LC Performance. Interview. Conversation With Rod Serling

from the Library of Congress in Washington DC from washington d.c WETA presents a conversation with rod serling eminent author and television and film writer in cooperation with the Library of Congress mr. Serling discusses television as a medium for the literary artist the writer with James Dickey consulted in poetry at the Library of Congress and Bernie Harrison television critic and editor of the Washington star any conversation on television for the past ten years with a representative of television could open with the observation that this has probably been the worst year in the history of the medium now what are your views on it rod and do you see any hope for an upbeat and the in quality or in balance either well first of all I'd have to make comment on the show titled Bernie a conversation with Rod Serling which carries with it a kind of built-in pretension like a conversation with Carl Sandburg or some equally wise man and indeed I'm not being humble I just worry about that you know that so Brooke had a conversation with Rod Serling but in direct response you're quite right it seems that each succeeding year is a little less exciting in the previous that we seem to be wallowing in a very rubbish concept here the most noteworthy being a lack of ingenuity the lack of new concepts the lack of new ideas and new approaches the fact that we should be producing I think a body of exciting modern literature in this marvelous new electronic media and Arendt it's reached a point now I guess where when something noteworthy is on its shine simply by virtue of comparison it is so unique by virtue of its aloneness now as to where we're going I would like to say hopefully well now let's maybe next year we'll come back with something more definitive more responsive to intellectual taste and the like but I've already seen the penciled in the so-called blueprint of next year's performances and they seem like virtually carbon copy of everything we've had what what are the prospects for return of anthology drama now I know that this is a point that's continually raised and it seems that the economics of the business dictates against it sponsors don't like to be associated with programs that have different castes every week they like to be able to buy the star like low and green so he can step out of character and sell the Chevrolets that's right and that of course has been a major deterrent to the anthology concept and to date every time I talk to any network people and they say what have you got for us which is becoming increasingly rare I'm hardly approached at all anymore except for a cigarette in the hall that they run out and I will say well why not a marvelously exciting regularly scheduled dramatic show which makes comment on the times good god there's enough controversy and drama you know implicit in our daily lives to warrant a dramatic approach and they in turn save no.not anthology and indeed they must have the continuing running character this I think stems from the fact that the network's have forever thought of an audience as some kind of personages with IQs and negative figures who cannot retain any kind of close association unless they are thrust into the maelstrom of familiar names week after week after week it must be a single character running from the one Iron Man it must be a guy dying of an incurable disease we must associate constantly well indeed this is the reason a body of literature is coming out it's like asking Arthur Miller to write a story about salesmen every time he takes the typewriter of pen it simply doesn't sustain legitimate drama when you write about one guy week after week I know making a judgment again to that show there's a place for these but the word you use that I think is key bernie is balanced why aren't there comparable programs what about children's programming in the afternoon at least in the early days of television they were making an effort in that direction the show's may not have been very good but to abandon the field entirely in the afternoon and in the early evening and here we are in the presence of a port and the last time most of us saw a poet on television was at a presidential inauguration how that's a long time to wait well what what interests me very much about what your gentlemen are saying is that you you you both deplore the lack of quality on television their lack of things that are good or as you say wrought exciting and new and yet it seems to me that the whole concept of what is good is is open to question about what what approach you use to it I suppose the program then the network officials would define as something being good is something that moves an awful lot of merchandize where as a television critic or a movie critic with someone like that with a vested interest in the literary and it would would not necessarily take that that particular point of view now what what is frightening about about the whole situation as far as doing the kind of thing that you were talking about doing rod it is that is that the the very agencies the advertising agencies the clients the networks and so on are have the whole concept of what is going to be put on television so embroiled with the profit motive that there's absolutely no way to get around it well it reaches the point and I think this is the response to Bernie's idea as to what other futures of this thing so long as you're appealing to a in a sense a totally commercial entity whose job it as is to move product whose use of the media is principally and primarily as a display case for commercial goods then wherein lies a challenge to networks to improve the quality of their product however there's a strange inconsistency in criteria which is forever exercised it may well be the truth that the network will push for this show which they know will get the rating but when the stockholders get their reports and when the public relations people handle the network throwaways it's usually that program which they Google about like the private war of Ali winter this is what our network does we do dramatic shows like this as if they did the private war of ali winter once a week and point of fact it was one show one exceptionally exciting terribly moving and I think decidedly qualitative piece of work with whatever small autistic criticisms you might may know what make might want to make against it it was nonetheless it cut above but I've seen that the CBS press releases and it's all Ali winter this year it'll be the Reggie Rose show it'll be dear friends this is what we do on our network I don't I don't want to speak for one side or the other although it surely must be obvious which side my sentiments are with but they they cut the concept of television a mass a mass media kind of presentation such as television is has something to do with the question of what you can conceive of as being the the purpose of television do you do you look at it primarily as entertainment the the fellow watching a show which he doesn't want any deep dramatic meaning he doesn't want catharsis he only wants to be entertained what do you look at it as entertainment or as an art form that's the oft asked properly asked question and in informal moments when you can buttonhole a network executive he will say to you that indeed no it is not the responsibility of the networks to enlighten to educate to lift the intellectual values and interests of a populace not at all they are simply there to reflect what are the entertainment tastes of the masses they have forever said this not publicly but in any private conversation this is principally what they will say this is very much of a chicken of the egg kind of thing exactly are the tastes of the people are so deplorable because they are not given anything better all the shows on television deplorable because the tastes of the people are bad initially I think bruni Harrison may have a point on this but my particular view Jim is that of late and I have never been a plea copper I've never begged off an issue before but I'm beginning to believe that there is a strange groundswell amongst the American populace the citizenry that would seek out an escape away from reality of late that their tastes lie much toward the entertainment quality rather than the cerebral quality I don't I don't think there's any question of that at all I think it is not only evidenced in television but more pronouncedly in the proscenium drama what does Broadway produced as a vehicle of social criticism that that in any way harkens back to the Odette sein days or the GB Shahs of the Imps ins when a play made a point by God they they had an axe to grind about what was it current social evil and they made it when a play moved you as a human precisely and for that reason it was written next fall NBC will have a movie on Monday in prime time therefore thereby giving us a movie every night of the week that'll be three nights for NBC tufa CBS and two for ABC and and I predicted that very shortly the three networks would petition Congress to change the week to nine days could have nuts but to go along with that point I believe some some national group predicted that we were heading for an average national nervous breakdown the anxieties and so forth now when you put on an old movie it's possible it'll be a movie made about some social problem but a problem that was contemporary 6 7 10 15 years 20 years ago and that's that makes it safe oh no question and again this this is the kind of programming a television national television seems to this escapist type it's reminiscent of television in its early days when indeed there was certainly a raised problem in those days it wasn't out in the street it wasn't loud in our ears it wasn't infesting our gut our conscious god as it is today but by god there was anguish amongst minorities then as there is now remember you wrote the town turned oh yeah which well you see then you assaulted the strong men who were acceptable as minority groups Mexicans American Indians Eskimos beaten down downtrodden peasants under the Czar but these were the minorities but not the negro now consequently I think the the purpose the point of a dramatic show which is used as a vehicle of social criticism is to involve an audience to show them where in their guilt lies or at least indeed their association but when you're talking about a bunch of cavalrymen knocking off a bunch of poor Redskins and putting them into a reservation the audience need to have no association certainly no guilt how many Indians have they pushed into a reservation but if indeed you talk about a denial of a man putting his garbage can next to yours whether he's fought in Vietnam or wherever by virtue of his color now you're getting into a universal guilt which they should feel or at least in part understand you can extend that and and dilate around a very important word that I think that you use rod this was this word this word involvement how much is an audience caught up in a particular to a particular show or a particular situation shown on television and I would maintain that very rarely is there any intimacy of involvement within anything that one sees on television our sense of identification it doesn't have to be social commentary it can have it can be any kind of show which would which allows one to participate in any kind of an insightful situation I think that's right I'm interested in images and in the memorability of things I know lines of poetry some stray random lines that I remember cuz they are there so just so good you know of the images I can remember from television shows they are very very few because it's not it's not intended to be memorable most of it it's intended to flush right out right you see it you had it has no memory value and this this is really not contributing to a person's individual being well that's when I talked about the I think the the incredible lack of a body of literature that could evolve from this medium which is certainly as exciting as far-reaching as immediate as any art form we've ever had and yet when you start looking back at the so-called memorable moments they are a few information well I know people like Marshall McLuhan say that it really doesn't matter what's on television them the medium is the message in the fact something is on the screen is is is delivering the message of the fact that television set is on I suppose I can following but I think it very much does matter what what is put on the screen well there's always in the offset argument of course the television functions and operates in the public air and ostensibly at least by active Federal Communication Commission in the public interest and indeed if you talk public now you mean all public all facets all strata and that doesn't mean the minority seventy million it also means the minority eighteen million they must be made you know a proper audience their tastes must be concerned with their attitudes must be responded to and they're not not by a longshot I'm not suggesting that we suddenly develop a gigantic school of protests here for a social comment in which we pre occupy ourselves with commentate of drama this sort of thing but I do believe the nature of the times now demand the television takes positions that it exposes both sides of controversy I've yet for example I keep thinking this awfully not to inject a political note into this but I have a feeling we're dealing with a faceless enemy in terms of the Vietnamese at least when Jack Warner ran Warner Brothers I knew what a Japanese soldier looked like I'll be at a cartoon version yet gigantic teeth and myopic vision and he ran around assaulting nuns and torturing Clark Gable and indeed the Nazi was the unregenerate of animal with a whip and he pointed with the whip for these thousand to go into that gas chamber and so on so now television gives us Hogan's Heroes and next year I suppose it'll be the merry men of Auschwitz yeah and and a big a dance thing on the death march of but time yeah ballet ballet if that's what you see I think this is a distortion now when we're talking about if indeed they want to have the temerity to suggest what is a moment in American history or a world history do it properly but you know one thing I generally rather dislike television although like most American sup Americans I found myself watching it a good deal because like the mountain it's there but I don't care much for the dramatic we've been talking mainly about the dramatic shows but what television really is very good at is any kind of sports coverage I think it's absolutely beautiful but some of these talk shows Face the Nation and so on or what does it meet the press and so on those people really do ask questions that yeah but really Jim then you're utilizing television simply as a disseminator but that's alright that part and marvelous but the football game that goes on between UCLA and other Dame is brilliant and marvelous and the camerawork is you know sublime but it is not the television that is so good it's that sporting event probably covered yeah properly cover but I'm talking about the more creative aspects yes yes right way and your feel fairly but what about if we're gonna have no plays or shows that say something then we need to get back in the television people who are who want to say things and can say them and whatever we say about the early days of television it brought along a lot of fascinating young people writers actors the movies are living off of these people the directors of Frankenheimer and so on there you can name 20 writers 20 directors 40 or 50 actors now the network's seem to have turned over this making of shows to Hollywood and we have a sort of a vast Hollywood repertory company you see the same actor as the heavy one night it may be his week on television he just happened to have made all these shows at one time and they come out all at once and he looks a little dazed as he goes through them because he's not quite sure whether he's in the western or it's a funny repertory company which does 11,000 plays concurrently on the same stage your little confusion rather okay that kind of course you have the same writer they don't get now you have an economic squeeze the squeeze inevitably has its effect first on the writing end of it the creative end of it though the Writers Guild of America West at the moment is currently involved in a big reappraisal of the whole creative or lack thereof creativity in terms of the the writers interest in the writers point of view and they're holding a series of confab Xand symposiums in which their principal position is that it's not a lack of writing it's a of platform and I think they've got a point in point of fact in 1950 when I began tell it when I started writing for the medium those were the days of the television giants this was shy of ski time and Reggie Rhodes time and gore Vidal time and Johnny Frankenheimer out there pen they were all there Sidney Lumet every major motion picture figure was done in television Martir it the names are legion not one of them is a regular contributor to television 95 percent and that's a fairly conservative estimate have no relationship to television anymore Reggie's recent dear friend I think is the first thing he's done for TV in better than three or four years I don't think it's necessary to have them back in the television but let's get a lot of young on new rows I [Music] would say this that the worst thing as far as the creative talent the creative man the really dramatic right I was concerned is that he is he is dogged with this dreadful formula kind of presentation people want formula show well how many times can you write the fugitive and feel excited and feel challenged and feel inspired I challenge you know any writer retaining any kind of perspective any kind of criterias self criteria for what is qualitative writing if each week he has to write about the same kind of guy well I saw about four or five years ago and I hope you wrote this one rod I saw a two-part thing about doctors called a play called doctors called know deadly medicine with Lee Jacob as a hilly road which was the most eloquent and moving drama I have ever seen on television I didn't curda near I could be doing somebody a terrible injustice but my recollection is it Arthur Haley a very good last one colleges les riots and they later on struck was a shot the pilot of a series that they made later on Bill Shatner didn't get it though that that was an eloquent and moving thing you and I can remember many like that I can remember some of the half-hour shows on on East Side West Side which I found definitive George Scott it's possible to do a quality show within the series framework I think your show Twilight Zone in the area of science fiction that a very good job of bringing some imaginative writing and some nice performance of course that was pure anthology but what we had going and which was our excuse to remain on the air for five years Bernie was simply that we did have a threaten of continuity we had a concept which was science fiction fantasy the occult well what bothers me gentlemen but this is that we if we agree that we have on television a presentation with the quality as we see quality that the vast public will not necessarily like it maybe it's too close to home maybe it shakes them up too much maybe that's not what they want from television it's a moot question but I have always maintained Jim that any audience with any kind of brain at all will respond this is something that you would have to tell them a story of prejudice in terrible form in which they may step aside as third persons and cluck and saying how awful we treat our minority groups but at least they know that it's an evil and it will recognize it as such and by osmosis or some incredible process we'll somewhere along the line be faced for the situation in which they too may have to exercise a prejudice and be conscious of it as an evil now on Twilight Zone for example done during just as timorous a time as any other time we made a comment on prejudice on conformity on intolerance and censorship but it's easy to do it when you're talking about Buck Rogers isn't allowed to write his memoirs in the way he wants to write them yes so he puts on his backpack his rocket pack and he zooms over to the publisher and they applaud and laugh and think how exciting and interesting now it may well be that the inner message may never get through but I think peripherally it does get through I myself am not so interested as you seem to be in drama which happen hasn't makes a social commentary of some some sort I realize the legitimacy of this and then this esoteric but what I would what I would hold out for is just any kind of drama that deeply involves the audience as human beings that they can really truly participate in I agree with and that that is the TV that I'm looking for with this thing's you see very rare Burnie did you see deer I saw it yes I couldn't buy his premise to begin with and and I thought it seemed to me with all due respect that original rose that this was an idea he had kicking around for some time because some of the relationships between the couples were a little antique there was an Albia stealing it's not the social commentary that some for the making us the point that that is important but the fact that the man who sat down the right display has written it in the same time in which we are living right now through the same problems that we are living with now and we are seeing actors who are exposed to the same conditions that we live in now so that there's this is what is meant by immediacy the presentation of a thing that was written within the period of months on television for an audience that so that all of the dialogue at lines will have reference to the things that are going doesn't have to make a an important point about prejudice right I understand I wasn't exclusively limiting good drama to the area I did social comment it happened to be one of the areas which we've been so far away from for so long but I share your feeling intelligent a story of human beings of human conflict told in legitimate valid human terms with no formulas with no formulas let it not be a man running away from a one-armed man we need to get some good storytellers back in ya know you need a platform though if the storytellers are there waiting if you travel in any college campus nowadays their writing talent is there in abundance dies surely from lack of exposure you see NBC and CBS vying with IBM and General Motors for the talent on the campuses then a new brain drain yeah I have not seen the network's in any militant search for good talent I've always felt this is one of the major problems that we are not developing a school of artists providers from other media they come fall we always that recommended by the interest sometimes exclusively by the interest advanced by somebody else that's why we all went to Hollywood and worked for motion picture studios not because they felt that we were any good most of them looked down their noses at television it was kind of an Aborigine child which they and in our way strange spawned and they never thought much about Talent but Warner Brothers thought Metro was interested in it so Warner Brothers hired us or the reverse this happened all the time I was telling you in the car gym that when I went to metro-goldwyn-mayer under contract in 56 I was a 12 weeks in an office eating in the commissary every every lunch with a secretary and a typewriter and a dictaphone and never wrote a word and never met a person for 12 weeks just sat there and drew my check and improved my chess game what's a miracle you made it back then it's a miracle I made it back to Washington I think under those conditions okay well yeah the television season this year despite the critical abuse has produced 40 or 50 shows which if you had been home at the time that was convenient to the network you might have seen and enjoyed in the and in the area of the documentaries I think television does a pretty good job I think they do an exceptionally good job I do wish though that the documentaries would take more of a definite stand a point of view and I'm not asking for a particular stand I hiked back now Bernie to a very effective documentary that I saw an NBC call the same blood same mud with Frank McGee I believe the footage the combat footage was tremendously I hate to use the word exciting we're talking of death now but let's say that it was stunning that it was horrendous that it had moved you would it did created a reaction but Frank McGee disturbed me because he would interview the white soldier and he would say what do you think of your Negro colleague and the whites told you would look at him and say yeah what do you mean what do I think of him he's a GI he's on my right he covers me on the attack he does this and McGee would cluck and say my gosh listen to that and I kept thinking why are you amazed mr. McGee yeah in the province of combat when you stake your life how could it be you know how could it be any other way and and more to the point would have been what happens to that Negro soldier having lived through this incredibly strange colorless world say for a period of a horrendous 12 or 13 munson he goes back to the state of California and under the tutelage of our governor there tries to exist in a society in which there is a public law on record which denies him proper housing by virtue of the color of his skin how does he feel then let's take our camera into that chaps living room and see with what equanimity but every turn they are the cameras been laughs seen seen that in several public broadcasting laboratory I think started something on that the PBL yes exactly what do you think of that series I just saw the one play they dead day of reckoning or day of disappearance or something which I thought was slightly overdone but which I was very intrigued by it was an intriguing idea and some of the criticism was it a trim much too long when that point was made that the the author insisted that the whole play be presented and here again we come to the point of the tyranny of the of the author I heard of the tyranny of the author since Elizabeth I tell you the truth and if indeed it exists I'm delighted that it does on that occasion I worked in a medium of course in which the director has always been the king in terms of motion pictures and in television the director is perhaps a crown prince but the King lived you know someplace where they make this cereal yeah the king is really there the advertising accountant man exactly I think the final judge of that which is put on him you see I don't watch foundation money it's on Sunday night on channel 26 educational Peter Watkins thing the bed the Battle of Culloden Moor was that no that was a British that wasn't that wasn't that was that the Canadian thing of the British us I saw that and that's that I couldn't shake I can't shake it all right that wasn't the the the the dropping of the hydrogen no claim fellow stunning documentaries ever it was an early film of Watkins you mean what is the war game wargames yeah that's me I'm that but this was an early film that he made on almost nothing for the BBC called The Ballad of qalaat more from Washington you've been watching a conversation with Rod Serling joining mr. Serling in a look at television as a medium for the literary artists the writer where mr. James Dickey consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress and mr. Burney Harrison television critic and editor of the Washington star mr. Sterling's appearance was made possible through a grant from the Gertrude Clark Woodall fund of the Library of Congress this is the eastern educational network this has been a presentation of the Library of Congress visit us at loc.gov

Channel: Library of Congress

Views: 315,785

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Keywords: Library of Congress

Id: LFVJYFI93Bk

Length: 29min 42sec (1782 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 27 2018