Quote:
Originally Posted by charlieray1
It's interesting. It's one of the very few episodes that could actually happen, which is why it was chosen for the pilot. Some of the more fantasy oriented stories would have hard a hard time finding a sponsor. There was very little of that kind of programming before Twilight Zone.
The episode itself is fine, though certainly not up to the best of the series. Apparently Rod felt that something was missing in it too. Later, when he included the story in a Twilight Zone book he added a twist. Remember when the main character goes into that movie theater? In the book version he tears off a ticket at the booth and puts the stub in his pocket. Then at the end of the story when he's being carried away from the isolation booth he puts his hand in his pocket . . . and the stub is there!
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You're right. I hadn't thought about the fact that it's one of the few that could actually happen.
Well, I don't know about that. It's open to interpretation and discussion, but I think that maybe some other episodes are happening in the minds of people who have gone off the deep end. I mean that gambling episode. No one else sees those crazy one armed bandits do they? Just that man "Franklin." And maybe that man in a crazed delusion wrestled with the machine and fell out the window.
And there are at least a few others like that, I think, where the fantastic things we are seeing are perhaps supposed to be just the products of truly sick minds....?
On the commentary it says that originally Serling had written as the first episode something called "The Happy Place"--or some such title. It was a retirement home in the future where they kept people happy with drugs until they did away with them because they were of no use to society.
The CBS exec who read it said to RS that it would never work, never sell. RS got pretty angry, apparently. But then he went home, realized the exec was right, and in a couple of weeks wrote the script of Where is Everybody?--which the CBS exec (don't remember his name) loved, and they got along well after that.
In fact this exec went with the film when it was done for a screening in New York City with CBS head honcho Bill Daley (?). The head of CBS didn't like to watch pilots in the NY theater with anybody, because then they would ask how he liked it. But since this other guy was an exec too, he made an exception. That turned out to be kind of a good thing, because the projectionist was so wrapped up in the story that he forgot to put on the third reel of film.
Suddenly, right at the part where the character runs into the mirror, the screen went black--with no explanation at all of what it was all about. Daley said something like "What?! That's it?!" And the other exec hastened to say that no there was another reel that explained it and told the projectionist to get with it and put it on. And after watching the rest of it, Daley loved it and green lit the series.
Yeah, interesting the idea that you mention of a ticket stub that then falls out of his pocket when he gets out of the isolation tank--which as you say goes against the idea of this episode but shows where TZ is soon going to go.
Earl Holliman says in the audio commentary that he came up with a similar idea. His idea was that he would tear a number out of the phone book, and then that would fall out of his pocket later. He says Serling said CBS just wouldn't go for it.
But after the series was approved they sure did go for it....
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