“Take a trip with me to a weird and goofy place — a wacky area where stuff just doesn’t make any sense. It’s in an area we call The Sunset Zone.”
After the two martinis we had, his speech was slurring just a bit.
I didn’t like it. The intro was amateurish. “What the hell does it mean, Rod?” We were drinking at the bar at the Hotel Obelus. Rod Serling and I were brainstorming ideas for a clever introduction and title to the episodes of a television show he was pitching to the networks for the umpteenth time. Quite frankly, I was not impressed.
“You’re getting too, uh… I dunno — trite?”, I continued. “What’s the word…Hackneyed.”
I picked the olive out of my martini and dropped it onto the bar. “Maybe tone it down a bit. You’ve been bouncing ideas off me all night, and I gotta say Rod, I don’t think you’re there yet.” I stubbed out my last cigarette and signaled to the bartender. “A pack of Chesterfields, Joe.” Then looking at Rod, I said, “The plot lines are good, not great, but your intro stinks.”
I flicked the olive up and into the ashtray. “Win again.”
“Another round of martinis here,” Rod said to the bartender. “Might as well, since I’m not there yet, according to… who?…You? The Auteur of Comic Books, Master of the Graphic Novel, Shlock Peddlar.” He turned away from me and mumbled, “Hackneyed, my ass. Look who’s talking.”
He loathed me at that moment. It’s happened before whenever I offered advice. And let’s be clear, Rod often asked for my advice. I’ve had some success as a B movie script writer and comic book author, so maybe I had some good instincts.
“Make it more esoteric. Go deep. Your audience may be a bunch of hillbillies, and they won’t understand what you’re saying, but that will add to the mystique. They’ll be sucked in to your stories, without even understanding why.”
We remained silent for a few minutes. The bartender brought the martinis and the Chesterfields, and I handed over a fistful of dollars. I needed this to be our last round, or I’d be real messed up in the morning. Again. The third martini always gives me nightmares and strange dreams that seem to continue long after I wake up in the morning.
“Keep the change, Joe.”
“How’s about this.” Rod began talking again. “‘We’re entering a special area - a place comprised of weird and wonderful things. An area we call The Dusk Zone.’ What do you think?”
He took notice that I said nothing.
“Or this,” he continued. “‘You are about to enter another dimension. A place where nightmares flourish and evil lurks in the shadows. You are about to enter The Darkness Zone.’ You think that’ll work?”
It’s all a bunch of crap. That was much worse than before. But how could I say this without pissing him off even more? He could become defensive, then aggressive at times like this. Even at his diminutive height of five foot four, Rod could deliver a punch with commendable strength. I had been on the receiving end of it a couple of times.
“Rod, you’re better than that. Make the intro a thing that people will remember forever. Put it over their heads so they’ll have something to reach for,” I said rather carefully with a mixture of pointed criticism and reserved praise. He didn’t need the praise. He knew he was good. But he didn’t want the criticism.
He lit another cigarette, looked me in the eye with measured contempt. “You’re an asshole and you’re getting under my skin,” he grumbled. “I should write you into a goddam episode and send you into that vast empty zone of space and time…”. He paused for a second or two, “…between what is real and what could not possibly exist.” As Rod continued, he realized that he was onto something. We both saw it. What he was threatening me with could actually become the intro he was looking for. There was a sparkle in his eye as he went on. “The fifth dimension where your desires and fears collide — where time’s fluidity warps one’s perception of reality. It is an area which I call… The Twilight Zone.” He sat back and grinned as he blew a cloud of smoke over me. “That’s good stuff.”
“Now you got it!” I bellowed. “Bravo! my man. That sounds great. You did it!”
“Yeah, I like it… The Twilight Zone.” He raised his glass to toast the title, satisfied that it reflected with the tone and style of his scripts.
I leaned in closer, and lowered my voice to a whisper. “Except you’re slurring your words, Rod. It sounded like you said ‘The Toilet Zone.’” He gave me an stern look, wondering if I was mocking him. I smiled and said, “Make sure you’re not drunk when you pitch it to the suits.”
That was in 1959, when we were both thirty-five and forging ahead in our careers. I had just published a spoof of Zane Grey’s dime store western novels. Rod hadn’t produced much since The Storm at WKRC-TV, but he was constantly pitching his ideas for a sci-fi, absurd and suspenseful supernatural drama television show. All he needed now was a network and a sponsor. And that would come to pass.
Fast forward to 1989. My book had been a major flop. Nobody cared about Zane Grey. I should have known that. And my legend as a comic book writer wasn’t enough to keep me employed much either. Bleak times lay ahead for me as I entered my mid 60s.
But Rod’s show The Twilight Zone had a successful run of five seasons, and went on to become a classic in the golden age of television.
Then one day I got a phone call.
“Mr. Serling asks if you could meet him today at the Hotel Obelus. Three thirty-works for him,” the secretary on the line said. “Can I tell him that you will be there?”
I angrily slammed down the phone. Rod had passed away fourteen years ago, so this was some kind of a sick joke. Who would do something like that? To me. I was really mad and deeply offended. Who the fuck did that?
For a reason I can’t explain and will never know, I was in midtown that afternoon near the Hotel Obelus, and something drew me to the hotel bar at three-thirty. What was it… Nostalgia? Curiosity? Whatever it was, I found myself entering the hotel lobby and heading towards the bar where Rod and I had pounded down martinis and debated his scripts thirty years ago. Yeah it was nostalgia. I missed those days. I missed Rod.
“I’ll take a martini. Gin.” It struck me as odd that Joe was still working the bar after all these years. He looked good though. I gave it no more thought as I took a stool.
He pointed to a glass on the bar. “This is your martini right here,” Joe said as he looked at me in a strange way. “That’s yours.”
I froze. “What?” What’s going on? I considered that the sick joke was unfolding, going further than it should, but honestly I wasn’t sure. I had this feeling in my gut that something weird was happening.
Then I noticed Rod. Rod Serling. He was sitting next to me, beside his martini and Chesterfields. “Yeah, I like it a lot,” Rod said. “Sounds mysterious. But not too sci-fi: It’s an area called… The Twilight Zone.” As he lit up another cigarette he added, “I’ll make sure not to slur it. That okay with you?”
He continued talking as if he and I were continuing our conversation of thirty years ago. Oddly, Rod hadn’t aged much since the last time I saw him. We were both sixty-five, but he looked like he did when we were in our thirties. And I know for a fact that he died years ago. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t. Something he had said back then came to mind: “time’s fluidity warps one’s perception of reality”.
He did all the talking. Story ideas sprang from his imagination almost instantly. Stories that twisted time and space, that set reality against the unreal, that presented the unexpected, the impossible, the unthinkable. He threw out ideas at a rapid pace, each one destined to be a groundbreaking television episode. And as he spoke, I remembered having watched all of those stories on television.
He was excited to think that his show might actually be produced one day, though he had no idea how successful it would become. I however did know.
After a while, he exhausted all he had to say. Rod was especially pleased with the intro. It would serve the show well. And then he finished his drink and cigarette.
He looked at me closely. Stared at my face for a while. “You should get some sleep,” he said. “You don’t look well.”
I said nothing. But I nodded slowly, as if to agree that sleep was what I needed, when in truth what happened to me was that I had been given a one way ticket into the fifth dimension. A place where a man’s hopes and aspirations give way to his fears.
It was the place we call… The Twilight Zone.