For a 2000 installment of his twentysomething drama Felicity, Abrams filmed an episode that put the cast in a dreamscape of paranormal events. Abrams wanted something bolder than a bad Serling imitation. Abrams did a Twilight Zone homage on Felicity.Ĭountless Zone parodies and tributes have aired over the decades, but writer/director J.J. “Aren’t there five?” The narration was re-recorded before any angry letters from physicists poured in. A CBS executive heard it and asked the writer why he had skipped a fifth dimension-weren’t there only four? Serling, puzzled, hadn’t really considered it. When Serling recorded his famous opening narration for the pilot episode in 1959, he began by intoning that there was “a sixth dimension” to explore. The Twilight Zone's opening narration had to be re-recorded. He once stuck a picture of the monster on writer Richard Matheson’s window seat the propellers blew it off before Matheson could see it.) 4. (Serling himself didn’t fare as well with another “Nightmare”-related prank. The director was horrified, but later joked his first thought was that they’d have to reshoot with another actor. As Donner looked on, the two grappled before throwing a Shatner-sized dummy that crashed to the concrete below. Produced in the show’s typical hurried pace of three days, Shatner and actor Edd Byrnes decided to add to Donner’s stress by staging a mock fight on the wing. The episode was shot in an empty water tank, with the plane roughly 30 feet off the ground. Inevitably, Shatner freaks out when he sees a gremlin on the wing tearing the guts out of the engine, and is unable to convince his wife or attendants of the danger. ![]() William Shatner pranked director Richard Donner during the "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" shoot.ĭirector Richard Donner still had his feature career in front of him ( Lethal Weapon, Superman: The Movie) when he worked on “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” about a man (William Shatner) getting on a plane after recovering from a nervous breakdown. Bierce’s story was also adapted into an episode of the other popular anthology of the day, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, marking the only time the two series used the same source material. The year prior, it had won an Oscar for Best Short Subject. No dubbing was needed the short was virtually silent, and its haunting cinematography was a perfect fit for the show. When Serling’s budget for the series tightened in the fifth and final season, he decided on an unusual cost-cutting measure: the writer paid $10,000 (by some accounts, $25,000) for the rights to broadcast An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, a French short based on the Ambrose Bierce story about a Confederate sympathizer who escapes the hangman’s noose at the end of the Civil War. An offended Serling told interviewers he admired Bradbury immensely, but it’s unknown if the two ever reconciled before Serling’s death in 1975. Clarke was unavailable, but Bradbury wrote several scripts, only one of which made it to air: an adaptation of his short story “I Sing the Body Electric.” Serling would go on to say that Bradbury’s work “seems to lend itself to the printed page, rather than spoken language.” Bradbury, possibly nursing a bruised ego, accused Serling of the capital crime of writing: plagiarizing stories. Serling also sought out the talents of sci-fi giants like Arthur C. But when the show received over 14,000 submissions-most of them either unread or deemed unsuitable-he learned to depend on authors like Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and George Clayton Johnson for story springboards or full scripts. At first, the multiple-time Emmy winner wanted to give new writers a chance to break into the business. Though Serling was contracted to write most of the scripts for Zone during its five-year run from 1959 to 1964, it was impossible to tackle every single episode. Rod Serling and Ray Bradbury didn't see eye to eye. ![]() We’ve unlocked the door to some of the most intriguing. Naturally, the show’s history has a few curious footnotes. Shows like Lost, The Leftovers, and Under the Dome often draw comparison to Serling’s densely populated fifth dimension of moral quandaries and supernatural occurrences. Though it’s been more than 50 years since it left the air, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone continues to be a benchmark for all the science fiction and fantasy series that have followed.
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