“My diet consisted chiefly of black coffee and fingernails.” This is how Rod Serling described his days as a young, struggling writer before his big break came when he sold his first teleplay.

In the mid-50′s, television was considered to be the “orphan stepchild of radio” according to this PBS American Masters episode illuminating Serling’s life and career. Serling started writing for television at that time and is one of the people who helped to define the new medium even as he pushed its dramatic and social potentials to their limits.

Honing his art crafting scripts for live television dramas, Serling hoped to make a name for himself in the “bumbling, inexpert medium” even as he hoped to raise the artistic profile of TV above the usual fare of sports programming and game shows. He went on to write early television classics like “Requiem for a Heavyweight” — which won five Emmys — and to invent a place he called The Twilight Zone. The program also points to Serling’s idyllic, small town upbringing and the horrors he saw as a paratrooper in World War II, recounting the effects these twin ghosts had on Serling’s outlook and art.

Here is Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval

What’s your favorite episode of The Twilight Zone? Please leave a comment and tell me why. Thanks!

Stay Awake!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Counter Culture posts.