Rod Serling
Rod Serling
Rodman Edward "Rod" Serlingwas an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science-fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen, and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues including censorship, racism, and war...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth25 December 1924
CitySyracuse, NY
CountryUnited States of America
The writer's role is to menace the public's conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus on the issues of his time.
In eleven or twelve years of writing, Mike, I can lay claim to at least this: I have never written beneath myself. I have never written anything that I didn't want my name attached to. I have probed deeper in some scripts and I've been more successful in some than others. But all of them that have been on, you know, I'll take my lick. They're mine and that's the way I wanted them.
But it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Just how normal are we? Just who are the people we nod our hellos to as we pass on the street? A rather good question to ask - particularly in The Twilight Zone.
It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.
If it sounds good as you say it, likely as not it'll sound good when an actor's saying it.
I'm an affluent screenwriter and all that - I'm a known screenwriter, but I'm not in the fraternity of the very, very major people. I would say a guy like Ernie Lehman, William Goldman, and a few others are quite a cut above.
I choose to think of tv audience as nameless, formless, faceless people who are all like me. And anything that I write, if I like it, they'll like it.
You must always assume that the relationship between writer and producer is that of adversaries - however you slice it. They may be your dearest friends, and they'll invite you to dinner, but when all the smoke clears and the ozone lifts, your enemy is the producer, that's the guy you're competing with, and you have to battle him, just as if you were an adversary.
I remember the first sale I made was a hundred and fifty dollars for a radio script, and, as poor as I was, I didn't cash the check for three months. I kept showing it to people.
If you're really a good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you'll write, and you'll be read, and you'll be produced somehow. It just works that way. If you're just a simple ordinary day-to-day craftsman, no different than most, then the likelihood is that you probably won't make it in writing.
The most important thing about the first sale is for the very first time in your life something written has value and proven value because somebody has given you money for the words that you've written, and that's terribly important, it's a tremendous boon to the ego, to your sense of self-reliance, to your feeling about your own talent.
I don't feel, God dictated that I should write.
You can be a hunchback and a dwarf and what-all. If you write beautifully, you can write beautifully.
There are millions of ways to not be writing. You say you're not in the mood, you'll pick it up tomorrow.