"My name is Talky Tina..."

Today was an interesting day. We had temperature changes, room changes, a conference call, and even got to be video-stars ourselves! It was a good idea to video-tape our call with Earl Hamner. As Dr. Snoeyink said, it was quite a historic event! I mentioned to my parents that we spoke with Mr. Hamner and they didn't believe me. It's a pretty neat thing that we got to talk to someone who played an integral role with the production of The Twilight Zone for such a long time. I appreciated hearing Hamner's personal viewpoints of his own episodes, like with You Drive, where I saw the story as a "crossroads-decisions-character-revealing" moral, Hamner really just meant the car to represent a conscience. He also informed us that most of his stories are based on real events (ex. You Drive was written after he read a story of a hit-and-run accident; The Art of the Miniature had roots in his experience with his bonsai trees and a pool boy). I'm not much of a writer myself. I especially can't see ever wanting to write a story or screenplay just for fun, as Hamner does, so it was interesting to hear where he gets his inspiration. I don't feel like I'm a particularly creative person, but I'm always glad to get insights from people who are!


As for the episodes we watched (Living Doll, The After Hours, and An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge), my personal favorite was Living Doll. I actually enjoyed Talky Tina, as strange as that may be. Her sayings were funny and her role in the story was that of Christie's protector. Serling also had good commentary at the end. It was awesome to see that he thought children should be protected, from both broken marriages and verbally-abusive [step-]parents. In my mind, I never associate "divorce" and "step-parenting" with the fifties and sixties. I've always thought of those things as more recent occurrences. But clearly my thinking is wrong. No marriage is trouble-free; today it's just more common for problems to be publicized and unions to be broken. Although the episode was sad, it was intriguing to see a blended family portrayed on television in the fifties. I just didn't realize that was "tele-visable" (it was probably more accepted because it was a TZ episode...that whole "other dimension" bit I guess).