Brow Beat

Rod Serling Talks His Obsession With Time and Creating The Twilight Zone in an Animated Lost Interview

For five seasons in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a cigarette-brandishing Rod Serling entered the homes of Americans with his droll brand of off-kilter storytelling on The Twilight Zone. In the latest episode of PBS’ ongoing animated series Blank on Blank, a lost 1963 interview with Australian journalist Binny Lum reveals that the host could be just as wry in real life. While discussing his fear of riding in Japanese taxi cabs, dubbed “kamikazes,” he quips, “I think probably they’re gonna start giving medals and ribbons for service in back seats of Japanese cabs.”

Serling could also be quite optimistic: “The most unfettered imagination belongs to young people,” he says of the adolescent fans of his show. “They don’t walk through life, they fly, and that’s marvelous. They defy the law of gravity—mentally, anyway.” Elsewhere, he unpacks his own obsession with time, science fiction’s influence on the space race, and how his wild imagination as a child served him well in his career as an adult—all themes and ideas that played out heavily in some of The Twilight Zone’s most beloved episodes, like “Time Enough at Last” and “A Stop at Willoughby.” Overall, it’s a fascinating, candid interview, brought alive by Blank on Blank’s typically inspired animation.

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