Inside The Twilight Zone With Its TV Historian Marc Scott Zicree – Episode 373

Jeff Dwoskin 0:00

Alright, everyone. I'm excited to introduce my next guest writer, producer, director and author of one of my most cherished books on my bookshelf, the Twilight Zone companion, a definitive guide to the classic series. My guest is also written for numerous iconic TV shows, including Star Trek, The Next Generation Deep Space Nine, Babylon five. But right now, get ready to enter the wondrous world of imagination with my guest Marc Scott Zicree, hello, glad to be here. Jeff. Oh, my goodness, I have loved, like many, the Twilight Zone forever and not I mean not to throw names around. But and Serling gave me your email, which, you know, so that was exciting. I have had your book, no kidding, like forever. You think this could be like, maybe an early at first, maybe an early?

Marc Scott Zicree 0:53

I think it is. I, you know, whenever people show me their dog eared copies, they're falling to pieces. I'm very gratified, because it means they loved the book. They really read it, and it's just, you know, I love, I wouldn't want to see pristine copies that no one's ever cracked open.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:06

There was a time where I think I had the entire book memorized. Like, anyway, if anyone had said any, any particular episode, I could be like, Oh, that one I found in the book, which is, it's kind of hilarious. I must have pulled this out of a magazine. It's to order the VHS episodes, yeah, which I believe that I ended up buying a bunch of those. I think I have the DVDs. And then you did the blu rays,

Marc Scott Zicree 1:34

yeah? Well, I've actually done all the home video version. So for instance, those, those VHS tapes, I wrote, the liner copy you'd open, you'd crack them open, then there'd be, like, a couple of pages of background notes on all the episodes. Yeah. So I've been involved with all of the including the laser disc. I've been involved with all of them.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:50

Tell me when you got obsessed with the Twilight Zone and what led you to write one, one of the early kind of TV books, right? It

Marc Scott Zicree 2:00

was, I actually, you know, I think I'm responsible for creating the genre, basically, because prior to the Twilight Zone companion, the attitude was, Well, why would people want to read about a show that's ended its network run years ago, Twilight Zone came, companion came out, and it sold like half a million copies and and then they understood there was a market. So I, you know, I've been a fan of The Twilight Zone since I was a kid, when I was around, you know, I don't know, 878, years old, it went into syndication, and it was running five days a week in the afternoon on KTLA here in Los Angeles. And so I would just come home from school and watch episodes, and it just became sort of our common mythology. All the kids at school would talk about the episodes. It was super fun. I grew up during the space race in the 60s, so science fiction and reality were very intermingled. You'd see science fiction writers on like being interviewed by Walter Cronkite about the space race, Arthur C Clarke and Ray Bradbury and so forth. And Rod Serling was just kind of like a member of the family. I mean, he he was so present between that and Night Gallery and the game shows he would appear on, and all sorts of stuff so that. So Twilight Zone and outer limits and the original Star Trek all came. All debuted when I was a kid, and those are the three shows that made me want to be a writer. And so that was, that was the beginning of it. All

Jeff Dwoskin 3:16

amazing. All right, so what's the origin of the book? I know George Clayton Johnson, one of the the big coworkers, I guess, contributing writers. Yeah, you the idea. No,

Marc Scott Zicree 3:27

here's here's basically the evolution of it. When I, as I mentioned that when I was kid, Star Trek, Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, I noticed that they were all sort of being written by pretty much the same guys, more like a handful of people writing all of these shows. And they were also the same names on the books I was reading. So whether that was Richard Mathis and Charles Bowman, you know George Clayton Johnson, he co wrote Logan's Run the novel with William F Nolan, Harlan Ellison, on and on and on. Theodore Sturgeon, as soon as I was a teenager, I started going to science fiction conventions and meeting these writers who were my heroes. I didn't particularly care about meeting Leonard Nimoy, I wanted to meet you know, George Clayton Johnson, and he wrote kick the can and nothing in the dark and game of pool on Twilight. So he wrote the first episode of Star Trek that ever aired, the one with the salt vampire. So George and I became very good friends when I was a teenager. I interviewed him for a book I was doing for one of my college classes called three interviews on media and society. So I interviewed him and Theodore Sturgeon and Ron Cobb, who was a great visual concept designer on movies like aliens and Star Wars and so forth. So when I got out of college, I'd gotten an art degree, painting, sculpture and graphic arts. I was trying to decide whether to be an artist or a writer. When I was 19, I went to the Clarion writers workshop, which is a big science fiction writing workshop and sold my first short story to one of my teachers, Damon Knight, who was the writer who wrote the short story. It's a good life or not, it's a good life to serve man, to serve man, you know. So this was, you know, I knew of him, of course, from the Twilight Zone episode. I got out of college, and I knew I wanted to be a writer, producer and TV, but there were no there were no classes. In that there was no way to learn that. And so I thought, well, it was two years after rod's death, 1977 and I was like 2122 years old. And I thought, well, if I write a book about one of the greatest shows ever made, if not the greatest show, I'll learn how to do this. You know, by studying the best show, I'll I'll learn how to make great TV. So it was partially my curiosity about the show itself, and it was part it was partially I wanted to learn this, so I spent three months interviewing people who'd worked on the show, starting with George before I even went to Carol Serling rod's widow, because I knew that if I went directly to her as someone who only sold one short story and never even taken a journalism class, she'd already turned down major journalists who wanted to write about rod and the zone. So I thought, Well, okay, I'll spend three months researching it and interviewing people. And by then, I then I went to Carol, and so I knew a lot about the subject. I knew how I was going to do the book. She clearly couldn't talk to George or to Bucha or any of the other people I'd interviewed, and they must have given me a good, you know, referral, because She then said, okay, you've got access to everything, and that was phenomenal. So

Jeff Dwoskin 6:03

when you say access to everything, what? What does that mean? Well,

Marc Scott Zicree 6:07

first off, I interviewed over 100 people who worked on the show, ultimately, but the great part, see, you know, if rod hadn't died at age 50 in 1975 I wouldn't have written that book, because obviously one to write a book about Twilight Zone should have been Rod Serling, right? But he was gone. And I thought, Well, why not me? Rod's house was exactly as he'd left it. It was only two years after his death. So the house in Pacific Palisades was it still had one room that was entirely the trophy room with all the sick, the six Emmys and the three Hugo Awards and the Peabody awards and all of that, even his dog was still there, this senile Irish setter. In the back of the house, there was a guest house, and that was rod's office, and there was one wall that was entirely science fiction. Paperbacks from 1959 to 1964 and many of them had never even cracked open. And on the inside front cover of every single one of them stamped in red was property of CBS. So clearly, Rod had said, Send me every book that's published about science fiction. And they had in the garage There were piles of Twilight Zone episodes in film, can 60 millimeter prints piled piled high in the attic were his scrapbooks and boxes of you know, there were file cabinets and boxes. I opened one box, and it was scripts that had never been made Twilight Zone, scripts by Matheson and Beaumont, two by Ray Bradbury. It was just like the treasure trove. It was, it was amazing.

Jeff Dwoskin 7:29

Okay, so you're a kid in the candy store with all this like, how long did it take you to to watch these things, to sort through them, to, I guess,

Marc Scott Zicree 7:39

from the month I started the book to the month it came out was five years by the time I was 2423 I was writing for television. You know, Smurf C man, Super Friends, Real Ghostbusters. That's why I broke in. But the Twilight Zone companion was my main project through that entire period. See, the problem was that, when I started the book, there were no VCRs. You couldn't record a show. You could record it on audio cassette, but you were also the only access you had were episodes that were airing, and they were cut down. You know, they cut several minutes out of them to add more commercials and syndication. And rod's contract was that he was supposed to get 216 millimeter prints of every episode. But as the show went on, it became much more haphazard. So some episodes he'd have four copies of, some he have no copies of, and then some, like the hour ones, he might only have the second half hour or the first half hour of the hour episode, but these were pristine 16 millimeter prints. They had the original commercials. They had his coming attraction spots. So they were so ultimately, Carol would let me carry home a whole pile of these 16 millimeter film cans. And I bought a 16 millimeter projector. I just put them on the projector and watch them and take notes and record the audio. And that was invaluable. And the funny part was, there were two episodes that, for some reason, Rod didn't have them, and they never aired. So I called KTLA, which was the local la station. I said, Hi, I'm writing a book on the Twilight Zone, and there's two episodes I never get I've never seen you air. And they said, the guy said, Well, what are the two episodes? I told him I was expecting. He would say, you know, come on in. We'll put him on a little movie. Olin, you can watch him. He said, Um, okay, we'll air them next week. So the in all of La saw those two episodes because I needed to see them. So that was those. Were those. One was the gift, which is a very rarely seen episode about an alien who comes to earth and he lands in a Mexican village and with a cure for cancer. Yeah. And originally, Rod had written that as one of the pilots, as an hour long script called I shot an arrow into the air. And it wasn't set in a Mexican village. It was just kind of more in America, and he kind of cobbled that and winnowed it down. It's not one of the better episodes, but that was one, and the other one I can't recall at this late remove. But then, of course, I found out there were four episodes that had never been syndicated and that then I had to, you know, go in search of those as well.

Jeff Dwoskin 9:52

Ruda Lee's episode was one of those. Yeah, yeah. It was,

Marc Scott Zicree 9:56

it was Yes, sounds and silences, the encounter, the one with joy. Which decay miniature, which is a great episode, an hour episode with Robert Duvall, and yeah, the one you're mentioning, so but yeah, but now they're all available because I was able to get them back into into into release. So that was, that was great.

Jeff Dwoskin 10:13

Yeah, I feel the gift, the whole Oh no, we hated that person, and we murdered the alien, but they were going to give us cancer. I feel like they've that trope, though, whether it may, whether it was the best episode or not, no eventually got reused and

Marc Scott Zicree 10:31

well, many of the Twilight Zone episodes have been, have been the inspirations for many TV shows and movies over the years, of course, and books. Do you have any favorites of Twilight Zone? Episode,

Jeff Dwoskin 10:42

sure. No, no, no. Well, yeah, I want to get to that. No. Do you have any favorites that were in that were inspired by the Twilight Yeah? I mean, clearly

Marc Scott Zicree 10:49

Poltergeist, the movie poltergeist is influenced by Little Girl Lost the Matheson episode, where the little girl falls through the hole in the in dimensions, you know, obviously the The Simpsons, Halloween episodes, all of the, all the tropes they've done relating to Twilight Zone. Oh, the Treehouse of

Jeff Dwoskin 11:06

those are more homages. So, yeah, those are fun.

Marc Scott Zicree 11:09

Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, it's, there's so many, you know, how where do you start? I mean, every, I mean, all of us grew up watching the Twilight Zone. There's a huge ripple effect through, through all of our culture,

Jeff Dwoskin 11:20

I feel like the Twilight Zone is like The Godfather. And what I mean by that is, if you've never seen the Godfather, you don't realize how many things you watch that reference the godfather. Yes, like, It's uncanny. Every movie references in some way, the Twilight Zone is the same exact thing. There's all these subtle references. If you never watch it, you just think, oh, that's that's cute, clever, whatever. But you don't realize, like, how much these things have inspired everything. Well,

Marc Scott Zicree 11:49

the thing that's so amazing about television because, really, I'm the first generation of television kids, you know, it's an incredibly powerful medium. You know, rod's idea, and initially, during the 50s, was that it would be like the Broadway stage, except that all of America could watch it. And so the idea was you could write these amazing pieces of work that would just, you know, ripple out into millions of people, you know, throughout the country, instantaneously. And of course, as the censors got more and more of a grip on things, the sponsors and the censors rod felt more and more frustrated, and that's how he ended up creating and being the showrunner of Twilight Zone. He was really the first modern showrunner in that way, the writer who ran the show, rather than the non writing, producer who had been over the writers prior to that. I

Jeff Dwoskin 12:33

think that's why it's been so hard, probably, to replicate the magic of it, because he was so much of it, speaking of inspiration, as you watch severance? Yes, I do. Okay, so the TV show severance that is on. Are you caught up?

Marc Scott Zicree 12:49

I haven't watched all of the second season yet. I've watched the first season. Okay.

Jeff Dwoskin 12:53

So are you aware that the finals episodes is, I don't want to ruin anything for you, but don't worry about it. I got you. So I gotta have it. So the second to last episode, leading into the final episode, was called the after hours, and they literally quote, like it's a literal quote where they use the woman's name and you know, she's going to the ninth floor for a gold thimble. Miss Marsha white, right? Wow. The specialties department, but they said that the after hours, the mighty Casey and a world of his own were are heavily tied in somehow, like they offer the clues. I don't know how much into it you are.

Marc Scott Zicree 13:34

Well, I should, I should reach out to them. And, you know, I mean, it's funny, because, you know, there's at least half of all the people in Hollywood own The Twilight Zone companion, and in many cases, it was a book that proved instrumental in their lives, in terms of them deciding to become writer producers in TV, particularly in science fiction. So you know, a lot of these guys, I know, I mean Ron Moore and Joe Straczynski and so forth, most science fiction shows need that visionary at the top, whether it's Joe Straczynski with Babylon five or Roddenberry with Star Trek, you know, or Chris Carter with X Files, usually there's one guy or maybe a team, sort of with the vision to see it through. Ron Moore with the RE, you know, reinvented Battlestar Galactica, you know, so, but they're all huge, huge, huge fans of Rod Serling,

Jeff Dwoskin 14:17

all right. Well, you need to catch up, because I we need to, I need

Marc Scott Zicree 14:22

I'll definitely check it out. Severance, you

Jeff Dwoskin 14:25

bet with Rod Sterling's Hunter's birthday was not too long ago, right? And what do you feel? How do you define his lasting legacy, like 100 years it would have been, he would have been 100 years old, 50 years from the time you start. He died past, you know, almost passed away. You started this

Marc Scott Zicree 14:43

book 1975 Yeah, it was, I mean, he's, he's had two enormous impacts. The first is on the public in general. The amazing irony is that if rod hadn't been censored, if he hadn't because rod wanted to write about. Society and race and governmental issues, you know, politics, all that stuff. So you know, when he wrote about non societal flash points, like, for instance, Requiem For heavyweight, about a boxer on the downward slide, there was no problem with that, because it wasn't controversial. It wouldn't and it wasn't censored. But the The irony is that if he hadn't wanted to write like about Emmett Till's murder, things like that. He never would have created Twilight Zone, and he would have just been writing stories of his day, and he'd be forgotten now, by and large, he'd be linked with the other writers who were big back then, but generally forgotten now, of Reginald, Rose, admo, Zelle Patty, Chayefsky, even. But because he wrote Twilight Zone, he made it more universal. So he would be writing about the same issues, but in a way where it could almost it would resonate to any generation for So, for instance, monsters are due on Maple Street is about how people can be manipulated to hysteria, toward toward turning against each other, instead of seeing who the real enemy is. And that's as timely today as it was when rod wrote it, if not more so. Thanks to that, everyone has watched Twilight Zone. Everyone has, you know, this is, this is a cultural touchstone, because they have such a depth of meaning. You can watch them over and over and again. They're never just about the gimmick, or rarely. You know Carol Serling, you know, I'd run into her periodically, and she'd say, I'm always amazed at how this is just continuing, that it's as popular as it ever was. I was gratified too, because when I wrote the book, I had no idea if Twilight Zone, you know, 50 years later, if it would be still known even, I mean, there's so many shows that I grew up with that people never talk about Bonanza or the High Chaparral or Mannix, you know, but Twilight Zone, everybody knows that was really gratifying. I think it's, I think it's going to continue. I think 100 years from now, when I'm ahead in a tank with nutrients, I'll be talking about Twilight zones. You know, rod's 200th birthday. But also there's the, there's the, the enormous ripple effect in the creative community. And so, as I mentioned, the second golden age of television is largely thanks to rod you know, guys like David Chase, you know, with the sopranos, or Vince Gilligan with Breaking Bad and better calls all these they're huge Rod Serling fans, and they look to him as a model, as an icon of what the medium is capable of and how you run a show To keep power so that your vision reaches your audience. I mean, Rod was a warrior and a great inspiration for all of us. Amazing

Jeff Dwoskin 17:26

answer, thank you. That's I feel the same way. Now, it's okay. I It is amazing, though, and you're right. I mean, for anyone to remember, you know, to be remembered that fondly. And it's not like we're barely remembering him. It's not like, Oh, it was his 100th and, and we suddenly remembered it was his. It's like, the other thing that's

Marc Scott Zicree 17:46

so interesting is that rod is a pop culture icon himself. I mean, he is, like, the epitome of cool, along with Marilyn Monroe, James Dean Bogart. You know, there are, there aren't that Elvis. You know, there aren't that many who are instantly recognizable and, and he's one of them, so I think that's, that's pretty cool, too. And that's, that was a total accident. He didn't intend to be the narrator, just, you know, happened by default, because the first narrator, they had Westbrook von Voorhees, who had done the march of time. He had this big, booming voice that was totally wrong for Twilight Zone. And then they couldn't afford Orson Welles, and so rod said, Well, how about me? And they kind of fell out of their chair laughing, but they gave it a whirl, and he turned out, of course, to be perfect. He

Jeff Dwoskin 18:25

was only on screen from season two on, right? I mean, he did like teasers at the end. Yeah, there's the opening Narrator On screen that sort of, that was a season two thing, right? Yeah.

Marc Scott Zicree 18:36

But, you know, he'd been doing the coming attraction stuff, and he also was really well known. He was interviewed all the time, like Mike Wallace interviewed him. He was a very public figure, even even from the beginning. All right,

Jeff Dwoskin 18:49

so you were close then with Carol Serling and Anne? Are you close with Anne or and

Marc Scott Zicree 18:54

Jody both? I, you know, I interviewed all three of them. I mean, it's amazing how gracious they were to even let me in to interview them, to, I mean, I was going up into that attic and pouring through things for years and so, I mean, for them, rod's death was very, very recent. It was two years since he had died. It was and of course, they were stunned by his death at 50. I mean, he went in for open heart surgery. The expectation was that he would, you know, recover. And instead, you know, he died, and really, really a shock. So they that grief was very fresh. It was a fresh wound when I started working on the book, but so I interviewed Anne and Jody, both when they were, like, in their early 20s, and I've known them ever since, a lot as as with Carol until her death,

Jeff Dwoskin 19:38

what are some of the things that you found that surprised you the most when you were digging through everything. Well,

Marc Scott Zicree 19:43

the big surprise ultimately was I learned that Charles Beaumont one of the principal writers of Twilight Zone, when he was 33 he started exhibiting symptoms that were ultimately diagnosed as pre senile dementia. So for the last season and a half of Twilight Zone, all of the script credit. Him, to him were either co written or entirely written by his friends, so he could still get assignments, but he didn't have he was losing the ability to write. And so, for instance, the episode living doll was actually ghost written by a writer named Jerry Sowell. This was totally unknown. No one had ever talked about it. No one had ever credited writers who ghost wrote for Beaumont. So I was really, I was really glad they let me in on that, and I could give the credit where credit was due. Beaumont died at 38 and he looked like a 90 year old man. He William F Nolan was one of his friends said, like his character, Walter Jameson, he just dusted away. So that was, that's, you know, amazing. So that was a surprise and really interesting. And then with Rod, it was just going deeper and deeper and deeper into that material, that that life and finding out, my curiosity, my read, one of my reasons for writing the book was, how do you grow up to be able to write these kind of stories? What kind of background do you have where you can imagine these things? Because these are stories that no one had ever written before. I mean, kick the can, you know, where how George Clayton Johnson come up with that, and so forth. So that was fun. It was amazing to realize that rod dictated his scripts. That was phenomenal. Matheson told me that once he tried to dictate a script and he couldn't do it. It's really a unique talent that Rod had.

Jeff Dwoskin 21:13

I mean, you found a lot of like, there's some cool stuff, like an unused opening in the book, and you talk about, like, all that you mentioned the scripts that you found that were not used, any chance that any of those scripts would ever see the light of day, or have they or I hope

Marc Scott Zicree 21:29

so, uh, some of them have. For instance, Matheson wrote a script called the doll, and on the final season of Twilight Zone, Burt granite left the show as producer, and William Frug take took over. And because of that, the script that maths and written called the doll was not shot, and instead, living doll was the one with talking Tina Matheson. Script was about these sort of two lonely people, middle aged people, who find these dolls that look like them, of look like each other and and they're drawn together through this. And it was ultimately made as an episode of Steven Spielberg's amazing stories, and John Lithgow started in it and it and it won him an Emmy. So that was, that was shot. But most of these scripts haven't been filmed, particularly the Sterling ones, and I hope someday they will be. I really would love to see that.

Jeff Dwoskin 22:15

Who did you interview of the 100 interviews that was able to give you the most tea, the most information, like Burgess Meredith was, you know, some of the iconic ones. Jack luck was It was

Marc Scott Zicree 22:29

great to interview the actors. That was really, really fun, particularly Billy Mumy, because as a little kid, he had, he memorized all of the lines he when they were doing a table read of, it's a good life, he was correcting Cloris Leachman on her lines, because he had everyone's lines memorized. He was like, you know, eight years old or whatever. I mean, I loved all of the interviews I conducted. They were all fascinating. Some people, though, were singular. I mean, Buck Houghton, who had been the great producer with Rod of the first three seasons. He was astonishing. He remembered every episode. He remembered details of everything. George T Clemens was the phenomenal director of photography on Twilight Zone. One won an Emmy for it. He again remembered details, specific details, of every single episode, of what it was like shoot it, how it was on the set. Really great. Douglas Hayes was the the director of the after hours and eye of the beholder and the howling man. Many others he was. He was brilliant and very inventive. He did, you know, he was a visual artist as well. So he helped design the look of the he called them the pig people in eye of the beholder, the the grotesque. He said. He went, he went down to Bill Tuttle's makeup lab at MGM, and they, he got his fingers in the clay. So the two of them worked on those appliances together, you know? So it was, it was, it was a cornucopia. It was just phenomenal. And the funny thing is, I recorded all of those interviews to then transcribe for the book, and it's only years later that you got home video, and I started excerpting those interviews for the blu ray and the DVD and so forth. So they proved to be very valuable in terms of a secondary usage, you know. So I'm very glad of that. Oh, so

Jeff Dwoskin 24:03

these 100 episodes are video. You saw cassettes or something. Well,

Marc Scott Zicree 24:08

the interviews I did were on audio cassette for the most part, because, again, technology, what didn't exist back in 77

Jeff Dwoskin 24:17

well, maybe it was 500 pounds, but, yeah, yeah,

Marc Scott Zicree 24:19

but it was, but audio, audio cassettes were great. They worked fine. And of course, almost all of those people, most of them, with exception of Billy Mumia, a few others, they're all gone now. Earl Hamner, you know, so many people, I was very lucky that I got Matheson and George Clayton Johnson and Earl Hamner, the other major writers who were still alive. Beaumont had died, but I interviewed his son and William F Nolan, who didn't write for Twilight Zone, he co wrote Logan's wrong with George Clayton Johnson, but he was part of that whole circle of friends, of writers who were around Beaumont. And so he had a very detailed memory and a very and he kept notes on everything. And so he was, he was a huge resource,

Jeff Dwoskin 24:58

one of my favorite. Things was, I interviewed Johnny Iman and Steven Talbot. Both were in the fugitive episode The Fugitive that was like a big deal for me, because, like, just you, when you find people that were in the twilight zone, like, oh yeah, we met rod, you know he was on the bench,

Marc Scott Zicree 25:20

yeah. Well, the fun, the fun part is, you know, the fugitive is one of those episodes is really good, and no one ever brings it up because, but it's just like a really solid, solid piece of work, very touching with the little girl and the old guy, who's an alien, you know, really, really nice episode, really fun.

Jeff Dwoskin 25:36

Let's use that as a pivot for my next question. So when people do say, these are the classic episodes, I probably could name I could probably I have them written down. I bet you could name five and we'd Match five for five. So nightmare at 20,000 feet. It's a good life. I had the beholder. Monsters are due. We already talked about time enough at last, walking distance, the invaders, the hitchhiker, living doll to serve man, all amazing. We can dive into any one of those in a second. But where? What are the what are the other? The fugitives, what are the other ones that are amazing that people just don't talk about, because there's, I only named off 10 or so. Yeah, 150 or so. So a lot of

Marc Scott Zicree 26:22

people don't know about the 18 hour long episodes that was season four. There's some real, real jewels there. Miniature is a terrific episode that Charles Beaumont wrote that's stars Robert Duvall. Death ship is a great episode that Matheson wrote, starring Jack Klugman and Ross Martin, who are phenomenal in it the and then Jess Bell Earl Hamner wrote that hour episode. And then, of course, Sterling wrote on Thursday we leave for home, starring James Whitmore. And that's a phenomenal, phenomenal piece of writing about a guy who saves a group of stranded colonists on an alien planet, and he's literally kept them alive all these years. And but when rescue comes, he can't let go of being the leader, and it ultimately leads to a very sad ending. And James Whitmore is just great, just great. So those are some of them, but, but, you know, there's so many great episodes, and praise of PIP is a wonderful episode. Talky Tina, as you mentioned, but kick the can. Nothing in the dark will the real Martian please stand up. That's one of the rare comedies that really works. And, you know, hilarious about, you know, group of people stranded in a diner during the snowstorm, and one of them is a Martian in disguise. Really great. I interviewed John Hoyt, who was in that episode. He was, he was the Martian. And, I mean, just you can, I mean, you can name so many of the purple testament, probably the greatest, one of the greatest things ever written about warfare, about the soldier who can see the look of death on the soldiers who are about to die, death had revisited, which is great episode about the the Holocaust. One of the best things ever written about the Holocaust. Yeah. I mean, I think you would be safe. I mean, there were 152 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone. Rod wrote 92 of them himself. An amazing output. I think you could probably mentioned at least 100 episodes of The Twilight Zone of those 156 that are like, really great. And there's a few bombs, but not many, not many. So the it's batting average is extremely high. The lonely, the one with Jack Warden falling in love with female robot, just brilliant. Wonderful is

Jeff Dwoskin 28:18

that the one where they get rescued and he won't, he doesn't want to

Marc Scott Zicree 28:20

leave, right, right? They shoot her in the face. I mean, my God, that is so brutal. The fact that they show that in a TV show that was shot in 1959 I mean, holy cow, you know. And it's, it just gives you, I mean, you just like when you see that, you go like that. It's just great. It's just great. Which

Jeff Dwoskin 28:39

ones would you consider at the bottom? Cavender is

Marc Scott Zicree 28:43

coming the which is the comedy with Carol Burnett. It was done as as an offshoot pilot, and it has a laugh track, and then they stripped out. It's about a guy a woman who's guardian angel visits her, and it's your rod. Most of the comedies the Rob wrote weren't very funny. They were a little leaden. It has a laugh track, which doesn't work at all. And then they on the DVDs and the blu rays, they have a version you can watch without the laugh track, but, but in that it's very weird, because they'll say a line, then stop, and then let's start talking again, because they were timing it for the laugh track. So that one's pretty weird. There's one come wander with me. It's one of the last episode shot. It's incoherent. It stars Gary Crosby. It's set in the backwoods. It's got this girl named Bonnie Beecher, who sings. Liza Minnelli auditioned for that role, but William froog thought Bonnie Beecher was was the better, bigger talent, and so, so she didn't get, she didn't get the gig. But it's just one of those stories where it's like, what's the plot here? What's going on here. So that's a pretty weak one, you know, you you can name a handful but, but I promise you that you would name one episode that is somebody's favorite episode. You know, it's like, because when I wrote the book, I didn't, I didn't like the bewitching pool, which is the one about the two kids whose parents are getting divorced. They dive into the swimming pool and find themselves in this backwood utopia. For children, run by this kind of creepy, grandmotherly character, and I didn't like that one, and I got a letter from someone saying, that's my favorite episode, because when I was a kid, my parents were getting a divorce, and nobody on TV was divorced. They were all happily married couples. And then I saw the bewitching pool, and I realized I wasn't alone. And I thought, okay, that's valid. I can, you know. So I actually, when I revised the Twilight Zone companion, the new edition, right out of the 100 pages and the 500 new photographs and the audio, video links and all that stuff, I wrote that as an addendum, because it's like, Okay, so I've changed my opinion on some episodes over the years. There's six episodes that were shot on black and white video tape, and those are amazing because they're so different. Originally they were, they were shown in really shitty 16 millimeter prints in syndication. They looked really grungy and odd when we did the blu rays. And now, I think it's indication too they've gone back to the videotape masters, the black and white video tape masters, and they're gorgeous, but so those are like, you know, long distance call the whole truth, lateness of the hour, Night of the meek. That's one of the great episodes of Twilight Zone. But it was shot on videotape because they were trying to find ways to economize. So they tried that as an experiment for six episodes. But they couldn't shoot exteriors, and that was too limiting for Twilight Zone. They couldn't just stay on a stage. It wouldn't work. So they went back to film.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:15

Speaking of the worst ones, okay, I was I'm going to read off a few and this is from Paste Magazine. Every worst, every episode of The Twilight Zone, ranked from worst to best. So they just ranked all now before, not to sway you in any way, yes, opening, I'm going to read to you the opening of this, this article, okay, but don't let it sway you. Okay, okay, sure. And the introduction to his invaluable book, The Twilight Zone companion marks out calls rod Sterling's game. Anyway, my point is, you are the opening reference of this. I'm the guy. Yeah, this is what they rank, number 156, okay, from Season Four, Episode 12, I dream of Genie. It's

Marc Scott Zicree 32:02

a bad one. Yeah, it's pretty wacky. I mean, it starts Howard Morris, who I like very much. I actually met him years later when he was directing animation that was writing and he had been part of your show, of shows with Caesar. Really, an amazing comedic actor. But, yeah, it's just funky. It's a funky episode. Really wacky. Yeah, not, not a good one,

Jeff Dwoskin 32:21

number 155, also from Season Four, Episode 18, the bard.

Marc Scott Zicree 32:26

That one, I might disagree with them, because it's rod writing about it's basically about a hack TV writer who summons up and goes through Shakespeare to help him write TV scripts. It's got some funny things in it. It has Burt Reynolds doing his impression of Marlon Brando, which is pretty good at playing a sort of a method actor named Rocky Rhodes. And you know, John Williams, who starred in dial in for murder, the Hitchcock film. He plays Shakespeare, and he's really good. And Jack Weston, who was so great in Monsters, John Maple Street, that heavy set guy, he's the comedy lead, and he's funny. So it's a it's a little leaden, but it still has its moments, you know, because rod certainly was writing from the inside of the of the television equation,

Jeff Dwoskin 33:06

Alright, number 154, from season two, Episode 19, Mr. Dingle, the strong of

Marc Scott Zicree 33:12

the four, the Burgess, Burgess Meredith. It's the weakest. Yes, absolutely. But the aliens are so peculiar. There's this two headed alien, very weird looking. And then there's these two little kids who are made up as, I guess, Venusians, or whatever the hell it's. Yeah, it's not a great one. Burgess Meredith is a weakling who gets super strength and, you know, okay, fine. Yeah, it's, it doesn't really fly. Let us say Burgess Meredith prizes

Jeff Dwoskin 33:34

best. Then up is a quality of mercy from season three, Episode 15. Well, I

Marc Scott Zicree 33:40

don't, I don't necessarily agree with that one. It's a little bit heavy handed in that. It's about a world war two soldier suddenly finds himself as a as a Japanese soldier. And it's Dean Stockwell, who's a very good actor. He was on Battlestar Galactica as well. I think because it's a white actor playing an Asian guy, it's, it's a little more outdated because of that, but it's interesting. It's a little bit sort of like 1234, you sort of know where it's going, but I don't think it's as bad as they say. But go ahead.

Jeff Dwoskin 34:08

The part of this I'm enjoying the most is your instant recall on all of these next is hocus pocus and frisbee from season three, Episode 30. That's

Marc Scott Zicree 34:18

Andy Devine. It should be better than it is. The basic gag is that there's a guy who's always telling these tall tales that aren't true, sort of a blow hard played by Andy Devine, who who was in everything from, you know, the the movie stagecoach on, he had this kind of raspy voice from when he had an injury to his throat when he was a kid. And the gag is that he gets abducted by a flying saucer and escapes, and noone believes him, you know, because, of course, nothing says is true. It's okay. I mean, the one thing that's so great about Twilight Zone and in general TV of that era in its entirety, is that you had this See, the thing that younger people don't know or don't understand, is, when we were kids, there were three networks. That was it three networks in syndication, so all the same actors appeared on every. TV show. So you might see Andy Devine in an episode of Twilight Zone, and the next week he might be on an episode of Gunsmoke, or he might be on Petticoat Junction, or whatever. You know, it's like all of the actors were like an ensemble company that appeared in everything. And so they were, they really were like members of the family, you know, whether it's John Fiedler who's in Night of the meek, or, you know, Inger Stevens, who would be in the hitchhiker, you'd see them on every other show as well. And that was, that was a good thing. That was fun, because then it was like, Oh, let's see what they're going to do with this role. Let's see how they're going to attack this part. It was very, very fun.

Jeff Dwoskin 35:32

Okay, now let's flip. I'm going to go to the number one. Do you want

Marc Scott Zicree 35:36

to number one is I like the list of bad ones because I've never heard but we'll go

Jeff Dwoskin 35:41

back. I just wanted to see if there's any there's any best ones that I disagree. So the number one is, I the beholder.

Marc Scott Zicree 35:48

Okay, pretty good one. Yeah, that's that's a good choice. And

Jeff Dwoskin 35:52

then monsters are doing Maple Street and timing. When

Marc Scott Zicree 35:55

you asked about surprises, one thing I did discover that was a there was a surprise was my friend Doug Hayes directed that episode. I found out two things about it that I didn't know. One was that the lead actress now, who's a woman whose face is wrapped in bandages, who's waiting to see if the last surgery has made her look quote, unquote normal, that was played by two different actresses. It was Maxine Stewart, when her head's wrapped in bandages, because she was very emotive and had a great voice, and then when they unwrap her and she's stunningly beautiful. It's Donna Douglas, who then would go on to play Ellie Mae and the Beverly Hillbillies. The other thing I discovered, and Doug only told me this, we became very good friends, he and I, and He only told me this years later, after I wrote the book, when they were shooting my other beholder. It was it was running short, and Rod was out of town and not reachable. So Doug, who himself was a very talented writer, he wrote a scene in sterling style, so there would be up to up to run time. And if you ever watch the episode, it was the scene in the the break room where the nurse and the doctor smoking a cigarette, and the doctor says, I've seen under these bandages, it's a human face. When they screened the episode for Rod, Doug was in the back of the screening room just sweating bullets, wondering what Rod was going to say. And Rod just looked back to back at him after the episode ran, and he said, good scene, but that was Doug Hayes, uncredited. Though wonderful.

Jeff Dwoskin 37:10

I love that. Number four best. I'll say number five is nightmare, 20,000 feet. That's That's classic, great. Number four is Shadow Play. I don't know if

Marc Scott Zicree 37:18

I'd rank it that highly. I think it's a good episode. Basically Dennis Weaver on trial for his life, and he's claiming that it's a dream. It's all a dream. Matheson used to dream, I'm sorry. Charles Beaumont used to dream in chapters where he'd go to sleep and it would pick up where the previous night's dream was left off. He also wrote an episode called per chance to dream about a guy having a recurring nightmare that sequential. It's an okay episode. It's kind of Philip K Dickey, and in the fact that it's playing with what's reality, what's not, it's okay. I wouldn't rank it that highly, though. No,

Jeff Dwoskin 37:50

we got five characters in search of an exit.

Marc Scott Zicree 37:53

It's a good episode, but I don't think it's one of the, one of the top five. You know, William Windham is very good in it. It's about five characters who are trying to figure out where the hell they are. They're in this, enormous cylinder. It's okay. It kind of, you know, it has its little payoff. It's a little twist ending. The little girl at the end of it is actually the producer's daughter Buck Houghton, his daughter Mona. It's okay. Not one of my favorites. Speaking

Jeff Dwoskin 38:15

of inspirations, the trivia here is that this episode is known to have inspired Bob Dylan's all along the Watchtower.

Marc Scott Zicree 38:23

That's interesting. I didn't know that. That's pretty crazy.

Jeff Dwoskin 38:26

And then we got the invaders. Mm, hmm, yeah, it's

Marc Scott Zicree 38:30

a good one. Though. Matheson didn't like the way it was done. He thought, he thought that the little creatures looked, the little astronauts looked ridiculous. He said it was so slow they took out. He had, he had a lot of stuff happening, and they took out about half of it. So it moves very slowly, but I think it's a good episode. Doug Hayes, who directed it, played those little characters. They were hand puppets, and you'd put your fingers in to make them walk, and then your fingers in to raise the little arms and fire the little ray gun. And so he was the voice at the end the race of giants. That's Doug's voice, he said, because, you know, I was those little guys, so I figured it should be my voice too.

Jeff Dwoskin 39:04

Love it. And then the hitchhiker, great

Marc Scott Zicree 39:06

episode. The fascinating one about that is, it's it. I think it's the only episode based on a radio play. Uh, Lucille Fletcher, who was married to Bernard Herman, the great composer who also wrote for Twilight Zone. Uh, wrote music for Twilight Zone. She wrote a radio play in the 40s called the hitchhiker. It was done a number of times on radio and notably on suspense. And it started Orson Welles in the lead, and Rod took it and adapted it and switched the sex to make it a woman, which I think was a good choice to make it more vulnerable. And Inger Stevens is just terrific in that and Leonard strong is the creepy hitchhiker she keeps seeing is just so creepy. And, you know, it's a keeper. It's a great episode. And

Jeff Dwoskin 39:42

then the number 10, which we talked about, the lonely, I'm sorry, number nine was perchance to dream, do

Marc Scott Zicree 39:48

we? It's a good one. It's a good one. But again, not I wouldn't put it in the top 10 of my list. It's effective. Richard Conte is good in it. You mentioned the Godfather earlier. He's in The Godfather. It's okay. It's. Wrong episode by Beaumont. It was the first one that Beaumont wrote for the show, and it certainly creates a very creepy nightmare world very effectively. Let's see,

Jeff Dwoskin 40:08

let's go right to the metal. Let's say right in the middle. Okay, sure. Dead Man's shoes, 123, it's kind of right in the middle. Yeah. It's

Marc Scott Zicree 40:17

okay. It's okay. Not great, just kind of obvious. You know, it's not a bad one. They remade it when they brought Twilight Zone back. I think it was Helen Mirren in it. I think, I think Warren Stevens was in it, originally, in the first version. Yeah.

Jeff Dwoskin 40:31

What's the name of the what's the one where the stopwatch, or

Marc Scott Zicree 40:35

stopwatch? It's a, it's called a kind of a stopwatch. Rod Sterling wrote that one. Again, the idea is better than the execution. The idea, it's such a great fantasy that you would have a stopwatch that could stop time so you could do anything you wanted. You could rob a bank or do anything. It's a very engaging notion.

Jeff Dwoskin 40:52

That's one of the ones that kept being remade when they kept remaking the Twilight Zone. Yes, all right. So Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, George Clayton Johnson, those are the big three outside of Rod Serling, yes.

Marc Scott Zicree 41:05

And the fascinating thing is, you know, Ray Bradbury was originally going to write, be one of the major writers of Twilight Zone. He only ended up writing one episode, ultimately, because they had a falling out. I have a YouTube channel called mister sci fi, and I actually talk about how rod and Ray Bradbury came to a falling out in their friendship. It's a very interesting story. I only found it out in recent years when I became a very, very close friend to Ray, because they never, neither rod, nor Ray would ever talk about it publicly, how they had fallen out. And finally, I said to Ray, okay, tell me what happened. And he told me, and that's an amazing story. But early in Twilight Zone, Rod threw open the doors for submissions to try to get other writers, because, you know, he wouldn't be able to write all of them. He was going to write the lion's share. And they got 500 submissions. They met a bunch of them, and none of them were any good, and he didn't know what to do. So he called Ray Bradbury, who, at the time, was the, you know, leading science fiction writer, and he knew Ray, and he said, What do I do? And Ray said, Come over to the house. He took him downstairs, into his office, and he pulled out four books. One was by him, one was by John Collier, a British writer. They ultimately adapted a story called The Chaser that John Collier wrote. And the other two were by two of Ray's proteges, Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont. He said, read these, and then let's talk. And Beaumont and Matheson became two of the major writers. And then, then, like a little later, George Clayton Johnson, who was another one of Ray's proteges, was hired as well, and he was a close friend of Beaumont, and so, so all of them knew each other. There was, it was very, I was gonna say incestuous, but it was definitely people who knew each other, people who loved each other's work and were reading each other's work.

Jeff Dwoskin 42:35

So Richard Matheson's done so much, and like, even like his, his episode, steal, yeah, was later either after the fact credit the Hugh Jackman movie. Well,

Marc Scott Zicree 42:47

it was actually, it was, it was actually a direct adaptation. They actually paid Matheson for that. That's the Twilight Zone. Episode is much better. It starts Lee Marvin in a future where human boxing has been outlawed and robots, humanoid robots or the boxers, and Lee Marvin has to go into the ring pretending to be his broken robot so he can get the money. It's a terrific episode. It's a little weird that Lee Marvin didn't really have the physique, so they put him in these black tights. It's a little funky, but still terrific. Wonderfully acted. Joe mantel is terrific in it. And then they made it in the movie with Hugh Jackman, and ironically, they built a full size, giant robot, and I own that robot now. So because I have a studio, I have three soundstages full of spaceships and robots and aliens and space suits. Because I'm now shooting my own shows, my fans gave me 4 million bucks to open my own studio and shoot Space Command, which is this new series I'm doing. We're also shooting a feature, and then we're about to shoot five pilots I'm creating with the creators of Farscape and the expanse and so forth. So I learned, I learned from Rob, very, very well. I think that's

Jeff Dwoskin 43:50

amazing. We'll have you back. Is your fascinating? We'll talk about all that stuff. It'll be fine. So of Richard Matheson's which, which do you think are his biggest ones, his nightmare 20,000 feet, obviously, yeah, definitely.

Marc Scott Zicree 44:03

Nightmare 20,000 feet is, is one of his great, great episodes. Little Girl Lost. There's such a great idea of a little girl falling through, through a, you know, a hole in dimensions. And it's beautifully rendered, very, very good episode. I mean, he's just, he's just a great writer in general. I mean, the fascinating thing about Matheson is he, you know, he had such an impact on the genre. I mean, from, you know, I Am Legend, which is like, not only influenced, you know, vampire fiction, but also was the inspiration for Night of the Living Dead, you know, all the way through to, you know, somewhere in time and duel and so many great and the Night Stalker. I mean, just a phenomenal writer, yeah, but I think his Twilight zones are generally incredibly strong. I love death ship. That's one of my favorites of his. I actually own the space suit, one of the space suits from that episode as well. It's pretty cool. Matheson was a very quiet man. He had a he had a dry sense of humor, but he was just like, very, you know, he was a. Hard working guy every every day, went to the typewriter and and worked and just really left an incredible body of work. Charles

Jeff Dwoskin 45:05

Beaumont, we've talked about a little bit, but like, what do you the Halloween man? I think is one that people, yeah, another

Marc Scott Zicree 45:13

one of his that I love is Long live. Walter Jameson, with Kevin McCarthy as an immortal guy who ultimately gets his comeuppance, to say the least. You know, I but also miniature, I think, the Robert Duvall episode Beaumont before he fell ill, Beaumont was a lightning rod. He was this incredibly gregarious and outgoing and passionate guy. And he brought together his circle of writers, William F Nolan, George Clayton, Johnson, Matheson, you know, John Tomlin, all these writers who were kind, they would go out all the time. They would go to movies. They would drive around the city talking. There was, he was an enormous inspiration to all of these other people. Many of them would not have become writers if not for him. George Clayton Johnson certainly would never become a writer if not for Beaumont. So he was really, I mean, he his effective creative life ended pretty much at age 33 but he he packed a lot into that time. And Twilight Zone was the perfect show for him to write for, because he really had full, full creative license. And so his shows, his episodes are, are a lot of fun, even even something like the jungle, which is not one of the better known ones with John Danner, about a guy who's come back from Africa, and there's a curse on him. And, you know, it's, it's pretty creepy and pretty fun. Fortunately,

Jeff Dwoskin 46:27

they'd all become immortalized, you know, with being part of this show. Yes, so George Clayton Johnson kicked the

Marc Scott Zicree 46:35

can. Well, George, George was funny because he didn't when he was running for Twilight Zone, he had short hair and wore suits and smoked cigarettes. And then after Twilight on the Surgeon General's report came out, and George switched from tobacco to weed, and he became the world's oldest hip he had the shoulder length hair he wore, dressed in these electric colors, very bright. And he was a fascinating guy. He was a real character, but, but certainly with something like kick the can. I mean, these are, I think, I think kick the can is one of the best scripts ever written for television. It's, it's just a jewel.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:06

Number 30 on that list. The other one, which actually is number 21 on the list of the best Twilight Zone episodes, which is one that I love as well, a game of pool. Yes,

Marc Scott Zicree 47:16

again, a superb piece of writing. Jonathan Winters, originally, George had in mind, you know, a different actor, burrow Ives, who was sort of, again, a heavy set, and a very good actor, but they cast Jonathan Winters. Jonathan Winters had just come out of a mental institution having had a nervous breakdown, and so he was very nervous, and it was a dramatic role for him, but he did a great job with it. And, of course, Jack Klugman is phenomenal. I think Jack Klugman did his best work on Twilight Zone. The four episodes he did are just a great and he's great in all four of them. And, yeah, gamer pool is terrific piece of work.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:50

So that's a good segue to my next thing, which was frequent guests. So Jack Klugman four episodes, passage for trumpet, game of pool, death ship and in praise of PIP, yes. And then the other two people with four, nobody had, well, I shouldn't say that. Robert McCord, we'll get to him in a second. Yeah. But Burgess Meredith had four time enough at last, which is considered one of the most classic printers, devil, which was during the hour long. Yeah, it's okay, obsolete man. And Mr. Dingle, the strong which we talked about, yeah,

Marc Scott Zicree 48:24

but the obsolete man is a great episode. It's very stylistic, and it really, really speaks to totalitarianism and censorship of books. It's, it packs a punch even to this day, and should deservedly. And

Jeff Dwoskin 48:38

then John Anderson were also visited four times. Yeah, yeah. I interviewed

Marc Scott Zicree 48:42

him as well. Yeah, he was cool guy, but go ahead, please. No.

Jeff Dwoskin 48:47

Oh, the Odyssey of flight 33 i is one of the ones that sticks in my head, or they keep going in through time, and

Marc Scott Zicree 48:55

then when they Yeah, when they see the dinosaur out the airline window. And that was the only episode that rod collaborated with his brother Robert. Robert was a Navy he was the editor of Aviation Week and wrote a lot about airplanes. And when Rob came up with this idea, he had Bob basically be his technical advisor. That's

Jeff Dwoskin 49:12

an interesting bit of trivia that rod Sterling's parents named his brother Robert rod, and Robert, okay, yes. And then Bill Mumy was in three episodes. And then Robert McCord, uncredited many but, like, was in 60 episodes or so. It's

Marc Scott Zicree 49:27

crazy. It's crazy. But Bill Mumy. The fun part about Bill Mumy is, you know, I worked with him when I wrote for Babylon five, and I also now working with him on Space Command. He's one of our leads in the show. And he just, you know, he is an icon. I mean, going from Twilight Zone to lost in space to Babylon five and now Space Command. I mean, he's just one of the greats, one of the greats. He was terrific. All of his three episodes are just standouts, long distance call, which is one of the videotape ones. And then, you know, in praise of PIP, of course. And it's the one where he's the Jerome Bixby one. You know. A good life where, you know, he has infinite powers. It's just wonderful. I love another one

Jeff Dwoskin 50:05

of the ones that was is always reimagined. All right, I got to get mark out of here. He spent a bunch of time with me, Mark, thank you for writing this book. I can't even tell you how much it's meant to so many people, but to me, specifically, you can tell, you know, it's just crazy. It's really honored to meet you. It's to be able to pick your brain like this, yeah, well, it'll, yeah, I've

Marc Scott Zicree 50:26

really enjoyed. It's a lot of fun. And as you can tell, yes, this stuff is hardwired in my brain, you know, and, but it's a joy. It's, I mean, I'm glad he didn't write about Wiener Schnitzel. I'm glad I wrote about Twilight. So, you know, because it's, it's a subject that just, you know, is endlessly entertaining and fun, and we will have to get back together again, a second time to talk about all these, all the different shows I've written for, you know, Star Trek, next gen and DS nine and all that stuff. So many, many a story to tell. Yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 50:52

I'd love to do that. To be honest, I was so focused on the Twilight Zone thing. And then I was like, Oh, he's done a lot, but I gotta spend the whole time on Twilight Zone. Well, I'll email you after. We'll do it. Thank you so much. You've been awesome. You're very

Marc Scott Zicree 51:03

welcome. I've loved it. Thanks, Jeff, you have you have a good day. Take care. You.