Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Rod Serling Update

Rod Serling on the Twilight Zone: We failed frequently, but we created more than we imitated: "A never-before-seen interview with Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling is hypnotic viewing, as he talks honestly about the show's successes and failures in that deep, reflective voice that narrated your childhood."

Video at the link.

6 comments:

David Cranmer said...

Now that was a fascinating interview. But when he reached for that cigarette and said "God is telling me something..." He died like five years later.

Mike Dennis said...

Thanks for finding and posting this great interview, Bill. It brought back some vivid memories.

When he wasn't in California, Serling used to live in Interlaken, New York, a little hamlet in the Finger Lakes district. At the time of TZ's popularity, I was in high school in Seneca Falls, a larger town (pop. 7000) just north of Interlaken. I would see him around Seneca Falls from time to time, and one of his relatives was Phil Serling, my father's lawyer.

Interlaken and Seneca Falls are both situated on Cayuga Lake, the wellspring for Cayuga Productions, his production company.

David Cranmer said...

Mike, I was to young to catch a Serling sighting but grew up in Freeville and many folks would talk about Rod and Carol and what gracious folks they were.

My dad also worked at Ithaca College at the same time as Serling.

Terrill Lee Lankford said...

What a great interview. Amazing how much has changed (25 million viewers a week would make that show the biggest hit in the world right now - and Serling would have been a millionaire many times over), and how much hasn't changed - his description of the "therapeutic" and unsolicited script submissions is polite and hilarious at the same time (Lee Goldberg will love it).

Most of all, this just proves how much class that Serling's generation had. The current crop of hot talent out there could learn a lot from watching this. A little humility goes a long way.

Unknown said...

I'm glad to see others enjoyed this as much as I did. Great stuff.

Stephen B. said...

A find. I really enjoyed that. When I was a teen my Dad and I caught many of the re-runs (WGN Broadcast) but over the years there seemed to be few articles and never video on Serling interviews.

I remember the early series 1986/1987 TWILIGHT ZONE and those were pretty good.