#352 Remembering Rod Serling and the Cultural Impact of The Twilight Zone

Jeff Dwoskin 0:00

All right, everyone. I'm so excited today we are going to be celebrating the Twilight Zone. So my two special guests. I have two special guests today, Anne Serling, daughter of Rod Serling, and author of, as I knew him, my dad, Rod Serling, amazing book, and also author of an amazing book, Mark dwytziak, who wrote everything I need to know I learned in the twilight zone, amongst a million other books. But we're gonna focus on the zone today. We're going deep, depending on when you listen to this, it would've been on Christmas with Rod serlings 100th birthday. So we're still celebrating this man, and he's such a huge impact 100 years later. I mean, that's just in itself amazing. When you reflect on that and, and, or mark or both, what do you think is it that resonates that here we are, 100 years later, and he's so relevant still?

Anne Serling 0:56

I think he's still relevant because he dealt with issues that are still sadly relevant and prevalent today, racism, anti semitism, I think also because so many of the themes he wrote about are relatable, walking distance. It's one of my and many others favorites. You know, the whole idea of going back in time and seeing people you love

Jeff Dwoskin 1:18

and then realizing you really can't go back in time. And I just re watched that one as well. It's amazing. I'm sitting there watching it. I'm like, oh my god, that is a little baby. Ron Howard, yeah, Ron Howard, it's, uh, it's such a great, great episode. 10 Zens for a three scoop shake. It's amazing. Mark. Do you feel the same way about that episode? Is that in your top I

Mark Dawidziak 1:41

think that one thing that the the Twilight Zone is been kind of a little bit of a double edged sword for Rod serlings enduring fame, but one thing, it's immortal, and the Twilight Zone, unquestionably is, is the major factor as to why we're still talking about Rod Serling and those amazing life lessons. You know, it obscures the fact that this was an amazingly complete writer who had a lot of facets to his career, and he was much more than just the Twilight Zone. But one of the things that is consistent with his career, whether you're talking about the dramas he wrote in the 1950s like patterns and Requiem For heavyweight or what he wrote after the Twilight Zone, there's a remarkable American writer here. And I think that this is something I always try to say, is that you diminish a writer when you put something in front of their name, when you say science fiction writer, or horror writer, or, you know the well, Rod Serling was a lot of different kinds of writer. He was to, to my mind, a great writer. And the great writers are always timeless, and that's because one thing that they have in common is they have they're amazingly perceptive observers of human nature. They understand human nature. Shakespeare, we're still hundreds of years later, we're still delving into Shakespeare's stories. And it's because Shakespeare's stories are still relevant, even though they're set in a different time. They're setting things setting things that we can't even begin to relate to, courts and the Italian cities. And then he sets his place. And why are they still relevant? It's because Shakespeare gets right to the heart of it who we are, and he shows us who we are in our own country. Mark Twain is like that. How many times does it seem like when we quote Mark Twain? It sounds like he's talking about us today. Rod Serling is like that. And one of the things about Rod Serling's writing is this has often been said by me, that Rod Serling's writing is of its time. You watch an episode of Walking like walking distance, and it's clearly set in an era that did not know cell phones or home computers or any of that, and yet it's of its time, but it's timeless. It still seems like he's talking to us today. And as you said, a lot of episodes of The Twilight Zone are more relevant today than when they were written, and that's because human nature doesn't change. Sadly to say, we don't change. So the lessons that were crafted in a different era, in a different time. Twilight Zone starts during the Eisenhower administration in 1959 and the life lessons that were crafted in 1959 some of them are even more relevant today. So I think that's probably a long answer to your question, but I think it's important to remember that again, Rod Serling was not just a great fantasy writer. He was not a great science fiction writer. I happen to think that Ron Serling was one of the great writers of all time. People don't change. No, sad to say,

Jeff Dwoskin 4:29

they don't on that theme I was watching re watching a bunch of episodes and watching the monsters. The monsters are due on Maple Street. And it's really interesting when you can watch something and you're like, it does feel like it could have just been written. And you're like, Oh, a little on the nose, you know, if someone had written it today, or something like that, but to know that it was written so long ago, you know, decades ago, and it is, it literally could play out exactly that way, right? Now like that, people don't change, which in itself, is a little upsetting that we are devolving in that way. There's

Anne Serling 5:07

a program in Binghamton, where my dad was from, called the fifth dimension, where all the fifth graders watch the Twilight zones, and they learn about racism and am I some anti semitism, scapegoating, mob mentality, etc. One of the teachers was showing the episode The monsters they do on Maple Street. And at the end of the show, she asked the class, so who were the monsters? She said, the entire class stood up. They really understand the themes of these and I think it would have been one of my dad's greatest athletes to know this program exists,

Mark Dawidziak 5:43

yeah, and that really is a prime example of what we're talking about. Because there's no question that when Rod wrote that piece and it aired originally in 1959 we had just come through the McCarthy era. We We had just come through this era of the Red Scare and all of this commun anti communist paranoia, and neighbor turning on neighbor, and co worker turning on co worker, and everybody looking for communists under the bed, and maybe it's your neighbor. How can you tell they look like everybody else? Clearly, that's what he was writing about. But that episode has more resonance today only when it aired, because we have become increasingly divided as a nation. And you know, there's a there's a very stirring lesson in that episode, which, you know, is the same warning that that Lincoln tried to give us, which is divided, we fall, you know, if we do not find a way forward, if we descend into this kind of paranoia about our fellow countrymen, and we are not the United States of America, we ain't gonna Make it. And that's a very stirring message in 1959 it's a very powerful message in 1959 a lot of ways it's more powerful now if I mean, if I could pass a bill, well, help the politicians in Washington can't pass a bill now, they're incapable. But if I had the ability to pass it would be to mandate that everybody in the country has to sit down and watch this episode just to get this message through that we are not the enemy, your fellow citizens are not the enemy. But see how that little town on Maple Street descends into chaos and madness because of all those things, powerful message. So right there, you have answered your own question of, why are we still talking about Rod Serling as we approach the 100th anniversary of his birth, there's your answer,

Jeff Dwoskin 7:21

yes, 100% and like just to reflect again on this episode and just in re watching it, it's obviously social media didn't exist at the time, but it kind of as I was watching it. Now. You know, you watch things with new eyes as you as you watch things throughout your life the way that they were manipulating each other into turning on the different people throughout the episode as quickly as they were now is what happens on social media through the advent of fake news or misinformation, where people take everything in and immediately pivot on that as a fact and then react to it as if it was truth. This was happening in real time with the group on Maple Street. As one would say, maybe it's Anne. Why is Anne's lights all of a sudden on right and like, and then they would just turn on each other, left and right, and not until the one guy, I always thought it was interesting too, and re watching it like when the guy shoots the guy who went to the other street and then suddenly realizes, you know, it's easy to be this way until there's consequences for an action that you ultimately do take. So it's like it was, like a little bit of a kind of a warning there too. But then, just to see how easy it is to be manipulated, which is really what's happening at the end of that episode. It's they're being manipulated by aliens, right? So the kid was right all along. You know the little boy, the boy that warns him, it's an amazing episode. Yeah, it's a good life. I thought was had some interesting themes to it too, that in watching it now, where the all powerful leader that everyone knows shouldn't be in power, but it's gotten to the point where everyone's too afraid to do anything, Yep,

Mark Dawidziak 9:01

yeah. And you know, that's interesting, because I don't think that one was the original intent of the story. I think you know, we are. It's an interesting interpretation to sort of put a 2024, spin on that story. And it works. It's valid. That's what. What is great about fantasy storytelling. Fantasy storytelling tends to be metaphoric. The metaphoric lessons that you draw from the story changes from generation to generation, depending on what's in because these stories tend to reflect our our fears, our hopes, our nightmares, our dreams. That's what science fiction, horror fantasy does almost better than any other genres out there. You can see that with like that. You can see a classic piece of literature like Dracula, and you could say it was interpreted in many different ways when it was published in 1897 but each generation has metaphorically reinterpreted that story, because within the culture changes a little bit. And we said, oh, well, maybe it's, you know, I mean, Dracula was read as an AIDS metaphor in the 90s. Well, you know, Bram Stoker clearly did not know what AIDS was. It had not been discovered yet. It had not been but it works. It does work that way. It's a very malleable form for us to sort of address our own fears and anxieties and hopes and dreams and aspirations. So you take an episode like, it's a good life. Now we know what the origins of a good it's a good life. The original author, Jerome Bixby, saw children misbehaving in a restaurant. It was his comment on parenting. It was his comment on people who just let their kids run their lives and run wild. And this was a spoiled child. But now you flash forward 50 years later, 60 years later, and you're looking at that episode, and you say, well, maybe there is a political message here that fits our time. So it's a very malleable form. It changes for us as societies and it changes for us as individuals. Because you can watch a Twilight Zone episode when you're 10 years old, when you're 15 years old, when you're 20 years old, when you're 30 years old, and what you get out of it changes, because you're a different person at each of those and you're bringing different things to the experience of watching those episodes. You can stay with the Twilight Zone your entire life, and it's still be fresh and still be new. And that's powerful part of the storytelling. That's another reason we're still talking about Rod Serling, and it's still is, even with all the things we've been talking about, how what a keen observer of human nature, that was, of all of the things that he was interested in, like racism and bigotry and ignorance and how we treat children and how we treat the elderly, and all of these things that he was passionately interested behind all of that was a great storyteller. Twilight Zone is great storytelling. And how do we learn from the various first things you were given as a child? How do we learn? We learn through stories. You study and you gain knowledge by going into a classroom, but you truly learn through storytelling. That's what the Twilight Zone is, and that's what Rod Serling was. He was a magnificent storyteller.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:58

He was, and my thoughts on the the answer to that question is, one is it's amazing to not only have written the great works, but also to have kind of encapsulated himself as part of that, as the narrator. And I think he, in himself, is so memorable in re watching a lot of these episodes, I realized what we today call hooks, is there's a lot of really solid hooks of like the ones that we consider, like the classic ones that might come to anyone's mind right away, you know, like the glasses breaking at the end, or the image of the the guy on the airplane, the monster on the wing right in 20,000 or I the beholder were, you know, like that reveal with the pretty and the difference of beauty, or, you know, just all these things had such specific things that I remember in my head, and then in re watching, I was able to, like, enjoy the full story again, you know, because it'd been a little bit since I had watched all of it through, you know, obviously, every New Year's Eve we all watched The the marathons and stuff, you know I'm saying like but there's such iconic things that are so easy to remember and associate with that these stories stay with us for those reasons. I think as well, this

Anne Serling 13:12

may not be connected to what what you're saying, but as you've both been speaking, I've been thinking about the number of people who told me that they thought of my dad as their own father, and some said that they had tumultuous childhoods, and it was really the Twilight Zone, and watching the episodes that helped them work through that, navigate whatever pain they were experiencing. And I was quite touched by that, and my dad will have been.

Jeff Dwoskin 13:41

I think your dad impacted a lot of people. I remember, I remember, like, I've been, I put some of the Twilight Zone stuff, but on my bookshelf, half of one thing of my bookshelf right now, always, not just because we're talking is all Twilight Zone stuff, like every, every DVD, you know, I have the whole collection on there, and then books and an autobiography, and the yearbook. You got the Twilight Zone companion, Mark, sorry, yours is on Kindle, so I can't hold it up. You know, it's just like I remember watching, and it's like I could see where somebody might make that connection, because your dad's the one getting us through these stories as well. He's not only the one writing them and and telling them, but he's there at the beginning. He's there at the end to help us as the guide and to take us through it and to make us feel good about the lesson or what we just saw.

Mark Dawidziak 14:29

It's a good point. One of the reasons we make this kind of connection with Rod Serling that we don't often make with other writers is because Rod Serling was one of the very few writers in history. You know, all of history who was a true, genuine, 24 carat celebrity, and it's because of television. He was instantly recognizable. His voice was recognizable, his mannerisms were recognizable. We felt like we knew him because he came into our homes on such a regular basis. There are not many writers. Who you could just show a picture of them to sense, to somebody, and the average American would have a shot at knowing who they were. Try it with Herman Melville and see how many people know whether you're holding up a picture of, you know, Herman Melville or Emerson, or Saul Bellow, you know, or Norman, even Norman mail, or something like that. There are very few writers who are really instantly recognizable, and one is Mark Twain. Twain is you show a picture of Mark Twain to people, they got a good shot at it, they've got a decent shot. And the same is true with Rod Serling. With that comes another side, which is we saw the person who was on the screen and the person who was like the what I was saying about the writer, where you perceive only a part of what is there. So Rod Serling was not the person you saw on the screen. You know he was. It is what kind of made that connection, what it made him instantly, but, and it's why I always say to people, if you want to know the real Rod Serling, if you want to get to know read Ann's book. Ann's book is the only way you're going to get that person, the real person. And I think it surprises people when you read Anne's book and you find out what he was really like he which, which, again, you know he wasn't that super serious guy talking in those clip tones that that he used to introduce the Twilight Zone. That's why that book is so one of the reasons, one of many reasons that book is such a valuable book. There's many more, but not the least of which is for somebody like me who never met Rod Serling, who never had the the honor of meeting Rod Serling, this is as close as I'm going to get to feel like you know you're you're actually drawing close to the real flesh and blood presence of who this person was. I

Jeff Dwoskin 16:33

agree. It's an amazing read. So Anne, tell us what? What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your dad?

Anne Serling 16:39

He wasn't this somber person that you see this dark and black and white image. He was so funny. He would do things like just appear out of a room and reappear with a lampshade on his head. He did the best gorilla imitation you could imagine, as is seen in almost every hall movie. He he had a fabulous singing voice. He would belt out Sinatra and Tony Bennett throughout the house. If he got mad at you, you would know, and he'd be very angry. And then about five he'd walk out of the room, and then about five minutes later he'd reappear and say, have you seen my twin brother anywhere? He loved the Flintstones. We went along to watch TV during the week, my sister and I my mother's bulls, but my dad and I would sneak more than the occasional episode of Flintstones. He was just incredibly fun to be with. As a teenager, I never went through that phase where I didn't want to be with my dad or hang out with my dad. He was a joy to hang out with. He crapped me up. My mother used to say, stop laughing at him. You're only encouraging.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:46

It sounds amazing. I think, if I remember correctly in the book, you were about four when the Twilight Zone debuted. So that when so from four to nine or so, 910 and how long the five seasons ran, were you aware of the fame that it was going on? I could you guys go to a restaurant, like, what was, what was it like, and what was your perception as a, you know, such a young child, kind of just witnessing that?

Anne Serling 18:12

Well, when I was very young, I had friends whose dads were writers, so I knew my father wrote, but I didn't know until I was about seven exactly what he was writing. And that only happened when this mean kid on the playground asked me if I was something out of The Twilight Zone. And he said, Where does your dad get all his ideas hanging from the ceiling? So I had no idea what he was little obnoxious kid was talking about. So I went home and I asked my father what that meant, and he explained that he wrote for a series The Twilight Zone, and it was probably too old for me, and the first one I ever saw was nightmare at 20,000 feet. And my dad and I were sitting at the cottage in the living room, and I was looking from my father to this episode and feeling quite terrified, just in shock that this was the kind of stuff my father was writing. Even though my dad didn't write that one, it was Richard Matheson, he was still connected to those so it was a wee bit unsettling initially, because this wasn't my dad.

Jeff Dwoskin 19:14

It's so interesting. I mean, as a kid, that probably sounded like an insult, hearing you say as adult, if someone said it now, you'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah. No, it'd be like, Yeah, of course. High honor. Thank you.

Anne Serling 19:27

I'd like to go back to that moment now and do that. That's a good idea,

Jeff Dwoskin 19:32

but you can't, because we learned that from walking distance. Well, it's all tying together. Mark I was reading, when we talk about, like, tying into, like, common, current day stuff. I was reading it beginning of your book, time enough at last, how you felt the character was wrongly punished. I thought that was an interesting take on that it's an

Mark Dawidziak 19:51

outlier. For me, I realized that this episode is many people's favorite episode, and it certainly contains the strongest visual image as. Associated with the Twilight Zone, which is the broken glasses. So I have no arguments with the people who want to talk about how well acted it is how powerfully framed this the story is Meredith's performance is, you know, astonishing. I have no complaints with that, but the Twilight Zone does operate under certain rules, and that is that you are punished and rewarded for what you bring into the Twilight Zone. That character is punished far beyond anything that he does in that episode. He, in fact, is not the villain of the episode. He is, you know, the wife is one of the worst characters ever put on screen. You know, she's horrible. She's beyond horrible. And it also the message, kind of dates badly. It's like, well, you know, he's kind of a foolish person, because why? Oh, he wants to read. And now all these years later, go, Really, that's his crime. He wants to read. How awful of him to want to read. We're now in the world where the printed word is under fire and books are being banned, and it's like, you know, I think the message of that episode is dated badly. However, in the book, I was drawing life lessons from the various episodes. There was no way I could not attach a lesson to that episode, and I there's no way I could ignore it. The lesson that I put on the episode was something my mother used to say, when we would complain about something, one of the kids would complain about something, and one boy said, ultimately would say, well, that's not fair. My mother would always say, Nobody said life was fair. I hated hearing it then. I don't like hearing it now, but I do not deny the wisdom of that, and that was the lesson that I put on that episode. And he says it at the end, when his glasses break, and he holds up the broken glasses, he says, that isn't fair. And we agree with him. It isn't fair. I think one of the reasons that episode is still powerful because it does break the rules of The Twilight Zone. It does sort it is an outlier, and it is the one time that somebody is punished far beyond anything that he has should have coming to him. You know. Now my favorite Burges Meredith episode is not time enough, at last, it's the obsolete man. And I think the obsolete man is another episode that has grown and grown out. Now here is the same pick, another character who is a reader, who values books and values the printed word, and Romney Wordsworth, the character that Burgess Meredith plays in the obsolete man. He is one of the most heroic characters in all five seasons of The Twilight Zone. He emerges as just an amazingly heroic character. And that is my favorite Burgess Meredith episode, and it is one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes. So

Jeff Dwoskin 22:24

when I read that in your book, it really got me thinking, because I had never even thought of it as a punishment. I had just thought of it as one of those amazing twists of fate. And so it was interesting one to think about it from the perspective that you put forward in the book. But then I started thinking about it, and I was like, and I've had so much thought, so he just was going through my head. He got my head mark. I started thinking I was like, not to put today onto the episodes again. But I started thinking maybe it wasn't that he got punished, maybe it was that that was more of a lesson, a lesson not about specifically reading, but about the focus away from everything and everyone around you. And then I started thinking, how we today, if you replaced the books with your phone, right, how everyone stares at the phone and ignores everyone around you, because that's really what he was doing. He was so into the reading that he was giving up the relationship with his wife. He wasn't connecting at work. He was and at the end, it was like, Okay, this is the danger of being so focused and not really being part of the world that you're around. I heard that

Mark Dawidziak 23:30

interpretation of the episode, and I violently disagree with it. And this is why, and this is why, when you're with your phone, you are withdrawn from people you are not dealing with people when you are not escaping into a place, you are being just sort of mindlessly taken over, robotically, to buy by something. When you read you are escaping sometimes things is a place to go. It's like a friend of mine who was a prison guard at a maximum security prison always used to tell the prisoners read books, because no matter how long you are locked up here, you can get out of here if you read books. And that's what this character is escaping. He's escaping a terrible boss and terrible people and a terrible, dreary job and really wife. And it's not that he's doesn't he tries to share it. What does he do in the first scene you see him in when he's a bank teller, he's trying to tell the other people about the books he's reading. He's telling them about David Copperfield, and he's trying to tell them, Oh, it's a wonderful book. He's not escaping and staying by himself. What's the cruelest moment in the episode when he tries to share the poetry with his wife? He doesn't want to retreat and just keep to himself. And one of the great joys in this moment is that she gets it. She gets it. She wants to share this poetry, and then he opens the book, and she has defaced every page, which is one of the cruelest and nastiest things anybody has ever does in the twilight zone. So I don't agree with that at all, because throughout the episode, he's not shutting down, he's trying to share, and that's not what happens with phones. So

Jeff Dwoskin 24:58

I totally agree. And now let's chalk this up as another reason why these are still so memorable is that we can even have this conversation so thankfully. And not to put Ann on the spot, we'll let Ann be the tiebreaker mark.

Anne Serling 25:10

And I have discussed this episode, and I agree with him yet Joe and I'm struggling for his last name. I can send it to you who just wrote a book. He wrote, he was one of the writers on 30 something, and he confronted my dad with this, Why did this have to happen in this episode? And my father responded something like, where you can't just draw inward and become narcissistic. But I think had my dad had an opportunity to answer that question, he would have answered it exactly as Mark just did, because there's too much to that where this guy is not just withdrawing. He wants to share this love he has of writing and poetry. It's Mark so eloquently, just said, I

Mark Dawidziak 25:52

think one of the greatest joys of this character would be, is if anybody had episodes said, you know, I went home and I read David Copperfield because you were so passionate about it, and I saw such a light in your eyes when you were talking about it. So I went home, and it was this wonderful experience, you know. And that's what writing is. That's what Rod Serling did. You know, we do want to share this stuff, but I also say, you know, and this is where I'll back off. The life lessons that I put into the book are the life lessons I drew from this. It's not necessarily life lessons. You draw from it. You know this is that that's what fantasy storytelling it is. It is open to metaphoric interpretation. So if somebody else comes away with a different interpretation of it, that's valid. I'm not going to say, I'll say I'll disagree with you, but I'm not going to say you're wrong, because you cannot be wrong in the interpretation you put on the episode. My book was 50 life lessons drawn from the Twilight Zone. They're my life lessons, but they're not necessarily your life lessons. And I'm always eager to hear what other people's interpretations are for an episode,

Anne Serling 26:52

I would really like to ask my father, why did you write it like

Jeff Dwoskin 26:55

that? What other questions would you want to ask your father? Ooh,

Anne Serling 26:59

that's a good question. Why didn't you quit smoking? There are many, many personal questions. I think one of the things I would ask him about are his war experience was because clearly that was so central to who my dad was, and I did know some of what had happened to him, and it was one of the most difficult parts of writing my book actually was, was when my dad was in the war, and I have letters that he had written to his parents and that they had written to come and in the he was 18, he had enlisted in the art in the army the day after he graduated from high school, and he was writing these letters from training camp, and he was asking for things like candy and gum and hangers and underwear because he didn't like the GI underwear. And it was like reading letters that a kid at summer camp would be and it was devastating to read these and then read the thing, the things that his parents were telling him now they were so worried about what was going to happen, and knowing now what he was about to face, we he saw true horror in the war. The producer of The Twilight Zone, Bucha, said he thinks my dad turned to writing to regain his affection for humanity. I think that's a very truthful, powerful statement. A friend of his was decapitated when a Queenie crate fell from the sky, and just dreadful thing. My dad wrote a story, actually, when he was in college that Amy bores Boyle Johnson found, called First squad, first plateau, where my dad talks about by the these guys who died, and just the horror that we subject these kids to, even today and forever, get heart wrenching. And my dad actually had not he was not going to be a writer. He wanted to major in phys ed when he went to college, because he worked at a camp with kids who had rheumatic fever, and he loved working with the kids, so he wanted to teach biz ed to kids, but he went to Antioch college about three weeks after he came back from the war, and he was suffering greatly from PTSD, which wasn't even a term back then. So he changed his major to language and literature, because, as he said, he needed to get it out of his gut. He needed to get it off his chest, and I knew he had he had trauma because he had nightmares, and I would remember hearing him scream in the middle of the night, and I would ask him what had happened, and he said, I dreamt the enemy was coming at me. No, but that's something I would want to talk to him about, and also more about his childhood and growing up. His father died when my father was overseas, and although my dad the war was over and my but my dad didn't have enough points to go home, so that was a huge trauma. So my dad, he always would say to me, if only you had known your grandfather, and it's something I say to Mike, yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 29:57

what does all this legacy mean? Mean to your kids, because it's a it's an amazing amount to be connected with, and to be able to say, oh, that's, that's my grandpa, you know? I mean, these, the show keeps getting rebooted. Every now and then there's been movies. It's pop culture. It's everywhere. I mean, it's just like, that must be really kind of rewarding for them and heartwarming for you. Like, how

Anne Serling 30:19

it is, it is, and it's, it's interesting, because my 10 year old grandson has been asking me about him too, and it's so wonderful. And they're so lucky, and I'm so lucky to where they could look at films and see this map. And not everybody can do that. We're so fortunate,

Jeff Dwoskin 30:37

right? There's 100 plus episodes. He didn't there, he didn't physically narrate. He wasn't on camera in season one, but like, yeah, he they're all there, and he wrote all these things. So it must be such an amazing thing. It's probably a hell of a show and tell for the kids when they're younger, to be able to go in. Speaking of pop culture, like, Do you have any favorite? And this is for either of you, or both of you, is like any random pop culture moments that reference the Twilight Zone, or any of the specific episodes, or anything like that.

Mark Dawidziak 31:07

Go ahead mark. I was just gonna say, not really, but it's constant. I mean, how many times you can't go a week without somebody saying, I feel like we're in the twilight zone, having a Twilight Zone moment, or I feel like I'm tracked into it is referenced constantly in in that regard. So it's not so much the, you know, a favorite example of that, except that, except that it is and has been constant ever since the show was on. My kind of joy is to see how much the Twilight Zone is influenced in the culture. Is that you moving forward, it influences almost everything in storytelling, especially in television. You see the fact that, of course, it's going to influence Star Trek, it's going to influence a lot of the genre storytelling that follows it all the way to today. But what you see is that it actually influences all storytelling in television. You get to a new century, and every single leading writer, producer in charge of an acclaimed show, David Chase, Matthew Weiner, Vince Gilligan, they all cite Rod Serling as their primary influence and inspiration. I think that would have amazed rod, and I think it would have delighted him, because these are really his children. These are, you know, his and is his, his child child, but his descendants in TV are numerous, and they're everywhere, and they have reshaped the medium several times over, just as he did one of the amazing things about him

Anne Serling 32:34

and Erwin would be more shocked than my dad that he still remembered and remembered so fondly. He said that he didn't think his writing would stand the test of time, that it was momentarily adequate.

Jeff Dwoskin 32:47

Oh, well, he was so wrong about that. But do you have, and do you have, like, a moment like I, I always loved it with, I think the Simpsons pay homage all the time with the tree house of horror episodes that they would do, they were always kind of pulling from Twilight Zone episodes. There is a hilarious Pam Anderson Saturday Night Live with the eye of the beholder. There's just, like, all these little things where it just kind of pops up constant

Anne Serling 33:10

but like, Mark, I don't really have a favorite, the Tower of Terror and stuff kind of shocking, The Simpsons and all the political you know, we're living in the twilight zone there. Indeed true. When you

Jeff Dwoskin 33:24

say tower terror, do you mean in in Florida, it's my favorite thing in the world. Do you love it? Or does it? Is it weird? I'm

Anne Serling 33:31

not a roller coaster, kind of not really my thing. And when it opened in Florida, they also had one in LA and Paris, I think. But when it opened in Florida, we went for the premiere, and so we had to ride it. And I was actually absolutely terrified this thing dropping from the sky. It's just not my thing. But we had to ride it like four times. So I still don't know if I got better, but we went with our grandkids a couple of years ago, and so of course, I was going to ride it. My granddaughter got quite a kick out of me screaming the entire 12 minutes or whatever. It's easier, right? You have to say.

Mark Dawidziak 34:10

And I'll take it back. I do have a favorite. It actually is. There is a moment on the comedy a third rock from the sun, which starred John Lithgow. And of course, they were all aliens on there, and they had done an episode. Now, John Lithgow had done the movie segment of The Twilight Zone, the remake of nightmare 20,000 feet in 1983 so he played the fright passenger in the remake of the episode that had starred William Shatner in the original series written by Richard Matheson. And in the series, The aliens are always in communication with the big, giant head, who is their leader. And they did an episode where John Lithgow is on a plane as character Dick Solomon, and he thinks he sees something on the wing of the plane, and he panics in the episode, and it's a reference to nightmare 20,000 feet. Well, they finally introduced. Is the big, giant head, and it's played by William Shatner. So, you know, Shatner comes off the plane. They go to meet him, and he gets off his plane, and John Lithgow says to him, you know, how was your flight? And Shatner says, It was fine. Halfway through the flight, I thought I saw something on the wing, and Lithgow looks at him and says, The same thing happened to me, you know. And a double met up, moment of both of them having played that character in nightmare 20,000 feet and referencing it in the and again, it's inside baseball, you have to know that they both played that character in different versions of that story. So I do have a favorite. And I got to know Richard Matheson very well, and he was not aware of that episode till I told him about it. And he, of course, was delighted by the fact that it had reached that level. I

Jeff Dwoskin 35:44

love that. And then, and do you have, or how many do you have stamps with your dad on it?

Anne Serling 35:50

Yeah, I have the thing, Brian, when first came out, yeah.

Jeff Dwoskin 35:54

So when we talk about your dad thinking Rod Serling, thinking he wasn't going to last, or that people wouldn't remember his writing. The series ended 60 years ago, 1964 that's when the five year round ended. But it's still to this day, right? Let's see. We got 2023 variety ranked. The Twilight Zone is number 14 on the 100 greatest TV shows of all time. I mean, it's just like, I mean, it's like, and then it's like Rolling Stone number 700 or number seven, number eight on the TV this list, it's like, it's incredible to think that a show that old still ranks as one of the absolute best of all time. I mean, if there's a testament to just the longevity and and just the amazing writing and impact that Rod Serling had. It's, it's just unbelievable to be remembered like that. It's just, I mean, when you think about top 100 shows of all time in 2023 I mean, how many shows have there been? I mean, there's a million shows, right? I mean, it's like, it's just unbelievable.

Mark Dawidziak 36:55

We have short memories. We have very short pop culture memories. Those lists are always slanted towards the last 20 years. You look at those lists, and whenever those lists are done, if it was done like 20 years ago, the front runners would be shows like The Sopranos and Seinfeld, you know. And now you'd see a lot of Game of Thrones, and, you know, you'd see different things that are more because, again, we have very short memories, the fact that the Twilight Zone keeps coming in the top five, top 10, top 15, and you handicap it for those short memories and time and that it's black and white. You know that we have gone through several iterations of generations that have resistant to black and white. When you handicap it for all those it's almost like saying it's number one. Once you, once you, you sort of say, okay, yeah, but that it is amazing that, and it does speak to the durability of the show. Absolutely,

Jeff Dwoskin 37:46

I would agree with that as well. It's interesting, like The Dick Van Dyke Show purposely didn't go to color because they wanted all of it to be in black and white, so that it would, as a whole, not get split, like we're lost in space. Most of the colored ones are the one the colored episodes are the ones we see in reruns and stuff, more than maybe a black and white, but, yeah, oh, you mentioned Star Trek earlier. Desi Lu, right? Star Trek, you know, Desi Lou was the, kind of, like the origin for Star Trek, right? And then, and then also the time element. Technically, I guess Desi was the first host

Mark Dawidziak 38:17

arguments been made.

Jeff Dwoskin 38:19

No, it's a soft argument. It's not, it's not real. I don't mean it's like, it's just a fun way to spin the trivia. We

Mark Dawidziak 38:25

do say that though. I mean, we have, you know, that that's sort of, it's, it is prototyped Twilight Zone. I mean, it's, you know, it's definitely, you cannot dismiss the time element. It's important. But it was also not the first version of it, you know, that he wrote. It's also not the first fantasy thing that he wrote. Get you can get a little overstated, but you're not careful.

Jeff Dwoskin 38:44

True, true, true. All right, I know I promised I'd keep you only this long, so it's you guys are amazing. Do you have any kind of just final thoughts on the core values and principles that we can learn from the Twilight Zone and that we've learned?

Anne Serling 38:59

Yeah, Mark, I'm going to let you go first on this one. All right,

Mark Dawidziak 39:02

one of the things that I point out in the book you know, is whenever I give a talk on the Twilight Zone, inevitably, and it sounds like a joke. It sounds like the beginning of a joke. And it isn't. It's actually happened. But somebody comes up to me after everyone's every single talk, and the person is either a priest, a minister, a rabbi. This is true. This is absolutely true. And they, they come up and they tell me, I use your book in sermons, and when I do, when I do talks, I draw life lessons from from that. It's one of the highest compliments that I can get, as far as the book is concerned. But it's that the compliment really belongs to Rod Serling in The Twilight Zone. As I said before. You know, storytelling is how we learn. And the Twilight Zone, one of the things that has made it truly immortal and has kept it in is because these stories are parables. And where do we he, you know, where have we heard that before? The power of parables? Well, you know, a lot of people think, Oh, he's talking about the New Testament. He's talking about, no, you can. That is true. But you can go all the way back to the Greeks and Aesop's Fables were the unsaid line at the end of every Aesop Fable was, and the moral of the story is. And you could say the same thing about the Twilight Zone. When you get to the end of The Twilight Zone, you always had Rod say something at the end, something very powerful and profound about what you have just seen. He's not saying it, but he might as well be saying and the moral of the story is, what, what did you learn? What did you take away from this? I think that's really the power of the show, the power of The Twilight Zone. And I think it's what's kept it going generation after generation after generation. I think it's going to keep it going. I think Rod worried that 100 years after his death, that people wouldn't remember anything that he wrote. Well, we're 50 years after reproaching, the 50th anniversary of his passing, and we not only know, still know, that he was a writer, we know he was a great American writer, and we know the writing itself and that kind of staying power. I'll take the bet now, if anybody wants to collect 500 years from now. But I think 500 years from now, when we're colonizing Mars, as I say in the book, wary of aliens dropping off cookbooks, we're still going to be know who Rod Serling is, and we are still going to know

Anne Serling 41:15

the writing. I can't improve on that.

Jeff Dwoskin 41:17

No, I was, that was, that was amazing, and it is, I, I'll take the bat, you know, I'm we'll meet up in 500 years. I can't even tell you how many times, just for no reason, it's a cookbook comes out of my mouth, like, anytime, like something's coming up where you don't like, what is this? Whether it's a cookbook, it's such a great it's one of the greatest. That's one of the greatest twists. I think I love, I love, love, love. Thank you guys for I know you guys are doing a whirlwind tour and everything and talking a lot about this, but I do so appreciate you carving a little bit of your time out to hang with me.

Anne Serling 41:51

And I appreciate both for chatting about my dad. Oh yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 41:55

I love your dad. Love your dad. Love the show. Love everything. It's it's meant a lot to me in terms of my writing. And I always say, like, I have a stand up comic. And I know Twilight Zone is, obviously, isn't stand up comedy, but I always say, like, oh, I learned how to write, and I do comedy based on the Twilight Zone. I mean, just because, when you think about the pattern of comedy, it's the twist at the end, that's what's funny. You know, it's the pattern of three and at the very end, you changed the perspective of what the people were listening. I just applied it to comedy, you know, which is the rule there, and it's like, but I feel like I learned it and like and really believed it from watching the Twilight Zone, you know, just so many memories of just little TV, black and white.

Mark Dawidziak 42:38

Twilight Zone was not a, truly a horror show, but it had episodes which were what you would call horror episodes that this. They had episodes that were science fiction episodes or fantasy. But you know, horror was an aspect, and horror and humor are twins. They're flip sides of the same coin. So when you say you learn something from that, that's not really very surprising, because truly they are they are they. They are that closely related. They are the two basic metaphoric devices we use to deal with subjects we don't like to think about. And you know, how much of comedy is based on pain, how much of comedy, I mean, nobody gets up there and as a state of comic and says, Hey, my wife's Great. That's not where it starts, is it? You know, it never starts there. And they both tend to address big themes, really big, powerful themes, and they're the way we do it, but, you know, they're the two ways we do it there. And they're also the two forms that don't tend to get a lot of respect. They're the ones we dismiss. And you know, it's, you write those two forms. It's sort of like the literary equivalent of eating at the Children's table, but they are the two hardest forms to write and to master. It's, you know, it's another reason, I think, again, that, you know, we I think Rod Serling understood that, and he understood the horrors of that we're capable of. And you know, that does come out of his war experiences, you know. And I'm right, if it weren't for the war, I don't think he would have become a writer the

Jeff Dwoskin 43:55

path they chose. And then we're all here talking about it. And I guess, you know, he turned all that pain into just a lot of amazing stories, metaphors, things that we can still learn from today. So it's, it's an incredible testament. So thank you both. Just one more time, I'll just say, as I knew him, my dad, Rod Serling, if you, like many, many people, grew up loving Rod Serling and twigs on Anne's book should be at the top, top of your list, and Mark's book, everything I need to know I learned in the twilight zone is just a great way to kind of understand and kind of dive into all the amazing lessons that we learned from the Twilight Zone. There you go. Thank you both very much.

Anne Serling 44:35

Thanks so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai