Interview with Rod Serling from Planet of The Apes Magazine issue 1

I am unhealthfully obsessed with the Planet of the Apes films.

I think it’s because the first Apes film was the first real “sci-fi” film I saw. I was eight – maybe. Before Star Wars, before Logan’s Run, I saw Chuck Heston scream at the sky as he realized (spoiler!) that it was Earth all along. Holy cow, did that freak me out. This nihilistic finish, as he stared at the statue of liberty as the waves crashed on the shore, was the first “dark” one I ever saw.

The man responsible for that ending, and much of what made the original film great, was Rod Serling. After famously creating and hosting The Twilight Zone, Serling started writing movie screenplays – and the bets known of these was for the original Planet of the Apes.

Here, from the great magazine published by Marvel Comics in the mid-seventies, is an interview with Serling talking about the film and his career.

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