Rod Serling, Mike Wallace, and Dick Cavett

TV Confidential with Ed Robertson

TVC 669.1: Part 2 of a conversation that began on our last program with Emmy Award-winning writer, producer, director, and author Joseph Dougherty (thirtysomething, Pretty Little Liars, A Screenwriters Companion: Instruction, Opinion, Encouragement). Joe’s latest book, Rod Serling at 100: One Writer’s Acknowledgment, takes a deep dive into the legacy of the Emmy Award-winning writer/producer, with a particular focus on Serling as a writer, and what Serling’s body of work continues to mean to Joe personally. Topics this segment include Serling’s apparent affection for Julius Moomer, the effervescent yet talentless television writer who served as Serling’s protagonist in the famous Twilight Zone episode “The Bard” (and who had previously appeared as a minor character in Serling’s live television drama The Velvet Alley); the similarities in structure between the Twilight Zone episode “Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Man” and “Last Night of the Jockey”; and the contentious television interviews that Serling gave to Mike Wallace and Dick Cavett in 1959 and 1972, respectively. Rod Serling at 100 is available from Fayetteville Mafia Press.