Rod Serling on Writing

Part 2 of a 16-part series featuring the master storyteller on video.

Ever since I launched Go Into The Story, I have regularly gone down the Internet’s rabbit hole in search of unique video clips featuring renowned writers. In 2010, I hit the Mother Lode: A series of 16 clips featuring Rod Serling chatting with what appear to be college students circa 1970.

Most well-known for the long-running TV anthology series “The Twilight Zone” (148 episodes, 1959–1964), Serling has over 70 writing credits including the screenplays for movies such as Seven Days in May and the original Planet of the Apes.

Back in 2010, I went through each clip and extracted some key quotes from Serling. Then as is often the case with the Internet, the videos disappeared.

However, they have emerged once again, a big hat tip to Doc Kane for surfacing them. As long as they are up, I will reprise the series. Today Serling ruminates on the thought — Writing to please an audience:

“Isn’t art a shared experience? Isn’t the excellence of art dependent on a reaction from the outside to someone’s work?”

There’s a quote attributed to the late actor Charlton Heston: “The problem with movies as art is they are commerce.”

Therein lies a dynamic tension: We, as writers, may aspire to art. But as far as movies and television are concerned, there is the audience. We do not write in a vacuum. We write so that eventually what we write may be seen by people.

My take on what Serling says in this video is that there is nothing wrong with a goal of entertaining the masses. No matter what type of art, however esoteric it is, ultimately it exists to be experienced by others. Others = Audience. The size or scope of the audience may vary, but that does not negate the fact that the creative act of writing is an artistic process.

This from a guy who was the brains behind The Twilight Zone, a hugely popular anthology TV series which featured popular episodes like this:

We may aspire to art. But our art must be grounded in the experience of an audience. And that is where the commerce comes in.

Serling understood this and had no pretensions about what he did. He was a storyteller. And a damn fine one.

For Part 1 of the series, go here.

Tomorrow: More of the interviews with Rod Serling.