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Rod Serling was tired of fighting for his success as a writer
Serling was tired of fighting for his right to write.
Years before The Twilight Zone premiered in 1959, writer Rod Serling was engaged in a running battle with agencies and sponsors over his right to say what he wanted when he wanted. For years, this kept Serling fighting for his right to write.
"I'm no longer an angry young man," Serling said in a 1959 interview with The Record. "Now I'm merely a petulant, aging man. I'm not exactly a meek conformist. I'm just a tired nonconformist."
Many consider The Twilight Zone to be a masterpiece, even inspiring the 2019 remake developed by Jordan Peele under the same name. The original series, which ran from 1959 to 1964, offered viewers a chance to escape reality and enter a new dimension.
The show was a weekly series of odd, spooky, and sometimes eerie tales of adventure in the realm of imagination.
Serling achieved numerous television writing milestones and set records for many "firsts" within the entertainment industry. The Twilight Zone gave Serling the success he had been chasing without losing his freedom.
"My philosophy is to please as many people as I can without selling out to them," Serling said.
Serling wrote 21 of the first 26 episodes of The Twilight Zone himself and also acted as a narrator and host for the series. He even became an executive producer of the series in order to defend himself even further if anyone ever tried to take his creative freedom.
"Writers are going into the production end in order to retain a share of the prerogative over what's done with their work," Serling said. "Television is a collaborative business. A lot of people stick their hands in the soup. When a writer takes over the reins of production, he eliminates a couple chefs. This may not simplify the menu, but it sure improves it."
Serling had been a writer for a long time. According to the article, he won a $500 prize for a radio script while still a student at Antioch College in Ohio (1948). He followed it up by writing 40 scripts that didn't sell. He said he only received $100 for his first half-hour TV script.
In the later seasons of The Twilight Zone, Serling made about $4,000 to $6,000 per script for comparison.
For Serling, contentment was life's greatest goal. At the end of the day, Serling just wanted to stop fighting for his life and start living it. It's safe to say The Twilight Zone helped make that happen.
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9 Comments
WAAAAY too brilliant for the present time
Serling had, in fact, and almost unprecedentedly generous and ironclad contract with CBS that prevented the network from interfering with scripts or final edited content of "Twilight Zone" episodes. The ONLY option the network retained was that they could refuse to air what he sent them, though it was never exercised beyond never rerunning the 1964 episode "The Encounter," with George Takei and Neville Brand. It's also the only episode that CBS never put into syndication, though it is in the DVD and Blu-ray sets.
