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Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you along with March's decree. Mark, I didn't know that you were such an accomplished singer.
Just for you, George. That's the only time when when you and Tom came to me and said we want our song for Christmas. I chose the Great Classic by Tom Larra and it was great fun to do. But but most of my time I'm writing and producing and directing, as you know, and it's really fun. You know, it's funny.
It's so wonderful that my own studio, full of all these spaceship props and all these things, all these things, and my fans from you know, have basically financed me four million dollars to date, and I'm raising another twenty million to make the five pilots we're going to be making. So between cloud funding and selling investment shares, it's gone wonderfully. I mean, people really want to see positive, hopeful future stories, you know, stories that say we can reach a crossbound
he's embarrassed, a world worth living in. And you know, when you talk about Rod Stirling, Rod was not a fatalist. He was he was he loved humanity. He had hope for humanity. The darker episodes of Twilight Zone, he's given cautionary tales like monsters are do on Maple Street or or the after the bomb stories. He did, you know, because he had hope for humanity, just like Geen Roddenberry on Star Trek. These were these were great, great men
with vision. And to celebrate Rod's hundred's birthday tonight with you is this is the best thing I think I could be doing on christ It's a Christmas gift to me, George, to be spending this time with you.
Did he know that he had health issues before he passed on.
Only towards the very end. You know, he was a four packa day smoker. He lived very intensely and uh, and then his heart started to fail, and you know, he had open heart surgery and and and died as a result of the open heart surgery. So it was very tragic. I think probably nowadays, with all the events and the surgery, they probably could have saved him and certainly he would have known to stop smoking. You know, people often asked me if I could go back in
time and ask Rod serving a question. What would I ask? And I asked and say, well, I don't think i'd asked a question. I just tell him to stop smoking. And you know, because we would love to have Rod with us even now. I mean, Kirk Douglas made it past one hundred and it would have been wonderful if Rod could have two.
How many years did Twilight Zone run?
It ran five seasons. Four of those seasons were half hour episodes and then one season was eighteen hour long episodes the fourth season, and it was just there wasn't anything like it on TV then or now. And it's the greatest looking black and white show ever made, great writing, great acting, great composers, Bernard Herman, Jerry Goldsmith, I mean, just the top people working in film and TV. It was the writing of the Tractor. It was Rod's writing that it all started with that.
I was watching It's a Wonderful Life, which I try to do every year, one of the classics, and that's black and white too. There's something weird and special about black and white, is there?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah. It just puts it in a puts you in a certain frame of mind. It's just it takes you to a place, and you know, people try and colorize these things, but I really loved really great black and white photography. You know George Clemens, who was the great cinematographer on Twilight Zone. He went an Emmy for Twilight Zone, but he'd been a cameraman on everything from Blood and Sand with Rudolph Valentino to Richer Verdu with Chaplain. I mean, this guy came up through the
great Golden era of Hollywood. And when you look at Twilights and you just see how spectacularly it's filmed, it's just miraculous. I think it's the most beautiful television show ever shot.
What was one of your favorite Twilight Zone episodes?
Oh gosh, Well, you know I love Walking Distance, which is Rod's farewell to his father. You know, his dad died when Rod was overseas in World War Two and he wasn't able to come to the funeral. And so this is a twilights On episode where an executive walks back his hometown. He finds himself in the past of his boyhood and he wants to stay there, and his father is to tell him that he has to go
back to his time and find happiness. There. But that was really Rod finally having a goodbye to his father, to have that last moment with his father that he so longed for. And so that's a great episode. But there's so many. I mean, I think any Twilights On episode are going to get value from a nightmare twenty thousand feet, the Grimlin on a wing, or that great villain on the episode with wishing people to the cornfield.
I mean, it's funny because when Bill and I are working together on space Command, Bill he'll say, oh, be careful, I'll wish you to the cornfield. You know it's and he can do it.
What of mine? You as you well know, to serve man.
Yes, Yes, a great episode and it's wonderful. Richard Keel, who later played the character Jaws, the villain Jaws of the James Bond movies, played all of the aliens in that film in that episode and he was great and has one of the great greatest, you know, swist endings of any Twilights One episode.
What were they called Cannamites or something like that.
Cannabis. Yeah, I think it's a play on Cannibal. And it's Damon Knight, who was a great short story writer and who instantly bought my first short story. He wrote that short that that story when he was when his wife was out with another man, and Rod read the story and bought it and adapted it to Twilight Zone. So I interviewed Damon when I wrote the Twilight Zone companion.
Mark Hollywood is going through a tremendous metamorphosis these days. What's happening?
Yes, Well, you know, I think it's a mixture of different different elements. You know. I think that in some cases Hollywood, you go to movies and they're like the same old thing, the same old thing. It's hard to see something that's original. Every now and then you find something. But also it's so easy now for people to shoot their own films, to shoot their own TV shows and movies. I mean, I have my own channel on YouTube that
reaches around the world. I have millions of views of one hundred thousand subscribers, and I think people if you want to have your own voice, and it's exactly what Rod was talking about back in the fifties. He's created twilights on too avoid censorship. If he were here now, he'd probably be wounding kickstarter campaigns. He'd be doing what
I was doing because I have total freedom now. But I have no interest in working for the studios and the networks because I don't need their guidance quote unquote to make my work a disaster. I can make it the way I want it. I can cast who I want. It's very easy. It's total artistic control, which I really love having.
And you could do it cheaper, can't you?
Yes? Much cheaper? Yes, what costs the studios millions, we can do for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And you know, and the fun part is one thing I learned from Rod that was so invaluable. He shot twilights under the MGM, and he had access to every prop, every costume, every set, everything at MGM ever made. So you'll see tons of stuff from Forbidden Planet in Twilight Zone, or you'll see them shooting an episode on the Andy Hardy Street on
the MGM back lot. So I did the same thing when I was at Sliders on the Universal lot, and now that I'm doing Space Command. Whenever a big budget science switch and TV show movie ends, a lot of those props and costumes and sets come on the market, come up for auction. I can buy them penny's on the dollar. So that's added to what we design and build from scratch, and it is a much more production value. And so if you go on my three sound stages, you see, you know, we have like thirty space suits
like from the original Twilight Zone and from Prometheus. We've sets from the you know, Andrews game, and all sorts of movies and TV shows. It's just it's like a museum. But it also allows us to work very, very effectively, and it's just a sheer joy. And we're having a party, George, January first, to our studio and any of your coast to Post team is certainly welcome, including you and Tom and everybody of course. And it's just such a joy to be able to share all of this with everyone.
You know, And I love I love making television. It's my favorite art form.
Well, you should check in with us because we're going to be on the air January first, Mark. You know, we work all the holidays.
My friend.
Well, you're you're just a hard working man, George, and you you're you're the best, and that's why you've lasted so long. You know. It's a quality doesn't always rise to the top, but I always celebrate it when it does.
What are your thoughts on streaming?
What?
What where are you headed with that?
Well, the challenge, of course is finding finding quality. There's so much of everything, you know, there's infinite channels, you know, and so that's a problem. The good part is that you can watch whatever you want to see whenever you want to see it. But there's just such a such an enormous amount of content being made that to find the quality things is hard, and so you really have to know who to listen to and who's guidance to seek, uh and and not just watch anything that comes on
because your mind will turn to mush, you know. So it's you know, it's very fun to have my own YouTube channel, mister sci Fi, because I can sort of talk about twilights when I can talk about Star Trek, I can share different episodes of TV that I've written in the past or that I'm doing now. It's but you know, my favorite network, frankly is YouTube because so many old TV movies and rarities are on YouTube. You can find things that you never thought you'd see again,
and I love that aspect of it. But Netflix, i think has some of the quality, has gone down and a lot of you know, there's a lot of shows where I watch and I just go, boy, they really dropped the ball on that one. And I think it's because they're just making them too fast. They're not putting enough their heart and soul into it. You really have to treat it like an art form as Stirling did, as Ray Bradbury did. You know all of our favorites and you know when you put quality and you know
it laughs. Many of the shows I wrote in my twenties and thirties and forties and fifties people are still watching now and loving. And it was funny. I was, I was out the other day and a homeless guy complimented me on the Deep Space nine episode. I wrote, Yes, he said that far be all the Stars, that was a great episode. It's like, wow, you know, I could
thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah, But I love the reach of television that reaches millions of people in their homes, and it has an intimacy that the big, big budget movies don't have. Really that the man, I've been so blessed, you know, I've known so many wonderful people and I worked with so many great people. I mean, you know George the case, so many of the Michelle Nichols before
she died. I met her when I was ten when the Original Star Trek was on the air, and I got gone the set of the Original Star Trek and and fifty years later I got to film her in a scene in the Space Command just before her passing. And so I brought the scrap book I kept when I was ten, with the photos and letters she'd written to me, and we sat years later flipping through the scrap book on you know, on my show, on my shooting day. So that was just a miracle, wonderful, just just just such a gift.
Russell Crow send me a Merry Christmas text today. What a class guy.
Yes, yes, and I'm glad he's having like a resurgence, so things like The Pope's Exorcist and so forth. He's a very strong actor. And you know, I'm I'm glad that he sent you, sent you that message. It's there's a lot of really good people in Hollywood. You know, Hollywood gets slammed for start of being a dog dog place, but that's not been my experience. You know. It's like
there's a lot of really good hearted people here. But you know, there's there's a lot of the bad kind too, and those are the ones that get all the press attention, you know when they're when they're misbehaving. But you can find wonderful friends and loyal people and honorable people. And I've worked with many, many, many of those kinds, and it's it's just been a blessed life.
Mark who was asleep at the wheel at Blockbuster. At one point, they were dominant in the DVD rentals. They captured the market, They had hundreds of stores all over the country. Somebody there slipped up when streaming came in because they entirely Millet missed the whole thing. How could you do that?
Well, we on Netflix started as just like you know, video rental, they mail you DBDs and they were smart enough to get into streaming ride at the beginning before people knew what it was. But yes, Blockbuster absolutely dropped the ball. So a lot of people have nostalgia for Blockbuster and maybe someday come back again. You know, what's old is new again. But yeah, they definitely missed out on the coming technology. And it's every few years it changes,
it changes, it changes. It needs to be on top of that. You know, it's I shoot digitally, I edit on a Mac. You know, it's you really have to know what the new technologies are. Otherwise it becomes impossible.
It really does, it really does. And how's the pool of talent in LA for you?
Fabulous great thing. If I can say to my friends, these actors like Doug Jones and Robert Poccardo and Bill Mummy and all of them, I can basically say, our studio is here in La. So when you were done shooting this whatever series or whatever movie you're shooting in, you know, in Toronto or Atlanta or Bangkok or wherever, you can come back.
Home to LA.
You can sleep in your own bed. We can shoot for two three days and that's it, you know. So I work with their schedules. Because I was standing sets, I can. I can do that. And even Ethan McDowell has been playing the lead in Space Command. He's he was in a regular and Walking Dead. Recently he just shot the you know, a show for HBO. I mean he's busy, but every time we call upon him, you know, he flies in from New York and we rock and roll.
It's in fact, we're about to shoot a scene. Way flies into a Rex spaceship in a space suit in a weightless atmosphere and saves his son who's been injured and knocked unconscious. And that's going to be this big special effects thing and huge fun, huge fun.
How did you conceive of Space Command?
Mark? I noticed a few years ago that a lot of science fiction was very negative and very just topic and very bleak, basically giving a message the future is going to be terrible and there's nothing we can do about it. And I thought it was a terribly disempowering message. And I wanted to create a show that would say, you know, we can do better, we can be better, we can make a future that's worth living in for
our children and grandchildren. It's not the moment you give up power, the moment you say, well nothing, I can't do anything. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. But if you come together with a good heart and compassion and action, you can make the world something worth living in. So I wanted to inspire people like the original start to conspire me when I was a kid, so I didn't want to trust the networks, so the studios not to
cut me off at pilot or wreck it. So I just reached out to my fans, and as I say, they stepped up so far with over four million dollars, and that's allowed me to have my own studio and shoot the first seven eight hours of Space Command, and now the future we're doing and on and on. You know, it's just it's limitless, and many of my investors have bought. You know, I sold shares at seventy five hundred bucks each because I figured that's enough that regular people could
afford it. But many people by multiple shares, and they just they love being part of something positive, and I do too.
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