Род Серлинг: Сценарист и создатель "Сумеречной зоны"

American screenwriter (1924–1975)

Rodman Edward Serling (December 25, 1924 – June 28, 1975) was an American screenwriter and television producer best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen, and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues, including censorship, racism, and war.

On October 2, 1959, the Twilight Zone series, created by Serling, premiered on CBS. with sponsors, network executives, or the general public and would escape censorship, unlike the earlier script for Playhouse 90. Serling drew on his own experience for many episodes, frequently about boxing, military life, and airplane pilots. The Twilight Zone incorporated his social views on racial relations, somewhat veiled in the science fiction and fantasy elements of the shows. Occasionally, the point was quite blunt, such as in the episode "I Am the Night—Color Me Black", in which hatred caused a dark cloud to form in a small town in the American Midwest and spread across the world. Many Twilight Zone stories reflected his views on gender roles, featuring quick thinking, resilient women as well as shrewish, nagging wives. The Twilight Zone aired for five seasons (the first three presented half hour episodes, the fourth had hour long episodes, and the fifth returned to the half hour format). It won many television and drama awards and drew critical acclaim for Serling and his co workers. Although it had loyal fans, The Twilight Zone had only moderate ratings and was twice canceled and revived. After five years and 156 episodes (92 written by Serling), he grew weary of the series. In 1964, he decided not to oppose its third and final cancellation. Serling sold the rights to The Twilight Zone to CBS. His wife later claimed he did this partly because he believed that his own production company, Cayuga Productions, would never recoup the production costs of the programs, which frequently went over budget. The Twilight Zone eventually resurfaced in the form of a 1983 film by Warner Bros. Former Twilight Zone actor Burgess Meredith was cast as the film's narrator, but does not appear on screen. There have been three attempts to revive the television series with mostly new scripts. In 1985, CBS used Charles Aidman (and later Robin Ward) as the narrator. In 2002, UPN featured Forest Whitaker in the role of narrator. In 2019, CBS made a third attempt at a successful revival, with Jordan Peele taking on producing duties as well as being host and narrator.

A Carol for Another Christmas was a 1964 American television movie, scripted by Rod Serling as a modernization of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and a plea for global cooperation between nations. It was telecast only once, on December 28, 1964. The only television movie directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, this was the film in which Peter Sellers gave his first performance after a series of near fatal heart attacks in the wake of his marriage to Britt Ekland. Sellers portrayed a demagogue in an apocalyptic Christmas.

In 1969, NBC aired a television film pilot for a new series, Night Gallery, written by Serling. Set in a dimly lit museum after hours, the pilot film featured Serling (as on camera host) playing the curator, who introduced three tales of the macabre, unveiling canvases that would appear in the subsequent story segments. Its brief first season (consisting of only six episodes) was rotated with three other shows airing in the same time slot; this wheel show was entitled Four in One. The series generally focused more on horror and suspense than The Twilight Zone did. On the insistence of the producer Jack Laird, Night Gallery also began including brief comedic "blackout" sketches during its second season, which Serling greatly disdained. He stated "I thought they [the blackout sketches] distorted the thread of what we were trying to do on Night Gallery. I don't think one can show Edgar Allan Poe and then come back with Flip Wilson for 34 seconds. I just don't think they fit." No longer wanting the burden of an executive position, Serling sidestepped an offer to retain creative control of content, a decision he would come to regret.

After The Twilight Zone was canceled, Serling wrote an unsuccessful western television series called The Loner, which ran from the fall of 1965 to April 1966. CBS asked Serling to have more action and less character interaction. He refused to comply, even though the show had received poor reviews and low ratings. In the 1970s, Serling appeared in television commercials for Ford, Radio Shack, Ziebart and the Japanese automaker Mazda. He also made occasional acting appearances, all in material he didn't write. Serling appears as a version of himself (but named "Mr. Zone") in a comedic bit on The Jack Benny Program; he appears in a 1962 episode of the short lived sitcom Ichabod and Me in the role of reclusive counterculture novelist Eugene Hollinfield; and in a 1972 episode of the crime drama Ironside entitled "Bubble, Bubble, Toil, and Murder" (which also featured a young Jodie Foster), in which he plays a small role as the proprietor of an occult magic shop.

Serling returned to radio late in his career with The Zero Hour (also known as Hollywood Radio Theater) in 1973. The drama anthology series featured tales of mystery, adventure, and suspense, airing in stereo for two seasons. Serling hosted the program but did not write any of the scripts. The series ended on July 26, 1974.

Serling's final radio performance was even more unusual: Fantasy Park was a 48 hour long rock concert aired by nearly 200 stations in 1974 and 1975. The program, written and produced by McLendon National Productions Director Steve Blackson, featured performances by dozens of rock stars of the day, and even reunited the Beatles. It was also completely imaginary—as KNUS Program Director Beau Weaver put it, a "theatre of the mind for the '70s". The concert used record albums, many recorded live in concert, plus crowd noise, interviews, schedule updates by host Fred Kennedy, and other sound effects. (Stations that aired the special were reportedly inundated by callers demanding to know how to get to the nonexistent concert.) KNUS general manager Bart McLendon recruited Serling to record the host segments, bumpers, custom promos, and television spots. Serling wrote the disclaimers, which aired each hour: "Hello, this is Rod Serling and welcome back to Fantasy Park—the crowds here today are unreal." "This is Fantasy Park—the greatest live concert—never held."

Serling kept his schedule full. When he was not writing, promoting, or producing his work, he often spoke on college campuses around the country. By the fourth season of Twilight Zone, Serling was exhausted and turned much of the writing over to a trusted stable of screenwriters, authoring only seven episodes. Desiring to take a break and clear his mind, he took a one year teaching job as writer in residence at Antioch College, Ohio. He taught classes in the 1962–63 school year on writing and drama and a survey course covering the "social and historical implications of the media." He was one of the first guest teachers at the Sherwood Oaks Experimental College in Hollywood, California. Audio recordings of his lectures there are included as bonus features on some Twilight Zone home video editions.

According to his wife, Carol, Serling often said that "the ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in, becoming narcissistic." "No Christmas This Year" was a script written early in Serling's career, around 1950, but was never produced. It told of a place that no longer celebrated Christmas, although none of the residents know why it has been canceled. Meanwhile, at the North Pole, the audience sees Santa Claus dealing with striking elves. Rather than creating toys and candy, the North Pole manufactures a diversity of bombs and offensive gases. Santa has been shot at on his route, and an elf was hit by shrapnel. On May 3, 1975, he had a heart attack and was hospitalized. He spent two weeks at Tompkins County Community Hospital before being released. The ten hour long procedure was performed on June 26, but Serling had a third heart attack on the operating table and died two days later at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York. He was 50 years old. The format of writing for television was changing rapidly in the early years, but eventually, it settled into a pattern of commercial breaks on each quarter hour. Writers were forced to work these breaks into their scripts. Serling's response to this convention was, "How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper? No dramatic art form should be dictated and controlled by men whose training and instincts are cut of an entirely different cloth. The fact remains that these gentlemen sell consumer goods, not an art form." Up to that time, many established writers were unwilling to write for television because the programs were viewed only once and then stored in a vault, never to be seen again.

After the first showing of "Patterns", the studio received such positive feedback that it produced a repeat performance, the first time a television program had been replayed at the request of the audience. Although successful shows had sometimes been recreated after two years or more, this was the first time a show was recreated exactly—with the same cast and crew—as it had been originally broadcast. The second live performance, only a month later, was equally successful and inspired New York Times critic Jack Gould to write an essay on the use of replays on television. He stated that "Patterns" was a prime example of a drama that should be seen more than once, whereas a single broadcast was the norm for television shows of the day. Sponsors believed that creating new shows every week would assure them the largest possible audience, so they purchased a new script for each night. Gould suggested that as new networks were opened and the viewers were given more choices, the percentage of viewers would spread among the offerings. "Patterns" was proof that a second showing could gain more viewers because those who missed the first showing could see the second, thus increasing the audience for sponsors.

Serling is indelibly woven into modern popular culture because of the enduring popularity of The Twilight Zone. Serling's widow, Carol, maintained that the cult status that surrounded both her husband and his shows continues to be a surprise, "as I'm sure it would have been to him." and participated in the continuing interest in Rod's work, sometimes preparing them for a new format and editing a publication about Rod that she founded, The Twilight Zone Magazine, as well as many activities to promote his legacy. The Twilight Zone has been rerun, re created and re imagined since going off the air in 1964. It has been released in comic book form, as a magazine, a film, and three additional television series from 1985 to 1989, from 2002 to 2003, and from 2019 to 2020. In 1988, J. Michael Straczynski scripted Serling's outline "Our Selena Is Dying" for the 1980s Twilight Zone series. Some of Serling's works are now available in graphic novels. Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone is a series of adaptations by Mark Kneece and Rich Ellis based on original scripts written by Serling. Several episodes were adapted into novel form for pulp fiction books by Serling himself. The Twilight Zone is not the only Serling work to reappear. In 1994, Rod Serling's Lost Classics released two never before seen works that Carol Serling found in her garage. The first was an outline called, "The Theatre", which Richard Matheson expanded. The second was a complete script written by Serling, "Where the Dead Are". Serling and his work on The Twilight Zone inspired the Disney theme park attraction The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, which debuted at Disney's Hollywood Studios at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida in 1994. Serling appears in the attraction through the use of repurposed archival footage, and voice actor Mark Silverman provides the dubbing of Serling's dialogue for the attraction at both Hollywood Studios and the defunct version at Disney California Adventure in Anaheim. The ride takes place in the once elegant Hollywood Tower Hotel that was struck by lightning, which caused the mysterious disappearance of five guests. Riders enter an abandoned elevator shaft as they become part of a "lost episode" of The Twilight Zone, with the attraction taking guests up 13 stories and dropping them multiple times. Annually since 1995, Binghamton High School, Serling's alma mater, primarily in partnership with WSKG TV, hosts the Rod Serling Video Festival for students in kindergarten through grade 12. The festival encourages young people to engage in filmmaking. More than 30 years after his death, Serling was digitally resurrected for an episode of the television series Medium that aired on November 21, 2005. Filmed partially in 3 D, it opened with Serling's introducing the episode and instructing viewers when to put on their 3 D glasses. This was accomplished using footage from The Twilight Zone episode "The Midnight Sun" and digitally manipulating Serling's mouth to match new dialogue spoken by voice actor Mark Silverman. The plot involved paintings coming to life, a nod to both The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery. On August 11, 2009, the United States Postal Service released its Early TV Memories commemorative stamp collection honoring notable television programs. One of the 20 stamps honored The Twilight Zone and featured a portrait of Serling. Through a mix of computer animation, a simulated version of Serling appeared at the end of the "Blurryman" episode of the 2019 revival of The Twilight Zone. This was done with a facial performance by Ryan Hesp, motion capture by Jefferson Black, and a voice reprisal by Mark Silverman.