I’m a bit wary of reading this one. While it’s interesting to see what a Rod Serling teleplay looks like, it’s also a known fact that for non-Hollywood types (like myself), reading a teleplay is incredibly boring. This book contains four of them, and I’m very familiar with two of them. That’s not why I’m truly interested in this one, though. This book contains not just Serling’s commentary on each piece, but also an essay on writing for television, in which he explains the torment of writing commercially, about having to misrepresent assholes, the bullshit one has to deal with and surviving advertisers. Serling was truly a writer’s writer. I respect him more than any TV writer ever. He wasn’t afraid to point out bullshitters when he found them. However, the most interesting thing of all is this: PATTERNS was published a year before THE TWILIGHT ZONE aired. He hadn’t yet learned the lessons he would from being the showrunner for TTZ. That makes me even more curious than ever to read this book. I’m only 10 pages in, and already, I’m mesmerized.
