The Twilight Zone - enter if you dare

If you ever find yourself in need of a spark of creativity, a kick of imagination - then I can only suggest you enter The Twilight Zone.

You may have seen every episode. You may have an all-around-awesome wife who gives you birthday gifts like the complete collection of The Twilight Zone, a whopping 28 DVD pack containing all of Rod Serling's 156 episodes. You may be old enough to have watched them all then and there …

… or you may be so young that the DVD acronym feels prehistoric to you. In any case, know that some of what you love across the TV and movie worlds has been inspired by that phantasmagorical original series.

What you’ve just seen above is likely the most iconic intro most people know - it was first used for the 4th season of the show. Interestingly, the intros evolved over time (here’s all of them), the very first version from the original pilot episode in 1959 went like this: "There is a sixth 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 sunlight of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area that might be called the Twilight Zone."

These days, you’ll likely catch up with Twilight Zone episodes on streaming services (I believe you’ll find it on Amazon) - or you download it from somewheres. In any case, when you spend time within The Twilight Zone, it’ll inspire for sure - give yourself a bit of that glorious wildly imaginative joy. When you do, you’ll also discover countless actors early in their careers, such as William Shatner, Carol Burnett, Robert Redford, Vera Miles, Roddy McDowall, Lee Marvin, Cloris Leachman, George Takei, Peter Falk, Rod Taylor, Robert Duvall, Denis Hopper, Charles Bronson, etc. etc. The below collage gives you a glimpse (and here’s a clip for some more).

The Twilight Zone is the gift that keeps on giving. Not only got those many actors their early breaks, but the show that ran for five years (1959-1964), was revived for more installments from 1985-1989, then again from 2002-2003 - and with a last (for now) iteration from 2019-2020, led by none other than Jordan Peele.

Must pause here for a moment to focus on the man himself, Rod Serling: an icon, a paratrooper, a screenwriter, a television producer … and one heck of a smart and clear-eyed individual who wasn’t afraid to rock the boat and fight censorship. If you can, spend the next thirty minutes with the man (and his cigarette, as always) himself:

Now then, as mentioned, The Twilight Zone inspired. But it didn’t just inspire follow-up shows over the years and into our time, it inspired games and books and films and keeps popping up with homages and references all the time. Sometimes movies pretty much copied their stories from Twilight Episodes:

Poltergeist for example took from ‘Little Girl Lost’ (episode 26); A Nightmare on Elm Street copied from ‘Perchance to Dream’ (episode 9); The Village was pretty much ‘A Hundred Yards Over the Rim’ (episode 23); The Box is ‘Button, Button’ (episode 20); Us borrows from ‘Mirror Image’ (episode 21) and when Frank Darabont did The Mist, he cited his source of inspiration as ‘The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street’ (episode 22).

I can assure you, if you know your Twilight Zone episodes, you’ll find many, many more similarities and outright copies of core story elements and twists that are right out of The Twilight Zone. And frankly, all of that makes it all the more clear just how amazingly imagined and written and crafted those original episodes were. Episode after episode was stacked with brilliantly inventive ideas.

So, if you’re a writer and find yourself stuck and out of ideas, do yourself a favor and dive into The Twilight Zone - you’ll come out refreshed and invigorated, for sure! And then, if you feel like using some of what the show has regaled you with - feel free to - but do it De Niro Style. Find out more about that in below post.

So there you have it, folks. Whether you look for inspiration - or just feel like watching amazing stories that have inspired countless creatives ever since the show began seventy years ago, jump into The Twilight Zone!