Day: January 25, 2003

Who would ever have thought that 42 years after filming “It’s a Good Life”, a “classic” episode of the original “The Twilight Zone” television series, that I’d return to the role of “Anthony Fremont” the “monster” with almost limitless mental powers in a brand new episode of “The Twilight Zone”, once again teamed with Cloris Leachman and adding to the mix, my 8 year old daughter Liliana Mumy?! WOW!

When this project, “It’s Still A Good Life” was initially discussed by me and the executive producer of the series, Ira Behr, I was really excited about the possibility of playing Anthony again. Some characters have a way of “staying” with you and Anthony certainly has been one. Honestly, I loved kicking the concept around with Ira, but I didn’t really think it would happen. Then, I got the call. “They want to do it.”

I got nervous. It could be real. Making a sequel to something that is considered a classic, that was named by TV Guide as one of the best 100 television shows ever made is challenging. There are sequels… “Godfather 2” and there are sequels, “Exorcist 2″… I started to worry.

I wrote outlines and submitted them to Ira. He wrote an outline and gave it to me. I liked his direction a lot. I wrote notes tweaking his outline.

He and I agreed on one thing: We wouldn’t do it unless we both felt the script was something we believed Rod Serling would have given the thumbs up to.

Ira generously invited me into the writer’s room to “break” the story. We spent a morning and an afternoon fine tuning it together and then Ira wrote the teleplay. I thought it was great. The very first draft of it. It was all there. He’d captured the characters perfectly, they way Rod Serling had written their dialogue in the original. Their voices felt true.

And… amazingly, the wonderful part of Anthony’s daughter, Audrey, (originally “Amy” but had to be changed for legal clearance reasons) was created and written for my own daughter Liliana! What an amazing opportunity! To return to one of my favorite all time characters and to be able to co-star opposite Liliana, who’s almost the exact same age I was when I originally played Anthony… it felt great. Ira and I both strongly agreed we HAD to get Cloris Leachman to reprise her role as my mother. Not a problem. Cloris loved the idea and came on board.

The deals were made and off we went to Vancouver, Canada where the series is filmed. It’s a great city. Liliana and my wife Eileen were there for over a month last year at this time filming “The Santa Clause 2”, they knew the town well and had made good friends there. We stayed in a nice two bedroom suite at the same hotel they had been in.

Wardrobe fittings…finding the right look for this “monster” Anthony Fremont well quickly. We were all on the same page. The sets and locations looked perfect. The mood and tone was right. Table read of the script… wow… Liliana’s so natural, so good! Cloris…searching for it… always finding it. It took me a few scenes to connect with the monster, but… there he was. Man… he’s a scary guy. He was scary when I was seven years old, but he was also a cute little freckly faced boy then. He’s not a cute kid anymore.

Imagine if you can the “tone” of Peaksville, Ohio as it was in the original episode. No electricity… Running out of supplies… the despair of knowing this monster could read your every thought and if he didn’t like what he picked up on… you could be sent away, erased and vanished to a place known only as “the cornfield”… or worse. You could be transformed into something horrible and kept here. Now imagine it’s 40 years later… things have not gotten any better.

It’s a dark tale to say the least.

Normally they film an episode of the Twilight Zone in 4 days. We were alloted 5. Most days I worked 15 hours. Everyone on the crew knew they were working on a sequel to something the world called “classic” and the lighting and the coverage was special for this.

The entire experience was special. Everyone treated us all like royalty. I was allowed quite a bit of creative input on this project, and for that I’ll always be grateful. I don’t know how objective I can be at this point. We wrapped it day before yesterday. I haven’t seen it edited together yet. But, I believe it’s going to be a really strong show. A good television show. A real good television show.

I don’t do a lot of on camera acting these days. I feel like I did some of my best work on this show. I hope you’ll check it out.

“IT’S STILL A GOOD LIFE” WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19TH 2003. “THE TWILIGHT ZONE” UPN… 9 PM.

Thanks.

Stay out of the cornfield.

Peace,