Twilight Zone events!

2024 is a significant anniversary for three major American pop culture treasures: it’s the centennial of Rod Serling (born on Christmas), the creator/head writer (and greatest broadcast voice of the 20th Century) of the immortal television series The Twilight Zone (a fount of American pop culture itself) that celebrates the 65th Anniversary of its debut on October 2; and it’s the 60th Anniversary of John Cheever’s most famous short story, “The Swimmer,” published in the July 18th issue of The New Yorker. 

All three are being celebrated in two major screenings in the New York area—the first at The Westport Library in Westport, Connecticut, which is hosting a four-day symposium, “Westport in The Twilight Zone” (Serling lived there in the mid-‘50s when he won three Emmys in a row for his 90-minute live TV shows that gave him the creative clout to go out to Hollywood and become the first “television playwright” to head his own series—what we now call a “show runner”) beginning Thursday, September 26 through Sunday, September 29, and is screening multiple Twilight Zone episodes paired with the movies they inspired; on night one, Serling’s 1960 episode “A Stop at Willoughby” is teamed with one of the most enigmatic cult films of The Sixties (released in that year of years, 1968), The Swimmer (starring the great Burt Lancaster), adapted from Cheever’s mini-masterpiece: https://westportlibrary.org/event/westport-in-rod-serlings-the-twilight-zone-a-symposium/2024-09-26/

The second screening of “Willoughby” and The Swimmer is in the city at The Triad Theater, a cabaret-sized upstairs room on West 72nd street, sporting a brand new 4k projection system with 12.3 surround sound, on Saturday, October 5th at 12 noon: https://www.instantseats.com/?fuseaction=home.event&eventID=755AEB7C-A544-F1D5-EBCF6FC39D81D577

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ARLEN SCHUMER is the author/designer of two books about The Twilight Zone, the coffee table art book Visions from The Twilight Zone (Chronicle Books, 1990), and his new book of episode essays, The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone (Bear Manor Media, October 2, 2024):  https://www.bearmanormedia.com/products/the-five-themes-of-the-twilight-zone-hardback