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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: Coast a m dot com and sign up for Coast

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Speaker 1: Insider to catch up on what you may have missed

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Speaker 1: from Coast to Coast. Now here's a highlight from Coast

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Speaker 1: to Coast AM on iHeart Radio. Ah you hear that theme.

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Speaker 1: That's the Twilight Zone, one of my favorite television shows

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Speaker 1: created by Rod Serling and the Genius and Nicholas Parisi

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Speaker 1: with Us serves on the board of directors of the

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Speaker 1: Rod Serling Memorial Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to preserving

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Speaker 1: and promoting Rod Sterling's legacy. He's a former staff writer

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Speaker 1: and editor for Good Times Magazine in Long Island. He's

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Speaker 1: also a musician and vocalist. Back in two thousand and ten,

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Speaker 1: his former band Ariak released the CD with the Sterling

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Speaker 1: Inspirer inspired the title between Light and Shadow on the

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Speaker 1: Retrospect Records, and his latest is his book called Rod

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Speaker 1: Serling His Life, Work and Imagination. And Nicholas, I gotta

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Speaker 1: tell you, I'm looking forward to this. Thank you, George,

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Speaker 1: so thank you very much for having me, and thank

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Speaker 1: you for that very nice and introductions. I thought Rod

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Speaker 1: Sterling was an absolute genius, wasn't he? He was? He was,

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's no doubt about it. Uh. And not

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Speaker 1: only was he a genius, but he was a prolific genius.

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Speaker 1: He um, he proved it over and over again. He

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Speaker 1: was just unbelievably productive. And he just wrote so many great,

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Speaker 1: great shows for for television and for film. One of

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Speaker 1: our friends, Mark Zachrie, wrote a book about The Twilight Zone.

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Speaker 1: In his subsequent book, The Twilight Zone Companion, he said

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Speaker 1: that Rod Serling used to write most of his os

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Speaker 1: by dictating in a dictaphone while he was floating in

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Speaker 1: his pool. Well, he definitely wrote most of his shows

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Speaker 1: by dictating. He did dictate from pretty much from nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty five onward. Um. I don't know if he did

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Speaker 1: most of them in the pool. He in the pool,

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Speaker 1: but he certainly dictated most of his scripts. And and honestly,

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Speaker 1: I don't know how he did it. I don't know

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Speaker 1: how anybody can write that way. But Sterling was a

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Speaker 1: rare breed. He was unique, and he was able to

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Speaker 1: do it somehow. Well, let's go back before the Twilight

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Speaker 1: Zone even started. Tell us a little bit about Rod Sterling.

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Speaker 1: Who he was. He was a veteran, was he not sure? Was? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: He um? He enlisted in the Army the day after

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Speaker 1: high school graduation, so he was, you know, he was

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Speaker 1: had the patriotic fervor of you know, having seen you know,

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Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor, and he he wanted to do his part.

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Speaker 1: So he enlisted as soon as he possibly could. And

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Speaker 1: he had this, um, this idea that he wanted to

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Speaker 1: be a paratrooper. That was just he was gung ho

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Speaker 1: on it. He wanted to be a paratrooper, and he

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Speaker 1: got his wish. He was assigned to the five eleventh

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Speaker 1: Haarashute Infantry Regiment of the eleventh They are born, and

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Speaker 1: he saw some pretty heavy combat in the Philippines and

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Speaker 1: Lady and Uh and Luzon, and it scarred him. Its

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Speaker 1: scarred him for life, and and it affected pretty much

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Speaker 1: everything that he that he did from that point forward.

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Speaker 1: Some of his episodes for the Twilight Zone had a

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Speaker 1: war type of personality to them, and did he get

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Speaker 1: that from his combat experience experience. He went back to

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Speaker 1: the battlefield Um several times before the Twilight Zone, during

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Speaker 1: the Twilight Zone, after the Twilight Zone, so um, it

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Speaker 1: was always there was always part of his makeup, you know,

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Speaker 1: the the experiences that he had. So yeah, there were

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Speaker 1: a couple of Twilight Zone episodes, particularly when called The

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Speaker 1: Purple Testament, which is actually set in lady Um during

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Speaker 1: World War Two. So that was as close as he

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Speaker 1: got to literally revisiting his his combat experience in the

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Speaker 1: Twilight Zone, and then several other other shows. Like I said,

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Speaker 1: before and after this Wilt Zone. He was fortune to

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Speaker 1: be born right in that golden age of television, wasn't he? Yes,

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Speaker 1: he he certainly was. It was a time when television

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Speaker 1: was obviously the new kid on the block. Radio was

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Speaker 1: still king in the late forties, when Rod was first

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Speaker 1: coming up and television needed writers. It was it was

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Speaker 1: it was this vast you know, I let's say, vast waistline.

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Speaker 1: It was a vast medium that was just devoid of

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Speaker 1: talent at the time, and Rod, you know, jumped right

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Speaker 1: into it. And he, as I said, he was so prolific,

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Speaker 1: and he wrote so much that he just sent stuff out,

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Speaker 1: sent stuff out, and until finally he started being accepted

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Speaker 1: and and soon enough he was you know, his shows

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Speaker 1: were you know, we're all over the place. Did you

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Speaker 1: have a chance to talk to Carol Serling, Rod's wife,

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Speaker 1: I did not, unfortunately know, okay what he had a

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Speaker 1: treat with that quite a person, indeed, I bet yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Now with with Rod, he start before he got into

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Speaker 1: Twilight Zone. He was a writer for other kinds of shows,

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Speaker 1: wasn't he. Oh sure, sure, Rod song I mean some people,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I know this, but Rod Sterling was without

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Speaker 1: question the most prestigious writer in television before the Twilight Zone.

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Speaker 1: He had written you know, he won three consecutive Emmy

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Speaker 1: Awards for Best Dramatic Writing in ninety five, fifty six,

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Speaker 1: and fifty seven, Twilight's One Start in fifty nine. Um,

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Speaker 1: so he was at the top of the of the

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Speaker 1: heap before the Twilight Zone came out, and he just

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Speaker 1: kind of took that dramatic, you know, just straightforward drama

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Speaker 1: sensibility into the Twilight Zone and gave it that little

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Speaker 1: fantasy twist on it. He was very socially minded, and

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Speaker 1: I think he was frustrated because a lot of times

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Speaker 1: when he wanted to put social things in his writings

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Speaker 1: prior to Twilight Zone, the sponsors went ballistic and always

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Speaker 1: tried to critique him, editorialize and even controlling. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that was that was the big you know, the big

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Speaker 1: problem that Sterling ran into was that he believed that

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Speaker 1: it's a writer's job to do those things. It's a

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Speaker 1: writer's job to address the issues of his time. And

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Speaker 1: every time he tried to address any issue of any

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Speaker 1: social import on television, the sensors would get in his way,

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Speaker 1: the sponsors would get in his way, and it was

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Speaker 1: frustrating for him and thankfully for Rod. For Rod, he

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Speaker 1: was successful enough and he had built such a name

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Speaker 1: for himself that they were willing to give him his

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Speaker 1: own show. And he had always loved science fiction. He

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Speaker 1: loved fantasy, science fiction, horror, you know, all that kind

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Speaker 1: of thing. So he created The Twilight Zone because he's

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Speaker 1: always wanted to do a show like The Twilight Zone.

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Speaker 1: But he also was able to take it and say,

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Speaker 1: you know what, I can probably get some of this

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Speaker 1: stuff by if I did it in a fantasy or

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Speaker 1: science fiction setting, when it will be a little less controversial.

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Speaker 1: Every Twilight Zone episode Nick that I recall, every Twilight

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Speaker 1: Zone episode had some kind of social issue or a

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Speaker 1: meaning behind it. It wasn't just a television show with

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Speaker 1: a cool ending. It had a message, didn't it. Oh? Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: If it was a telignistors that just had a cool twistending,

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Speaker 1: we wouldn't be talking about it right now, you know.

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Speaker 1: It's it was always deeper than that. Certainly, Sterling's episodes

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Speaker 1: were always deeper than that, because he again believed that

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Speaker 1: that was part of the artist's job. The art. If

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Speaker 1: it's going to be art, it has to what he

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Speaker 1: would say, is it has to say something about something,

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Speaker 1: and you know, it had to be entertaining. He did

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Speaker 1: want to entertain, but at the same time he had

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Speaker 1: to say something about something. What do you think some

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Speaker 1: of the issues were that he wanted to address in

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Speaker 1: his work, Well, you know, throughout his career, the big

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Speaker 1: the biggest issue was prejudice. Um Rod had this this

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Speaker 1: innate aversion to prejudice, and he believed it was He

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Speaker 1: believed that all evils stem from prejudice, that that's the

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Speaker 1: beginning and that's the root of all of them. So

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Speaker 1: he wanted to address that idea that um, we have this, um,

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Speaker 1: this tendency to look to other people too for our

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Speaker 1: own faults when we should be looking within, will blame

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Speaker 1: somebody else instead, and that that idea came out constantly

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Speaker 1: throughout the Twilight Zone before and after in some of

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Speaker 1: the things that he wrote about. Of course we're pretty dramatic,

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Speaker 1: but what do you think has kept the Twilight Zone

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Speaker 1: so strong all these years? I mean, we're talking about

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Speaker 1: sixty years now, and next next year will be the

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Speaker 1: sixtieth anniversary of the you know, the debut in nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty nine, and yeah it is. You know, just recently

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Speaker 1: there was a magazine was released, science fiction magazine, but

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Speaker 1: it was ranking the top one hundred television series of

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Speaker 1: all time. And it wasn't just science fiction as all

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Speaker 1: television series. And the only black and white television series

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Speaker 1: on the cover was The Twilight Zone is the only

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Speaker 1: the only one that made it. And at this point,

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Speaker 1: you know, you asked the average five year old, they're

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Speaker 1: not getting a many black and white television series, but

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Speaker 1: they know what the twilight zone is. It's entered the consciousness.

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Speaker 1: Just as a term, you know, people know that it's

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Speaker 1: Wilton means what you think it means. It means something

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Speaker 1: is off kilter, something is strange, something is you know,

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Speaker 1: not quite right. And it's lasted all this time because

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Speaker 1: of of Rod's messages and because quite frankly, just because

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Speaker 1: it was it was so good, you know, it was

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Speaker 1: just so well written, so well produced, so well acted. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it was just a first class production from from get

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Speaker 1: from point A to point z, you know. So so

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Speaker 1: that's I think why it has lasted all these years.

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Speaker 1: Listen to More Coast to Coast a m. Every weeknight

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Speaker 1: at one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast am dot com for more