June 8, 2023 • 90 mins
"Where is Everybody?"
Season 1, Episode 1
Written by Rod Serling
Directed by Robert Stevens
Starring: Earl Holliman, James Gregory
Original Airdate: October 2, 1959
Synopsis:
Mike Ferris, an amnesiac in an Air Force jumpsuit, finds himself in a town strangely devoid of people. But despite the emptiness, he has the odd feeling that he's being watched.
The premiere episode of The Twilight Zone, "Where is Everybody" accomplished something that no other episode could ever have done: it sold the series.
Zoners is hosted by Matt McGregor, Colin Shaw, and Harris McCabe. Three friends who also co-host and produce License to Watch, a comedic movie review podcast focusing on movie franchises.
That show can be found HERE. Listen and subscribe for free everywhere you listen to podcasts!
Season 1, Episode 1
Written by Rod Serling
Directed by Robert Stevens
Starring: Earl Holliman, James Gregory
Original Airdate: October 2, 1959
Synopsis:
Mike Ferris, an amnesiac in an Air Force jumpsuit, finds himself in a town strangely devoid of people. But despite the emptiness, he has the odd feeling that he's being watched.
The premiere episode of The Twilight Zone, "Where is Everybody" accomplished something that no other episode could ever have done: it sold the series.
Zoners is hosted by Matt McGregor, Colin Shaw, and Harris McCabe. Three friends who also co-host and produce License to Watch, a comedic movie review podcast focusing on movie franchises.
That show can be found HERE. Listen and subscribe for free everywhere you listen to podcasts!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:26):
Observe a lonely man on a lonelyroad. He passes an empty gas station
in an empty town. He hasa flirtation with a mannequin. He almost
locks himself in a phone booth,and then almost locks himself in a jail.
He goes to the movies and runsinto a mirror. But there is
no mirror, there is no town. It's all in his mind. He's
(00:50):
part of a military experiment to helpfind a way to launch a man into
space, to the Moon, orto the Twilight Zone. All right,
welcome the Zoners. I'm Matt McGregor, I'm Colin Shaw, I'm Harris McCabe,
and we're back to talk about thevery first official episode of a show
called The Twilight Zone. The FrontDoor Pilot, if you will, the
(01:11):
Front Door Violet with us tonight,his men Rode. Colin is eating.
Colin is eating an ungrilled cheese breadwith cheese. On the plain white bread
with cheese. It's it tastes fantastic. It's true, it's totally within my
character and um and it and itworks on Mike. It's kind of It's
(01:34):
the Carmela Cheese Carmela, So Carmelasoprano. Yeah, that's the first thing
I thought. I didn't know.I didn't know she made a cheese that's
hot um, that's super hot um. It's basically like a mix between Gudha
and Parmesan. It's fantastic. Theyshould call it Gudas. It's a Goudas
(01:59):
on everything. So, yeah,Harris, thanks for that intro. That
really set the stage here for this. What this episode is? What's the
episode called? It's called where isEverybody? Question Mark? Question Mark?
Yeah, this is written by RodSterling. It is directed by Robert Stevens,
who is like a popular TV directorof the time. But what's interesting
(02:21):
about this? Okay, so lastepisode we talked about the Time Element and
which as good as good or badas we thought it was. I think
we can all agree that it's notas good as the Honda Element. Zoners
Podcast brought to you by a HondaLove what you Drive and Auto Zone,
(02:46):
Get into the Zone and the Generalyou want a great insurance rate, save
some go to the I'm glad wegot so many sponsors. I can't wait
until they start paying us one days. I hope the General is listening.
Voted for him? Oh my gosh, this episode is crazy. So the
(03:14):
time element looked like pretty boring.It looked like television, you know,
it didn't have anything exciting. Soon one thing they wanted to do was
like for this pilot, they wantedit to look really good. So they
hired this DP. His name isJoseph Lachelle, and he shot the Apartment,
UM, Marty Laura, and amovie called The Chase, which is
(03:36):
the only one of those that Iwas unfamiliar with. UM Bernard Herman JP
Morgan. Bernard Herman is the composerof this and he did the music.
So this episode starts with the uhtheme song that we're not so familiar with.
(03:57):
It's not the No No No thatcomes in season two. So season
one has music by Bernard Hermann,and he scored Citizen Kane, Psycho north
By Northwest, and The Day theEarth's Still, among many others. Score
is way better than the score ofUM. By the way, this is
my favorite shot in the show wherehe starts walking down the road and you
could just see like there's just nothingon the horizon. Yeah, yeah,
(04:20):
that's pretty cool. There's a treewell I mean yeah, but it's literally
on the horizon. UM. Ijust felt like the score in the in
the time element was just not TwilightZone. It felt like it was like
an episode of like Lucy, youknow what. It felt like an episode
of the Desolu playoff exactly because itwas exactly Yeah, it wasn't a This
(04:42):
is the first official Twilight Zone episodeshot on the Universal backlot. I don't
know if you could tell um it'sthe only one that shot on the Universal
backlot. Eventually they moved to MGMor something. I we'll get into that
in the next episode. But youcan actually see like the Back to the
Future M clock tower in this episode. I'll point Hill Valley, Hill Valley.
(05:02):
That's right. Yeah, this takesplace in Hill Valley. And it's
surprising how much they've already kind offigured out from like the very pilot of
it. They sort of have alot of the format with the opening narration
and the you know, the theyou know, they don't have the same
It isn't the same title sequences,isn't the same music, but it's the
same vibe. I do feel theabsence of Huey Lewis though, yes,
(05:28):
so not really. Hill Valley.Don't take money, Yeah, don't take
fame. You don't need no creditcard to ride this train, don't take
Twilight, don't take zones. Stuckin this town. So there's one conceit
that this just this episode demands thatI couldn't get past, which we sort
of touched on earlier on the previousepisode about like people talking to no one,
(05:57):
and this is an episode that isliterally just one guy. The entire
almost the entire episode, is oneactor walking around by himself by necessity,
because that's sort of the gag isthat he's the last man on earth kind
of um. But he ends uptalking to himself to people who aren't there.
He's like shouting whole conversations assuming thatsomebody's just off camera, and then
(06:18):
constantly being surprised when he is allalone, including this very long conversation with
a mannequin who he definitely in theunrated version at least feels up because he's
got he got that look. Noone's watching me, right, Yeah,
he doesn't know it's a mannequin untillike way after until at least after penetration.
(06:45):
Plus see Colin. What you don'tknow is that women back then looked
like and they weren't expected to talka lot. So he was like,
this date's going really swell swell.That's sad Resnick store mannequins. They're they're
bald. Imagine that's the late fifties. And like a town square has enough
(07:05):
businesses that a store mannequin place islike one of them. We don't know
that this isn't the entire counties mannequinsupply. Maybe this is what the town
is, the town built up aroundthe mannequin industry. I like that.
That's like Restics isn't even the onlymannequin shop in this town. This is
mannequin. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I would love to see a town
(07:28):
built up around the mannequin. Thetown was built on mannequin. They nicknamed
this place Mannequin Usa. I mean, there has to be a place where
mannequins come from, right exactly exactlyheadquarters if you will. There always like
be a doll and do this.I always find that LA is kind of
like that, like you'll see likevacuum repair stores and like at the very
(07:50):
specific stores like you know when youwere a kid and like you wrote you
sent away for something or like youhad to send something out for repair,
like you yeah, like there hasto be a Nintendo. There's always that,
like pair stations, there's always thatpicture of Mario with the wrench on
the back with like the phone number, the address where you send it back
to Nintendo guarantee. That was onlike Ventura BOULEIV already in like North Hollywood.
(08:13):
I grew up next to New Britain, which in New Britain, Connecticut
was known as the Hardware City becausethey had Stanley and Faffner Bearings and a
bunch of other basically companies that createdhardware and tools and stuff. And you
know, apparently at one point,long long before any of us were born,
it was where everyone made tools,and that was what the whole town
(08:35):
was about. And this is thatfor mannequins. I'm a little disappointed.
I was always hoping to work atspacely Sprockets when I grew up, But
you still might, still might.I was just thinking about the Jetsons recently.
Sorry, this is like pretty irrelevant, but remember how George Jetson he
doesn't even really need an alarm clock, Like he just gets up in the
(08:58):
machines like do do his like teethbrushing and putting on his clothes and all
that stuff pretty nice, pretty nicelife. That is kind of like the
world we live. I mean thattreadmill seems like it should possibly kill a
person, but other than that,he's doing pretty I feel like there's a
lot of offscreen deaths in the jetsand yeah, yeah, we just don't
acknowledge it. Nobody talks about.Yeah. Absolutely, um question, we're
(09:20):
at the point where he gets brieflytrapped in a phone booth. He forgot
how to work the door correct,Like, this is so stupid, what
a waste of time? He thoughtit was a push and it's allus all
phone booths are so I mean,I know we don't use them that much
anymore, but even we know thata phone booth is a pull door.
But I guess like this is uh, this is really they're really hammering home
(09:43):
the message of like when there's noone around, there's no one to say
like it's a pull. But okay, so I'm forgetting did he have to
open the door to get in orwas it already open, already open,
but he still had to close closeit? Yeah, close, pushing it?
Yea. So I read that thatbit actually happened to Rod Sterling that
like in a panic. He hewas like gonna miss his flight or something,
(10:03):
and he was like trying open thedoor and he was panicking, and
like some guy came over and likegently kicked it and it like opened,
and he felt like an idiot.Yeah, yeah, well that's one of
those things that like he probably feltlike it was an insight into the artist's
mind to share how he came upwith this brilliant idea. But that's one
of those things that I would definitelyjust leave out of the Q and A
(10:24):
of like how I was an idiotand got trapped in a phone because I
couldn't remember how the door works.It was just vulnerability. If it was
just this, it would be onething. But he also talked to that
mannequin when like he was at adistance where he could see it was a
man. Yeah, yeah, stupid. Just in shot that we see you
could tell it's a mannequin. Imean, this is this the reason that
he gets stuck in the phone boothis I mean the reason in terms of
(10:48):
like the narrative reason he gets stuckin the phone booth and the reason he
almost gets stuck in the jail cellis something that should have leaned into a
lot. More is that we findout at the end that he's in a
basically a sensory deprivation pod to trainfor going on a space mission. And
he's been in there for almost threeweeks and that's why he's going insane and
hallucinating. But I feel like theyshould have done more with this of and
(11:09):
well, we can talk about thiswhen we talk about how we would remake
this, but that that and thejail cell are both him being trapped in
a tiny area, which is whathe literally is. Yeah, I'll get
into it later. But um RodSerling in Later in Life was interviewed about
this episode and he says it's oneof the episodes where he truly feels like
(11:33):
he didn't do it justice and sincehe actually rewrote it as like a novelization
later in life and changed the endingand made the ending better. And so
i'll get into you know what thatis. Yeah, he so you know
the part, I'll just do itnow. You know, when he goes
he goes to the movies. Atthe end, there's like one of those
like old fashioned like ticket dispenser thingsand you like pull a ticket out,
(11:56):
you're supposed to rip it in halfand drop half of it in the box
and then you take the other halfwith you. And so he puts it
in his pocket. And then atthe end, when he comes out of
the deprivation chamber and he's on thestretcher and they're taking him away, he
reaches into his pocket and he pullsout the movie ticket. The questions like,
wait, did this he's still reallyhappen or is he still in it?
(12:16):
Yeah? Exactly. Um, youguys have probably watched movies with me
before, and you may not ormay have may not have noticed that like
I tend not to Like I don'tlaughter in comedies, I don't jump during
scary movies. I don't react tothings that I'm watching at all when I
watch them. Idea that you're anemotionless you have that policy of like your
(12:37):
only reaction to anything ever will bequote harumph. Yeah, but I don't.
I don't have a tendency to reactto things. But when I saw
this door, the shadow of thejail cell closing behind him, and he
gets so close to being closed,and then he notices the shadow on the
wall, he notices a sound.It takes him a second to turn around,
and then he once he sees it, it takes him another second to
(12:58):
actually react and go not get lockedin the jail cell. I literally sat
up and yelled at my TV,don't get locked in the jail cell because
I was so alarmed that he wasgoing to do that. I was like,
please, don't let this entire episodebe him locked in a jail cell.
Yeah. I mean, this episodeis not the best, but it's
pretty good for what it is.It has its moments. Yeah. Well,
(13:20):
I mean, you guys have watchedmovies with me before, so you
know it has one really strong thinggoing for it. For for the way
I evaluate films, there's no fullfrontal. It's a there's a there's a
jumpsuit. We all know it's asharp jumpsuit. I feel about jimps.
If you look at that fabric,that's yally, that's not one of these
(13:41):
like tearaway garage zipper. Well,is it supposed to be like an air
Force jumps Yeah? I think that'sthe idea. Is that sort of set
up that Like the first thing Ithought was, oh, is he's some
kind of a prisoner, But thenI realized that it sort of ties into
that. It looks like a mechanic. That's what I was gonna say.
I thought he was a mechanic.Let's talk about our favorite and least favorite
parts of this Okay. I wouldsay my least favorite is a phone booth
(14:03):
thing and the mannequin thing. Okay, because he just looks so dumb.
What are your favorites? Uh?The movie theater thing is really cool?
Um. I don't know how tosay why, but um, that that
whole sequence really, I think,especially now that I know that, like
(14:24):
the alternate ending is like has likethe ticket ripper thing that's Look how good
this shot is, um, withthe when he's talking to himself in the
mirror and the ice cream shop.It's so well lit and the mirror is
so clean and it's all one piece, and the depth of field is great,
like both he and his self thathe's talking to her in focus.
I was just really impressed with thetechnical mastery on display here with this shot.
(14:48):
So I guess he's always breaking likea light sweat, so they must
have put a lot of lights onhim. Ya. No, I mean
like, and you know you weresaying before that we hate when people talk
to themselves, and usually it's unbelievablebut I didn't say that, we were
saying the royal weak exactly. Ithink this episode you kind of buy it
(15:09):
because not only do you like atthe end it kind of makes sense,
but you know, you see thathe was right that you know he is
being watched and he like that's thewhole thing is that he has the sense
that he's being watched. Yeah,there's people, So he's talking to someone,
he just doesn't know who, andit doesn't come off like he's talking
to himself. It's like he's talkingto us kind of you know, yeah,
and he's got amnesia. But Ithink that I like that element of
(15:31):
like sort of gradually growing paranoia.Um, but how do you think Oakwood's
gonna do in that big Clarion game? Yeah? Um, Matt, what
were your favorite I don't know ifthe listeners are gonna get that not unless
they watched the episode. So yeah, there's not much to go on in
this episode. I actually have thatthe phone booth is my favorite scene because
(15:54):
it was like suspenseful and I knowyou guys are like, you know,
it does kind of pull the wholetime. It's a bull. And then
my least favorite scene is the mannequinscene, because that's the scene I'd buy
the least because he thought he shouldhave gone farther. Yes, yeah,
definitely. We didn't even see himget the second base for Christ's sake.
Um yeah, I U. Ithink my least favorite scene is probably I
(16:18):
don't know, I feel like thethe ending in general, I feel like
it is. It really didn't well, oh, let me take it all
back. I just remembered, thisis my least favorite scene where he is
out of boardom playing Tic Tac Toewith himself. So, first of all,
I got so I got so manyI got so many issues with us.
First of all, he lost everygame. If you if you're ever
(16:41):
playing, if you're ever bored,Tic Tac Toe is the worst. As
an adult, you should never wantto play Tic Tac Toe under any circumstances
because it's not a game that youshould ever lose, because it's not like
a like it's the dumbest game ever, um, and you should definitely not
do it out of boredom and playit with yourself. And if you do
play it with yourself, you definitelyshouldn't lose because the only way to lose
it tik tak to is to somehowto trick the other person into thinking you're
(17:04):
doing something that you're not, whichyou can't do if you're playing yourself.
He loses a game to tik takToo to himself, which is fucking impossible,
but to be fair, he alsowon. You're right. You're right,
young people draw. Any adults playingtik Takto should always draw every single
game. It's not that hard.You know. It's a dumb game to
play. It's called the cats game, first of all, and second of
all, you're right. Young peoplelove TikTok So yeah, thank you,
(17:27):
Colin. No, that is myleast favorite scene. My most favorite scene.
I actually like when things get crazyat the end and he's and like
the movie theater drives him, driveshim nuts, and um, he get
like he freaks out and then heruns into the mirror and he smashes the
mirror. I love that. That'ssuch a great moment. I love that
it's like he really ran full speedinto that mirror. He really did.
(17:48):
Yeah, it was. It wasjust really well done and a surprise because
anytime somebody runs to him because you'reseeing him through the reflection. And then
also he comes barreling into the kit, into the camera's view and breaks a
mirror, and it's just a perfectend. Is sort of a surreal moment
because we're trying to figure out whatit's going on. He's seeing this crazy
shit and he's overreacting and he's paranoid. He thinks he's being watched and whatever.
(18:10):
It's just a really good crescendo.Also, the movie is like not
a movie. It's like images oflike air force stuff, so it's like
clearly from his brain. Yeah,it's a lot of plants. It's battle
him. That's the movie. Itsays on the mark with rock Hudson.
I know, you know he's gonnasee the rock Hudson picture. I don't
know, rock Hudson, show RockHudson. He gets all the girls take
a look on the gams on therock Hudson at the coast. So good.
(18:40):
I like that he keeps finding thingsthat are like proof that people are
there. Yeah, like the likethe cigar and then the projector starts up
when he's in the theater, anduh, you know, I think that
they should have gone further with that, where like lights could turn on and
like you know, yeah, yeah, I love this, like we got
the canted camera angles and it's likeeverything is going crazy. Um. I
(19:02):
would say that the the twist endingis basically it was all a dream,
which is why I'm I was alittle disappointed with that. I think that
having the ticket stuff being in hispocket and throwing some doubt into that would
have been a better right. It'sa twist ending. So should we talk
about some alternate casting and what wewould do if we were remaking this.
(19:22):
Sure this isn't an alternate casting,but there's something about this guy that is
really reminiscent of um fuck, Iforgot his name, the guy who he's
in Cliffhanger and he plays yondu udantain oh yeah, yeah, oh oh,
Michael Michael Rooker. This guy isThere's something about this guy I would
he has got to be related tohim, Monnie. I didn't get it.
(19:44):
I didn't get a lot of MichaelMichael Rooker. So like rough around
the Edges, I was getting morelike an a Alan Tutick vibe from this
guy. Um. Although my fantasycasting would be my good friend Austin Stole,
who I think is like young,kind of bland white guy who also
tends love here, tends to doa lot of tends to do a lot
of TV stuff, So I feellike he's like the realistic casting. Yeah,
(20:07):
he kind of has that all AmericanYeah, he's an all American guy.
He's plays a lot of soldiers andpilots. This guy reminds you of
Alan Tutic, Yeah, and likea young Alan Tutic. Yeah too,
goofy. I think I would say, if you're gonna go in this he
spends half the thing talking to himselflike a goof I was definitely a sound
stage, but I would say,if you're gonna go in the Alan Tutic
direction, this guy is more ofa Steve's on but I don't even know
(20:29):
what we're talking. Actually, nota bad one. I actually put that
it should be some an actor whois good at talking and like talking to
them talking to themselves. Well,let's not go let's not go crazy here,
Like actors are not good at that. So not Troy Cotzer. Right
now, you guys love this.I put Ryan Reynolds, like the Ryan
(20:52):
Reynolds, the actor you hate mostof the world. But he's good at
like talking to the camera and likeyou know, he does like a Deadpool.
Thing's like you wish you could doto him, Isn't it like I
want to lock him in a littlebit. I want to make him a
TV actor again, just to punishhim. By the way, did you
guys see Um James Gregory playing thegeneral here? Do you know who he
is? No? Because first ofall, he's the guy who plays like
(21:14):
the in the Manchurian candidate. He'sthe guy who plays like the McCarthy type,
you know, senator who's accusing everyoneof being a communist. But that's
not the Denzel Manchurian candidate. No, that's the older one. Um,
the Denzel one I've seen. Yeah, But but you know who else he
is? He is General Ursus inbeneath the Planet of the Well. We
(21:36):
would never know that because General Ursusis a h Yeah, but I could
tell just by his reactions. Ithink he does a double take here when
he sees him nice. Um.The Planet Planet the Apes franchise is available
now on license to watch. Iput um like Chris Pratt, maybe like
someone who's like like all American,all American everyman blah blah. Yeah,
(22:00):
yeah, I mean I was Iwas going for somebody we can get,
we can get Austin. Yeah,anyways, I think what I would do
is I would lean into them,like because I think my favorite parts of
this were like the growing paranoia andthe and the idea that like sort of
semi supernatural stuff is happening like alit cigar, and the projectors starting by
(22:22):
itself, and like I think Iwould slowly want with the production design and
with what's going on, make theworld a little less real, and definitely
lean into that idea of him beingphysically limited. So like I would have
like hallways that when he started offin them they seemed really wide, and
then as he goes into him theyget narrower and narrower, and rooms that
seem big when he enters them,but once he's inside, it's like he's
(22:45):
feeling like claustrophobic in every environment.In fact, I might not put him
in a town. I might puthim in a like a house or a
building that he's trying to escape fromand make it a little more like lean
into the horror elements of it ashe gets horror charming about the town though,
but I also feel like it couldbe a town and he could be
like trying to leave the town andthen like next thing, you know,
(23:07):
he's like back in the town,right, He's like, I can't escape.
That's a very um one division.Yeah, it's also kind of like
um in the mouth of madness andsee. Um yeah I put that.
I would like to play up thebeing watched elements. Yeah. Yeah,
I still feel like we didn't reallyget the fantasy casting because I think this
guy needs to be like pretty youngactually, because he's like in the military
(23:30):
and volunteering for like their experiments orwhatever. Like I don't think he like,
this guy even looks a little tooseasoned for what they've got him doing.
But if you think about the firstAstronauts, they were all like pretty
seasoned. You know, if weremake it, is it happening now or
is it happening then? Um.I think since they were putting him in
(23:52):
the sensory deprivation to shoot him intospace, I think it has to be
happening before we were shooting people this. But I mean, you could make
up another reason to force a militaryguy to be in a sensory deprivation,
and then if you did it now, it'd be one of those things like
the It's like you know those likepods where you're like you're resting on water
or whatever where you're like kind offloating there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
(24:14):
I actually put how did he poop? And they they got a tube
up there. They mentioned that theysaid they got they got ways of getting
food in and waste out. Yeah, yeah, which I'd like to know
how. Yeah, exactly. It'sbut stuff, isn't it. You can't
say but stuff on TV? Butit was definitely but stuff. I don't
think you want to see you,you know what. I thought it was
(24:36):
interesting that that was a big problemRod Serling had with the sensors. So
you're saying, you want me tocut the butt stuff out? Yes,
Rod, no more but stuff.We can't tell you this every week.
I think. One of the interestingthings about this too is that it's like
I was, like nineteen fifty eight, we didn't land on the Moon for
like a deck like more than adecade. Yet it was interesting that like
(25:02):
the Soviets launched a man into spacelike three years later, Juri Gregarin,
yeah whatever his name is. Thatwas nice. Was sixty one. This
was the year they made NASA though, was it? Yes? Nineteen good
piece of trivia, y job.This episode of this episode us our lead
(25:22):
actor, Earl Holliman. Is hein anything else that we would know?
He was kind of a He waskind of a jobber. I mean he
was in other stuff, but nothingthat I thought was significant. It was
mostly he was in like small partsand movies, and then even his TV
stuff was like guest stars and smallparts. He didn't really have a notable
thing, which is you know,um, some interesting factoids. Um.
(25:45):
So this this aired October two,nineteen fifty nine. UM. One of
the last minute changes that they madebefore it aired was that, um,
they actually had a different narrator andthe guy said that he couldn't come back
for certain episod and so they endedup canning him in favor and Rod Sterling
was like, I'll do it.They were like trying to find, you
know, different people, and finallyhe stepped up and was like, you
(26:08):
know, I can just do itand they were like you Rod Sterling,
I don't know. And then helike the Rods and then he you know,
did it and they liked it andhe's great. He's like iconic,
you like, you know, associatehis his image Sterling was serving you got
curled, you got curled? Um, let's see I have some other stuff
(26:30):
here. I was laughing in spiteof myself. I was tying, do
I get your approval there? No? Um, let's see, but you
might take second place, but youknow what they give for a second place,
Surling Silver, Yes, you knowwhat they say, searles for the
girls. We don't even know whatsucks. So this wasn't the original pilot
(26:57):
idea. He wrote another script init called The Happy Place, and it
was about a totalitarian society where theythey euthanize you once he turned sixty,
so it's like a society of justmuch like Logan's Run. Yeah. Um.
And they thought it was too downbeaten, depressing, and so rather than
like fight them, Sterling was justlike, fine, I'll write something completely
(27:19):
different, and he wrote this anduh yeah that's oh. And one of
the other last minute changes in thebeginning narration, he originally said the sixth
dimension, and then someone at thelast second was like, you know there's
only four dimensions, right, andhe's like, oh, I thought there
were five dimension nice. So yeah, what I was driving in earlier is
(27:48):
like they wanted the look and soundof the Twilight Zone to be unlike anything
else that was on TV at thetime, and like everything was like pretty
much like I Love Lucy, likethat sitcom look like that's what the time
element kind of looks like. Andfor this they hired that DP who I
mentioned, who kind of made itlook have a unique look. And they
have that shot where the guy looksat he breaks the fourth wall and he
(28:11):
says, where is everybody comes runningup to the screen. There's canted angles
like you said, there's Yeah,they're definitely using different lenses there. Yeah,
and like you said, with thelighting, there was you know,
depth of focus that was you knowkind of like it's more cinematic, it's
more sci fi. You know.They definitely wanted it to stand out with
what besides sitcoms like westerns or whatYeah, and even those are kind of
(28:34):
shot similarly. Yeah. Um soyeah, So I don't know if those
guys continue to work on the show, but they set the pace, you
know for everything else. I guesswe'll find out in future episodes. Yeah.
Yeah, Um was this immediately popular? Was this viewed by lots of
people and beloved by all? Ithink this first episode was positively received and
(28:56):
people were excited about it. Thethe you know CBI was excited about the
pilot. They were happy to youknow, air it, and they were
like, great, now just makeforty more. Yeah. It's an interesting
thing because usually a pilot dictates whatthe rest of the show is going to
be like, but because of itsanthology nature, it doesn't do that,
you know. And so they're like, oh, we like this actor,
(29:18):
but we're never going to see himagain, and uh yeah, and so
they just kind of rolled the diceand took a chance that you know,
he was He was bragging to allhis friends. He's like, I landed
a pilot. I'm gonna be inthis great pilot. My life is set.
And he was never heard from again. I think he's still alive.
I hope the jumpsuit as he didn'teven get paid us. I'm sorry,
(29:41):
you can keep the jumpsuit. Um, what else could we do to this
episode? Where is all the money? It's in Tom's house and Bill's house.
Hey, what's my money doing atyour house? Bill? Should we
rate this thing? I think weshould rate this thing. Yeah, what's
(30:03):
our scale here? Sick? Ihave six out of ten? I put
a six out of ten Deprivation Chambers. Okay, I like this one a
little better. I thought the productiondesign was much better, and I was
really impressed by honestly, the performancefrom this unknown actor. I thought was
really solid, and I liked someof the sort of playing with the unreliable
(30:26):
narrator and of course the great momentsat the end where things go crazy.
I think we're really effective. SoI will give it seven Air Force jumpsuits.
Nice, I will give it sevenphone booths with a working door.
It's a push, it's a fuckingpull. Well, there you have it,
(30:48):
everyone, Thank you for joining us, thanks for listening to zonners,
and we're going to continue to doall these Twilight Zone episodes. M Harris,
do you want to take us outand so I can't do the reds
Eli for your approval. Yeah.I don't know what to say aside from
please join us again on another episodeof the Twilight Zone.
Observe a lonely man on a lonelyroad. He passes an empty gas station
in an empty town. He hasa flirtation with a mannequin. He almost
locks himself in a phone booth,and then almost locks himself in a jail.
He goes to the movies and runsinto a mirror. But there is
no mirror, there is no town. It's all in his mind. He's
(00:50):
part of a military experiment to helpfind a way to launch a man into
space, to the Moon, orto the Twilight Zone. All right,
welcome the Zoners. I'm Matt McGregor, I'm Colin Shaw, I'm Harris McCabe,
and we're back to talk about thevery first official episode of a show
called The Twilight Zone. The FrontDoor Pilot, if you will, the
(01:11):
Front Door Violet with us tonight,his men Rode. Colin is eating.
Colin is eating an ungrilled cheese breadwith cheese. On the plain white bread
with cheese. It's it tastes fantastic. It's true, it's totally within my
character and um and it and itworks on Mike. It's kind of It's
(01:34):
the Carmela Cheese Carmela, So Carmelasoprano. Yeah, that's the first thing
I thought. I didn't know.I didn't know she made a cheese that's
hot um, that's super hot um. It's basically like a mix between Gudha
and Parmesan. It's fantastic. Theyshould call it Gudas. It's a Goudas
(01:59):
on everything. So, yeah,Harris, thanks for that intro. That
really set the stage here for this. What this episode is? What's the
episode called? It's called where isEverybody? Question Mark? Question Mark?
Yeah, this is written by RodSterling. It is directed by Robert Stevens,
who is like a popular TV directorof the time. But what's interesting
(02:21):
about this? Okay, so lastepisode we talked about the Time Element and
which as good as good or badas we thought it was. I think
we can all agree that it's notas good as the Honda Element. Zoners
Podcast brought to you by a HondaLove what you Drive and Auto Zone,
(02:46):
Get into the Zone and the Generalyou want a great insurance rate, save
some go to the I'm glad wegot so many sponsors. I can't wait
until they start paying us one days. I hope the General is listening.
Voted for him? Oh my gosh, this episode is crazy. So the
(03:14):
time element looked like pretty boring.It looked like television, you know,
it didn't have anything exciting. Soon one thing they wanted to do was
like for this pilot, they wantedit to look really good. So they
hired this DP. His name isJoseph Lachelle, and he shot the Apartment,
UM, Marty Laura, and amovie called The Chase, which is
(03:36):
the only one of those that Iwas unfamiliar with. UM Bernard Herman JP
Morgan. Bernard Herman is the composerof this and he did the music.
So this episode starts with the uhtheme song that we're not so familiar with.
(03:57):
It's not the No No No thatcomes in season two. So season
one has music by Bernard Hermann,and he scored Citizen Kane, Psycho north
By Northwest, and The Day theEarth's Still, among many others. Score
is way better than the score ofUM. By the way, this is
my favorite shot in the show wherehe starts walking down the road and you
could just see like there's just nothingon the horizon. Yeah, yeah,
(04:20):
that's pretty cool. There's a treewell I mean yeah, but it's literally
on the horizon. UM. Ijust felt like the score in the in
the time element was just not TwilightZone. It felt like it was like
an episode of like Lucy, youknow what. It felt like an episode
of the Desolu playoff exactly because itwas exactly Yeah, it wasn't a This
(04:42):
is the first official Twilight Zone episodeshot on the Universal backlot. I don't
know if you could tell um it'sthe only one that shot on the Universal
backlot. Eventually they moved to MGMor something. I we'll get into that
in the next episode. But youcan actually see like the Back to the
Future M clock tower in this episode. I'll point Hill Valley, Hill Valley.
(05:02):
That's right. Yeah, this takesplace in Hill Valley. And it's
surprising how much they've already kind offigured out from like the very pilot of
it. They sort of have alot of the format with the opening narration
and the you know, the theyou know, they don't have the same
It isn't the same title sequences,isn't the same music, but it's the
same vibe. I do feel theabsence of Huey Lewis though, yes,
(05:28):
so not really. Hill Valley.Don't take money, Yeah, don't take
fame. You don't need no creditcard to ride this train, don't take
Twilight, don't take zones. Stuckin this town. So there's one conceit
that this just this episode demands thatI couldn't get past, which we sort
of touched on earlier on the previousepisode about like people talking to no one,
(05:57):
and this is an episode that isliterally just one guy. The entire
almost the entire episode, is oneactor walking around by himself by necessity,
because that's sort of the gag isthat he's the last man on earth kind
of um. But he ends uptalking to himself to people who aren't there.
He's like shouting whole conversations assuming thatsomebody's just off camera, and then
(06:18):
constantly being surprised when he is allalone, including this very long conversation with
a mannequin who he definitely in theunrated version at least feels up because he's
got he got that look. Noone's watching me, right, Yeah,
he doesn't know it's a mannequin untillike way after until at least after penetration.
(06:45):
Plus see Colin. What you don'tknow is that women back then looked
like and they weren't expected to talka lot. So he was like,
this date's going really swell swell.That's sad Resnick store mannequins. They're they're
bald. Imagine that's the late fifties. And like a town square has enough
(07:05):
businesses that a store mannequin place islike one of them. We don't know
that this isn't the entire counties mannequinsupply. Maybe this is what the town
is, the town built up aroundthe mannequin industry. I like that.
That's like Restics isn't even the onlymannequin shop in this town. This is
mannequin. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I would love to see a town
(07:28):
built up around the mannequin. Thetown was built on mannequin. They nicknamed
this place Mannequin Usa. I mean, there has to be a place where
mannequins come from, right exactly exactlyheadquarters if you will. There always like
be a doll and do this.I always find that LA is kind of
like that, like you'll see likevacuum repair stores and like at the very
(07:50):
specific stores like you know when youwere a kid and like you wrote you
sent away for something or like youhad to send something out for repair,
like you yeah, like there hasto be a Nintendo. There's always that,
like pair stations, there's always thatpicture of Mario with the wrench on
the back with like the phone number, the address where you send it back
to Nintendo guarantee. That was onlike Ventura BOULEIV already in like North Hollywood.
(08:13):
I grew up next to New Britain, which in New Britain, Connecticut
was known as the Hardware City becausethey had Stanley and Faffner Bearings and a
bunch of other basically companies that createdhardware and tools and stuff. And you
know, apparently at one point,long long before any of us were born,
it was where everyone made tools,and that was what the whole town
(08:35):
was about. And this is thatfor mannequins. I'm a little disappointed.
I was always hoping to work atspacely Sprockets when I grew up, But
you still might, still might.I was just thinking about the Jetsons recently.
Sorry, this is like pretty irrelevant, but remember how George Jetson he
doesn't even really need an alarm clock, Like he just gets up in the
(08:58):
machines like do do his like teethbrushing and putting on his clothes and all
that stuff pretty nice, pretty nicelife. That is kind of like the
world we live. I mean thattreadmill seems like it should possibly kill a
person, but other than that,he's doing pretty I feel like there's a
lot of offscreen deaths in the jetsand yeah, yeah, we just don't
acknowledge it. Nobody talks about.Yeah. Absolutely, um question, we're
(09:20):
at the point where he gets brieflytrapped in a phone booth. He forgot
how to work the door correct,Like, this is so stupid, what
a waste of time? He thoughtit was a push and it's allus all
phone booths are so I mean,I know we don't use them that much
anymore, but even we know thata phone booth is a pull door.
But I guess like this is uh, this is really they're really hammering home
(09:43):
the message of like when there's noone around, there's no one to say
like it's a pull. But okay, so I'm forgetting did he have to
open the door to get in orwas it already open, already open,
but he still had to close closeit? Yeah, close, pushing it?
Yea. So I read that thatbit actually happened to Rod Sterling that
like in a panic. He hewas like gonna miss his flight or something,
(10:03):
and he was like trying open thedoor and he was panicking, and
like some guy came over and likegently kicked it and it like opened,
and he felt like an idiot.Yeah, yeah, well that's one of
those things that like he probably feltlike it was an insight into the artist's
mind to share how he came upwith this brilliant idea. But that's one
of those things that I would definitelyjust leave out of the Q and A
(10:24):
of like how I was an idiotand got trapped in a phone because I
couldn't remember how the door works.It was just vulnerability. If it was
just this, it would be onething. But he also talked to that
mannequin when like he was at adistance where he could see it was a
man. Yeah, yeah, stupid. Just in shot that we see you
could tell it's a mannequin. Imean, this is this the reason that
he gets stuck in the phone boothis I mean the reason in terms of
(10:48):
like the narrative reason he gets stuckin the phone booth and the reason he
almost gets stuck in the jail cellis something that should have leaned into a
lot. More is that we findout at the end that he's in a
basically a sensory deprivation pod to trainfor going on a space mission. And
he's been in there for almost threeweeks and that's why he's going insane and
hallucinating. But I feel like theyshould have done more with this of and
(11:09):
well, we can talk about thiswhen we talk about how we would remake
this, but that that and thejail cell are both him being trapped in
a tiny area, which is whathe literally is. Yeah, I'll get
into it later. But um RodSerling in Later in Life was interviewed about
this episode and he says it's oneof the episodes where he truly feels like
(11:33):
he didn't do it justice and sincehe actually rewrote it as like a novelization
later in life and changed the endingand made the ending better. And so
i'll get into you know what thatis. Yeah, he so you know
the part, I'll just do itnow. You know, when he goes
he goes to the movies. Atthe end, there's like one of those
like old fashioned like ticket dispenser thingsand you like pull a ticket out,
(11:56):
you're supposed to rip it in halfand drop half of it in the box
and then you take the other halfwith you. And so he puts it
in his pocket. And then atthe end, when he comes out of
the deprivation chamber and he's on thestretcher and they're taking him away, he
reaches into his pocket and he pullsout the movie ticket. The questions like,
wait, did this he's still reallyhappen or is he still in it?
(12:16):
Yeah? Exactly. Um, youguys have probably watched movies with me
before, and you may not ormay have may not have noticed that like
I tend not to Like I don'tlaughter in comedies, I don't jump during
scary movies. I don't react tothings that I'm watching at all when I
watch them. Idea that you're anemotionless you have that policy of like your
(12:37):
only reaction to anything ever will bequote harumph. Yeah, but I don't.
I don't have a tendency to reactto things. But when I saw
this door, the shadow of thejail cell closing behind him, and he
gets so close to being closed,and then he notices the shadow on the
wall, he notices a sound.It takes him a second to turn around,
and then he once he sees it, it takes him another second to
(12:58):
actually react and go not get lockedin the jail cell. I literally sat
up and yelled at my TV,don't get locked in the jail cell because
I was so alarmed that he wasgoing to do that. I was like,
please, don't let this entire episodebe him locked in a jail cell.
Yeah. I mean, this episodeis not the best, but it's
pretty good for what it is.It has its moments. Yeah. Well,
(13:20):
I mean, you guys have watchedmovies with me before, so you
know it has one really strong thinggoing for it. For for the way
I evaluate films, there's no fullfrontal. It's a there's a there's a
jumpsuit. We all know it's asharp jumpsuit. I feel about jimps.
If you look at that fabric,that's yally, that's not one of these
(13:41):
like tearaway garage zipper. Well,is it supposed to be like an air
Force jumps Yeah? I think that'sthe idea. Is that sort of set
up that Like the first thing Ithought was, oh, is he's some
kind of a prisoner, But thenI realized that it sort of ties into
that. It looks like a mechanic. That's what I was gonna say.
I thought he was a mechanic.Let's talk about our favorite and least favorite
parts of this Okay. I wouldsay my least favorite is a phone booth
(14:03):
thing and the mannequin thing. Okay, because he just looks so dumb.
What are your favorites? Uh?The movie theater thing is really cool?
Um. I don't know how tosay why, but um, that that
whole sequence really, I think,especially now that I know that, like
(14:24):
the alternate ending is like has likethe ticket ripper thing that's Look how good
this shot is, um, withthe when he's talking to himself in the
mirror and the ice cream shop.It's so well lit and the mirror is
so clean and it's all one piece, and the depth of field is great,
like both he and his self thathe's talking to her in focus.
I was just really impressed with thetechnical mastery on display here with this shot.
(14:48):
So I guess he's always breaking likea light sweat, so they must
have put a lot of lights onhim. Ya. No, I mean
like, and you know you weresaying before that we hate when people talk
to themselves, and usually it's unbelievablebut I didn't say that, we were
saying the royal weak exactly. Ithink this episode you kind of buy it
(15:09):
because not only do you like atthe end it kind of makes sense,
but you know, you see thathe was right that you know he is
being watched and he like that's thewhole thing is that he has the sense
that he's being watched. Yeah,there's people, So he's talking to someone,
he just doesn't know who, andit doesn't come off like he's talking
to himself. It's like he's talkingto us kind of you know, yeah,
and he's got amnesia. But Ithink that I like that element of
(15:31):
like sort of gradually growing paranoia.Um, but how do you think Oakwood's
gonna do in that big Clarion game? Yeah? Um, Matt, what
were your favorite I don't know ifthe listeners are gonna get that not unless
they watched the episode. So yeah, there's not much to go on in
this episode. I actually have thatthe phone booth is my favorite scene because
(15:54):
it was like suspenseful and I knowyou guys are like, you know,
it does kind of pull the wholetime. It's a bull. And then
my least favorite scene is the mannequinscene, because that's the scene I'd buy
the least because he thought he shouldhave gone farther. Yes, yeah,
definitely. We didn't even see himget the second base for Christ's sake.
Um yeah, I U. Ithink my least favorite scene is probably I
(16:18):
don't know, I feel like thethe ending in general, I feel like
it is. It really didn't well, oh, let me take it all
back. I just remembered, thisis my least favorite scene where he is
out of boardom playing Tic Tac Toewith himself. So, first of all,
I got so I got so manyI got so many issues with us.
First of all, he lost everygame. If you if you're ever
(16:41):
playing, if you're ever bored,Tic Tac Toe is the worst. As
an adult, you should never wantto play Tic Tac Toe under any circumstances
because it's not a game that youshould ever lose, because it's not like
a like it's the dumbest game ever, um, and you should definitely not
do it out of boredom and playit with yourself. And if you do
play it with yourself, you definitelyshouldn't lose because the only way to lose
it tik tak to is to somehowto trick the other person into thinking you're
(17:04):
doing something that you're not, whichyou can't do if you're playing yourself.
He loses a game to tik takToo to himself, which is fucking impossible,
but to be fair, he alsowon. You're right. You're right,
young people draw. Any adults playingtik Takto should always draw every single
game. It's not that hard.You know. It's a dumb game to
play. It's called the cats game, first of all, and second of
all, you're right. Young peoplelove TikTok So yeah, thank you,
(17:27):
Colin. No, that is myleast favorite scene. My most favorite scene.
I actually like when things get crazyat the end and he's and like
the movie theater drives him, driveshim nuts, and um, he get
like he freaks out and then heruns into the mirror and he smashes the
mirror. I love that. That'ssuch a great moment. I love that
it's like he really ran full speedinto that mirror. He really did.
(17:48):
Yeah, it was. It wasjust really well done and a surprise because
anytime somebody runs to him because you'reseeing him through the reflection. And then
also he comes barreling into the kit, into the camera's view and breaks a
mirror, and it's just a perfectend. Is sort of a surreal moment
because we're trying to figure out whatit's going on. He's seeing this crazy
shit and he's overreacting and he's paranoid. He thinks he's being watched and whatever.
(18:10):
It's just a really good crescendo.Also, the movie is like not
a movie. It's like images oflike air force stuff, so it's like
clearly from his brain. Yeah,it's a lot of plants. It's battle
him. That's the movie. Itsays on the mark with rock Hudson.
I know, you know he's gonnasee the rock Hudson picture. I don't
know, rock Hudson, show RockHudson. He gets all the girls take
a look on the gams on therock Hudson at the coast. So good.
(18:40):
I like that he keeps finding thingsthat are like proof that people are
there. Yeah, like the likethe cigar and then the projector starts up
when he's in the theater, anduh, you know, I think that
they should have gone further with that, where like lights could turn on and
like you know, yeah, yeah, I love this, like we got
the canted camera angles and it's likeeverything is going crazy. Um. I
(19:02):
would say that the the twist endingis basically it was all a dream,
which is why I'm I was alittle disappointed with that. I think that
having the ticket stuff being in hispocket and throwing some doubt into that would
have been a better right. It'sa twist ending. So should we talk
about some alternate casting and what wewould do if we were remaking this.
(19:22):
Sure this isn't an alternate casting,but there's something about this guy that is
really reminiscent of um fuck, Iforgot his name, the guy who he's
in Cliffhanger and he plays yondu udantain oh yeah, yeah, oh oh,
Michael Michael Rooker. This guy isThere's something about this guy I would
he has got to be related tohim, Monnie. I didn't get it.
(19:44):
I didn't get a lot of MichaelMichael Rooker. So like rough around
the Edges, I was getting morelike an a Alan Tutick vibe from this
guy. Um. Although my fantasycasting would be my good friend Austin Stole,
who I think is like young,kind of bland white guy who also
tends love here, tends to doa lot of tends to do a lot
of TV stuff, So I feellike he's like the realistic casting. Yeah,
(20:07):
he kind of has that all AmericanYeah, he's an all American guy.
He's plays a lot of soldiers andpilots. This guy reminds you of
Alan Tutic, Yeah, and likea young Alan Tutic. Yeah too,
goofy. I think I would say, if you're gonna go in this he
spends half the thing talking to himselflike a goof I was definitely a sound
stage, but I would say,if you're gonna go in the Alan Tutic
direction, this guy is more ofa Steve's on but I don't even know
(20:29):
what we're talking. Actually, nota bad one. I actually put that
it should be some an actor whois good at talking and like talking to
them talking to themselves. Well,let's not go let's not go crazy here,
Like actors are not good at that. So not Troy Cotzer. Right
now, you guys love this.I put Ryan Reynolds, like the Ryan
(20:52):
Reynolds, the actor you hate mostof the world. But he's good at
like talking to the camera and likeyou know, he does like a Deadpool.
Thing's like you wish you could doto him, Isn't it like I
want to lock him in a littlebit. I want to make him a
TV actor again, just to punishhim. By the way, did you
guys see Um James Gregory playing thegeneral here? Do you know who he
is? No? Because first ofall, he's the guy who plays like
(21:14):
the in the Manchurian candidate. He'sthe guy who plays like the McCarthy type,
you know, senator who's accusing everyoneof being a communist. But that's
not the Denzel Manchurian candidate. No, that's the older one. Um,
the Denzel one I've seen. Yeah, But but you know who else he
is? He is General Ursus inbeneath the Planet of the Well. We
(21:36):
would never know that because General Ursusis a h Yeah, but I could
tell just by his reactions. Ithink he does a double take here when
he sees him nice. Um.The Planet Planet the Apes franchise is available
now on license to watch. Iput um like Chris Pratt, maybe like
someone who's like like all American,all American everyman blah blah. Yeah,
(22:00):
yeah, I mean I was Iwas going for somebody we can get,
we can get Austin. Yeah,anyways, I think what I would do
is I would lean into them,like because I think my favorite parts of
this were like the growing paranoia andthe and the idea that like sort of
semi supernatural stuff is happening like alit cigar, and the projectors starting by
(22:22):
itself, and like I think Iwould slowly want with the production design and
with what's going on, make theworld a little less real, and definitely
lean into that idea of him beingphysically limited. So like I would have
like hallways that when he started offin them they seemed really wide, and
then as he goes into him theyget narrower and narrower, and rooms that
seem big when he enters them,but once he's inside, it's like he's
(22:45):
feeling like claustrophobic in every environment.In fact, I might not put him
in a town. I might puthim in a like a house or a
building that he's trying to escape fromand make it a little more like lean
into the horror elements of it ashe gets horror charming about the town though,
but I also feel like it couldbe a town and he could be
like trying to leave the town andthen like next thing, you know,
(23:07):
he's like back in the town,right, He's like, I can't escape.
That's a very um one division.Yeah, it's also kind of like
um in the mouth of madness andsee. Um yeah I put that.
I would like to play up thebeing watched elements. Yeah. Yeah,
I still feel like we didn't reallyget the fantasy casting because I think this
guy needs to be like pretty youngactually, because he's like in the military
(23:30):
and volunteering for like their experiments orwhatever. Like I don't think he like,
this guy even looks a little tooseasoned for what they've got him doing.
But if you think about the firstAstronauts, they were all like pretty
seasoned. You know, if weremake it, is it happening now or
is it happening then? Um.I think since they were putting him in
(23:52):
the sensory deprivation to shoot him intospace, I think it has to be
happening before we were shooting people this. But I mean, you could make
up another reason to force a militaryguy to be in a sensory deprivation,
and then if you did it now, it'd be one of those things like
the It's like you know those likepods where you're like you're resting on water
or whatever where you're like kind offloating there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
(24:14):
I actually put how did he poop? And they they got a tube
up there. They mentioned that theysaid they got they got ways of getting
food in and waste out. Yeah, yeah, which I'd like to know
how. Yeah, exactly. It'sbut stuff, isn't it. You can't
say but stuff on TV? Butit was definitely but stuff. I don't
think you want to see you,you know what. I thought it was
(24:36):
interesting that that was a big problemRod Serling had with the sensors. So
you're saying, you want me tocut the butt stuff out? Yes,
Rod, no more but stuff.We can't tell you this every week.
I think. One of the interestingthings about this too is that it's like
I was, like nineteen fifty eight, we didn't land on the Moon for
like a deck like more than adecade. Yet it was interesting that like
(25:02):
the Soviets launched a man into spacelike three years later, Juri Gregarin,
yeah whatever his name is. Thatwas nice. Was sixty one. This
was the year they made NASA though, was it? Yes? Nineteen good
piece of trivia, y job.This episode of this episode us our lead
(25:22):
actor, Earl Holliman. Is hein anything else that we would know?
He was kind of a He waskind of a jobber. I mean he
was in other stuff, but nothingthat I thought was significant. It was
mostly he was in like small partsand movies, and then even his TV
stuff was like guest stars and smallparts. He didn't really have a notable
thing, which is you know,um, some interesting factoids. Um.
(25:45):
So this this aired October two,nineteen fifty nine. UM. One of
the last minute changes that they madebefore it aired was that, um,
they actually had a different narrator andthe guy said that he couldn't come back
for certain episod and so they endedup canning him in favor and Rod Sterling
was like, I'll do it.They were like trying to find, you
know, different people, and finallyhe stepped up and was like, you
(26:08):
know, I can just do itand they were like you Rod Sterling,
I don't know. And then helike the Rods and then he you know,
did it and they liked it andhe's great. He's like iconic,
you like, you know, associatehis his image Sterling was serving you got
curled, you got curled? Um, let's see I have some other stuff
(26:30):
here. I was laughing in spiteof myself. I was tying, do
I get your approval there? No? Um, let's see, but you
might take second place, but youknow what they give for a second place,
Surling Silver, Yes, you knowwhat they say, searles for the
girls. We don't even know whatsucks. So this wasn't the original pilot
(26:57):
idea. He wrote another script init called The Happy Place, and it
was about a totalitarian society where theythey euthanize you once he turned sixty,
so it's like a society of justmuch like Logan's Run. Yeah. Um.
And they thought it was too downbeaten, depressing, and so rather than
like fight them, Sterling was justlike, fine, I'll write something completely
(27:19):
different, and he wrote this anduh yeah that's oh. And one of
the other last minute changes in thebeginning narration, he originally said the sixth
dimension, and then someone at thelast second was like, you know there's
only four dimensions, right, andhe's like, oh, I thought there
were five dimension nice. So yeah, what I was driving in earlier is
(27:48):
like they wanted the look and soundof the Twilight Zone to be unlike anything
else that was on TV at thetime, and like everything was like pretty
much like I Love Lucy, likethat sitcom look like that's what the time
element kind of looks like. Andfor this they hired that DP who I
mentioned, who kind of made itlook have a unique look. And they
have that shot where the guy looksat he breaks the fourth wall and he
(28:11):
says, where is everybody comes runningup to the screen. There's canted angles
like you said, there's Yeah,they're definitely using different lenses there. Yeah,
and like you said, with thelighting, there was you know,
depth of focus that was you knowkind of like it's more cinematic, it's
more sci fi. You know.They definitely wanted it to stand out with
what besides sitcoms like westerns or whatYeah, and even those are kind of
(28:34):
shot similarly. Yeah. Um soyeah, So I don't know if those
guys continue to work on the show, but they set the pace, you
know for everything else. I guesswe'll find out in future episodes. Yeah.
Yeah, Um was this immediately popular? Was this viewed by lots of
people and beloved by all? Ithink this first episode was positively received and
(28:56):
people were excited about it. Thethe you know CBI was excited about the
pilot. They were happy to youknow, air it, and they were
like, great, now just makeforty more. Yeah. It's an interesting
thing because usually a pilot dictates whatthe rest of the show is going to
be like, but because of itsanthology nature, it doesn't do that,
you know. And so they're like, oh, we like this actor,
(29:18):
but we're never going to see himagain, and uh yeah, and so
they just kind of rolled the diceand took a chance that you know,
he was He was bragging to allhis friends. He's like, I landed
a pilot. I'm gonna be inthis great pilot. My life is set.
And he was never heard from again. I think he's still alive.
I hope the jumpsuit as he didn'teven get paid us. I'm sorry,
(29:41):
you can keep the jumpsuit. Um, what else could we do to this
episode? Where is all the money? It's in Tom's house and Bill's house.
Hey, what's my money doing atyour house? Bill? Should we
rate this thing? I think weshould rate this thing. Yeah, what's
(30:03):
our scale here? Sick? Ihave six out of ten? I put
a six out of ten Deprivation Chambers. Okay, I like this one a
little better. I thought the productiondesign was much better, and I was
really impressed by honestly, the performancefrom this unknown actor. I thought was
really solid, and I liked someof the sort of playing with the unreliable
(30:26):
narrator and of course the great momentsat the end where things go crazy.
I think we're really effective. SoI will give it seven Air Force jumpsuits.
Nice, I will give it sevenphone booths with a working door.
It's a push, it's a fuckingpull. Well, there you have it,
(30:48):
everyone, Thank you for joining us, thanks for listening to zonners,
and we're going to continue to doall these Twilight Zone episodes. M Harris,
do you want to take us outand so I can't do the reds
Eli for your approval. Yeah.I don't know what to say aside from
please join us again on another episodeof the Twilight Zone.
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