Rod Serling: Timing

Rod Serling was American screenwriter. Explore interesting quotes on timing.
Rod Serling: 82   quotes 1   like

“For the first time in television a writer will have the opportunity to let his imagination take him where ever he wants to. The sky is no longer the limit.”

Rod Serling

Rod Serling: American Masters.
Other

Imagination , Time

“… the worst aspect of our time is prejudice… In almost everything I've written, there is a thread of this - man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.”

Rod Serling

Ellen Cameron May, "Serling in Creative Mainstream" (profile/interview), Los Angeles Times (June 25, 1967), page C22-23.
Other
Context: I happen to think that the singular evil of our time is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other evils grow and multiply. In almost everything I've written there is a thread of this: man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.

Time

“Once again there appears to be a considerable difference of opinion. I wanted a series with distinction, I have no interest in a series which is purely and uniquely suspenseful but makes no comment about anything. But all they seem to want is maniacs in a cemetery. When I complain they pat me on the head, condescend, and hope I go away. When I was on the Twilight Zone I took the bows, but I also took the brickbats, because when it was bad it was usually my fault, but when it's bad on the Night Gallery, I had nothing to do with it, yet my face is on it all the time.”

Rod Serling

Rod Serling: American Masters.
Other

Hope , Appearance , Time , Night

“As I get older the urge to write gets less and less; I've pretty much spewed out everything I have to say, none of which has been particularly monumental; nothing that will stand the test of time. Good writing like wine has to age well, and my stuff has been momentarily adequate.”

Rod Serling

Rod Serling: American Masters.
Other

Age , Wine , Time

“I was dealing with a political story where much of the action took place on the floor of the U. S. Senate, and one of the edicts that came down from the Mt. Sinai of advertisers row was that at no time in a political drama must a speech or a character be equated with an existing political party or current political problems. So several million viewers were treated to an incredible display of senators shouting, gesticulating and talking in hieroglyphics, saying not a single thing germaine to the current political scene.”

Rod Serling

Rod Serling on Arena, American Masters.
Other

Problem , Time

“I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably. But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of war and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words… less than a year before the whole world went to war. But this gentleman was suffering the worldly disease of insufferable optimism. He and his fellow humans kept polishing the rose colored glasses when actually they should have taken them off. They were sacrificing reason and reality for a brief and temporal peace of mind, the same peace of mind that many of my contemporaries derive by steadfastly refraining from remembering the war that came before.”

Rod Serling

Excerpt from a dedication to an unpublished short story, "First Squad, First Platoon"; from Serling to his as yet unborn children.
Other

War , Children , World , Fear

“I got the idea for the pilot while walking through an empty lot of a movie studio. There were all the evidences of a community but with no people. I felt at the time a kind of encroaching loneliness, and desolation; a feeling of how nightmarish it would be to wind up in a city with no inhabitants.”

Rod Serling

Rod Serling: American Masters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kZcHylU2t8.
Other

People , Feeling , Communication , Idea

“…a medium best suited to illumine and dramatize the issues of the times has its product pressed into a mold, painted lily-white, and has its dramatic teeth yanked out one by one.”

Rod Serling

"About Writing for Television", his foreword to a collection of teleplays ("Patterns").
Other

Time , Painting