I think we’re all familiar with the tragedy that occurred during the filming of the Twilight Zone movie, the footage of which obviously does not appear in the released film.
Since this apparently would have caused a change in the script, what was supposed to be the outcome of that segment in the original script?
Well, I don’t know what changes were required, but I don’t see why the outcome should be effected. Clearly the scene with the guy carrying a kid through water while being chased by a helicopter was removed, but it seems like that could have simply been scooped out of the script.
Well, “The Twilight Zone” was a pretty lame movie, and the segment in which Vic Morrow was killed was the worst of the four, in numerous way. If you haven’t seen it, Vic Morrow plays an Archie Bunkerish bigot who’s always shooting his mouth off about how much he hates the blacks, the Jews, and pretty much everybody else. At one point, he nearly gets in a fight with a black guy at a bar. In my opinion, if that black guy had just given Vic a good butt whipping, THAT would have been justice.
Instead, Vic is magically transported to different times and place in world history, where he gets a taste of what it was like to be a black man in the south, what it was like to be Vietnamese in the 60s, and what it was like to be a German Jew in the 1930s. The segment ends with Morrow in a boxcar headed for Auschwitz.
You end up thinking, what’s the moral here??? That bigots should be rounded up, sent to concentration camps and put to death?? Wasn’t this character at least entitled to a chance at redemption, or a chance at learning a lesson?
Now, it’s POSSIBLE that there would have been another ending, had Morrow survuved to film it. I can only hope so! (Not that the segment or the movie would have been much better.)
The only semi-clever thing in that segment (directed by John Landis) was the joking reference to Doug Niedermeyer, from Landis’ “Animal House.” You may recall that, the closing scenes of “Animal House” stated that Niedermeyer was killed in Viet Nam by his own troops; well, in “Twilight Zone,” some American GIs are heard saying, “Man, I wish we hadn’t killed Lieutenant Niedermeyer.”
[[Well, “The Twilight Zone” was a pretty lame movie, and the segment in which Vic Morrow was killed was the worst of the four, in numerous way. If you haven’t seen it, Vic Morrow plays an Archie Bunkerish bigot who’s always shooting his mouth off about how much he hates the blacks, the Jews, and pretty much everybody else. At one point, he nearly gets in a fight with a black guy at a bar. In my opinion, if that black guy had just given Vic a good butt whipping, THAT would have been justice.
Instead, Vic is magically transported to different times and place in world history, where he gets a taste of what it was like to be a black man in the south, what it was like to be Vietnamese in the 60s, and what it was like to be a German Jew in the 1930s. The segment ends with Morrow in a boxcar headed for Auschwitz.
You end up thinking, what’s the moral here??? That bigots should be rounded up, sent to concentration camps and put to death?? Wasn’t this character at least entitled to a chance at redemption, or a chance at learning a lesson?]]
Why should he? He’s screwed, just like all those people he had nothing but contempt for. How often did that happen in “The Twighlight Zone,” anyway? The show certainly didn’t always have a happy ending. I see no reason for such a repugnant character to get a chance at redemption (or, more accurately, I see no reason why his getting one could possibly have improved the movie – not that it couldn’t otherwise have been improved).
Morals (of stories) tend to be for children.
Actually, morals in stories are really for uptight parents who feel that this sort of activity should “improve” their offspring.
The only story I ever saw with an appropriate moral was Norton Juster’s The Dot and the Line.
Tom~
BigIron… are you kidding me???
The Vic Morrow character was a jerk, but what did his crimes amount to? Answer: a lot of hot air. He shoots his mouth off about the blacks and the Jews, but he never DOES anything. He doesn’t kill anybody, he doesn’t vandalize anybody’s house, he doesn’t burn a cross on anyone’s lawn… indeed, given an opportunity to beat up a black man, he backs down.
So… the powers that be (God? The Eumenides? The fates?) decide that Vic should be sent to the ovens at Auschwitz for talking a lot of trash???
I grant you, not every episode of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” had a happy ending, but most of the time, something resembling justice was done. The same was true of the old E.C. horror comics that inspired the series. There are a mere handful of episodes where innocents suffer some cosmic injustice (remember poor Burgess Meredith, the sole survivor of a nuclear war? All he wanted to do was spend his remaining few years reading books, and, whoops! He broke his reading glasses). In the great majority of the Zone shows, people got what they deserved, for good and for ill. Occasionally this made the show a bit simplistic, moralistic and didactic, I grant you.
One of the most glaring weaknesses of the Morrow episode is that, in the scenes we’re shown, Morrow NEVER comprehends what’s happening to him. He doesn’t KNOW that he’s a black man in the South. He doesn’t KNOW that he’s Vietnamese. He doesn’t KNOW he’s a Jew! Perhaps he died before he could film scenes that would show his growing awareness of what was happening to him. Perhaps some crucial linking scenes or a different ending WOULD have been filmed, if he hadn’t been decapitated by that helicopter.
As I said, the movie itself was a mess, and even a different ending to that segment wouldn’t have made it much better. But I SUSPECT (rightly or wrongly) that, had Morrow survived, there would have been a different ending, one in which he emerged from his experience a sadder-but-wiser man.
Alright, chuckleheads, y’all can argue and speculate all you want; I’ll actually answer the question. Quoting from pp. 66-67 of “Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego and the ‘Twilight Zone’ Case,” by Stephen Farber and Marc Green:
"Landis submitted the script of his segment to the Warner Bros. studio executives for his approval . . . [Lucy] Fisher and [Terry] Semel explained their dissatisfaction with Landis’ story [which ended just as it appears in the film]; they felt it needed more ‘humanity.’ The character of Bill was such an unredeemed bigot that they feared audiences would recoil from him. As Landis put it, ‘They were so concerned that I painted Bill so harshly, his character was so ugly. They said he was so unsympathetic, why watch the episode? What was I trying to prove?’
Landis felt their criticism might have some validity. . .’[Is there] a way of literally having Bill redeemed, if he could not just learn an object from his experience, but act upon it. And it was out of that meeting that we came up with the idea of an additional scene to try to soften Bill’s character.’
Landis lit upon the notion that when Bill was fleeing the hostile soldiers in Vietnam, he might come upon two Vietnameses orphans and rescue them from an air attack; the sight of the helpless children would rekindle the last flickering embers of humanity in his hate ravaged soul. Besides, the scene would allow Landis to blow up the entire village and thus end his segment on a grand apocalyptic note. . .There was some concern about the added cost of this new scene, but in the end Semel and Fisher happily approved the revised screenplay.
In some stories it might make sense to have a ‘sympathetic’ protagonist. But Landis’ segment of Twilight Zone is the tale of a bigot who gets his comeuppance. It’s a simple parable with an ironic twist. What was added by the attempt to humanize the character? Rod Serling would never have inserted the heart-tugging scene with the orphans; he would have taken the story to its logical, sardonic conclusion."
So, yes, the segment would originally have ended differently, apparently. I’m not sure how that would have resulted in resequencing of the events as they did appear on screen.
But wasn’t this story loosely based on an old b&w tv episode where the bigot G.I. ‘becomes’ a Japanese soldier ordered to carry out a lethal assault on some American sitting ducks?
I’m having a hard time remember how that episode ended. I think the bigot returned to his own body a wiser man.
Peace.
In the episode described above, Dean Stockwell played the main character. He wasn’t as much a bigot as much as just a young officer who got a bit too carried away with defeating the enemy.
He then found himself on the wrong side of the battle line and as a Japanese officer.
In the end, he realizes that extreme hatred on either side of war is of no use.
At least that’s how I interpeted it.
[[BigIron… are you kidding me???]]
Not in the slightest, Astorian.
[[The Vic Morrow character was a jerk, but what did his crimes amount to? Answer: a lot of hot air. He shoots his mouth off about the blacks and the Jews, but he never DOES anything. He doesn’t kill anybody, he doesn’t vandalize anybody’s house, he doesn’t burn a cross on anyone’s lawn… indeed, given an opportunity to beat up a black man, he backs down.
So… the powers that be (God? The Eumenides? The fates?) decide that Vic should be sent to the ovens at Auschwitz for talking a lot of trash??? ]]
Why not? It’s just one of those cornball horrific ironies that were such a staple for the TV show, not an attempt at ultimate justice.
[[I grant you, not every episode of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” had a happy ending, but most of the time, something resembling justice was done.]]
It’s extreme, but it “resembles” justice as much as many of those shows did. You said he deserved to be beaten to a pulp – how much further is it to just kill him?
[[One of the most glaring weaknesses of the Morrow episode is that, in the scenes we’re shown, Morrow NEVER comprehends what’s happening to him. He doesn’t KNOW that he’s a black man in the South. He doesn’t KNOW that he’s Vietnamese. He doesn’t KNOW he’s a Jew!]]
You sure? I can’t remember, and I ain’t renting it to make sure. 