“That’s a real good thing you did there, Anthony! A real good thing!!”
It’s a big night for sci-fi nostalgia Wednesday night on UPN. The Tholians return to the Star Trek universe for the first time in four decades on “Enterprise,” and Anthony Fremont – of “Wish it into the cornfield, Anthony!” fame – returns to the “Twilight Zone.”
“It’s Still A Good Life,” the new “Twlight Zone” episode that airs Wednesday at 9 p.m. on UPN, is the sequel to the Nov. 3, 1961, “Zone” episode “It’s A Good Life,” which still has to rank as one of the most disturbing half-hours of television ever broadcast.
Longtime Coaxial spy “Gaspode” has scored us an exclusive interview with Bill Mumy, who stars as Anthony in both original and sequel:
Longtime Coaxial spy “Gaspode” has scored us an exclusive interview with Bill Mumy, who stars as Anthony in both original and sequel:
Talk to any fan of the original Twilight Zone, and certain episodes will inevitably get mentioned. There's Burgess Meredith as the mild-mannered bank clerk who breaks his glasses in 'Time Enough at Last.' There's 'The Shelter' and 'The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,' which best exemplified the perils of living in the Cold War era. And of course there's 'It's A Good Life,' starring Bill Mumy as a seemingly innocent-looking boy with fearsome mental powers that allow him to control and terrorize his small-town Ohio community. Based on the 1953 short story by Jerome Bixby (which was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in '69), 'It's A Good Life' was subsequently adapted by Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, and remains one of the show's classic episodes.
There have been follow-ups over the years, including a feature-length script that Serling had written in the '70s, which was never produced. And in 1983, the Steven Spielberg-produced Twilight Zone: The Movie featured a remake of 'It's A Good Life,' directed by Joe Dante, and starring Jeremy Licht as Anthony Fremont (Mumy himself makes a small cameo early in the segment). And on Wednesday, February 19th, UPN's new Twilight Zone returns to the town of Peaksville with 'It's Still A Good Life.' The episode, which is written by executive producer Ira Steven Behr sees Mumy reprising his role as an adult Anthony Fremont, with actress Cloris Leachman returning as his mother, and Mumy's real life daughter Liliana playing Anthony's young daughter Audrey, who possesses her dad's psychic abilities- and then some. On the eve of the show's broadcast, an enthusiastic Mumy talks about the original episode, its sequel, and working with his own daughter…]
I'm sure when you were working on the original 'It's A Good Life' back in the sixties, you had no idea that it would one day be regarded as a classic episode of television. When did you first realize that might be true?
That's a hard question to answer, because as a kid, working on a set, all I ever did was believe the situation and know those lines and deliver them. Whether it was Hitchcock or Disney or Rod Serling, I just played the game of cops and robbers so to speak, within the arenas that they created. I don't think the thought of importance or 'classic' ever entered my head. Certainly when we were making Lost in Space, no one ever paused to say, 'I wonder if people will want to talk to us about this 30 years from now.' It was never that kind of a mindset, although now that I'm thinking about it, I do have very clear memories of certain shows. If you asked me about a Wagon Train or Have Gun, Will Travel or any number of television shows that I made around the same time as some of the more well-remembered ones, I don't really have very clear visions of many of them. So I don't know why I have clear memories of this. Whatever the reason, those three Twilight Zones I did (and certainly 'It's A Good Life' is at the top of those three), have stayed very precious moments to me, with positive memories of the way they were filmed. I'm very proud of the fact that they've stood the test of time.
When you heard that a new Twilight Zone series was in the works, did you get together with your old friend [executive producer] Ira Behr to talk about it?
Absolutely. I had an interesting dinner one evening very early on when Ira had just finished the Jason Alexander show, which didn't fly the way he'd hoped it would, and he was offered two other shows and one of them was The Twilight Zone. He and I were discussing which show he should choose, and I said, 'How can you not steer the fate of The Twilight Zone? If you're in the position to actually be a show runner and executive producer on the show, you've got to do it, because you have to protect it!' Personally speaking, I've never been a big fan of the concept of returning to a new television series called The Twilight Zone without Rod Serling. It would be like doing Babylon 5 without Joe Straczynski. I always felt that if they were going to do another Twilight Zone, it should be called 'Return to The Twilight Zone,' or 'Tales from The Twilight Zone.' To simply go back to The Twilight Zone, which was such a personal creative stylized project by a single visionary, I was not a huge fan of doing that because I didn't think it was fair to him. Which is why when Ira was given the opportunity to steer the show, I wholeheartedly endorsed that he did it because I knew he was a huge fan of the original show, and knew he would do his best to steer it in the proper course. So I wouldn't say he took my advice, but he ended up making that choice.
Ira and I had a dinner one night with Mike McGreevey - Mike and I played brothers in three Disney movies when we were little kids, and Mike, who's also a writer, is friends with Ira as well. We just kicked around ideas off the top of our heads as we ate, and I think it was me who said, 'Wouldn't it be cool not to do a remake, but to see what would happen in Peaksville Ohio 40 years later?' We got all excited about it, but I just forgot about it after we kicked it around that night. And then Ira called me at the end of the year and said they wanted to do it, and they wanted to do it for February sweeps week, so they wanted to do it right away. That's when I got a little proprietary in a way, because- and I do mean this seriously- I don't care if UPN or New Line decides they want to do something right away. I'm only going to do it if I feel it's really good, and I didn't know if there was time to get it to that place in time for February sweeps week. I want The Twilight Zone to get good ratings and all that stuff, but I'm not going to return to Anthony Fremont in a rush if I don't think the script is there. I was very flattered that Ira wouldn't have done it without me, meaning that if I didn't think it was a good idea, he would have canned it. He also wouldn't have cast somebody else as Anthony Fremont, and I appreciated that.
But there was also the scary part of it: there were so many people, like Peter David, people I respect, who were saying, 'Wow man, you can write the book now; this is the perfect ending! Your life has come full circle, and now you're seeing through your daughter carrying on!' and I'm thinking, 'Dude, I'm not dead! I'm not ready to close out the chapter called 'Bill Mumy' because I'm returning to this character.' It is a dramatic closer if you want it to be, but I have no desire to see the saga end. I'm not ready to go to the cornfield!
What was your daughter's reaction to the idea of appearing with you in the sequel?
She's very prolifically working. She's working all the time now. She recently co-starred in The Santa Clause 2, which came out at the end of the year, and she's been going nonstop since then. I think she's on a really good path, but she's very happy to doing it. She's very similar to the way I was when I was her age: going from a comedy to a drama to a SF project to animation, and it's all great for her, because she's working on these different characters and she's really gifted. I think you'll be incredibly impressed with her performance. She's also a recurring character on the an sitcom My Wife and Kids, where she plays this precocious little smart-ass comedic character, but she's also done these dramatic things where she has to break down and cry and she's really good. In this episode, she runs the gamut of emotions. Her character, Audrey Fremont was a very hard role, and I was blown away by her performance when you see her scenes with Cloris.
The episode is a big departure from the kind of material that UPN has been doing, isn't it?
I think everybody was aware, certainly after the first day, that this was a much different episode than the ones they've been filming. If you've seen the series, it's leaning towards a very young vibe, and now you've got Cloris Leachman and Bill Mumy starring in an episode, so it isn't a young hip urban hip-hoppy kind of show. It's a dark, quiet story with an older actors and a little girl, and the network was a little spooked about that, because they've set a course for The Twilight Zone, and this was breaking the tone of it. But from everything I've heard from the high powers there, they think this is by far the best one they've ever done and they're thrilled about it.
So wouldn't this be an opportunity to capture a different demographic?
After 45 years as an actor, I'm not the kind of guy who sends out e-mails and phone calls to say, 'Hey, watch me on TV!' but I think this is 23 minutes of great TV, and I hope people will watch it. Certainly I agree with you about bringing in a new audience. To me, it's very sad that the modern networks, I don't care if it's cable or ABC or NBC or CBS or Fox, everybody wants unbelievably hot babes and hot guys in all of these roles. And if you notice in these sitcoms and everything else, all the supporting characters, the so-called 'quirky neighbors' that would have been the weird-looking guys on the Bob Newhart Show or whatever, they're all models. They're all gorgeous, but The Twilight Zone was the epitome of a character actor's television series. Whether it was Mickey Rooney or Burgess Meredith or Cloris Leachman, the casts of those shows were phenomenally gifted quirky actors. You also had actors like Robert Redford or Elizabeth Montgomery, so you had beautiful handsome people in those shows, but the bulk of the characters were interesting faces, with unbelievably talented actors behind those faces, and you don't see that anymore because of network mandates. It's very sad, because there are still thousands of very talented character actors today who can't get work. That's not to say these handsome Ken and Barbies can't act because they can, but it's just such a difference.
Does it feel a bit strange to look back at your work as a child actor and think about your daughter now in a similar situation career-wise?
Looking at it from the removed perspective like that, yes, of course you see it coming full circle, and because of my experiences and the way my parents handled it, I've been given a road map that I know is the right one. But everybody has their own destiny to pursue, and who knows what Liliana is going to be like when she's my age? We're certainly making what we believe to be the right decisions for her as a person, not as a career. She was just offered two feature films, both from big studios, both for 12 week's worth, both with huge stars: Steve Martin in one, John Travolta in another. Quite honestly, one of them is a much more interesting character, and probably a better show from an actor's perspective, but the one that is a better show from an actor's perspective would have taken her (and my wife) out of state for three months. The other one shoots in town, so there wasn't a nano-second before the decision of 'We'll go with the one that shoots in town.'
It sounds as though your own career is moving away from acting these days, and more behind the camera.
Well, it isn't necessarily 100% by choice. First of all, I can say this much: for more than 25 years, I've been very picky about what I'll do as an on-camera actor. I'm pretty proud of my catalogue so to speak, and I don't need the money. I'm not a rich guy, but I'm not poor, and I don't need to compromise my artistic values for money at this point in my life. And I don't want to do things that I'm embarrassed by, or that go against my moral grain. Over the years, I've been offered many bad B movies where girls get stabbed and things like that, but I've never wanted to do it, and I'm glad I've said no to those projects. But if the process of getting on camera was easier, like Joe Straczynski did on Babylon 5, if someone were to say, 'Hey, I'd like to see Bill Mumy for this!' then I'm available. But the process of getting these jobs has become really humiliating to anybody who's been in it from the old school days. It's not a very nice industry anymore. The ageism in it is rampant and insulting, and the casting process has added several degrading steps for actors, and I'm just not going to play that game.
Veronica Cartwright shared this with me, and she's a brilliant actress, who's been in the game for almost 50 years. I don't need to give you Veronica Cartwright's résumé, because she's an excellent talent, and she was reading for regular guest shots on episodics, where the money is ridiculous. You literally make a hundredth of what the regulars on the show are making, which I also find difficult. For instance, I know that my best friend Miguel Ferrer is making huge money every week on his television series, Crossing Jordan, and if I were to get a lead guest shot opposite him on that show, I would be making much less. But in order to get an episodic nowadays, just a guest shot, there's now a new first round of casting. Instead of going in and reading for the casting director, you go in and you're put on video camera with the casting director's assistant. And then that is sent to the casting director, and then the casting director, alone with her monitor and VCR, will decide if she wants to send you on to the director. Well, if you're Veronica Cartwright, or if you're me, I don't want to go in and audition with someone who has not a clue as to any of my history and be on videotape to see if I'm going to be judged good enough for the casting director to send me on. Forget it; I'd rather stay home.
The other thing I find that clutters vision is, if you look at any TV series that's on the air, you'll see in the opening credits anywhere from eight to 14-15 producers on it. Well, if you have an executive producer, or maybe there's two executives producers who own the show, and they have a very strong talented line producer, that's it. That keeps the executive producer's vision in order, and that line producer keeps the crew and everything else in synch and running. A perfect example of that was Babylon 5, where you had Doug Netter and Joe Straczynski, and you had John Copeland, who was a hell of a good producer. You had 110 episodes where there were never forced calls on actors, and there were never budgetary problems where things were spiraling out of control. That was a series that never worked after 9:00 at night ever, and even when the fifth season came along and the budget was slashed so we had to shoot in a day's less time than you'd done 80 or whatever they were, it still managed to stay on schedule. But when you look at these shows with a dozen producers, each one of those people needs to justify their paycheck. They have to justify why they're a producer, so they get the script and each of them has some notes. It doesn't matter if they're a visionary or if they're a writer, or if they have anything to contribute, they're going to anyway. So now you get notes from 14 producers, and you get notes from the network. You get notes from the production company, and by the time it's done, it's like 15-20 people making a salad: you've got blue cheese dressing over here, and oil and vinegar over there; it just becomes a mess. And I think that's a lot of the problem with modern television.
Having said all that, are you still reasonably happy with life in general?
I accept the fact that I've had a wonderful, blessed life, and continue to have one. I hope that we all live in peace and prosperity, instead of radioactive dirt bombs, but I made a choice 15 years ago, which was to not sell my house and move into some big gated bitchin' house. That would mean every month of my life, I was forced to compromise and scramble and prostitute myself just to pay my mortgage. Instead, I added on to my house and stayed where I was, and that's meant the world to me. It meant that if I'm cranky or recalcitrant or not in the mood, I can stay home and play the guitar and not worry about anything. What a difference that makes in how you approach your work!
9 p.m. Wenesday. UPN.
