The Twilight Zone Episode

Introducing the Twilight Zone

0:00This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

0:15Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Oh, I should say...

0:21Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and this is Chuck, and this is you too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the Twilight Zone edition. Completely unrecognizable as the Twilight Zone theme song. Really? It was off? I think you give people a hundred guesses. No one's guessing Twilight Zone. Oh, wow. All right, well... I've been singing the Golden Earring song in my head all day. Oh, I forgot about that. Thanks for that, earworm. When the bullet hits the bone.

0:54That's the one? That's the one. I didn't know that was Golden Earring, too. Yeah. They talk about doing speed in that Twilight Zone song. Actually, he talks about not doing speed, because he's almost there. Oh, wow. I think I knew that. Yeah, he says, no more speed, I'm almost there. Oh, okay. I don't think he's talking about driving fast. You know what I mean?

Rod Serling before television

1:15Mm-hmm.

Rod Serling before television

1:16No, but we're talking about Twilight Zone, the great TV show that started out in October 2nd, 1959, at a time when TV minds would be blown, because if you're talking about, I guess, whatever you would call science fiction on television at the time, it's very kind of corny, B-movie kind of stuff. Right. And people were not ready for what the great, great Rod Serling was about to deliver into their living rooms. No. The 50s started what's known as the golden age of television, and Rod Serling was a major part of making it the golden age of television.

1:55Yeah. And not just with the Twilight Zone. He started out with an illustrious career, basically, right off the bat. He was doing some radio writing. He started to try his hand at TV. And at the time, TV was about as good as those B sci-fi movies were. You had variety shows, westerns, lots and lots of westerns. Oh, yeah. Sitcoms that were mostly slapstick, nothing like—there wasn't anything particularly high-minded, right? Yeah. And so Serling comes along, and he starts writing these 90-minute TV plays that were broadcast live, so it was very much like a live TV play.

2:33Mm-hmm. And they were just—the stuff he was writing, it just hadn't been seen before on television. And again, television wasn't that old, so there wasn't a lot to compare it to, but he just took what was going on and elevated it to just astronomical new levels. Yeah, for sure. His big hit that he kind of got his name for at first was in 1956. It was a—one of those teleplays called Patterns. Mm-hmm. And it was about kind of ruthless business people. And it was really, really popular, and I think you found this thing that was—it was so popular, it was the first TV show ever to run again.

3:10Like, they put it on the air again just because people thought it was so awesome. Yeah. And so this is his first thing that got really big, and he hadn't been writing all that long. By the end of the 50s, so less than a decade, maybe half a decade, he had something like 100 produced scripts under his belt. Yeah. And then he was also the recipient of more Emmys for TV writing than anyone in history still to this day. So he was really, really good at what he did.

3:42Yeah. Another big one was—and this is one I had heard of because they made a film after this teleplay, but it was called Requiem for a Heavyweight. And when I saw that, I was like, wait, is that the movie? Like, did he base it on that or the other way around? But yeah, he wrote the original script for Jack Palance's Requiem for a Heavyweight. And I think that won a Peabody Award. He was the first writer to ever win a Peabody for TV writing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully it's coming through, like, how good Rod Serling was and just how he's considered, you know, synonymous with the Twilight Zone, but there is just a lot more to him.

4:22Handsome, too. One of the things that he was really big on was basically tackling big social issues of the day. Yeah. In large part, racism, fascism through the McCarthy trials or hearings, that kind of stuff. And he just hit wall after wall. Not only were the networks, like, really worried about losing sponsors by putting anything, like, particularly hard-hitting on, he had—like, the censors were conservative. And they were like, you can't do that. You can't talk about, you know, black people being whiched.

4:57Even though it's what's going on, you can't write a show about that. So he kept running into it. And he would adjust. I saw that there was one—it's considered one of the greatest shows of all time. It's called The Town That Turned to Dust. And it was written about lynchings in the South, but he had to move it from the South to the Southwest and the victim from a black man to a Mexican man. And apparently the censors were like, oh, yeah, that's all totally fine.

5:29But he had to turn it into something of an allegory to make it more palatable for TV viewers. So right off of the bat, he basically had to figure out how to maneuver into this really tight structure that he found very stifling. Yeah. One of the—one of those was something he wrote a teleplay about corruption on Capitol Hill, which, you know, by the time it got to air was not even recognizable as the thing that he had written to begin with. Like Dirty Dancing 2. Yeah, exactly. So he told the press, he said, in retrospect, I probably would have had a much more adult play had I made it science fiction, put it in the year 2057, and peopled the Senate with robots.

6:11And so that idea, I mean, that was just a quote to the press, but he was like, maybe there's something to this. Like he can get across messages better if he packages it in something that's, you know, kind of sci-fi and more palatable.

Pitching the series to CBS

6:26So we moved to L.A. with this idea.

6:31Specifically, his pitch was to base a TV show around this other thing. One of his last TV plays was called The Time Element about a guy who had a recurring dream that he goes back to Hawaii in 41 to warn about the attack on Pearl Harbor. And then there's a twist, which, of course, Twilight Zone would become known for, twist in general. But in this case, it was like, was it a dream kind of thing? But he was like, in 58, he said, why don't we try and do a TV show like where every week we have something like The Time Element?

7:04Yeah. And he was used to writing 90-minute teleplays. So he wanted an hour-long slot. And CBS was like, no, let's see what you got with a half hour first. So he came up with, I guess, something called a happy place. I don't think it was ever produced. I didn't see any mention of it being produced. It was just the first attempt at a pilot. And it was more than CBS was willing to accept because it essentially became Logan's Run years later, where once you reached age 60, you were taken to a happy place.

7:39And the happy place was the place where you were exterminated. CBS was like, no, we're not doing that. What else you got? Yeah. And he said, well, I got this other thing. It's called Where Is Everybody? And it was sort of like the last person on Earth kind of scenario. And the twist in this case was the last man was an astronaut in a tank, a sensory deprivation tank, training for a solo mission to the moon. CBS was like, now we're talking, baby. How about 36 episodes?

8:10And he said, great. He wrote 80% of those scripts and was an owner of 50% of the show. And he made the name up. Like the Twilight Zone was something he just came up with, even though it turns out that is an aviation term that the Air Force uses is when you're about to land and you can no longer see the horizon. You're in the Twilight Zone. But apparently he didn't know that and didn't get it from that. No, it's got a nice ring to it. I could see somebody putting it together. It's creepy sounding. You just reminded me. I meant to propose, what if we don't give away the twists to any of the episodes?

8:44I kind of wondered that, too. Yeah, let's do that. Okay. Well, sorry about the first one, everybody, but we won't give any more away. How about that? Yeah, because hopefully what happens is you'll go out and be encouraged to watch some of these full episodes, which you can do. Man, I watched so many of them over the last couple of days. It's just been a real joy, dude. Yeah, I watched one full one today that I'd seen before, but I have seen a bunch of these. I used to watch the reruns, and then I watched a couple of – there's a couple of fun lists, like top 20 creepiest on YouTube, top 20 creepiest reveals on the Twilight Zone.

9:17And I remember – I went through that today, and I probably remembered about half of those. Which one did you watch today? Well, I watched – I wanted to watch one I had seen before, and I watched the Burgess Meredith – well, I'm not going to reveal it. Burgess Meredith is one of the last guys who doesn't want to live anymore because he survived the nuclear holocaust. And then he realizes that the library is there, and he's a big reader. And he's like, well, I've got the books. I can now – I have all the time in the world to read. And then something happens. Yeah, that's a great one.

9:48I think that was season one as well. That might have been the – I don't remember exactly which one that was, but that was a great one. And that's – so just buckle up, everybody, because I'm going to say that was a great one about basically all the episodes. Because that is something about the Twilight Zone. It never got bad. It never declined. It was great until the end. Yeah, agreed.

The opening narration and style

10:13If you've ever seen an episode, then you know that they open with – and again, very handsome Rod Serling. Even though he was 5'4", who cares? He packed a lot of handsome in that body. Cool as a cucumber coming out there. Looks so cool. And he gives his opening spiel, which changed over the years. It wasn't the same thing each season. But one of the seasons – I'm not sure which one this is. It goes a little something like this.

10:44There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. And it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call the Twilight Zone. Very nice. And that was – I thought that was the one that changes sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Each season, it was slightly different, I think. I did not know that.

11:15Yeah. You mentioned he was handsome in that he hosted – did you say that the first season, when he did the initial – what is it called? Were you – narration, I guess? Yeah. That he was off screen for the first season? Well, no. And it's because he had stage fright, right? Yes. He had really, really bad stage fright. And he was like, I'm fine to do the narration, do the writing, all that stuff. And yes, I would love 50% of the show's revenue.

11:46But eventually, for some reason, they were like, dude, you should just be in front of camera doing this. And so there was a guy who was a director who worked on the Twilight Zone. His name was Lamont Johnson. And he later said, like, his week would be ruined when he knew that he was going to have to be in front of the camera. Yeah. So – but he did great. He did great, Ghost of Rod Serling. Yeah, you would never know because he seemed just so cool up there on screen.

12:16So he did a great job. He did. Again, Ghost of Rod Serling, be proud. So one of the other things that Dave dug up that I thought was great, he dictated all of his scripts. Yeah. And he could dictate 10 to 15 pages worth in one sitting, which I would not be able to do. Because, yeah, that just seems way harder than writing to me. Yeah. And I guess he had someone sitting there who could do steno really fast. I hope so. Yeah. Should we take a break? Yeah, I think we'll take a little slightly early break and come back.

12:48All right. We'll come back and talk about some of the themes right after this.

12:57Stuff you should know. Jerry. Got your job. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know.

Nostalgia and war themes

13:21So if you've watched The Twilight Zone, you'll see that there are a lot of things that kind of come up. There's recurring themes like the last person or only person in a town or on Earth or something like that. Yeah. That's a big one. So loneliness, isolation, mob mentalities come up quite a bit. People losing themselves due to, like, panic or just going along with the mob. But one of the ones that I really love is nostalgia. Rod Serling really felt great about his childhood, which is in a picturesque town of Binghamton, New York.

13:55Boy, that pee can trip you up. So he really loved small town America. He was born in 1924 between World War I and World War II, and he just had a really great childhood. And that comes through in a lot of the episodes. Like, for the most part, if you find a small town, it's pretty great. But then, obviously, there's always a twist to that. Yeah. There was one famous episode called A Stop at Willoughby, where an ad exec from New York discovers a train stop on his way home that is an actual throwback town, the town of Willoughby, where it's always the summer of 1888.

14:32And everything's wonderful. And he gets off there. And we're not going to say what happens because we're not revealing twists. But another fun thing Dave dug up is in Willoughby, Ohio, their annual summer festival is called Last Stop Willoughby. And it's got a little Twilight Zone theme running through. I think the library plays that theme music Josh did at the beginning on a loop all day. Yeah. Well, no, I think they play that episode of Stop at Willoughby on a Loop. Oh, OK. I thought they did the theme. I was like, that'd be a little maddening.

15:02Especially your version. But that's it. That's the entire thing that the town of Willoughby does. They just play that episode on a loop at the library and no one else talks about it the rest of the day. Yeah, that's it. So out of high school, Serling, I saw that he was described as an angry person. I don't know when he picked that up, but it was probably during his experiences in World War II. Like you said, he was 5'4", so he shouldn't have been eligible for the draft. But I think he insisted.

15:32And they're like, sure, we could use you. He did paratrooper training. Yeah. He became a boxer. He was a flyweight boxer. He was in 17 bouts. I did not see how good he was or not, but he stood up at least 17 times. Yeah. He was OK. OK. Let's just say that. I think he tried Golden Gloves after and they were like, yeah, you're not so great. But, you know, the point is he was in there slugging it out. Yeah. He could have beat me up, I'm sure. Yeah. Both of us. At the same time. So in World War II, he was stationed in the Pacific in the Philippines and he saw like heavy action and a lot of friends died around him, in front of him.

16:10And it just seared itself on his memory, obviously. And that's why one of the other recurring themes is war and the hell of war. That's maybe the most recurring theme, because even if it's not set in war, it's very often there's some like mention or some connection to war, like even if the events took place after some war. Yeah, I saw he wanted to fight the Nazis, so he was he wanted to get sent to that theater.

16:42So apparently he wasn't happy to get sent to the Pacific. But he also writes, you know, in some of the Twilight Zone episodes about the absurdity of war, because I know one event that just horrific but sounds just crazy is that at one point, like one of his friends was standing around just kind of entertaining everyone, like telling jokes and stuff. And a supply box, like the U.S. was dropping, like here's some supplies, like fell on this guy and decapitated him in front of Rod Serling and all his troop mates.

17:14Oh, my God. Troop mates? Sure. Is that a thing? Yeah. So, you know, stuff like that would happen. He saw the real hell of war. He got a purple heart, a bronze star. It was not like some cushy, you know, he wasn't like writing for the for the stars and stripes away from the battles. And we want to apologize for all the writers of stars and stripes. Of course, because, you know, that's what I would want to do. Sure. I'm not throwing stones, man. Give me a camera. Give me a typewriter.

17:45Yeah, exactly. So there were a couple of episodes that were pretty heavy handed as far as like beating you over the head of like just how terrible war is. But they're still great. They're still great, everybody. One that really stood out to me was the quality of mercy, which it turns out is a Shakespeare quote from Merchant of Venice. But it's about this guy, this not a, sorry, I guess a lieutenant who was really wanting to prove himself. But he came to the war very late.

18:15He was young. And so it's the last day of World War Two. But he orders, since it's still a day in World War Two, he orders his men to go take out a nest of Japanese soldiers hidden in a cave. It's going to kill a bunch of Japanese guys. It's going to kill a bunch of Americans for no reason whatsoever, because this is the last day of the war. And yet he's like really gung ho about it and makes them do it. Yeah, maybe this one, maybe we can reveal a couple of twists just so people get the point of this whole thing.

18:46Is that OK? OK, yeah. Yeah, I think that's good. We don't want to spoil them all. In this case, the twist is, is that he is transformed into a Japanese soldier and that soldier gets the same orders to kill the his American troops. So a big, obviously, moral statement. But this one is kind of similar to it wasn't a direct remake, but the Twilight Zone movie, which we're going to talk about later, which was a huge, huge movie for me when I was a kid, kind of is akin to the Vic Morrow storyline of like a racist guy who gets all of a sudden thrust into war.

19:22And but people think he is or the people that they're fighting. Right. Yeah. So that's just one example of many about war. But he also was writing in the time of like the Cold War as well. And there was a lot of like he captured like paranoia, losing yourself to mob mentality. Like I said, one of the ones that usually get cited is the monsters are due on Maple Street. We cannot give that twist away.

19:53No, no, no, no. That's from season one. And that's that's up at the at the top of most list of like best in the series where.

20:01Well, yeah, I guess we can talk about the first part, but not the twist. But the residents, you talked about mob mentality. In this case, they turn on each other during a blackout and, you know, it turns into like a like a mob mentality. Yeah, because they're expecting an alien invasion and they're like, wait, are the aliens already among us? Are you an alien? You know, it's really good. And it's just it's set. I think the entire thing is set in one front yard. Oh, really? I'm pretty sure. I don't think that they leave the front yard.

20:31I think the whole thing takes place on the street in this neighborhood, which makes it even better. It's just that's the other thing, too. The the twists in the writing, the stories themselves get top billing in like all of the spotlight. But man, some of the best directors working at the time, some of the best cinematographers like the stuff they were doing was just primo television that still holds up today that at the time no one had seen anything like this. Like it was just a gift to the world.

21:03And it still is, frankly, because all of the episodes are great. Yeah. And the a lot of like actors would get their start on TV. Obviously, that's still a thing in some cases. But like Robert Redford, Elizabeth Montgomery, Dennis Hopper and Francis, Robert Duvall, Carol Burnett got her start on the Twilight Zone. Yeah. Charlie Bronson, Jarvis Bronson, Julie Newmar. And of course, Burt Reynolds. Man, Julie Newmar. She was a Catwoman, right?

21:34Mm hmm. One of the Catwomen. She was the original campy Catwoman. Yeah. So you mentioned the theme music. It turns out that they're well, we can talk about it. Like there's a story behind that, too. There was a music director who was like the season one music. It's fine, but we can do better. His name was Ludd Gluskin. Ludd Gluskin. Either way, he would give you three tries to guess his name. Or else you had to give him your firstborn child. Very nice.

22:04And he dug into the CBS Music Library looking for something. And I guess was in a very creative mood because he put two pieces together and he came up with the Twilight Zone theme. Yeah. I mean, that's a thing that still happens. Even our own iHeartMedia has a music library where they have, I guess, commissioned a bunch of musicians to make a bunch of kind of generic, not to say bad, but generic music. Like, hey, something that sounds like something symphonic or something that sounds like yacht rock. And then you pay a musician to make this and you own it forever, basically, without having to pay them any more money.

22:43You pay them an exposure. Yeah. And the reason I said yacht rock is we, you know, Adam and I started the Three Putt Bogey podcast and we wanted something yacht rocky and leaned on Ben. We were like, Ben, is there something that you can find? Or like, he's a musician. Can you put something together? He's a genius. And he sent us like 12 could like total yacht rocky sounds from the iHeart Music Library that are just completely, you know, licensed for us to use. And it's just an embarrassment of riches, basically. And that's what they had with the Twilight Zone when they took a Romanian born musician named Marius Constance, two things from him, Estrange No. 3, which is the do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do on electric guitar.

23:24Yeah. Which was electric guitar, by the way. And Milieu No. 2, which is that kind of chaotic ending, and they smashed those together to great success. Yeah. The do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do with the bongos. Yeah. That was much better. Great stuff. So, yeah, that was it. You put those back to back and you've got the Twilight Zone theme. I love that everything about this has a story, but still, if you go research Twilight Zone, it's actually hard to find because all anybody wants to talk about is the episodes.

23:54And understandably so. You could say that they're all great. Yeah. Should we talk about some more? Or should we take a break and then do that? Here, why don't we talk about some more episodes and then we'll break before we talk about the modern stuff. I'm glad you decided. I had a bully for a second. All right.

Classic episodes and twists

24:14So, five seasons total is what we get with the original run of the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling wrote 92 of the 156 episodes. And I'm going to talk about one. I'm going to pick this one. Eye of the Beholder because this was – I don't think I remember seeing this one, but I had heard about it and this was in the list of top 20 great reveals or whatever. Yeah. And I think this is one where I will reveal the twist. Okay. Yeah, I see in retrospect that saying we weren't going to reveal any more twists was black and white thinking and I need to be more – I need to go with the flow a little more.

24:48No, you're doing fine. So, this one will reveal the twist, but if you don't want to hear it, just, you know, mute it for a few seconds when I say the twist is. Yeah, put your fingers in your ears, plug your ears with your fingers and go do-do-do-do-do-do as loud as you can. Exactly. This one was, in fact, written by Rod Serling. It was directed by Douglas Hayes. And this was a woman that in the show, she was wrapped up in bandages the whole time. So, you couldn't see her face. But the reason that she goes to the surgery that she's there for is because apparently she's so ugly that she has to have this plastic surgery to make her look like everyone else looks.

25:25And then, you know, you can't see her face through the whole thing. She's wrapped in bandages. If you – you know, this is season two. So, by this time, episode six, everyone's like, I wonder what's under those bandages. Can't wait for that twist. You can't see the doctors because they have their surgical masks and all that stuff. And then the big twist and the reveal when she takes those bandages off is that she's very beautiful by just, you know, normal, regular standards of the day. And then the doctors take their stuff off and they have, like, pig noses and, like, horrible scars and stuff. So, that's the big twist.

25:56Yeah. Beauty's relative. Exactly. I want to talk about a couple that are my favorites. Do you mind? I would love to hear about them. Okay. So, I like some of the sweeter ones that aren't necessarily terrifying. I love the terrifying ones. But there's some sweet ones out there. There's one called The Changing of the Guards with Donald Pleasance as a boarding school teacher at the end of his years. So sweet. But there's one called The Fugitive where this alien plays with little kids and ends up sacrificing his own freedom to save this little girl whose leg is in a brace.

26:33I think I saw that one back in the day. That is such a great one. Yeah. That's got one of the all-time great twists as well. Yeah. And then there's another one called Night Call. That is probably the scariest one of all, I think. I don't remember that one. It's an old woman who lives alone in her house. She gets visited by her nurse once a day, but the nurse leaves at night. And then while she's trying to sleep, she gets these calls from this really unsettling voice that can barely talk. He just sounds messed up. And she has no idea who this caller is as night after night goes by.

27:08These calls just keep freaking her out more and more. And then the twist of the whole thing is, well, it's pretty great. Well, you're going to have to tell me these twists because I don't remember the one that I saw and I didn't see this one. Okay. That one's great. And then the last one I want to talk about is what I think is, well, it's my favorite. I'm not going to say it's the best one. It's called the After Hours where this woman is in a department store. After Hours, she gets trapped in there because she's trying to find a gold thimble and stuff is just weird. Like things are getting very odd.

27:39There's this shop lady who is assisting her that keeps disappearing and appearing. And it's just something's off here. And the twist is really great. All right. I'm going to mention three kind of quickly because all three of these had Simpsons episodes. And two of the three were used in the Twilight Zone movie in the 80s. The first one, It's a Good Life from Season 3, Episode 8. So good. It's about a little kid who has these godlike powers.

28:12And if he gets angry, like you can't upset this kid because he can turn – he can basically control things and make bad things happen to people. That was inspiration for the Bart Zone from the Treehouse of Horror, one of the Treehouse of Horrors. And that, again, was redone very successfully, I think, in the movie. A living doll was a predated Chucky from Child's Play in that we had Talking Tina, which was a demonic doll with the great Telly Savalas.

28:43Simpsons Clown Without Pity was the Simpsons version. And then Nightmare at 20,000 Feet is maybe the most classic episode of all time as far as being well-known. That was all the way in Season 5, and that's when William Shatner is on an airline plane. And he is – I think he's coming home from, like, visiting a sanitarium or something where, you know, because he was nervous. Right. And he sees a monster on the wing. And that is also done in the movie version with the great John Lithgow.

29:15And then later done in the most recent Twilight Zone with Adam Scott in sort of a different way. So good. And was on The Simpsons, Terror at 5 1⁄2 Feet in the case of The Simpsons. I don't remember that one. Do you? I don't remember that. I'll have to go back and watch it. But it's funny to go back and watch, you know, I'll watch bits from Terror, the original Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. And the monster on the plane is so corny looking now. But it was absolutely terrifying, I'm sure, at the time.

29:46Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's still unsettling in its way. It is corny, but also you're like, good God, that thing is awful. Yeah, well, I mean, if anything else, you'd be terrified because you're like, there's a weird man in a funny looking suit. Right, he's trying to bring the plane down. Yeah, exactly. So I think the one I would put up for the most famous one is To Serve Man, where the aliens come down and they have this book called To Serve Man, and they're like really nice and kind to humans, and they want to take some humans home with them.

30:17Do you know that one?

30:19Can you give me more without giving it away? I will. Well, we're going to beep this out because here's the twist, Chuck.

30:32Wow. Pretty great, huh? All right. Well, that's probably our longest beep in history. It's got to be. Yeah, that's a good one. And that sounds familiar. And that's, well, if I said what movie that probably inspired, it would probably give away the twist, so I won't. Okay, fair enough. But I'll tell you during break, which we'll take right now. Okay. Stuff You Should Know Stuff You Should Know

Later seasons and reboots

31:12all right we're back everybody uh to talk about some later iterations because the twilight zone og was canceled in 1964 after but five seasons uh i i don't think you said that he i know you said the beginning he wanted an hour but they said 30 minutes but then they did go to an hour during what season four yeah they had a mid-season show that they canceled or they had a show that

31:46they canceled mid-season that was an hour long and they're like hey you want your shot finally at the hour-long version of twilight zone and by this time rod serling was like no actually a half hour is perfect right well ts for you because we need an hour-long version so season four is typically considered the um least favorite of people interesting because it is true the twilight zone is a perfect half hour show but the season four episodes are still great yeah agreed uh but that's a totally interesting little footnote i think because i don't i didn't know that until uh

32:20you sent that along yeah and then they went back for season five the last season it went back to half hour again so it was just season four yeah crazy um he like i said you know they got canceled uh he it's not like rod serling was no good anymore he was still a hugely successful writer and went on and did more work of course but he liked being mr twilight zone which is what people would call him when they see him out of course uh and i think anything after that he did i think rod serling's night gallery was a show that came along that he put his name on i'm not sure how much he had

32:54to do with it but i liked night gallery yeah i mean i thought it was pretty good but it wasn't probably wasn't as successful as the twilight zone and he never reached that kind of success again um speaking of twists though even though planet of the apes the movie was based on a french novel uh he did write that original script that first script for the first planet of the apes movie yeah the french novel was called the planet of the apes that's right he also taught ithaca college um i did not see their mascot so let's just say the fighting ignatius is yeah uh i think he taught english or writing or

33:31something probably writing um and he's still revered uh quite a bit today there's a cool statue of him there oh i bet um very sadly he was a lifelong like three to four pack a day by the way ithaca college bombers go bombers oh okay go bombers yeah that sounded so midwest go bombers uh he was he smoked three to four packs of cigarettes a day which is just a crazy amount of cigarettes yeah uh so unsurprisingly he died at 50 years old after complications from heart surgery

34:06uh this was in 1975 and you know if you do the math uh he could have if he hadn't have smoked and lived to be 80 like he would have been alive in 2005 and and seen all these reboots come along and maybe perhaps have been a part of some of these yeah and and probably have done some other really great stuff too you know but yeah so you said there was rebooted three times and then there was the movie um i was like so the the really probably the best reboot was from 1985 to 1987 it had three

34:41seasons and it had a lot of really good episodes in them and i was going through the episodes and i'm like where's the kick the can one because kick the can is one of the original twilight zone episodes where a group of um uh rest home residents are bored and they want to like keep you know living life so they go play a game of kick the can and they have to get around like this um administrator or nurse or whatever who just wants them to act their age and relax and rest it's really great um and i was

35:12like i thought that i had seen the the reboot version in 1985 couldn't find it that's the one that steven spielberg directed in the movie did you see the movie yeah i have okay yeah i don't know why i mean i guess the why was because i liked watching the reruns so when the twilight zone the movie came out in 1983 i was 12 and oh buddy i ate it up i saw it at least twice in the theater wow uh it was you know each direct steven spielberg directed that one joe dante directed one uh john landis

35:46directed the one that we'll talk about here in a second and george miller the great george miller um and then there was that great opening bit with dan akkroyd i don't remember that it was like a little intro part uh with dan akkroyd and oh god i'm blanking on who his car mate whose passenger was can't remember anyway it's just a little you know a little teaser at the beginning and then you hear the twilight zone uh music come in and then you get the four films and like i said it's a good life

36:17about the kid who can control things that was remade nightmare on 20 000 feet was remade um i guess all of them were remakes now that i think about it uh except for maybe the vic morrow and that's like i said seemed to be based on just unless somebody knows it was a direct remake it seemed to be based on uh the ideas of like racist and war and stuff like that yeah and that had a very tragic ending right yeah um it actually sunk the the um movie it the it got such bad press um during production

36:47uh where they were filming a scene where vic morrow is um i think trying to help two little vietnamese girls escape they're going through a rice paddy and there's a helicopter um flying over them and the helicopter i think struck a wire it was a real helicopter really you know moving with its rotors in the sound stage it struck a wire and it the the rotors cut they just they killed vic morrow and the two girls like immediately um yeah so it's like and obviously that was big news and everybody

37:21was so traumatized by it i saw that um george miller he did the matt max trilogy the original three yeah he was like he wasn't on set he had nothing to do with that that segment but just being associated with that um movie like stirred him so much that he was like i don't know about some of the stunts that i've been having my actors do like i think yeah he kind of it felt like somebody walked over his grave like what he'd been able to get away with um without anybody getting hurt or killed and so he

37:51went on to uh co-write babe yeah and he did the most recent uh mad max 2 by the way that's still his yeah but he did babe and i think that's probably the pinnacle no that that is a little fun fact if you didn't know that that the same guy who did mad max did babe pick or uh did he pick in the city or the original both yep okay that's right um yeah a very just tragic thing um like you said huge lawsuits and i know we i think we talked about that before in a movie actually in a like a top 10 list in an episode yeah i don't remember what maybe special effects yeah because i believe

38:25i told you that vic morrow was jennifer jason lee's father and you did not know that at the time that is so funny because i just found out today that vic morrow is jennifer jason lee's father so it happened again uh all right so the 85 to 87 you feel like is the most successful tv reboot there was also one in 2002 uh where forest whitaker was the host which i think was a great pick i love forest whitaker yeah and this had you know some big big stars i i don't think it was um i didn't see any of these but they did remake some of these including a fun update on it's a good life uh where

39:01it's called it's still a good life and they had the the kid the uh bill mummy the kid who played the kid from the beginning um was a grown-up uh terrorizing a town yeah but now his daughter was around and she might be even worse than him who knows only forest whitaker knows we should say in 2002 that episode starred cloris leachman and she was in i think more than one episode of the original run she was in the original it's a good life she was billy mummy's mom oh billy mummy's mommy yeah that's right uh and then they also updated the maple street one right they did kind of like

39:36a post 9 11 one where instead of aliens the neighbors turn on each other thinking that they're terrorists so i think probably that was like a little on the nose for 2002 i'm not sure yeah maybe but the one that i think um most people who listen to us are probably familiar with is the one that just came out a couple years ago that jordan peele produced that were great but jordan peele had the great misfortune of releasing this twilight zone episode at a time when black mirror was at its apex yeah and there was just nothing he could do to to compete with black

40:09mirror like you can't most people are like black mirror is the true uh successor of twilight zone nobody's done it better since um and it's probably true again if you just saw jordan jordan peele's twilight zone it's uh like it's great on its own for sure yeah i have not seen those i did see the adam scott episode because i'm just a big adam scott fan and i'm a big fan of that story nightmare this time at 30 000 feet it's a good one and i don't he didn't see a monster on that one does he

40:40no he's listening to a podcast appropriately oh yeah yeah that's right and the podcast it turns out is about a plane crash and then it turns out further that it's about the crash of the plane that he's on yes so he spends the whole thing trying to convince everybody rather than there's a monster on the plane instead that this plane is going to crash and uh the the twist is even better i think than the original william shatner version nightmare at 20 000 feet it's a great twist yeah yeah i do

41:11remember the twist um i need to check more of it out but i was into black mirror and maybe that's why i didn't watch twilight zone because there's maybe you can only watch so much of that kind of thing but black mirror was truly great and bad timing for jordan peele it really was and now that black mirror's kind of gone away um you could if especially if you haven't seen them before you could probably enjoy them a little more than you could have at the time it was really weird like you just couldn't enjoy both on their own like it was just yeah you know you just couldn't give it a try you couldn't face it i have one more thing yeah let's hear it have you ever noticed in twilight

Aspect ratio trivia

41:49zone episodes the the actors stand really close together are we doing this yeah i love this part okay because it stood out to me so if it stood out to me it stood out to other people do you mind sure i just wonder if you didn't see any tv pre like 1995 i don't know why um it stands out to me in twilight zone but yes i do realize that it is it is common especially in like the 50s but in the twilight zone maybe it's because it's creepy uh the plot lines are creepy so people standing close

42:22together is creepier than it would be in like say an episode of general hospital from the 50s yeah i don't want to yuck your yum i'm kidding you go ahead and tell everybody thanks did you know already why the actors stand so close together not just on the twilight zone but back in the day i did okay it's because the aspect ratio of a tv at the time was four to three which is almost a perfect square nothing like the 16 to 9 we have today which allows for a lot more peripheral vision so if you wanted a close-up of not one but more than one character they had to stand physically

42:56close together to get in the frame that's right there you go amazing the more you know just a little bonus yeah for those of us who weren't in the film industry back in the 50s hey you know i

Listener mail

43:09wasn't uh that's it for twilight zone i think we could sit here for another hour and just talk about our favorite episodes but yeah we will leave it to you to just go watch the twilight zone it it really is a gift to humanity that rod serling created um and while you go do that we're going to do listener mail uh to set up this listener mail i'm going to very quickly retell the story uh because it won't make sense if you haven't heard this kind of obscure reference uh when i worked at jj's barbecue on

43:40in stone mountain georgia in the 1980s as a 12 year old still sounds weird to say but yeah at a job as a busboy as a 12 year old not when you say stone mountain georgia right uh and uh one time there was a big pot of brunswick stew in the walk-in i was in there getting some stuff with this guy keith who worked there and he said hey watch this and keith put his entire shoed foot and jeaned leg into the brunswick stew and pulled it back out and that stew was later heated up and served to

44:12diners man so that's the setting a depraved situation hey guys my best friend dave and i who also work together both avid listeners of stuff you should know have been since 2008 each week one of us makes lunch for the entire week and there's usually a theme and for this week's lunch i made brunswick stew and in honor of chuck's foot in the brunswick stew story on how restaurant health inspections work oh there you go uh i stuck my bare foot into a container of the stew i took a video and shared it with dave so he knew what he was getting into he loved the video and

44:43still loved the stew i can assure you that my foot was very very clean thank you for the inspiration and all the great stories over the years if you choose to read this one on the air of course you can use my name that is jason and salt lake uh so jason that's gross still not quite as gross i think as a shoed and jeaned blue jeaned foot and no no that's the sanitized version but still pretty gross agreed yeah i mean something's grosser in a way the human skin yeah the foot on on stew contact yeah

45:18the hottest contact as we all know right that uh that does it is grosser in some way for sure anyway never never thought that that would inspire such an act but uh it's pretty fun to read that mail that was from jason yeah jason salt lake do not eat his offerings people no for sure um thanks a lot jason thanks for listening to us for so long too we appreciate that and if you want to be like jason and get in touch with us you can do that by sending an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com

45:52stuff you should know is a production of iheartradio for more podcasts from iheartradio visit the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human