By: Victoria Stevens
(The Hollywood Times) 11/27/24 – As many die-heart fans wait earnestly for the Twilight Zone Marathon that runs every year for New Years Eve from December 30th to January 2nd, they now have another celebration to look forward to: Rod’s Serling’s 100th Birthday. On December 25th, Rod Serling would have been one hundred years old if it were not for his premature death at the age of fifty. The priceless contributions that Serling gave to Hollywood were monumental. Marc Scott Zicree, author of the American Book Award nominee show-by-show guide “The Twilight Zone Companion,” shines light into these many contributions from this renown author.
“Prior to Rod Serling, the producers were over top the writers. The writers were in a subordinate position, but Rod had such blazing talent. He was a genius when it came to writing roles actors would want to perform and that composers would want to compose their best work for. He had such a wide breath of experience, knowledge, and interests. He was not a small man in terms of his soul. However, people would be surprised to know that he was just 5’5 in height. He had such enormous ambition and saw the opportunity of television in a way no one had before, explained Zicree.
When you think of Rod Serling you envision a man who had a unique voice that just needed to be heard. Even though the three network studios at the time tried to sensor him, Serling knew that he needed to share what he believed in a way that the world would understand.
“Serling was someone who had lived through World War 2, the Depression, and the Blacklist. He had a lot on his mind, and I think that with things like the murder of Emmett Till, who was a teenage black boy who was murdered, he could not express what he wanted to express through the major TV shows for which he was writing. He wrote for Playhouse 90, and he was the most well-paid, sought-after writer at the time. However, any time he wanted to talk about politics he was censored,” said Zicree. “He never set out to be a science fiction writer, but this was his way of avoiding the sensors.”
Serling can be described as the Leonard Davinci of Television. His work still stands strong throughout the generations. Even though there have been many remakes of The Twilight Zone, there has only been one original series.
“The lovely thing about remakes is that the original work still stands. Some of my friends are authors, like Ray Bradbury. Many of them have told me that other creators had taken my book and screwed it up in the movie version. What I told them is that the book is still there. People can still read the book, which is the artwork. So, you can still watch all 156 episodes of Twilight Zone whenever you want. That is a huge gift that I did not have growing up. So, the best thing about the remakes, which are haphazard, is that the Serling kids get money off them,” explained Zicree. “I think with all the great science fiction shows, there is always someone at the top with the vision to set the tone of the show and that was Rod. So, all the remakes, the one thing they all lacked was Rod himself.”
Zicree started writing “The Twilight Zone Companion” at the age of twenty-one. He saw a huge opportunity to gain experience as a writer/director by studying Serling’s journey in the Entertainment business. Having interviewed over one hundred creators from the show, he got permission from Serling’s widow Carol to create the book.
“When I went to Carol and Rod’s house, everything was left the same. There was a room that was set aside just for his awards. There were six Emmys, and a Peabody award, and the list goes on and on. His Irish setter dog was still there as well. Now we are talking in 1977, and I had such ambition and enthusiasm. I just wanted to find the underlying cause of it. What made this show so wonderful, and what made these writers so able to produce stories we had never seen before. Fortunately, many of the directors and producers were still around and I interviewed all four producers that worked with Rod. Also, Carol Serling gave me access to everything in the house, and upstairs in his attic there were huge volumes of clippings that he had from a clipping service he subscribed to. It was like the encyclopedia of Rod Serling. I knew it was going to be a big project, and it took me five years to complete it because I wanted to make sure that I got it right. I did not want to cheat the audience by not doing the work that needed to be done, and I was incredibly determined to go deep into this subject,” explained Zicree.
Studying Rod Serling was extremely rewarding for Zicree, in fact it led him to another project idea that he is hoping to produce soon.
“There is a show that I am pitching right now to Serling’s daughters which is called Rod Serling After Twilight where Rod dictated all his scripts, letters, and speeches. Everyone thought they were all lost, however just recently his daughters found a thousand of them. So, I want to take that material and have Rod narrate a new show made up of scripts that Rod wrote that were never made. There were many night gallery scripts that he wrote that were never made, there were many shows that he wrote in the fifties that were never seen, and they would also have scripts from other Twilight writers like Beaumont Madison. There is one script that I wrote for the Twilight Zone when they brought it back in the eighties, however it was pulled from production a week before it was going to shoot because producers thought it was too hard edged. So, I would like to include that script as well,” expressed Zicree.
Zicree has many projects on which he is currently working. He is producing and directing a Sch-Fi TV Show called Space Command, he just got his latest book, Greenlighting Yourself, published; and he is helping produce his wife’s feature film with the Showrunner’s Network.
“In this day in age, I have total control over my projects. I do not have to get permission from anyone. I can write what I want, I can cast who I want, I can shoot when I want, I can put it on my YouTube channel and get it seen by millions of people, and I can also sell it to distributors. Now the first two hours of Space Command are on Amazon Prime, Google Plus, Tubi, and people can buy Blue Rays and DVDs of it. Now I debuted the Showrunners Network where I am shooting one of my wife Elaine’s features where I created an assemble of actors like Doug Jones, Robert Picardo, and on and on will also be appearing in these other projects. I am also creating new shows with creators from Farscape, and creators from the Expanse as well. So, it is a dream come true. Every day is Christmas,” elaborated Zicree.
Photo Credit: Marc Scott Zicree
For more information: YouTube Channel: (2) Mr. Sci-Fi – YouTube
IMDB: Marc Scott Zicree – IMDb
