Arlen’s Events Blog

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 @ 5:30pm EST:

Deconstructing The Twilight Zone #8: “SHADOW PLAY” webinar via NY Adventure Club

Rod Serling’s immortal television series The Twilight Zone used the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres to tell incisive stories that dealt with the social and societal issues of its time. In doing so, Serling and Co. created some of the most indelible half-hours of filmed television drama ever made.

One of those half-hours was The Twilight Zone season two episode, the aptly titled “Shadow Play” (the second of writer Charles Beaumont’s two great Twilight Zone episodes about the nature of dreams and reality; the other, season one’s “Perchance to Dream”), which plays out like a tense, taut television noir: though convicted murderer Adam Grant desperately tries to share his recurring nightmare of electrocution with his fellow death-row inmates, the district attorney, the press, beseeching anyone who’ll listen that they, too, are all part of his dream, it is to no avail—he is condemned to walk the last mile every night.

“Shadow Play” also introduces the concept of “meta” to the 1961American television audience, perhaps for the first time, as Beaumont’s underlying premise is that Grant’s “corny” dream of death row is only based on what he’s seen in “bad” movies! By the end of this grim but gripping episode, we are finally sharing Grant’s recurring nightmare with him.

So join New York Adventure Club and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, Visions from The Twilight Zone and The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone) as he deconstructs “Shadow Play” via discussion and dissemination of clips from the episode, along with stills, behind-the-scenes material, and collateral images and ideas culled from both the episode’s time, and our time, so that even the most ardent aficionados of The Twilight Zone will feel as if they’ve seen “Shadow Play” for the first time!

TIX: bit.ly/3U2tYIp

CAN’T make it LIVE? Buy a ticket so you can watch a video recording of the webinar for 1 week!

Saturday, July 18 @ 1:00pm

The Passaic County Arts Center in Hawthorne, NJ presents:

SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT: Bruce Springsteen’s Greatest Show

A Live Multimedia Presentation by Springsteen Historian Arlen Schumer

On September 19, 1978, Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band performed what many fans and critics consider their greatest single show, at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey. Why this particular show? Why does it stand out from not only all the other amazing Darkness on the Edge of Town tour performances, but from Bruce’s entire performing career?

There are many reasons–and that’s what Arlen Schumer’s multimedia presentation, SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT, is all about! Schumer, a pop culture historian and writer/designer of coffeetable books like The Silver Age of Comic Book Art and The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone, was in the 6th row of the landmark show, and at the time, the art director of Thunder Road magazine (1978-82), the first Springsteen fan publication. He also illustrated the iconic Capitol marquee, on display at the Arts Center!

He’s written about the show over the years for various books and publications like Backstreets (the Springsteen publication from 1980-2023), and has put together a multimedia presentation that recreates the legendary concert in words, images, music and video excerpts from the show itself, and tracks Springsteen’s career trajectory that led up to the fateful night of September 19, 1978!

So whether you know Springsteen’s music, or not—whether you’ve seen him in concert a hundred times, or never—you’ll look, listen and learn about Bruce Springsteen—and the Capitol Theatre show on September 19, 1978—in ways you never have before!

The event is free, but reserve your seat: bit.ly/4eX5IOK

WEDNESDAY, JULY 15 @ 5:30pm EST:

DECONSTRUCTING THE TWILIGHT ZONE #7: “The After Hours” webinar via NY Adventure Club!

Rod Serling’s immortal television series The Twilight Zone used the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres to tell incisive stories that dealt with the social and societal issues of its time. In doing so, Serling and Co. created some of the most indelible half-hours of filmed television drama ever made.

One of those half-hours was The Twilight Zone season one episode, “The After Hours,” one of Serling’s most accessible Twilight Zone episodes—for who among the American generations who’ve grown up in and around shopping malls has never been afraid of being locked in a department store at night? And of the store’s mannequins somehow coming to life? In its June 2003 issue,Barbie Bazaar noted: “The reason that The Twilight Zone still amazes us is the wonder that underlies episodes like ‘The After Hours,’ that recall childhood fantasies of dolls and toys coming to life when no one is watching.” By tapping into such deep-seated American neuroses, Serling mirrored the anxieties and apprehensions of his audience, as this excerpt from the episode’s closing narration testifies: “Just how ‘normal’ are we? Just who are the people we nod our hellos to as we pass on the street?”

So join New York Adventure Club and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, Visions from The Twilight Zone and The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone) as he deconstructs “The After Hours” via discussion and dissemination of clips from the episode, along with stills, behind-the-scenes material, and collateral images and ideas culled from both the episode’s time, and our time, so that even the most ardent aficionados of The Twilight Zone will feel as if they’ve seen “The After Hours” for the first time!

TIX: bit.ly/4e9JcTD

CAN’T make it LIVE? Buy a ticket so you can watch a video recording of the webinar for 1 week!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17 @ 5:30pm EST:

DECONSTRUCTING THE TWILIGHT ZONE #6: “Mirror Image” webinar via NY Adventure Club!

Rod Serling’s immortal television series The Twilight Zone used the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres to tell incisive stories that dealt with the social and societal issues of its time. In doing so, Serling and Co. created some of the most indelible half-hours of filmed television drama ever made.

One of those half-hours was The Twilight Zone season one episode written by Serling, “Mirror Image,” that takes place in a nondescript, generic bus station, peopled by drab figures immobile in the stark Americana like an Edward Hopper painting brought to life. The title refers to the exact duplicate a woman sees of herself reflected in the bus station’s washroom mirror; Serling got the idea for the episode when he thought he saw someone at an airport who looked just like him, wearing the same exact clothes, holding the same exact briefcase. By turning that unnerving experience into an unforgettable Twilight Zone episode, Serling tapped into a universal feeling of dread—meeting a duplicate of ourselves—that we’ve all had sometime in our lives. “Mirror Image” is also the most Hitchcockian of Twilight Zones, the suspense as palpable as the rain that beats down throughout the macabre episode.

So join New York Adventure Club and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, Visions from The Twilight Zone and The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone) as he deconstructs “Mirror Image” via discussion and dissemination of clips from the episode, along with stills, behind-the-scenes material, and collateral images and ideas culled from both the episode’s time, and our time, so that even the most ardent aficionados of The Twilight Zone will feel as if they’ve seen “Mirror Image” for the first time!

TIX: bit.ly/4ua7vpV

CAN’T make it LIVE? Buy a ticket so you can watch a video recording of the webinar for 1 week!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 13 @ 5:30pm EST:

DECONSTRUCTING THE TWILIGHT ZONE #5: “A Stop at Willoughby” webinar via NY Adventure Club!

The Twilight Zone, the 1959-64 CBS science fiction/fantasy television series, created by one of the most influential American writers of the 20th Century, Rod Serling (1924-75), is considered by generations of TV critics and viewers alike to be one of—if not the—greatest television series of all time.

Serling’s Twilight Zone used the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres to tell incisive stories that dealt with the social and societal issues of its time. In doing so, Serling and Co. created some of the most indelible half-hours of filmed television drama ever made.

One of those half-hours was The Twilight Zone season one episode “A Stop at Willoughby,” written by Serling, who considered this episode his favorite. Why? Because it was most reflective of Serling’s own lifelong nostalgia for a pre-war, pre-20th Century idyll that in this episode he dubs “Willoughby”: “If I had the means, I think I would like to be in Victorian times. Small town. Bandstands. Summer,” he said in his last interview before he passed away in 1975.

In this taut tale, a mid-thirties ad man can’t take the Madison Avenue rat race any longer; while he finds no solace at home from his ultra-materialist shrew of a wife, he does in the dreams he has of “Willoughby” when he dozes off during his commute in and out of New York City—a commute that Serling himself experienced for three years in the mid-Fifties when he was living an hour away in Westport, Connecticut, and working on the live, 90-minute television productions shot in the City, for which he won three Emmys in a row, giving him the creative clout to go out to Hollywood to launch The Twilight Zone itself.

So join New York Adventure Club and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, Visions from The Twilight Zone and The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone) as he deconstructs “A Stop at Willoughby” via discussion and dissemination of clips from the episode, along with stills, behind-the-scenes material, and collateral images and ideas culled from both the episode’s time, and our time, so that even the most ardent aficionados of The Twilight Zone will feel as if they’ve seen “A Stop at Willoughby” for the first time!

TIX: bit.ly/3QmcXac

CAN’T make it LIVE? Buy a ticket so you can watch a video recording of the webinar for 1 week!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15 @ 5:30pm EST:

DECONSTRUCTING THE TWILIGHT ZONE #4: “A World of Difference” webinar via NY Adventure Club!

The Twilight Zone, the 1959-64 CBS science fiction/fantasy television series, created by one of the most influential American writers of the 20th Century, Rod Serling (1924-75), is considered by generations of TV critics and viewers alike to be one of—if not the—greatest television series of all time.

Utilizing the benefits of the varied subject matter and settings afforded by its anthology format, Serling’s Twilight Zone used the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres to tell incisive stories that dealt with the social and societal issues of its time. In doing so, Serling and Co. created some of the most indelible half-hours of filmed television drama ever made.

One of those half-hours was the Twilight Zone season one episode “A World of Difference,” written by science fiction and fantasy luminary Richard Matheson, one of the triad of main writers of the series that included creator Serling and horror/fantasy author Charles Beaumont. The idea of an actor believing he is the character he’s playing, as played out in “A World of Difference,” is both surreal and Brechtian in its fourth-wall breaking, self-referentially meta mise-en-scene. It’s ur-Twilight Zone, because writer Matheson asks the metaphysical query central to the very concept of the series itself, in Serling’s voiceover intro: “How thin a line separates that which we assume to be real with that manufactured inside of a mind?” And the episode’s existential ending is one of the most difficult Twilight Zone endings to parse, to intellectually untangle—thereby making it, by default, one of the series’ greatest episodes.

So join New York Adventure Club and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, Visions from The Twilight Zone and The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone) as he deconstructs “A World of Difference” via discussion and dissemination of clips from the episode, along with stills, behind-the-scenes material, and collateral images and ideas culled from both the episode’s time, and our time, so that even the most ardent aficionados of The Twilight Zone will feel as if they’ve seen “A World of Difference” for the first time!

TIX: bit.ly/4lwNJ4k

CAN’T make it LIVE? Buy a ticket so you can watch a video recording of the webinar for 1 week!

MONDAY, APRIL 13 @ 7:00pm EST:

“TECHNOLOGY & THE TWILIGHT ZONE,” a live multimedia presentation by ARLEN SCHUMER for the ART & TECH Committee of the National Arts Club in NYC!

THE NATIONAL ARTS CLUB • 15 Gramercy Park South • NYC

The 156 episodes of the legendary anthology television series The Twilight Zone (CBS, 1959-64), created by the equally-legendary writer Rod Serling, are justifiably famous for their timeless stories of science-fiction, fantasy, and horror, stories whose themes have proven to be as relevant to our societal and cultural concerns here in the 21st Century as they were back in the sixth decade of the 20th.

Of particular concern to head writer Serling and his fellow Twilight Zone scribes was the effects modern technology was having on mankind, effects at once both promising and beneficial, but more often than not, ones of a more deleterious, dehumanizing nature.

In this way, the themes of these taut, terse Twilight Zone episodes by Serling & Company were both of their time—the post-War, post-Atom Bomb boom in science, technology, and space exploration—and timeless, as so many of those episodes are eerily prescient, uncannily predicting our present grapplings with technologies and their potential for both creation and destruction, physically and existentially.

Arlen Schumer, author/designer of two books on the Serling series, the coffee table Visions from The Twilight Zone, and his new book of essays on the series’ greatest episodes, The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone, has put together a multimedia presentation that highlights over a dozen episodes that delve deeply into the concept of “Technology…and The Twilight Zone.”

And it’s FREE, but REGISTER, seating is limited: bit.ly/4sld3Nf

TUESDAY, MARCH 17 @ 5:30pm EST:

“DECONSTRUCTING THE TWILIGHT ZONE: ‘Perchance to Dream’” webinar via NY Adventure Club!

The Twilight Zone, the 1959-64 CBS science fiction/fantasy television series, created by one of the most influential American writers of the 20th Century, Rod Serling (1924-75), is considered by generations of TV critics and viewers alike to be one of—if not the—greatest television series of all time.

Utilizing the benefits of the varied subject matter and settings afforded by its anthology format, Serling’s Twilight Zone used the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres to tell incisive stories that dealt with the social and societal issues of its time, which have proven to be still relevant to us today in the 21st Century. As well, the series tackled all the timeless themes and conflicts that man has forever been telling stories about, but presented them in the relatively new medium of black and white filmed television. In doing so, Serling and Co. created some of the most indelible half-hours of filmed television drama ever made.

One of those half-hours was The Twilight Zone’s ninth episode, “Perchance to Dream,” the first series episode written by the enigmatic horror and fantasy author Charles Beaumont, one of the triad of main writers of the series that included creator Serling and science fiction luminary Richard Matheson. “Perchance” is the first of Beaumont’s two Twilight Zone meditations on the nature of dreams and reality (the other is season two’s “Shadow Play,” a future “Deconstructing” episode), a core concept of The Twilight Zone itself. It takes us on a surreal rollercoaster ride—literally—that plunges us into the feverish depths of one man’s never-ending nightmares. The episode’s surprise ending is still one of the most shocking of all Twilight Zone twists…and one of the most misunderstood! Why? You’ll have to come to the webinar to find out!

So join New York Adventure Club and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, Visions from The Twilight Zone and The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone) as he deconstructs “Perchance to Dream” via discussion and dissemination of clips from the episode, along with stills, behind-the-scenes material, and collateral images and ideas culled from both the episode’s time, and our time, so that even the most ardent aficionados of The Twilight Zone will feel as if they’ve seen “Perchance to Dream” for the first time!

TIX: bit.ly/4rMu5mS

CAN’T make it LIVE? Buy a ticket so you can watch a video recording of the webinar for 1 week!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18 @ 5:30pm EST:

DECONSTRUCTING THE TWILIGHT ZONE #2: “Walking Distance” webinar via NY Adventure Club!

The Twilight Zone, the 1959-64 CBS science fiction/fantasy television series, created by writer and showrunner Rod Serling (1924-75), is considered by generations of TV critics and viewers alike to be one of—if not the—greatest television series in history (usually ranking in the top three with The Sopranos and Seinfeld). 

Utilizing the benefits of the varied subject matter and settings afforded by its anthology format, Serling’s Twilight Zone used the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres to tell incisive stories that dealt with the social and societal issues of its time, which have proven to be still relevant to us today in the 21st Century. As well, the series tackled all the timeless themes and conflicts that man has forever been telling stories about, but presented them in the relatively new medium of black and white filmed television. In doing so, Serling and Co. created some of the most indelible half-hours of television drama ever broadcast. 

One of those half-hours was The Twilight Zone’s very first episode, written and narrated by Serling, that aired on October 2, 1959, “Where is Everybody?” in which an amnesiac 30-year-old man in an air force jumpsuit wanders through a completely deserted American town where things are not quite what they seem. A true pilot episode in that it included virtually all the existential and surreal motifs that would become associated with The Twilight Zone—isolation, fear, hallucinogenic delusions that seem all too real—“Where is Everybody?” is finally a harrowing visualization of one man’s alienation from reality, indeed from one’s self, which would prove to be the defining, existential crisis facing man in the second half of the 20th Century, a time when the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge—the atomic bomb—first coexisted. 

So join New York Adventure Club and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, Visions from The Twilight Zone andThe Five Themes of The Twilight Zone) as he deconstructs “Walking Distance” via discussion and dissemination of clips from the episode, along with stills, behind-the-scenes material, and collateral images and ideas culled from both the episode’s time, and our time, so that even the most ardent aficionados of The Twilight Zone will feel as if they’ve seen “Walking Distance” for the first time!

TIX: bit.ly/3LRjqIm

CAN’T make it LIVE? Buy a ticket so you can watch a video recording of the webinar for 1 week!