Rod Serling in ‘The Twilight Zone’: “Walking Distance” and “He’s Alive” – Westport,

This event is free to attend. Arlen Schumer’s new book, The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone, is available for preorder through registration for an additional fee.

Author Nick Parisi will be in conversation with Arlen Schumer about his definitive biography, Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination as well as Nick’s latest, America’s Twilight Zone: How Rod Serling Foreshadowed the Age of Trump. Stay tuned for a screening of the Serling-centric episode, “Walking Distance,” followed by a screening of a rare one-hour Twilight Zone episode of Serling’s from 1963 that presciently forecasts the Age of Trump: “He’s Alive,” starring the legendary Dennis Hopper.

Martin Sloan, age 36. Occupation: vice president; ad agency; in charge of media. This is not just a Sunday drive for Martin Sloan. He perhaps doesn’t know it at the time, but it’s an exodus. Somewhere up the road he’s looking for sanity. And somewhere up the road, he’ll find something else.

—The Twilight Zone, “Walking Distance” (Season 1, Episode 5. Originally aired October 30, 1959)

Portrait of a bush-league Führer named Peter Vollmer, a sparse little man who feeds off his self-delusions and finds himself perpetually hungry for want of greatness in his diet. And like some goose-stepping predecessors he searches for something to explain his hunger, and to rationalize why a world passes him by without saluting. That something he looks for and finds is in a sewer. In his own twisted and distorted lexicon he calls it faith, strength, truth. But in just a moment Peter Vollmer will ply his trade on another kind of corner, a strange intersection in a shadowland called the Twilight Zone.

—The Twilight Zone, “He’s Alive”(Season 4, Episode 4. Originally aired January 24, 1963)

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About Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination:

Long before anyone had heard of alien cookbooks, gremlins on the wings of airplanes, or places where pig-faced people are considered beautiful, Rod Serling was the most prestigious writer in American television. As creator, host, and primary writer for The Twilight Zone, Serling became something more: an American icon. When Serling died in 1975 at the age of 50, he was the most honored, outspoken, recognizable, and prolific writer in television history.

Though best known for The Twilight Zone, Serling wrote over 250 scripts for film and television and won an unmatched six Emmy Awards for dramatic writing for four different series. His filmography includes the acclaimed political thriller Seven Days in May and cowriting the original Planet of the Apes.

Including exclusive insights drawn directly from Serling’s personal correspondence, unpublished writings, speeches, and unproduced scripts, Nicholas Parisi explores Serling’s entire body of work in great detail. With a foreword by Serling’s daughter, Anne Serling, Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination is part biography, part videography, and part critical analysis. It is a painstakingly researched look at all of Serling’s work — in and out of The Twilight Zone.

As Roy Lichtenstein brought comic book art into the fine art world, Arlen Schumer has brought it into the commercial art world. His unique comic book-style art appears in advertisements and other editorial and promotional instances.

Schumer’s background in graphic design, art direction and copywriting in New York City advertising agencies, combined with his expertise and enthusiasm for the comic book medium and its rich history, produces captivating award-winning imagery recognized worldwide. He has been a long-standing member of the Society of Illustrators.

As a published author and pop culture historian, Schumer has been equally recognized. His book The Silver Age of Comic Book Art won the Independent Book Publishers Award for Best Popular Culture Book; ABC’s 20/20 named him “one of the country’s preeminent authorities on comics and culture,” and the BBC said his works on The Twilight Zone were “a cut above the rest, full of passion and erudition.” Comic Book Artist Magazine called him “one of the more articulate and enthusiastic advocates of comic book art in America.” His other books are Visions from The Twilight Zone and The Neal Adams Sketchbook.

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