ven those who have never read a story by George Clayton Johnson have likely been exposed to his work, which encompasses not only tour-de-force science fiction like Logan's Run (co-written by William F. Nolan) but also numerous Twilight Zone stories and scripts such as "The Four of Us Are Dying" (from his story "All of Us Are Dying"), "Execution," "A Penny for Your Thoughts," "The Prime Mover," "A Game of Pool," "Nothing in the Dark" (starring Robert Redford) and "Kick The Can," (which was later remade in the feature-length Twilight Zone: The Movie). He is also responsible for the Star Trek classic "The Man Trap," in which the crew of the Enterprise battle the salt vampire.
A contemporary of writing legends like Rod Serling, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont and Ray Bradbury, Johnson showed his versatility not only for genre fiction, but also for TV shows like The Law and Mr. Jones, Kung Fu and Route 66. He co-authored the book Ocean's Eleven, which was turned into a movie starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
He's appeared in a number of documentaries, including one regarding Rod Serling, entitled American Masters: Rod Serling: Submitted For Approval (1995), My Life With Count Dracula (2003), plus an upcoming documentary about the California Golden Age writing group called The Green Hand founded by the late Charles Beaumont with Johnson, Nolan, Dennis Etchison and Richard Matheson.
George Clayton Johnson was born in and Cheyenne, Wyo., and currently lives in Southern California. (Above photo provided courtesy of RodSerling.com and TwilightZoneConvention.com.)
As a writer for the classic Twilight Zone, what was working with Rod Serling like?
Johnson: The truth of it is, I didn't work with Rod. What I did was work with Buck Houghton, the producer of the series. I would go in and pitch him stories and Buck would say, "OK, if you take the kinks out of that, I'll buy it." I'd take the kinks out of it and he would hire me to write a script.
He would do this three or four times a year at best. In that process, I was in a room with Buck, serving like collaborators—half of the ideas in this growing idea that we are shaping are coming from him. But he wasn't getting any credit for it. But he's having a hell of an influence on the story. As I discuss it with him, as I tell him what it's going to be, he'd suggest other things I might want to think about.
I would go home and work on these things; I'd end up writing outlines. I'd end up selling him the outlines, and I'd be hired by him to adapt the outline into a script.
Rod Serling didn't see it until after Buck had approved it. If Buck said it was okay, he'd pass it on to Rod. If Rod agreed, they would film it. That was the relationship.
Which did you like better—the television or the Twilight Zone movie version of your "Kick The Can"?
Johnson: I like the TV show the best. Someone else changed what was in the TV story into the movie story.
My general feeling of everything that appeared on Twilight Zone—I was ecstatic. For heaven's sake, look at the care they took of everything—the casting was great, the settings were perfect, and look how much detailing went into the series.
When I would sell a story to Rod like "The Four of Us Are Dying," or "Execution," I would be astonished at what he did with it.
Rod took my story and used it as an armature—he'd add all the clay to it. And when it came on television, I'd be glued to the screen, amazed at how much richness and detail that Rod put in the show.
I was invited to come watch them film "A Penny for Your Thoughts." I was there with my wife, Lola, and we were snooping around in the dark, eavesdropping on everything, watching the actors do the scenes. Then the door opened and here comes Rod Serling with a bunch of guests. He sees Lola and me and comes over with this crowd of people and says, "This young man here is the guy who wrote this dandy piece that we're filming right now," and everybody clapped. I felt really lifted by that. Rod's style was, he was remarkably generous with people; he didn't mind confessing himself to be a fan.
I'm a fan, too. I'm a Richard Matheson fan, I'm a Charles Beaumont fan, I'm a Philip K. Dick fan, and I'm a Ray Bradbury fan. I read their stuff, I know all about it and just love it.
You were also on the set during the filming of Nothing in the Dark for the Twilight Zone. You had the chance to meet a young Robert Redford. What was he like? Did you have any idea he'd become such a major star years later?
Johnson: As a result of watching Robert Redford act and being around him—because I went there every day—I found every opportunity to talk to him. Gladys Cooper, Robert, the wonderful R.G. Armstrong would be bored sitting around waiting for the shots to be set up.
I went to New York for some business, and that was the time Robert Redford was on stage with Jane Fonda in Barefoot in the Park. I stopped by the theater after one of the productions and got the chance to meet Redford again. I spent half the night talking with Redford. He had to go home and get ready to do a matinee performance that day.
I met him when he came to California with his wife at the time, Lola. They lived at the beach, and I got a chance to see his paintings. He's a remarkable artist, a remarkable painter. I think he has given as much effort to painting as he has with his acting or directing. I am surprised that he hasn't tried to exhibit his work.
What was your opinion of the film version of Logan's Run when it first came out, and has it changed nowadays?
Johnson: I was invited to see the premiere at MGM. William F. Nolan was sitting six rows ahead of me and my daughter Judy. The film started, and the music started, and it was so big and so beautiful. And there was this cotton-candy look to this universe that was cleaner than Star Trek—it all was very sweet. When things start moving in the super city of the future, they [Logan and Jessica] leave the super city and go out to a Paramount backlot and it loses interest and it drags and it drags. Then Logan comes upon the old man, who is pictured as a revolutionary in the novel. He appears, and most of my concentration just went out. My ass turned to stone. I was waiting for it to be over.
When it finishes, everyone goes out into the aisle and they start clasping hands and telling each other how wonderful the picture is, and here is William F. Nolan and he goes, "Judy, what did you think of it?" And Judy says, "I did like it but—" she explained to him what I was trying to explain to him—it must have be a real shock to Bill to been told the truth. The truth is, when I first saw it, beautiful music, beautiful coloration, lovely actors, great casting, the sets—some of them were quite exquisite—they had the look of Doc Savage—everything was okay until they left the super city.
Now I come to understand that Joel Silver, who did The Matrix, is going to do a remake of Logan's Run. It is going to be one of those big-budget movies. The truth is, I know nothing about it. Everything I know I know from William F. Nolan, who has been tracking on this. They are also doing Ocean's Eleven again, in the form of a movie that is being filmed at the beginning of the year in Europe called Ocean's Twelve.
Which actor (any era, living or dead) would be your idea Logan?
Johnson: When I first saw a young [Leonardo] DiCaprio—I thought that was interesting. We wrote it to be less than 21. This is a society where you die at 21. You've got to have characters with strong personalities—because usually at that age, they don't, they haven't developed their inner shape yet. If anyone who prematurely starts to get himself or herself together where he has an attitude that can be read by a camera ... When I saw a young DiCaprio, I thought "My God, he would have made a good Logan, if you were going to do it like the book."
I think the book is far superior, and I hope the new production follows the book. What really went wrong is they took three chapters out of a 10-chapter book and a couple of props and things from outer settings and tried to jam them together in order to create a city of domes.
Bill and I weren't talking about living in domes. We were talking about an interconnected world that you could jump in the maze and you could be in Tokyo in a couple of hours.
Were there any hard feelings when William F. Nolan decided to continue the Logan universe on his own?
Johnson: Oh, no, Bill and I had a nice little tearing. We said, "Let us, by magic, turn our one baseball into two baseballs. I take one and you take one."
I am the author of Logan's Run. When I talk to people, I tell them I wrote Logan's Run. When he sees people, he says he wrote Logan's Run—if you have to mention me, mention me—that's it. I tell Bill, "Go get some assignments to write books with Logan's Run. Kill Logan off, marry him up, do anything you want to him, I exercise no control over what you do with Logan. And I will do the same." He said fine and wrote a couple of novels—I'm in the process of writing the sequel to the Logan's Run book. I have about 40, 50 pages of it completed, lots of outlines and notes to complete the book. I'm waiting for the opportune moment, hoping that the new Logan's Run movie comes out, that will give me a real reason to negotiate some good bucks for another Logan novel. And when it happens, I will probably get William F. Nolan to write an introduction for it—so everyone will know that there is nothing but harmony between Bill and I. We never had any problems at all.
What is your favorite, most perfect George Clayton Johnson story, and why?
Johnson: There are two of them. The first one is "Nothing in the Dark," the old lady and Mr. Death. It is a simple little fable—it really works well for me. I've seen it produced a couple of time on the stage. It really is a reverie piece of theater.
On the other hand, every time I look at "A Penny for Your Thoughts," it's whimsical and a little odd, oddly stilted and British in its approach to humor. The actors don't think they are being one bit funny—it has a sort of slightly fey humorous quality.
It's a choice between those two. Although I'm really enamored of "Kick the Can," "All of Us Are Dying," "Execution," and "Perchance to Dream" [which Charles Beaumont adapted for Twilight Zone].
Last question—you lived and wrote for most of the 20th century, and now we're into the new 21st century. What do you think are humanity's prospects? How do you see the world heading along from here?
Johnson: You must understand that I am a real fan of this world. I think we are going to prosper. I think we are going to succeed. I think the president [Bush] is doing the right thing. I think our new governor [Arnold Schwarzenegger] in California is going to make the state a transcendent example of what can happen when you try to protect your reputation and image in front of an audience who has learned to love you.
I have no fear for our future. One time, Alvin Toffler, in his book Future Shock, said the world had to rise to a new level of relatedness—because as it was, we couldn't make decisions fast enough. Even if we turned it over to one guy to decide the steel industry or a triad of people or a committee of people, or to a legislator or to a Congress—these things were too cumbersome, and we were going to get buried in our own paperwork and our inability to keep up with stuff. I thought, "Oh my God, that is truly a prescription for doom. He is not so off there."
Then I see this Internet. We have risen to a new level of relatedness. We've done exactly as Toffler prophesized we had to do it. Not only that, I see within it—a renaissance for mankind—a business where we have almost instant telepathic-like communication. That sense of peer relatedness is inherent in the computer in a process called synergistic convergence—syncon—which was experimented with in 1975 Philadelphia by an outfit called Committee for the Future.
When I look around at the new developments in science and more about the topology in the universe that we are in, the idea that man is immortal, that there is nothing that man is meant to know—that really is in the heart of everything. That is why I'm fascinated with things like Frankenstein; the idea of bringing someone back from the dead is eerie and strange but worthy of contemplating and try to realize that could be possible. Maybe we'll come to understand, what is life? It's anti-entropic; it doesn't contribute to entropy.
I think America is going to be a hell of a place to live in the next 15 to 20 years, and I hope to be around to do it.
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