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Rod Serling on the importance of being ''original''
Alien neighbors and nuclear apocalypses was as original as it could get.
The Twilight Zone (1959) can be described using a variety of words: Eerie, magical, mind-bending, and original. "Original" is the term of the decade for creator Rod Serling who believed that originality was the key to good art.
The Twilight Zone was as original as it could get. With everything from creepy dolls, aliens, and gremlins; There were all kinds of characters that could only come out of Serling's imagination.
Serling created more than 150 episodes of the iconic series and left such an impact on viewers that the original prompted a 2019 remake narrated by Jordan Peele with the same title.
With so much creativity, many wondered what kind of man was behind the words. According to Serling, most of the episodes and stories within The Twilight Zone were based on real things — kind of.
In a 1960 interview with The Courier-Journal, Serling said that television's biggest need was originality.
"Every communications medium in history has discovered the truth of those two maxims," Serling said. "You cannot fool an audience forever. The audience demands not only original stories and ideas, it demands a variety and originality in the presentation."
With hundreds of family shows like The Brady Bunch, dozens of Westerns like Gunsmoke, and a few shows pointed at rural humor such as Green Acres - there seemed to be no show that dared to take us to the same places The Twilight Zone did.
According to the interview, Serling said selling a drama series like his to the American public was a lot harder to do than trying to sell a run-of-the-mill sitcom.
"Some of the episodes were too different," Serling said. "Of the first 36, I think I am proud of about 18. There are others I liked, and there were some I wished we had never heard from in the first place."
The Twilight Zone was based on things that happened to people who were between reality and the unreal. Many fans enjoyed entering into a new world each week and would write Serling letters to let him know that.
According to Serling, he would get letters from fans suggesting new ideas and asking for script changes. One of those changes requested by fans all over the country was to have more of a balance between the light stories and the down-beat stories.
"We will do more of our shows with tongue-in-cheek," Serling said. "We will also have more women as leading characters. We will avoid some of the 'real-far-out,' endings which leave no alternatives for the viewer. We have found our audience wants to think."
Because of Serling's originality, The Twilight Zone became one of the most popular, important, and strange television series of its time.
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