Nov. 1, 1964 - Rod Serling, one of television’s best-known and best‐paid writers, has decided to transfer his talents to motion pictures.
“Television had left me frustrated and fatigued,” confesses Serling, who, ironically, is president of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
While he may turn out an occasional TV script, he said he focus the bulk of his energies on writing screenplays for the movies.
Mr. Serling’s decision comes as yet another reminder of the virtual disappearance of serious drama from television. This season, Serling notes, there is only one true anthology dramatic show on TV, compared with 13 a few years ago.
As a result of the demise of TV drama and the sudden exaltation of situation comedy, a number of television's better writers have, like Serling, been shifting their energies to other fields. His defection, however, is of special note since he has been perhaps television’s most prolific and famous literary practitioner.
For the last five years Mr. Serling has had a weekly dramatic show, “The Twilight Zone,” on TV and also has written for dozens of others. He admits that he is glad to see “The Twilight Zone” end its run.
“Toward the end I was writing so much that I felt I had begun to lose my perspective on what was good or bad,” the writer said.
Serling says he still gets at least one offer a day to write a TV show, but that he turns them down to devote more time to movies. He has completed the script for “The Planet of the Apes,” and now is at work on a movie about World War I aviators.
Movies offer several advantages over TV writing, Serling declares. For one thing, a writer has more time to prepare and polish his script and thus can avoid the pressures and compromises imposed by TV. Serling, who is paid $150,000 a script, says he averages one screenplay every 2½ months:
In addition, while TV continues to impose rigid restrictions over the themes that its writers may explore, the motion‐picture business has “opened up,” Serling states.
“You can really say things now in the movies” he notes. This new‐found freedom, he believes, was clearly demonstrated in “Seven Days in May,” for which he prepared the script. The movie was allowed to say some provocative things about extremism and the military.
Serling, who is 39 years old, insists that he does not want to give too black a picture of TV.
“Television gave me money and identity as a writer,” he notes. “You can’t knock that. It’s just that I now like movies better.”
Serling labors in a setting befitting a Hollywood writer. He has constructed a handsomely appointed office adjacent to the swimming pool of his rambling rustic home in the Pacific Palisades.
Support this project at patreon.com/realtime1960s
תגובות