The Outer Limits | Joanne Morreale, David J. Schow, Marc Scott Zicree

good evening everyone and welcome to the Billy Wilder theater home of public programs for the UCLA film and television archive I'm Mark Quigley I'm the John H Mitchell television creator for the archive thank you for joining us tonight for the 60th anniversary celebration of the landmark series The Outer Limits before we begin as a land-grant institution the film and television archive at UCLA would like to acknowledge our presence on the traditional ancestral and unseated territory of the Gabrielino Antonov peoples we are humbled to do work in this community we also need to take a moment to thank the entities who helped make tonight's screening possible all of the archived screenings in the Wilder are free thanks to a gift from an anonymous donor and we're grateful for their support and to the Hammer Museum for their partnership this screening has also been made possible by the John H Mitchell television programming endowment so let's please give these critical supporters another round of applause it's why you didn't have to pay to get in tonight now travel back in time to September 16th 1963 7 30 pm you've turned your TV dial to ABC for the premiere of a new series but there's something wrong with your television set you no longer control the horizontal you can no longer control the volume for the duration of the TV season your 19-inch black and white Zenith set belongs to the creative genius of series masterminds Leslie Stevens and Joseph Stefano to explain its phenomenon following our screening we will have a panel discussion with three experts Joanne moriali associate professor in media study media and Screen studies at Northwestern University Northeastern University and author of The excellent recently published and sold out in the lobby TV Milestones book The Outer Limits David J scalp historian and screenwriter and author of the extension extensive and essential works the outer limits companion and the outer limits at 50. Mark save it I have and Mark Scott zikri historian and screenwriter and author of one of the most important books of my childhood the groundbreaking and essential Twilight Zone companion please give them all a big hand now we were expecting some special guests tonight and I'm not sure if they made it but we were hoping that Leslie Stevens daughters and Chelsea Stefano's son and wife were here did they make it David so thank you um Samantha Stevens Sunday Stevens Marilyn Stefano and Dominic Stefano we're honored to have you here with us the outer limit series is now available on DVD in pristine quality tonight we've elected instead to utilize 100 year old projection technology to share gloriously imperfect Celluloid prints that are 60 years old first up is the Galaxy being the original pilot for the outer limits but you won't see the iconic series title anywhere on the 35 millimeter ABC Network print we are screening a point will be sure to examine in our q a the masterful pilot will be followed by a 16 millimeter print of another one of the best episodes of the series The Bolero shield and that print features original commercials so for the next two hours turn off your phones sit quietly it's Giants Leslie Stevens and Joseph Stefano control all that you see in here you are about to experience the awe and mystery of one of the most unique series ever broadcast enjoy and stick around for the Q a point but there's a lot of cross fertilization in terms of actors obviously John Hoyt who played the alien in that second episode in the Bolero Shield he uh he was on a couple of Twilights he was the first doctor on Star Trek on the first pilot so uh you know so there's there's a lot of cross fertilization and the writers of course with Matheson and Jerry soul and cast both shows yes he did and he was quite quite a guy so um but but this was but what Rod said in motion was the writer running the show creatively and and definitely Leslie Stevens and uh Joseph took that and ran with it there's a great authorial voice uh on both shows these are writer's shows more than anything else and uh and the writers are running Productions so it's their say of what gets made it's these are extremely um individualistic uh products from in a mass medium but the girl they're great I was going to say and they got that because all of them were writers during televisions golden age they were all writers for Playhouse 90 which was the prestige television of the time but during that period the the it was all about the writer you know and so they they uh the sort of the few people who carried that over to television wouldn't you agree wouldn't you agree Joanne that the uh uh the uh please stand by the Galaxy being is like Leslie Stevens shiny optimistic technological view of the story and The velaro Shield is Joe's dark Gothic oh definitely oh no that's fine yeah okay for Mark I have a trivia question did you the Galaxy being when he's walking down the street that's great did you recognize the store no what's the store tell me they shot the Galaxy being before they got their Studio facilities they shot the Galaxy being at MGM yeah yeah it was shut down for Cleopatra he walks past the store with a window that says babcocks does anybody know what Twilight Zone episode that window appears in Mark I don't know that's great that's great but but the cool part about about that first episode is the fact that as I I'm sure many of you knew uh that was a negative image with a a black alien with oil on it to give it that shine and that's what makes it look so remarkably uh original and creepy and strange and this is where they're using what are called practical effects in many cases on cam you know tricking the camera doing a lot of stuff in the lab this is the very early days of VFX that we would talk about today but there was an enormous Ingenuity at at play to deliver that because the aliens in outer limits are spectacular yeah let's let me uh let me interject there for a second because I want to uh rewind a little bit since we're talking about the Galaxy being and setting it up with like Twilight some kind of sun setting um and so Joanne we're twilight zone is definitely not optimistic when it comes to technology and anxieties around the Space Race but I think Outer Limits how would you define Outer Limits The their take on technology I think that they see technology as I mean they're you know it's to that but I think it's also saying be careful about using technologies that you don't fully understand because you will be sorry and that happened in both of those those episodes right they're just playing around and and Chaos ensued as a result of that how many how many people picked up Joanne's book in the lobby tonight yay great no thank you uh because one of the things I thought was really interesting about that is it it is looking at the show from a cultural perspective and the impact you were just talking about the mistrust of Science and stuff like that could you say more a little bit more about that point of view well I think that I mean I think Stefano even even said I mean well first of all um this is when a little bit after a few years after um Eisenhower talked about the the power of the military-industrial complex so in a lot of episodes they're criticizing either the military or government or or scientists and I know Stefano said at one point you know these are the people who thought it was a good idea to drop a nuclear bomb awesome yeah but one thing I love about outer limits and also about Twilight Zone and Star Trek as well that's the Triumph right of shows that made me want to be a writer in the first place uh was The Compassion there's a humanistic element and the fact in both of those episodes the alien is not the villain and that's remarkable when you think about it coming off of an entire decade of of monster movies from the 50s where where the alien was the other was the thing to be afraid of and to be suspicious I want our light bulbs our women our water well we we kept the Trope of screaming women but at the same at the same time it was it was three yeah I know but but at the same time in the outer limits humans are more often than not the monster to be feared and I think right and I think in terms of Technology you know television is really taken over in American homes for the first time in the early 60s and Outer Limits Taps into this idea that there's this object in your house now that's delivering beams so I wonder if any of you want to expand on that idea where the control voice is actually taking over your TV well I know I know that when it first happened on first broadcast Joe Stefano told me a story about how uh people wrote angry letters to the TV show saying my TV hasn't worked correctly since that's great and you guys owe me for the repairs yeah but there was but but there was great intimacy to television the fact that it came into everyone's home and it was a common mythology everyone because there were only three networks everyone knew everything that was on and all of the actors it was like an ensemble group of actors who you would see Sally Kellerman in this then you'd see around Star Trek or or Martin Landau you know in Mission Impossible and so forth there was a great I mean it was you know everyone knew who these people were and they would be on they would pop up on every single show so um so it wasn't like movies where he had to go out and pay money to see something there wasn't you didn't have to deliberate you just had to turn it on and there it was and it was presented as this this benign technology right that people it was a piece of furniture that people had in their in their living rooms I mean that was what was so cool about the opening credits it was almost like a a brechtian alienation technique right that makes people aware of the unsettling aspects of this technology that that it's new at the time like people didn't really understand it and with that David tell us why the show could not be called please stand by oh well I wanted to say first of all to what Joanne said bear in mind that these shows this like the the uh the Galaxy being is an episode where the alien is asking questions of the audience like is there a god it's a TV show what's going on oh look out well I guess that's God answering yes it's the tunnel of light yes exactly it's like yeah we've lost control of the theater that's funny okay uh it's a TV show where the characters ask is there a god do you have death in a world where the standard was The Beverly Hillbillies and the cement Pond I mean come on right there's all these seven year old kids watching right yeah well I was one yeah yeah really but to your question about the title remember this was the age of the Cuban Missile Crisis and uh the network turned around and said What's the title of your show again please stand by we can't put that on a TV screen right and so for a while even more even more weird even more weirdly uh the show was briefly called beyond control which kind of gave you an idea where the network heads were and then uh I don't know where the term The Outer Limits first came up I first saw it in the right stuff the book of the right stuff yeah where the jet pile has talked about pushing the outer limits of the envelope maybe that's where they copped it from but please stand by this wouldn't play as a title there was there was a radio show x minus one that had an episode called the I don't know the outer limit yeah yeah but the the Twilight Zone title actually came from the Air Force as well yeah again aeronautical terms because Rod was had been a paratrooper and he was always into airplanes yeah and his brother was the aviation editor of the editor of Aviation weekly so but but again these these shows are really as you said Dave when you compare them things that were like Gilligan's Island Beverly Hillbillies the standard shows you know The Lucy Show I mean these are are really mind-bending shows I mean you know it's a from Twilight Zone to this there's a there's a different voice to these two shows but a lot of really um out there stuff it's a lot for an eight-year-old to absorb yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it was on at 7 30 on Monday nights you had the choice of a game show on on the network on the opposite Network a movie yeah well with a program like this it does kind of run contrary to what advertisers want right because television is supposed to lull you into a sense of complacency make you feel good about things so you go out and consume this show somehow does something different yes yeah I mean I can't imagine the kind of products you would you would properly advertise on the Outer Limits unless it was you know anti-depression medications well yeah funeral homes home brain surgery brain surgery yeah oh man when when were you first exposed to this show I'm your age well there you go yeah by the way that's good this is archeology you're seeing here no I mean I I but to be fair I watched it a little bit later I used to watch it uh with with my we I grew up in Boston I'd watch it with my my brother and it would um follow bowling which was like well first it was Saturday so first week cartoons then bowling and to be like low to sleep and then this would come on rolling to the Outer Limits and that Creature Feature after that so talking about how TV was different during this time um Joanne explain what why we see a spoiler alert at the beginning of Belarus Shield uh Stevens and Stefano wanted that to happen at all and and it's basically to keep you sitting there right it's like it's a teaser it's a teaser that's what it's called yeah essentially most TV shows would open with a minute or two minutes of something really dramatic happening so that people would watch the show and wait through the minute of commercials or whatever yeah ABC uh the only way that they could stamp on the Outer Limits and idea idea to their uh you know table of Suits was it's a monster show and very quickly after they had four episodes done they the network went to Leslie Stevens and Joe Stefano and said well we want to see that monster at the beginning of the show immediately right and in many cases it blows plot twists in in the episode they didn't care as long as you could see that monstrous presence right at the beginning of the show before the titles that please them and that's why we have those teasers and and speaking of the monsters Stefano in the Bible for this show calls the monsters the bear so this Mark do you want to talk about the bear no let Dave talk about it that's fine I want to know what your definition of the bear is I just think it's a perfect description of what those things were but the fascinating thing was when someone was not talked about very often Fred Phillips is the makeup guy and John Chambers also worked on the show and the fact that they were looking for different ways to do aliens where you'd cover the nose you'd do things differently so that it the actor's face was not as recognized there's a very characteristic looking alien to this show and most of those aliens were uh sculpted by a guy named wah Chang yes who uh wah Ming Chang who worked for project unlimited who had just taken home an Academy Award for the time machine in 1960. most of them are was sculptures uh the Belarus Shield guy is a classic watching alien the Galaxy being was sculpted by Charles Schramm because they didn't have a team at the point that they did the pilot they shot it on Twilight Zone also yes he did yes he did yeah and Mark you talked a little bit about the creature effects for that but David go into because you go into a lot of detail in your book about that effect just describe that Galaxy being costume and how they did that effect not to blow it for you all right but the Galaxy being costume you may have noticed in certain shots of this there's a weird flap on the back of his head that's because um William O Douglas Jr son of the Supreme Court Justice who played the monster is wearing a scuba suit backwards with an air tank in it I actually have a photo of Leslie Stevens josephano and and and Douglas in the suit on a stage without the negative reversal photographic effect and he was dragging an oxygen tank behind him on the set and he said when they were giving him Direction on the show Leslie was safe move left move right pantomime Douglas played it as though he was a praying mantis walking on a world that he perceived of being made of glass all right and Douglas would say Leslie Stevens would give him directions and Douglas all Douglas could hear was [Laughter] and then the head piece um uh was the sculpture by Charles Schram uh that they straightened out and they took reportedly they took the uh the uh the eyes out of a crow statue and stuck them on the uh the mask and they negative reverse out really neat I think and is it is with another character they're looking at every single shot in this show those two are not in the frame at the same time because the Galaxy being is a superimposed optical effect you can see it missed the borders occasionally it doesn't matter because they did it in a hurry and nobody had ever also nobody had ever done stuff like this on TV before it was rare when even not even Twilight Zone No had done aliens like this I mean it's it's off on guard when the Galaxy being walks into the camera and it's it's almost like molecules or atoms on the screen yes and he doesn't spend his time doing Monster stuff no no he looks through the binoculars he's looking at the artifacts of this planet yeah as opposed he's a tourist yeah but also one thing one thing to point out that often I think a modern audience misses is back then first of all you couldn't watch a show when you wanted to watch it you watched it when it aired and there was no way to record it you could record out on audio tape I recorded the original Star Trek on real Trail audio tape when I was 10 just in case it never aired again but so you watched it was on you couldn't pause it you couldn't stop it you couldn't go back so it went by very quickly when you were watching it and the TV sets of course were smaller a 19 inch screen was a big screen and uh and and most people had Black and White sets and and so forth yeah yeah and so I mean the NBC was the all-color network and moving into the 60s and Star Trek of course was one of the first great color science fiction shows but uh but it was a very different experience of watching television from what what it is now we're very fortunate right now uh for those of you that have gotten the the DVD or the Blu-ray sets of any of these series because these things were shot on 35 millimeter film you know uh lit and photographed by guys like conright Hall and so when we get around to remastering them for DVD they look better now than they've ever looked in history because they didn't look that good on your 626 scan line TV in 1963. oh and this and the seams you see on the special effects on a big screen like this or on Blu-ray you would not have seen on TV with the resolution TVs at that time so be forgiving it was it was more real than than it is now watching on Blu-ray yes so an incredible experiment the first season Stefano and Leslie Stevens are somehow battle the network and are able to do incredible things like the episodes we saw tonight Joanne what happened well I think they just kept pushing the envelope and ABC kept telling them make it more mainstream make it more mainstream and I think they just didn't think it would happen you know but uh they they didn't get canceled what were they um Leslie Stevens said a bleeder like their ratings were like just enough to stay on on the air um but they moved it to from Monday nights at 7 30 to Saturday nights at 7 30 up against Jackie Gleason which was then the most popular popular show on television and I guess flipper was the other one and so that took the kids away so they knew then they knew the writing was on the wall and I think Stefano quit first and then Leslie Stevens followed soon after the thing that kills me about that time switching that cancellation is that for a very brief period of time they said let's move the outer limits to Wednesday nights at 7 30 and Stefano said if they'd done that I would would have produced One More season of this show yeah I wish I could have that season yeah yeah yeah yeah right I think he knew what they were doing when they moved him to Saturday nights and Leslie Leslie you may notice that in the show Leslie only directed the shows that he wrote himself he was a complete auteur right and he only directed the shows that he wrote himself and we would have four more at least of those weird episodes and also I think one of the reasons why uh the original Outer Limits is less known than Twilight Zone in Star Trek is because there are a few fewer episodes and back then going into syndication if you only how many episodes are there total there are 49 right and those were the days when you needed three seasons worth of shows to make a syndication package starts indicators E4 yeah yeah yeah but but the outer limits was in strangely enough it was not only a bleeder it was not only underseen but it was in syndication continuously from the day it was canceled so that may speak something for the quality of the show at least I hope it does yeah it was a perennial in La for decades he was on KT TV yeah constantly um I just wanted to go back to a second to before the cancellation but what happens at the end of season one and talk about season two a little bit season one some of you may have been here for our lovely screening of the forms of things unknown back a few years ago yeah that was something about a decade eight or nine years ago yes yeah and uh that show aired and uh the network went what yeah and we would have shown that tonight except we did show that before because that is one of the most incredible pieces of TV ever made it is your your film education is incomplete if you have not seen the forms of things I've known and and uh but this pairing you know like wine pairings and stuff this is a particularly good selection of two shows and what happened uh between the two seasons was Steven sustafano got muscled out uh the network suits took over the show they put in one they put in a guy as a producer named Ben Brady whose most biggest credit most biggest whose biggest credit was producing Perry Mason there's nothing wrong with Ben Brady he's a swell human being and everything but he's a meat and potatoes television producer who was one of the guys who actually approved the outer limits for broadcast in the first place and now instead of being a network so he's put in the same position Leslie and Joe are in where the Network's coming to him and said you can't have that much money you can't do where are the monsters you can't and with less money per show and then they slash off a shooting day and it's like the show just strangled on its own blood but lives on forever in reruns and then now on Blu-ray we've got we've got 49 of them well well also it speaks to the fact that the creators of these shows the people making these shows had a different objective than the network ad and Rod certainly encountered that and certainly the you know Leslie Stevens and Joe Stefano did which is they're trying to be artiste they're trying to create uh stories that are meaningful and powerful and fresh and truthful the network is they don't want to make waves they want to make sausage essentially you know and so the Beverly Hillbillies the you know all these comedies they're churning out those are safe shows even something like Perry Mason is a safe show because you see in one and you've seen every Perry Mason basically you know and uh so to have something this Renegade for the to the network Executives it's like trying to hold on to a snake that's writhing you know and uh and so there is so that it was inevitable that the executives would be bumping heads with uh you know what's strange though is they must have known somehow what they were getting right Stefano had written the screenplay for psycho Stevens had done private property which was talked about as you know the new the American New Wave it couldn't get a distributor because it was so risque so so it's hard to believe they didn't have any idea what they were doing in a sense they had exactly an idea of what they were doing Leslie is the guy who put Joe forth as the producer of the show it's Leslie's show he created it he's producing it but we need a producer and they have a big meeting and here's Leslie and Joe and Leslie goes Joe did psycho ABC goes ah and they thought they understood the show at that point and also let's just say the ABC was struggling in dying and hoping for a third of three yeah and to try to survive and try to reach a younger demographic they would be willing to take a chance on that yeah but I can't imagine by the time the belrose shield uh airs you know late later in the first season that they were happy with what they were getting is it getting a monster show where you're basically getting a Shakespeare play as a monster show yeah and and you know the the suits have all got to be looking at each other at that point and going another one of these Joe really I mean the language is is very theatrical uh even for you know television of that area remember what you were up against you're up against gun smoke you know you're up against predictable thing and and I don't know how many of you have noticed this or not but the way that this show is shot is unique for its time period and very short-lived because very quickly in order to churn the sausage out faster they learn to keep everything in the middle of the screen light it as brightly as possible they wouldn't go for Dutch angles you know they wouldn't go for anything avant-garde and TV assumed that uniform look well yeah that it had for the rest of the 60s well also also a great way a great way of comparing is like compare a great episode of Twilight Zone with the Night Gallery where everything is flat and looks like I mean The Knife Gallery has many great episodes too but it stylistically it's night and day it looks like it was shot on the same set of two stages when you say Sausage Factory that's what really shows on Night galways it's Universal cranking out product yeah and on the new Outer Limits remember that yeah which are pretty forgettable anytime they try to bring back our limits to Twilight's one of these shows they're they're missing the key ingredient which is I think number one the humanism that was in the original episodes yes and number two the creators that had the heart to bring those originally to air they're just not here and no the makers of the revived Outer Limits series which I wrote in episode four yes and I don't watch it yeah yeah it's really bad they took uh when Leslie Stevens died uh the producers of that new improved Outer Limits show took Leslie's name off the credits four weeks after he died the guy who created the show yeah that's yeah that's typical that should tell you everything that you need to know well you know also in order to write something meaningful you have to have something you want to say and in order to have characters who come live you have to know how to write characters and in order to tell the story you have to know how to structure a story in order to say something that hasn't been said before to create something new these are it's harder to make something great than to make something you know and so I think there's a reason for that but but but more than that I think that and now now with josephano and um and Leslie were they in World War II I don't know their their history specifically worthy in the war Leslie's wasn't Leslie in the Navy yes he served Air Force yeah uh Joe did not serve he got an affirm enough but the point is that Sterling and Roddenberry and all these guys had gone through World War II they had actually experienced something yes and I think that that so their humanism came from a personal experience of life and death and so I think that also made the work uh more profound and deeper I think that and you know the medium was still new and there was still seen with as having Limitless potential as a a medium for art yeah it didn't really end up fulfilling before we call it a night let's take a couple of questions from the audience yeah we're gonna we're gonna take just a couple of microphones are coming let's take one in the back and then we'll take one a little closer to the front so gentlemen in the back with his hand way up there wait for the microphone hmm don't throw the mic yeah we don't know much about United Artist television as we do about desilu and Universal but well Joe and Leslie were making these wonderful shows who would United Artists was fighting for them against ABC which did not quite understand what these two men were trying to do and uh did the regime at United Artists continue uh for both seasons no they replaced uh Executives at United Artists the way you go through a bag of potato chips but they but they did have Champions on the inside of the organization one of them was a guy named Richard dorso who was the guy who approved the chauffeur Network originally and another one was a guy who literally almost literally single-handedly gave the green light to the Outer Limits who was a producer who worked into the 80s uh named Dan Melnick and the name Robert Justman we know from Star Trek the Original Series uh what do you know about Robert justman's Recollections and anecdotes about working with the Joe well I'll tell you I'll tell you a story about Robert Justman and Sunday Stevens can verify this because she works as an ad in film and it's like interviewing all the people that worked on the television show it's like go to the ads yeah folks they know everything about what happened and that was Bobby Justman that was Lee katzen and that was Claude Binion Jr who were the top three 80s who worked on this show because they were there like Bill fraker behind the camera they were there for Every Beat of every day of every show and they were there to solve the problems for no money at the last minute you know and well well if we cut out a piece of cardboard and put it like that'll work you know because you know you've got to gotta get it in the can and Bobby Justman was not only one of the most delightful interviews I ever I ever had for the the period you know I'm from Star Trek right yeah and and but uh funny funny as hell and I'll tell you something um it doesn't matter whether you're a Star Trek fan or not you don't have to be because I'm not really one but he co-wrote a book with herb solo about making Star Trek it's called yeah the behind the scenes story or something like that and it's a wonderful Star Trek book because it's the third of it is about the outer limits yeah that's great let's take one more from the other oh we got somebody way in the back okay this will be our last question so make it a good one hello I'd like to say hello to everyone my name is Marilyn Stefano and Joe my husband thank you so much for being such good fans of the outer limits it's been a great experience and it's wonderful to know that people still love it and learn from it and Joe would be very proud I didn't see you back there [Applause] and it's it's an honor to once again um show his work on the big screen here uh and we'll be showing it for decades to come thank you everyone for being here and thank you Marilyn and for this Stevens Family for being here uh it means a lot to have you with us to honor 60 years of an incredible TV show and unlike a lot of shows that are on now we'll still be talking about outer limits in 60 years yeah yeah yeah you bet we'll be back thank you thanks guys