Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you
Speaker 2: along with March's decree. Mark, I didn't know that you
Speaker 2: were such an accomplished singer.
Speaker 3: Just for you, George. That's the only time when when
Speaker 3: you and Tom came to me and said we want
Speaker 3: our song for Christmas. I chose the Great Classic by
Speaker 3: Tom Larra and it was great fun to do. But
Speaker 3: but most of my time I'm writing and producing and directing,
Speaker 3: as you know, and it's really fun. You know, it's funny.
Speaker 3: It's so wonderful that my own studio, full of all
Speaker 3: these spaceship props and all these things, all these things,
Speaker 3: and my fans from you know, have basically financed me
Speaker 3: four million dollars to date, and I'm raising another twenty
Speaker 3: million to make the five pilots we're going to be making.
Speaker 3: So between cloud funding and selling investment shares, it's gone wonderfully.
Speaker 3: I mean, people really want to see positive, hopeful future stories,
Speaker 3: you know, stories that say we can reach a crossbound
Speaker 3: he's embarrassed, a world worth living in. And you know,
Speaker 3: when you talk about Rod Stirling, Rod was not a fatalist.
Speaker 3: He was he was he loved humanity. He had hope
Speaker 3: for humanity. The darker episodes of Twilight Zone, he's given
Speaker 3: cautionary tales like monsters are do on Maple Street or
Speaker 3: or the after the bomb stories. He did, you know,
Speaker 3: because he had hope for humanity, just like Geen Roddenberry
Speaker 3: on Star Trek. These were these were great, great men
Speaker 3: with vision. And to celebrate Rod's hundred's birthday tonight with
Speaker 3: you is this is the best thing I think I
Speaker 3: could be doing on christ It's a Christmas gift to me, George,
Speaker 3: to be spending this time with you.
Speaker 2: Did he know that he had health issues before he
Speaker 2: passed on.
Speaker 3: Only towards the very end. You know, he was a
Speaker 3: four packa day smoker. He lived very intensely and uh,
Speaker 3: and then his heart started to fail, and you know,
Speaker 3: he had open heart surgery and and and died as
Speaker 3: a result of the open heart surgery. So it was
Speaker 3: very tragic. I think probably nowadays, with all the events
Speaker 3: and the surgery, they probably could have saved him and
Speaker 3: certainly he would have known to stop smoking. You know,
Speaker 3: people often asked me if I could go back in
Speaker 3: time and ask Rod serving a question. What would I ask?
Speaker 3: And I asked and say, well, I don't think i'd
Speaker 3: asked a question. I just tell him to stop smoking.
Speaker 3: And you know, because we would love to have Rod
Speaker 3: with us even now. I mean, Kirk Douglas made it
Speaker 3: past one hundred and it would have been wonderful if
Speaker 3: Rod could have two.
Speaker 2: How many years did Twilight Zone run?
Speaker 3: It ran five seasons. Four of those seasons were half
Speaker 3: hour episodes and then one season was eighteen hour long
Speaker 3: episodes the fourth season, and it was just there wasn't
Speaker 3: anything like it on TV then or now. And it's
Speaker 3: the greatest looking black and white show ever made, great writing,
Speaker 3: great acting, great composers, Bernard Herman, Jerry Goldsmith, I mean,
Speaker 3: just the top people working in film and TV. It
Speaker 3: was the writing of the Tractor. It was Rod's writing
Speaker 3: that it all started with that.
Speaker 2: I was watching It's a Wonderful Life, which I try
Speaker 2: to do every year, one of the classics, and that's
Speaker 2: black and white too. There's something weird and special about
Speaker 2: black and white, is there?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah. It just puts it in a puts
Speaker 3: you in a certain frame of mind. It's just it
Speaker 3: takes you to a place, and you know, people try
Speaker 3: and colorize these things, but I really loved really great
Speaker 3: black and white photography. You know George Clemens, who was
Speaker 3: the great cinematographer on Twilight Zone. He went an Emmy
Speaker 3: for Twilight Zone, but he'd been a cameraman on everything
Speaker 3: from Blood and Sand with Rudolph Valentino to Richer Verdu
Speaker 3: with Chaplain. I mean, this guy came up through the
Speaker 3: great Golden era of Hollywood. And when you look at
Speaker 3: Twilights and you just see how spectacularly it's filmed, it's
Speaker 3: just miraculous. I think it's the most beautiful television show
Speaker 3: ever shot.
Speaker 2: What was one of your favorite Twilight Zone episodes?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, Well, you know I love Walking Distance, which
Speaker 3: is Rod's farewell to his father. You know, his dad
Speaker 3: died when Rod was overseas in World War Two and
Speaker 3: he wasn't able to come to the funeral. And so
Speaker 3: this is a twilights On episode where an executive walks
Speaker 3: back his hometown. He finds himself in the past of
Speaker 3: his boyhood and he wants to stay there, and his
Speaker 3: father is to tell him that he has to go
Speaker 3: back to his time and find happiness. There. But that
Speaker 3: was really Rod finally having a goodbye to his father,
Speaker 3: to have that last moment with his father that he
Speaker 3: so longed for. And so that's a great episode. But
Speaker 3: there's so many. I mean, I think any Twilights On
Speaker 3: episode are going to get value from a nightmare twenty
Speaker 3: thousand feet, the Grimlin on a wing, or that great
Speaker 3: villain on the episode with wishing people to the cornfield.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's funny because when Bill and I are
Speaker 3: working together on space Command, Bill he'll say, oh, be careful,
Speaker 3: I'll wish you to the cornfield. You know it's and
Speaker 3: he can do it.
Speaker 2: What of mine? You as you well know, to serve man.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, a great episode and it's wonderful. Richard Keel,
Speaker 3: who later played the character Jaws, the villain Jaws of
Speaker 3: the James Bond movies, played all of the aliens in
Speaker 3: that film in that episode and he was great and
Speaker 3: has one of the great greatest, you know, swist endings
Speaker 3: of any Twilights One episode.
Speaker 2: What were they called Cannamites or something like that.
Speaker 3: Cannabis. Yeah, I think it's a play on Cannibal. And
Speaker 3: it's Damon Knight, who was a great short story writer
Speaker 3: and who instantly bought my first short story. He wrote
Speaker 3: that short that that story when he was when his
Speaker 3: wife was out with another man, and Rod read the
Speaker 3: story and bought it and adapted it to Twilight Zone.
Speaker 3: So I interviewed Damon when I wrote the Twilight Zone companion.
Speaker 2: Mark Hollywood is going through a tremendous metamorphosis these days.
Speaker 2: What's happening?
Speaker 3: Yes, Well, you know, I think it's a mixture of
Speaker 3: different different elements. You know. I think that in some
Speaker 3: cases Hollywood, you go to movies and they're like the
Speaker 3: same old thing, the same old thing. It's hard to
Speaker 3: see something that's original. Every now and then you find something.
Speaker 3: But also it's so easy now for people to shoot
Speaker 3: their own films, to shoot their own TV shows and movies.
Speaker 3: I mean, I have my own channel on YouTube that
Speaker 3: reaches around the world. I have millions of views of
Speaker 3: one hundred thousand subscribers, and I think people if you
Speaker 3: want to have your own voice, and it's exactly what
Speaker 3: Rod was talking about back in the fifties. He's created
Speaker 3: twilights on too avoid censorship. If he were here now,
Speaker 3: he'd probably be wounding kickstarter campaigns. He'd be doing what
Speaker 3: I was doing because I have total freedom now. But
Speaker 3: I have no interest in working for the studios and
Speaker 3: the networks because I don't need their guidance quote unquote
Speaker 3: to make my work a disaster. I can make it
Speaker 3: the way I want it. I can cast who I want.
Speaker 3: It's very easy. It's total artistic control, which I really
Speaker 3: love having.
Speaker 2: And you could do it cheaper, can't you?
Speaker 3: Yes? Much cheaper? Yes, what costs the studios millions, we
Speaker 3: can do for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And you know,
Speaker 3: and the fun part is one thing I learned from
Speaker 3: Rod that was so invaluable. He shot twilights under the MGM,
Speaker 3: and he had access to every prop, every costume, every set,
Speaker 3: everything at MGM ever made. So you'll see tons of
Speaker 3: stuff from Forbidden Planet in Twilight Zone, or you'll see
Speaker 3: them shooting an episode on the Andy Hardy Street on
Speaker 3: the MGM back lot. So I did the same thing
Speaker 3: when I was at Sliders on the Universal lot, and
Speaker 3: now that I'm doing Space Command. Whenever a big budget
Speaker 3: science switch and TV show movie ends, a lot of
Speaker 3: those props and costumes and sets come on the market,
Speaker 3: come up for auction. I can buy them penny's on
Speaker 3: the dollar. So that's added to what we design and
Speaker 3: build from scratch, and it is a much more production value.
Speaker 3: And so if you go on my three sound stages,
Speaker 3: you see, you know, we have like thirty space suits
Speaker 3: like from the original Twilight Zone and from Prometheus. We've
Speaker 3: sets from the you know, Andrews game, and all sorts
Speaker 3: of movies and TV shows. It's just it's like a museum.
Speaker 3: But it also allows us to work very, very effectively,
Speaker 3: and it's just a sheer joy. And we're having a party, George,
Speaker 3: January first, to our studio and any of your coast
Speaker 3: to Post team is certainly welcome, including you and Tom
Speaker 3: and everybody of course. And it's just such a joy
Speaker 3: to be able to share all of this with everyone.
Speaker 3: You know, And I love I love making television. It's
Speaker 3: my favorite art form.
Speaker 2: Well, you should check in with us because we're going
Speaker 2: to be on the air January first, Mark. You know,
Speaker 2: we work all the holidays.
Speaker 1: My friend.
Speaker 3: Well, you're you're just a hard working man, George, and
Speaker 3: you you're you're the best, and that's why you've lasted
Speaker 3: so long. You know. It's a quality doesn't always rise
Speaker 3: to the top, but I always celebrate it when it does.
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts on streaming?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: What where are you headed with that?
Speaker 3: Well, the challenge, of course is finding finding quality. There's
Speaker 3: so much of everything, you know, there's infinite channels, you know,
Speaker 3: and so that's a problem. The good part is that
Speaker 3: you can watch whatever you want to see whenever you
Speaker 3: want to see it. But there's just such a such
Speaker 3: an enormous amount of content being made that to find
Speaker 3: the quality things is hard, and so you really have
Speaker 3: to know who to listen to and who's guidance to seek,
Speaker 3: uh and and not just watch anything that comes on
Speaker 3: because your mind will turn to mush, you know. So
Speaker 3: it's you know, it's very fun to have my own
Speaker 3: YouTube channel, mister sci Fi, because I can sort of
Speaker 3: talk about twilights when I can talk about Star Trek,
Speaker 3: I can share different episodes of TV that I've written
Speaker 3: in the past or that I'm doing now. It's but
Speaker 3: you know, my favorite network, frankly is YouTube because so
Speaker 3: many old TV movies and rarities are on YouTube. You
Speaker 3: can find things that you never thought you'd see again,
Speaker 3: and I love that aspect of it. But Netflix, i
Speaker 3: think has some of the quality, has gone down and
Speaker 3: a lot of you know, there's a lot of shows
Speaker 3: where I watch and I just go, boy, they really
Speaker 3: dropped the ball on that one. And I think it's
Speaker 3: because they're just making them too fast. They're not putting
Speaker 3: enough their heart and soul into it. You really have
Speaker 3: to treat it like an art form as Stirling did,
Speaker 3: as Ray Bradbury did. You know all of our favorites
Speaker 3: and you know when you put quality and you know
Speaker 3: it laughs. Many of the shows I wrote in my
Speaker 3: twenties and thirties and forties and fifties people are still
Speaker 3: watching now and loving. And it was funny. I was,
Speaker 3: I was out the other day and a homeless guy
Speaker 3: complimented me on the Deep Space nine episode. I wrote, Yes,
Speaker 3: he said that far be all the Stars, that was
Speaker 3: a great episode. It's like, wow, you know, I could
Speaker 3: thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah, But I love the
Speaker 3: reach of television that reaches millions of people in their homes,
Speaker 3: and it has an intimacy that the big, big budget
Speaker 3: movies don't have. Really that the man, I've been so blessed,
Speaker 3: you know, I've known so many wonderful people and I
Speaker 3: worked with so many great people. I mean, you know
Speaker 3: George the case, so many of the Michelle Nichols before
Speaker 3: she died. I met her when I was ten when
Speaker 3: the Original Star Trek was on the air, and I
Speaker 3: got gone the set of the Original Star Trek and
Speaker 3: and fifty years later I got to film her in
Speaker 3: a scene in the Space Command just before her passing.
Speaker 3: And so I brought the scrap book I kept when
Speaker 3: I was ten, with the photos and letters she'd written
Speaker 3: to me, and we sat years later flipping through the
Speaker 3: scrap book on you know, on my show, on my
Speaker 3: shooting day. So that was just a miracle, wonderful, just
Speaker 3: just just such a gift.
Speaker 2: Russell Crow send me a Merry Christmas text today. What
Speaker 2: a class guy.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and I'm glad he's having like a resurgence,
Speaker 3: so things like The Pope's Exorcist and so forth. He's
Speaker 3: a very strong actor. And you know, I'm I'm glad
Speaker 3: that he sent you, sent you that message. It's there's
Speaker 3: a lot of really good people in Hollywood. You know,
Speaker 3: Hollywood gets slammed for start of being a dog dog place,
Speaker 3: but that's not been my experience. You know. It's like
Speaker 3: there's a lot of really good hearted people here. But
Speaker 3: you know, there's there's a lot of the bad kind too,
Speaker 3: and those are the ones that get all the press attention,
Speaker 3: you know when they're when they're misbehaving. But you can
Speaker 3: find wonderful friends and loyal people and honorable people. And
Speaker 3: I've worked with many, many, many of those kinds, and
Speaker 3: it's it's just been a blessed life.
Speaker 2: Mark who was asleep at the wheel at Blockbuster. At
Speaker 2: one point, they were dominant in the DVD rentals. They
Speaker 2: captured the market, They had hundreds of stores all over
Speaker 2: the country. Somebody there slipped up when streaming came in
Speaker 2: because they entirely Millet missed the whole thing. How could
Speaker 2: you do that?
Speaker 3: Well, we on Netflix started as just like you know,
Speaker 3: video rental, they mail you DBDs and they were smart
Speaker 3: enough to get into streaming ride at the beginning before
Speaker 3: people knew what it was. But yes, Blockbuster absolutely dropped
Speaker 3: the ball. So a lot of people have nostalgia for
Speaker 3: Blockbuster and maybe someday come back again. You know, what's
Speaker 3: old is new again. But yeah, they definitely missed out
Speaker 3: on the coming technology. And it's every few years it changes,
Speaker 3: it changes, it changes. It needs to be on top
Speaker 3: of that. You know, it's I shoot digitally, I edit
Speaker 3: on a Mac. You know, it's you really have to
Speaker 3: know what the new technologies are. Otherwise it becomes impossible.
Speaker 2: It really does, it really does. And how's the pool
Speaker 2: of talent in LA for you?
Speaker 3: Fabulous great thing. If I can say to my friends,
Speaker 3: these actors like Doug Jones and Robert Poccardo and Bill
Speaker 3: Mummy and all of them, I can basically say, our
Speaker 3: studio is here in La. So when you were done
Speaker 3: shooting this whatever series or whatever movie you're shooting in,
Speaker 3: you know, in Toronto or Atlanta or Bangkok or wherever,
Speaker 3: you can come back.
Speaker 2: Home to LA.
Speaker 3: You can sleep in your own bed. We can shoot
Speaker 3: for two three days and that's it, you know. So
Speaker 3: I work with their schedules. Because I was standing sets,
Speaker 3: I can. I can do that. And even Ethan McDowell
Speaker 3: has been playing the lead in Space Command. He's he
Speaker 3: was in a regular and Walking Dead. Recently he just
Speaker 3: shot the you know, a show for HBO. I mean
Speaker 3: he's busy, but every time we call upon him, you know,
Speaker 3: he flies in from New York and we rock and roll.
Speaker 3: It's in fact, we're about to shoot a scene. Way
Speaker 3: flies into a Rex spaceship in a space suit in
Speaker 3: a weightless atmosphere and saves his son who's been injured
Speaker 3: and knocked unconscious. And that's going to be this big
Speaker 3: special effects thing and huge fun, huge fun.
Speaker 2: How did you conceive of Space Command?
Speaker 3: Mark? I noticed a few years ago that a lot
Speaker 3: of science fiction was very negative and very just topic
Speaker 3: and very bleak, basically giving a message the future is
Speaker 3: going to be terrible and there's nothing we can do
Speaker 3: about it. And I thought it was a terribly disempowering message.
Speaker 3: And I wanted to create a show that would say,
Speaker 3: you know, we can do better, we can be better,
Speaker 3: we can make a future that's worth living in for
Speaker 3: our children and grandchildren. It's not the moment you give
Speaker 3: up power, the moment you say, well nothing, I can't
Speaker 3: do anything. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. But if
Speaker 3: you come together with a good heart and compassion and action,
Speaker 3: you can make the world something worth living in. So
Speaker 3: I wanted to inspire people like the original start to
Speaker 3: conspire me when I was a kid, so I didn't
Speaker 3: want to trust the networks, so the studios not to
Speaker 3: cut me off at pilot or wreck it. So I
Speaker 3: just reached out to my fans, and as I say,
Speaker 3: they stepped up so far with over four million dollars,
Speaker 3: and that's allowed me to have my own studio and
Speaker 3: shoot the first seven eight hours of Space Command, and
Speaker 3: now the future we're doing and on and on. You know,
Speaker 3: it's just it's limitless, and many of my investors have bought.
Speaker 3: You know, I sold shares at seventy five hundred bucks
Speaker 3: each because I figured that's enough that regular people could
Speaker 3: afford it. But many people by multiple shares, and they
Speaker 3: just they love being part of something positive, and I
Speaker 3: do too.
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