After Twilight:
ROD SERLING’S TWILIGHT ZONE MOVIE AND THE TWILIGHT ZONE: SEASON 6
Less than one year after The Twilight Zone debuted, Rod Serling was already thinking about producing a Twilight Zone feature film. Within another year, he was seriously considering the idea. Serling’s agents, however, were less enamored of the idea. On August 2, 1961, Alden Schwimmer of Ashley-Steiner opined that Serling could try to “cash in” on the popularity of the television series by producing a feature film called The Twilight Zone, or he could “do a first class imaginative motion picture stemming very loosely from the basic philosophy that gave birth to the TWILIGHT ZONE television series.” Further, Schwimmer believed, The Twilight Zone’s producer, Buck Houghton, could produce a Twilight Zone motion picture but “should not necessarily be the producer of a motion picture built out of your imagination and designed to stand on its own as a first class motion picture.”1 Schwimmer went to great lengths to avoid ruling out either option, but his implication was clear: The Twilight Zone is a television show, and television shows do not make for “first class” motion pictures. Serling disagreed: “It’s my feeling at this juncture that if I can’t use the title ‘The Twilight Zone’ I don’t want to go along with it. I still think ‘The Twilight Zone’ carries with it a built in audience and almost a guarantee of box office success.”2
In this regard, Serling was again ahead of his time. In 1961, few television series had been attempted as feature films, and Schwimmer’s view was very much the Hollywood norm: television remained the ugly stepchild of motion pictures. This perception, however, was not the most significant obstacle Serling faced in producing a Twilight Zone feature film: the bigger hurdle was getting CBS to grant permission to use the Twilight Zone title. Serling left that job to his agents while he moved ahead with a treatment for his proposed film. Ira Steiner pitched the general concept of a Twilight Zone feature film, and in June 1962, he reported that “every major studio in town turned it down.” He suggested that Serling forget the idea because he had too many other commitments to consider.3
But Serling’s desire to do a Twilight Zone film only grew. In June 1964 he wrote to Robert Parrish, who had directed several episodes of the series (as well as the Serling-scripted feature, Saddle the Wind):
Old Rod has a walloping idea. I want to do a Twilight Zone trilogy—in color, and maybe even big screen. But I wanna do it badly. And furthermore, I want Bob Parrish to come in with me on it as a partner. It would be three unconnected stories with perhaps a thread of location running through them to provide story background. I have two of the stories in mind already and I think they’re eminently dramatizable, oddball and exciting.4
Parrish was interested but was living overseas and did not think he could commit to the project, which Serling seemed eager to begin. CBS also remained a stumbling block. In July 1964, Serling suggested a deal: in exchange for “the right to use the Twilight Zone on a film title,” he would develop an additional series pilot for CBS. “As you know,” he wrote to Schwimmer, “one of my long range projects is to do a three-part feature length Twilight Zone, and it’s one of the projects that I want to do next year or the following.… [I]t has much more appeal to me than embarking on another series at the moment.”5
One month later, Serling, frustrated by Schwimmer’s inability to secure the title from CBS, essentially went over his head, writing to enlist Ted Ashley’s help.
Since March or April of last year I have been trying to get [Schwimmer] to clear with CBS the use of a motion picture called THE TWILIGHT ZONE done in trilogy form. At first he wanted to do this on the basis of hooking it to a pilot for CBS so that they would be properly sweetened and in a permissive frame of mind to relinquish the rights for a nominal figure. The pilot, of course, died aborning and there is no chance of securing any kind of CBS cooperation without paying through the nose for it. But the point of this thing is, Ted, that I want to do that film and I want to do it badly. I have in mind three exceptionally good story lines that would make a walloping good motion picture. I definitely want to keep this in my plans for next spring or summer as a major motion picture. Unfortunately, Alden seems to have a block in this. Can you pick up the reins on this thing and get it done for me? Find out, through CBS, just how I can use the title TWILIGHT ZONE in a motion picture, what it will cost me, and what further steps can be taken—immediately—so I can very definitely put this into my plans.6
Ashley had no more success than Schwimmer, and by the end of 1964, this issue and others led Serling to ask for his release from their contract. He later contacted Parrish again, this time indicating that he was “in the process of selling a trilogy to Paramount called THE TWILIGHT ZONE … or something like it.”7 Once again, however, Serling was disappointed.
In the early 1960s, Serling wrote multiple proposals for a Twilight Zone (or Twilight Zone–ish) motion picture that would include three unrelated (though potentially interconnected) stories. On April 7, 1966, Variety reported that Serling had reached an agreement with Sammy Davis Jr. to star in one segment of such a film, “Three Nightmares.”8 Davis’s segment was to be based on an idea that he had pitched to Serling about a racist rabble-rouser who instigates violence in a southern town and then finds that he has been transformed into a black man, just in time to take punishment for what he has caused. Serling ultimately used the idea for a novella, “Color Scheme,” published in The Season to Be Wary (which is dedicated to Davis).
Another proposal consisted of three different stories that were eventually released in other forms. The first, about a stadium hot dog vendor who has Walter Mitty–esque fantasies about baseball stardom, appeared as a short story, “An Odyssey, or Whatever You Call It, Concerning Baseball,” in Carol Serling’s More Stories from the Twilight Zone. The second proposed episode was adapted by J. Michael Straczynski as “Our Selena Is Dying,” an episode of the rebooted Twilight Zone first broadcast on November 12, 1988. This gothic horror tale concerns a woman who keeps from aging by draining the youth from those around her.
The final episode in this proposed trilogy, “The Theatre,” was adapted by Richard Matheson and produced as part of Twilight Zone: Rod Serling’s Lost Classics, which debuted on US television on May 19, 1994. Serling’s original story treatment begins with a woman being accosted by a violent drunk and then retreating to a movie theater. Once inside, she discovers that the film on the screen is showing an exact replay of the events of her day, leading up to the confrontation that drove her into the theater. She flees in terror and tries to convince herself that what she saw in the film was a stress-induced hallucination, though she is not completely successful. She returns to the theater the next day and again finds the film replaying the most recent events in her life. This time, however, it goes further, showing her screaming and fleeing the theater, running frantically through the city streets and into a subway station, and throwing herself in front of an oncoming train. When the film ends, she precisely follows the on-screen events but stops herself before entering the subway station. Instead of following through with what seems to be her fate, she telephones a friend for help. He arrives and takes her home, trying to put her at ease. He points out that she has proved that she can deviate from the pattern she saw on-screen: her death is not preordained. Intrigued by what she has told him, the man visits the theater the next day. Before he can enter, he remembers a crucial detail of the woman’s story: in the film, she had seen a man sleeping on a park bench with a newspaper covering his face. The date that she saw on the newspaper was not yesterday’s—it was today’s. She has not averted her death: it wasn’t supposed to happen until today. He runs to the subway station but is too late to prevent her from jumping to her death. Serling wrote in his treatment: “He walks away, trancelike, and strangely—compulsively—unexplainably, he goes to the movie house, buys a ticket, and goes in. He looks up on the screen and sees himself entering the movie theater. He wants to scream. He opens his mouth, and we: FADE OUT.”
Even while he worked toward a Twilight Zone feature film, Serling continued to push for The Twilight Zone (or something very much like it) to continue as a television series. As overworked and drained of inspiration as he claimed to have felt, he and his agents began trying to sell The Twilight Zone to other networks even before its fifth season had ended. Because CBS owned the rights to the Twilight Zone name, however, Serling approached NBC and ABC with ideas that were only conceptually similar. CBS, however, also remained open to the possibility of a new Serling-produced series. On February 5, 1964, more than four months before Twilight Zone aired its final episode, Serling provided Schwimmer with a “projection of the Twilight Zone planning we had slated for next season.” Serling
planned to do considerably more extra-terrestrial stuff—exciting and tense things that take place on other planets. Not the scaley [sic] monster business—but some creditable suspense items with the added impetus of the outer space mystique.… [W]hile we would have retained the general flavor of the show, we had intended to become more ambitious—not necessarily in physical scope—but in story area. We had hoped and felt quite positive that there would be a kind of new excitement and new flavor to the show when it came around for its sixth running.
Serling sent a copy of this letter to Mike Dann, a programming executive at CBS, and indicated that he had spoken with Dann about these ideas “some weeks ago.”9 But the network apparently remained uninterested.
ABC, however, showed serious interest in having Serling helm a similar series. ABC president Tom Moore met with Serling and suggested Witches, Warlocks, and Werewolves, a series inspired by the title of an anthology that Serling had edited in 1963. Negotiations progressed so far that the network announced that the series would air on Friday nights at 9:00 during the 1964–65 season. This announcement was premature: Serling strongly disliked both the title and the concept. On March 11, 1964, he submitted to ABC an alternate concept, Rod Serling’s Wax Museum. Each episode would begin with Serling walking through a creepy wax museum before stopping to introducing the audience to a wax figure representing the primary character in that night’s story. “To save us extraneous trouble and misunderstanding,” he wrote, “I would have to categorically reject a series about ghouls and weekly blood suckings. And if, indeed, that is ABC’s particular desire—I’m afraid I’ll have to pass.”10 Moore held firm to the idea of a series rooted more in the horror genre than the fantasy genre, and Serling declined, saying, “I don’t want to be hooked into a graveyard every week.”11
Fast-forward approximately five years, trade paintings for wax figures, subtract Serling’s better judgment, and the result is Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. It was likely the most frustrating creative experience of his career.
While negotiating with ABC, Serling had not given up on a possible return to CBS. In October 1965 he submitted to the network a script that he proposed as the pilot for a Zone-esque anthology series, Odd Street (see chapter 20). Executives rejected the proposal the following December, but Serling and Schwimmer continued to discuss a potential return to CBS for most of 1966. On August 3, Schwimmer indicated that he had talked with CBS vice president of programs Perry Lafferty, who had directed three Twilight Zone episodes during the fourth season, and that he would be considering options. Although Lafferty had worked on the series, he apparently needed a refresher on its range of story potential. On August 12, Schwimmer offered an update:
The CBS chaps looked at the two Twilight Zone films and tell me that neither one of them do anything in particular to suggest the kind of series they are thinking about. As I understand it the kind of series they are thinking about lies more in the general area of a strange element in known surroundings rather than moving off into space. I believe they described “The Invaders” program to you as the prototype.… I gather that Perry Lafferty directed one of your shows which involved a man who was really a bunch of wires but who looked quite human and that sounds more like what they are talking about.12
The plot of Twilight Zone’s “The Invaders” does not resemble Schwimmer’s story description, so his interpretation of CBS’s response is puzzling. Whatever the reason, CBS neither renewed The Twilight Zone nor produced anything like it. Three years later, however, Serling still had not abandoned the idea of returning to CBS. On August 12, 1969, in the midst of a letter to Lafferty regarding an unrelated project, Serling digressed, “And what the hell ever happened to TWILIGHT ZONE as an hour color show? Now that I’ve been in retirement for so long, I’d like to re-form the team and start it all over again.”13
On the night of November 8, 1969, NBC’s World Premiere Movie presented Night Gallery, a film hosted by Rod Serling, and any chance for Serling to return to the Twilight Zone was definitively lost.