The pilot episode for Rod Serling’s seminal sci-fi TV series “The Twilight Zone” was called “Where Is Everybody?,” and it aired on October 2, 1959.
It was directed by Robert Stevens and, like most episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” was written by Serling himself.
This was, according to an article in LitHub, part of his contract; Serling was to write at least 80% of the show’s scripts.
For the remaining 20%, Serling solicited scripts from just about every writer in Hollywood and reportedly received maybe 14,000 spec scripts in less than a week.
That seems high to this author’s eye, but given the number of starving writers living in L.A., it could very well be plausible.It was clear that soliciting scripts from the writers’ world at large wasn’t practical; there’s no way Serling could read all those stories in any kind of timely fashion.
Serling put the scripts aside and decided to get more intimate with it.
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