Bob Shepherd writes a segment for Rod Serling in “The Twilight Zone”:
INT. OVAL OFFICE – DAY
Trump sitting behind the Resolute Desk. Camera back to reveal Rod Serling standing D.R.
SERLING
His name, Mr. Little. A man with little education, little taste, little knowledge, little concern for other people. Neglected as a child, he grew into a black hole of neediness. And so he used Daddy’s money to build big, erected his name in Midas-gold letters across the landscape–his every action screaming, “I am worth something.” Everything became a zero-sum game. If someone else failed or was worse off, he was better, a “winner,” and so he cheated and harassed and ridiculed the unfortunate, the stranger, the down and out; appealed to the basest instincts of the basest among us; huffed and puffed and blew himself to gigantic proportions, at least in his own little brain. A twisted, malignant, metastasizing tumor of need and narcissism and knee-jerk nastiness, Mr. Little doesn’t know much, but the biggest thing he doesn’t know is that he just stepped over into a place where everything is bigger than he is, where everything is just beyond the grasp of his little mind and his little hands. He just stepped over into . . . The Twilight Zone.
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Great descriptive writing! They say that you can judge the size of a man’s brain and heart from the size of his hands.
Yes, Bob nailed it. We are in a bizarre and other worldly Twilight Zone with Trump in office and conspiracy theory nuts reigning supreme.
Love it… but it is I who is living in the Twilight Zone.
You are not alone Susan. I just heard Trump make outrageous claims from a press conference held at the White House, really a non-stop campaign blaming Democrats for everything wrong.
It began with a rambling attack on the Atlantic article, and a self-aggrandizing repeat of his dislike of John McCain then more about Obama/Clinton/Biden conspiracy to spy on his campaign, and so on.
In my best New Orleanian: Amen to dat, sistah!
Ha! Spot on, Bob. It happens that I’ve been watching a lot of the old show lately, and you got it. Now can you mimic Rod Serling? He strikes me as one of the coolest people ever involved in the medium of television.
I have loved Serling ever since I was a kid. Did you know that he wrote most of his television pieces as short stories FIRST? There is a wonderful collection of these Twilight Zone short stories. I agree with you about this guy. When I grow up, I want to be just as cool as Rod Serling was.
I don’t think I did know that about him, Bob. I was more aware, as Joe Jersey points out below, about his combat experience in World War II. Given the literary quality of those scripts, though, I’m not surprised to hear that. I’ll go looking for that book of short stories. I’ve watched some of episodes of “The Twilight Zone repeatedly and never grown tired of seeing them. For example, “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” with Martin Balsam and Ida Lupino (Ms. Lupino, a respected auteur in her own right, would later direct “The Masks” in the fifth season) is simply a masterpiece of short filmmaking.
Those are good ones, but there are so many. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. A Stop at Willoughby. A Thing about Machines. To Serve Man. The After Hours. He’s Alive. I think I first got my love of sci-fi from Serling’s grafts of quirks in the natural order onto medieval morality plays.
Absolutely: “A Stop at Willoughby,” in my not terribly humble opinion, is one of the greatest things that has ever been on television.
YES!
Mark, I first learned that I would one day die from my grandmother’s comment on a Twilight Zone episode. Here, the story of that: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/the-limits-of-learning/
There are so many good ones, but if I had to pick one, it would be Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?. I got CBS All Access for a week to watch the Champions League quarters and semis and tried the new version introduced by Jordan Peele. Gave up after two episodes. Sad that they invoke Serling’s name in the credits.
From wikipedia: Serling’s final assignment was as part of the occupation force in Japan. During his military service, Private Serling was awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, and the Philippine Liberation Medal.
Serling’s combat experience affected him deeply and influenced much of his writing. It left him with nightmares and flashbacks for the rest of his life. He said, “I was bitter about everything and at loose ends when I got out of the service. I think I turned to writing to get it off my chest.”
He was only 50 when he died.
Thanks, Joe Jersey.
He was a chain smoker.
Perfect. I too watched Serling each week on T Zone when I was a boy, loved it.