Out of Gear
|
Excerpted from “The Twilight Zone: Season Six, 1964-1965,” author not credited, FANBOY Magazine #42 - February 1983 (New York, Deus Ex press, a division of Ziff Davis) “OUT OF GEAR” (Aired November 6, 1964) ----------- Rod’s Intro: Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles. Four very talented young men who have a career to make Caruso cry that he could never achieve such success, success that would make Croteus envious of them. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr; four very familiar faces that could never find any place outside that door they are trapped behind to just relax and enjoy their newfound position. But beyond that door, there’s a place, a place they can’t go lest they find things are not as rosy as they sound out there. For tonight, the Beatles’ long, grinding tour will deliver them to a strange new venue, booking them at a hall in--the Twilight Zone. The Beatles are preparing for a gig, trying to joke about the long days on the tour, before their manager comes in and tells them that their rest day in Boston two days from now’s been cancelled. There’s lots of groaning and complaining as Ringo tries on a ring sent him by a fan, a ring that glows as he seconds their desire in jest to just not have to do another show. Suddenly the crowd noise stops, and the lads find themselves in an empty theatre. They decide to play one song, just for the joy of being able to perform without a screaming audience, and find that they miss the crowd. Back in the dressing room, they discover while trying to listen to the radio and make a phone call that it’s not just the theatre that’s empty; no one’s left on the Earth! Ringo realizes the ring’s the cause, and the lads wish everyone back, but Ringo mutters as he hears the crowd how he’d wish it could be “just like the old days again,” and when the boys appear on stage, the screaming stops because the crowd doesn’t recognize them. Rod’s close: Submitted for your approval. The Beatles, no longer colossi of culture, just four lads
from Liverpool trying to make their mark in the music business.
Their desire for a little peace and quite reminded them to be careful
what you wish for, something they did not think about the first time they
started on this path. The mountain under them taken away, they find themselves with
another long climb to the top, to an upper echelon they must again aim at
in—the Twilight Zone. ---- The celebrity
gimmicks William Froug brought to the show, starting with last season’s
appearances of Mickey Rooney in “The Last Night of a Jockey,” and Suzy
Parker in “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You,” achieved their
penultimate prize in this season with getting the Beatles.
What makes the program so amazing is that it came about despite
everyone’s reluctance to do it. When Jim Aubrey,
president of CBS in 1964, renewed the show for another season, Froug thought
the renewal was based above all else on Aubrey’s desire for getting high
end talent to appear in the series. Froug
continued to bring on such stars in season six as Jack Benny and George
Raft, and the cast of The Dick Van Dyke Show in
a cross-over episode. Feeling
the heat to continue to make Twilight Zone
a celebrity showcase, Froug had placed calls to Robert Pretch, producer for The
Ed Sullivan Show, soon after he got the word
in February of 1964 that there’d be a season six, to get started on
negotiations with the Beatles’ management.
Froug claims he got a commitment from the Beatles, but none of the
Beatles remember ever saying yes to the show in later interviews. When presented with
the news the Beatles were going to be on, Rod Serling was reported to have
said, “Well, that’s the end of civilization as we know it,” and left
the episode to be handled by other writers.
As the weeks went on, not a single script submitted to Cayuga
Productions [Serling’s production company set up to oversee Twilight
Zone for CBS] was considered worth filming,
and the episode almost ended up scrapped even as the Beatles’ careers were
taking off in the States. The show might never
have been made had Serling not been invited to an advance industry screening
held by United Artists for the film A Hard Day’s Night. Within thirty six hours,
Serling had a script that played to the Beatles’ natural strengths yet
still allowed him the chance to visit the themes found throughout
Serling’s episodes that season of release from drudgery and escape. (Contrary to rumors that came later, there never was any
secret payment from Cayuga to writer Alun Owen; Owen and film’s producer
Walter Shenson never filed any sort of copyright infringement against CBS
for the episode, no matter how many Beatles and Twilight Zone
fan publications claimed that an ‘understanding’ had been made.
Most people consider the ‘Beatles-Zone Incident’ to be as
credible as the ‘Paul is Dead’ and ‘Lost Harlan Ellsion TZ Scripts’
stories that never seem to die.) While Serling got
enthusiastic for the episode, his subjects needed a bit more convincing.
When the Beatles were told that their off day in Los Angeles on
August 24, 1964, was going to be spent doing a TV appearance, they were
initially furious. CBS brass
had to promise another appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show
for that fall to get management on board (which led to the infamous incident
on the October 25, 1964 show of John asking Ed, “What does this mean,
then?” imitating the hand gesture Jackie Mason gave Ed earlier in the
program). What convinced the
Beatles, however, to give up their day off was a quick read of the script
sent to them; the parallels with their current situation were too strong for
them to ignore, convincing them to do the show. Director Robert
Altman shot the Beatles in the empty El Capitan theatre first, where he shot
their reactions to not being recognized in the last scene and their
performance of the song “You Can’t Do That.”
(The use of the song, which was cut from A Hard Day’s Night,
may have fed fuel to the ‘Beatles-Zone Incident’ rumors.)
Then he brought in the crowd waiting outside, whipped them up for the
Beatles, then filmed them when he introduced the band but put out instead a
different group entirely made up of nobodies.
(Two of the ‘nobodies’ in this group, Steven Stills and Ray
Manzarek, would go on to much bigger things.)
Once this set of reaction shots was captured by Altman’s crew, the
Beatles performed for the audience a two song set used in the opening of the
episode, after which they filmed the rest of show at Television City.
Altman’s entire shooting schedule came to a zephyr-like ten hours
for all principal photography. Beatles fans are
probably the strongest defenders of this episode today, while most everyone
else dismisses the show as yet another needless celebrity outing from the
sixth season. Supposedly,
Serling wrote an expanded adapted to be included in his collection Even
More Stories From The Twilight Zone. The story was reported to have showed the Beatles
running around a deserted American city; however, this story has never seen
print, possibly out of concern for legal complications that surrounded the
Beatles right up until their dissolution in 1970. The only Beatle to
ever comment on this episode of Twilight Zone
was George, made during an interview conducted on a press junket to support
his production of Tobe Hooper’s film adaptation of Naked Lunch.
He called the episode of Twilight Zone,
“my lost weekend in Los Angeles.” |
|
James Ryan isn't worried at all, really; he's just stocking up the bomb shelter out back because he "is in desperate need of a hobby".... His work has appeared online at both Rational Magic and Pyramid, and in print in Dragon, Lacunae, the Urbanite, The Dream Zone, the New York Times, and some of the better men's room walls across the state of New York. His wife Susan and son Jamie just nod and smile when he starts to rant, which, all said, makes things that much easier. Tell James Ryan what you thought of his story! |
Return to Rooftop Sessions Archive
