Our Zone

Cropped from image found here.

This is wildly divergent thematically, but I read a quote recently about The Twilight Zone that seems to me to contain some important wisdom for us in shaping this show.  To wit:

“The Twilight Zone was shaped by Rod Serling. His instincts led him to a pattern he & I agreed upon as the bottom-line basis for buying stories for adaptation and for his own originals:

"Find an interesting character, or a group, at a moment in crisis in life, and get there quickly; then lay on some magic. That magic must be devilishly appropriate and capable of providing a whiplash kickback at the tag. The character(s) must be ordinary and average and modern, and the problem facing him (her, them) must be commonplace.

"The Twilight Zone always struck people as identifiable as to whom it was about, and the story hang-ups as resonant as their own fears, dreams, and wishes. Allow only one miracle or special talent or imaginative circumstance per episode. More than one and the audience grows impatient with your calls on their credibility. The story must be impossible in the real world. A request at some point to suspend disbelief is a trademark of the series. Mere scare tactics will not fill the bill. A clever bit of advanced scientific hardware is not enough to support a story. The Twilight Zone was not a sci-fi show.”

-Twilight Zone producer Buck Houghton (via Dimensions Behind the Twilight Zone)

Special thanks to Old Hollywood for the inspiration.

Lest the myriad readers of our 'blog (Hi mom! [My Mom: "What's a 'blog?"]) think I'm trying very hard to make Zuppa's first horror play, let me clarify that I'm not interested in exploring madness or weirdness for the sake of weirdness.  That's not the connection I make with this.  The connection I make has to do with fantasy.  We are leaning in some respects toward building a fantasy, and when I use that word, I do not mean the bookstore section.

The first thing this quote reminded me of is another favorite of mine from Mr. Buster Keaton: "You could write the whole plot on a postcard. We do the rest."  In other words, it's more important that the plot be simple and straight-forward so that we can build elaborate structures off of it.  That's what the grounded nature of the guidance from Serling reminds me of.

The other thing I take from this and appreciate is the idea that there is a singular piece of magic, or imaginative circumstances (great term).  For us, this is the puppetry, and how it can transform interactions and influence reality.  The puppetry is the thing - and the only thing - that carries us into Oz, so to speak.  And once we get there, it's all about our fears, dreams and wishes.