SciFi (or SyFy) runs marathons of the show on random holidays, but always on New Years Eve. I have lots of memories of sitting in my pajamas with my family watching this for hours, and then the the next day being twitchy and nervous the whole time because that much time with TZ does something to your psychological state. And a couple of iconic lines are known to be shouted out during family gatherings like "No change!!!!! No change at all!" or "Last stop Willoughby".
I think my favorite episodes are "The Howling Man", "The Eye of the Beholder" , "Deaths Head Revisited", and "The Masks". I've linked them all to their Wikipedia pages, but do yourselves a favor and YouTube it. Several are online and it's a glorious way to spend hours and hours...
So I'm going to do that and I'm going to come back and finish this review....
Seriously ya'll. Twilight Zone. Make that your whole weekend plan sometime.
So this book is a memoir/sort of biography about Rod Serling by his daughter. As I was reading it I realized that a straight biography would have suited my reading tastes better.
I don't want to give away too much so here's a couple of bullet points to get you intrigued:
-Rod fought with the 511th airborne in the Philippines during World War II. He fought in the Battle of Leyte, which was one of the more terrible battles in the Pacific theater.
-He smoked up to 3 packs of cigarettes a day. (Spoiler, this doesn't end well)
-He got in a fight with (one of my favorites) author Leon Uris about something he wrote that Leon considered "sympathetic to the Nazis". This made me sad.
-The iconic scene at the end of the original Planet of the Apes? That was Rod.
I liked this book. I give it three stars. This review is short because I just want to go watch some Twilight Zones. Peace!
It's always interesting to find out more about the people behind your favorite book or show. I'm glad you enjoyed this one!
ReplyDeleteI was glad that he turned out to be a pretty normal, family man!
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