The President

The President

The Day 10 of the Twilight Zone Advent calendar and Maxwell Dizibis ask, we all love Rod sailing,

but between you and your co-host, which of the other major writers of the original Twilight Zone, Matheson, Beaumont, Johnson, Hamnet, etc., do you find yourself gravitating towards the most in terms of storytelling style, focus, or standout average episodes,

which are their outputs best aligns with your idea of what the Twilight Zone is or should be?

I think you're going to go with El Hamner, Zach.

I think you're a black leather jackets guy.

Earl Hamer Jr. Tom.

Oh, I do. Yeah. Oh, I do.

Yeah.

Oh, go on.

What's your answer to this one?

I got to go with Richard Matheson.

Almost all of my favorite episodes that aren't Rod Sterling's are his.

I love his short stories, his novels.

I just think he was a very creative guy.

And I think the key to what the appeal of his stuff was, he created these, these situations where the protagonist's regular person who just falls into this fantastical set of circumstances, but the relatable enough that you can see yourself in that situation. Like, oh, I'm on an airplane. I'm looking out of window. Or people don't remember who I am. Or, you know, you go down the list, right? So to me, there's just something there about those stories that I gravitate to. And whenever, you know, when you're younger and you watch these episodes, you're not really paying attention to who wrote this or directed that, but when you're older and you're looking at the credits and you start to delve into the behind the scenes, like, whenever I saw Richard Mathis's name come up, I'm like, okay, I'm in for a good one, and he usually delivered. So that he's definitely my answer. That's a good answer. I can't disagree with any of that. I think it's so cool the way they all had a lane

that, you know, they didn't always stick to it. Sometimes they would veer out of it, but there was a

general kind of lane that they stuck to. And, you know, George Clayton Johnson had all these kind

of meditations on life and death and and so on but my choices is going to be

be be beaumont because i think you know rod was the morality plays looking back you know nostalgia and

all these kind of things and not that it was all that, obviously he could do different stuff.

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