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!