Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
The ATX TV Festival, which was held in Austin from May 28-31, not only previews current and future television projects, it devotes time to look back at classic moments too. This year’s attendees were treated to such a moment involving Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone.
TV’s First Visionary
The Twilight Zone was one of my all-time favorite TV shows, leaving vivid memories. It ran for five seasons between 1959 and 1964. It was only in preparation for this event that I realized it had come and gone before I had even graduated from high school.
TV critic Alan Sepinwall previewed his biography of the iconic sci-fi/fantasy creator: Serling: A Journey Into The Twilight Zone with TV’s First Visionary. He discussed the book (to be published in October), the man, and his stories with Daniel Fienberg, chief TV critic for The Hollywood Reporter.
Every seat in the room was taken when the presentation began with a showing of Season 1 Episode 5 of The Twilight Zone, “Walking Distance.”
This, explained Sepinwall, was Serling’s favorite episode.
Walking Distance
The episode stars Gig Young (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia) as Martin Sloan. Sloan, a rich but unhappy and obnoxious businessman, has car problems in walking distance of the town he grew up in. He leaves his car at the gas station to be repaired and walks to his old hometown. But, when he arrives, he slowly discovers he has traveled back in time to when he was a little kid.
Interactions follow with townspeople, his younger self, his parents, and another youngster (played by eight-year-old Ron Howard). He even finds the merry-go-round he loved to ride.
Author Sepinwall explained that he spent two years researching Serling, saying, “Serling is the super autobiographical writer. He put himself in everything he wrote. He idolized his childhood and loved to ride the merry-go-round. In this story it was him trying to deal with everything he went through during the war. He was a real sentimentalist. In the end of this story, Sloan’s father tells him, ‘You can’t go home again. You have to make peace with the man you are now.'”
Finding Rod
Fineberg asked Sepinwall how he researched Serling.
Sepinwall explained, “There were other books, but Serling loved to talk. He loved celebrity. I looked at his interviews and the things he wanted to say. He was into civil rights, but there were things you couldn’t say back then. That’s why he got into sci-fi and fantasy. I talked to his daughters, [and] some actors who were really young when they were on the show. And, really important, there were so many show runners who talked about the influence he had on them.”
Fineberg asked how many of the 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone were really classics.
Sepinwall said, “Rod did an interview once where he said that a third were adequate, a third were good, and a third were awful. I would say, a third were bad, a third were good, and a third were great!”
More ATX TV?
ATX TV Festival brings TV fans and industry together to celebrate their favorite moments in TV as one community. Deep dives into show creation, revisiting past favorites, and discovering something new at “TV Camp for Grown Ups” highlight the Austin event.
For more information on the Austin TV Festival and opportunities for yearlong participation, check their website or social media sites: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.
