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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow a War-Weary Vet Created ‘The Twilight Zone’
Marta and I have been to two TZcons.
2002: http://www.steveandmarta.com/graveyards/tzcon2002.htm
2004: http://www.steveandmarta.com/tzcon2004.htm
We are on the credits for the 80's version DVD release: http://www.steveandmarta.com/ntz1.htm
OS
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/13/how-a-war-weary-vet-created-the-twilight-zone.html
http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2014/11/13/how-a-war-weary-vet-created-the-twilight-zone/jcr:content/image.crop.800.500.jpg/1415875512087.cached.jpg
CBS Photo Archive
No television show exerted more influence on the state of American science fiction than The Twilight Zone, the little morality plays of a former Army private.
A strange mix of dramatic styles, one part satiric morality play, one part science-fiction ghost story, The Twilight Zone challenged the sensibilities of both hardened skeptics and true believers. It was never a huge hit, but its stories resonated with an American public tenuously relearning moral ambiguity.
Creator Rod Serling was compelled by the need not to just entertain but to enlighten. He wrote 93 of the series 156 episodes over the course of its five-season run, which began on CBS in 1959. Most modern shows take an average of 7 seasons to produce as many episodes.
Serling, a veteran of World War II, used the show, and his writing, to deal with the untreated psychological trauma he suffered during his enlistment in the U.S. military. Rather than the glamorized affair the war was to become in subsequent retellings, Serling was intimately acquainted with the horrors of Americas attempt to reclaim its Pacific colonies. Almost half of the authors comrades were killed fighting in the Philippines. Serling's best friend, a Pvt. Melvin Levy of Brooklyn, was decapitated in front of the future screenwriter by a "biscuit bomb," a food crate intended to nourish the life of the man it killed.
Serling closed out the war living in the horror of occupied Japan where the American treatment of women, children, and the elderly contributed to the nightmares that plagued the author for the rest of his life. The towns that were not obliterated by the atomic bombs, or burned by Americans firebombing raids, were deeply scarred by famine. The U.S. naval blockade around Japan in the waning days of World War 2 was actually called Operation Starvation.
Snip: The 1980s series followed in that tradition with episodes from Harlan Ellison, Arthur C. Clarke, and Anne Collins. Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin got his first staff writing job on the new series after penning an episode of HBO anthology series The Hitchhiker, which first aired in 1983.
FULL story at link.
shenmue
(38,506 posts)Old Nick
(468 posts)"But don't look for it in the Twilight Zone; look for it in the mirror. Look for it...before the light goes out altogether."
burrowowl
(17,641 posts)MisterP
(23,730 posts)OTOH, the rest of what I'd show them is all cartoons
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)Fearless
(18,421 posts)pamela
(3,469 posts)I'm wondering if you know the name of it?
It was about these workmen that are kind of set designers for your life. It was explained that the work men build the sets for each minute of your life but only the rooms that you will be in for that minute. Sometimes they forget something and that's why you will not be able to find something that you know you left a certain place and then, a minute or two later, you go back to where you thought it was and, yep, there it is.
I probably didn't explain it well. I haven't seen it since it originally aired and only saw it that once. It just stuck with me because it explains a phenomenon that I experience a lot.
edited to add: I just found it on your site. It's called A Matter Of Minutes.
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)pamela
(3,469 posts)That made me laugh. It's so true.
Whenever I can't find something, which happens way too often, I eventually just leave the room for a few minutes so the workmen have a chance to put it back. It's amazing how often that works. Last week, I couldn't find my ecig and I was sure I had left it on the table. We looked and looked and looked and I finally said, "I think the workmen just forgot to put it on the set." I went into another room for a few minutes, came back to the table and I swear it was right there where I thought it should have been. Totally bizarre. Fucking set designers.
Omaha Steve
(99,660 posts)That episode was always our youngest daughters favorite. She would have been 4-5 years old at the time. Too early to do the math.
surrealAmerican
(11,362 posts)The original series is on Netflix, and on seeing them now, very few episodes seem overly dated or irrelevant. Some of them are annoyingly sexist, but, for the time they were made, perhaps less so than other shows.
roguevalley
(40,656 posts)I loved him
He was about five feet tall.