Film festival to showcase Serling drama
Elizabeth Cohen:
Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin, August 03, 2008


Greater Binghamton may be the home of the first computers, the best flight simulators, and we may find out we sit atop a great big glob of natural gas, but one of our greatest natural resources ever went by the name of Rod Serling.

Serling was naturally brilliant and naturally resourceful, pulling ideas and material for his work from our community and region. The more I learn about him, the more impressed I am with his talent, productivity and overall prescience, and the way he so artfully tucked political messages into his screenplays.

The genre of science fiction was handy for Serling. Because science fiction is about things that happen either in the future or in other dimensions, he could make subversive statements about race and politics that would never have been allowed in any other arena.

For the last two years, Binghamton Summer Film has offered a program of free family films at either NYSEG Stadium or The Forum. And each year, one of the films that is screened is a Rod Serling feature. "Many people think Rod Serling and think 'Twilight Zone,' but he earned six Emmys for his television writing alone," said Lawrence Kassan, director of the Rod Serling Video Festival. "Among other award-winning and famous works was 'Requiem for a Heavyweight' and 'The Planet of the Apes.'"

This year, Summer Film is presenting "Seven Days in May," a film with a blockbuster ensemble cast including Burt Lancaster as one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Kirk Douglas as his subordinant, and Frederick March as the U.S. President, who is trying to ratify a weapons treaty with the Soviet Union. In the film, the military is in cahoots with the media and Congress to overthrow the president, to prevent the treaty from being signed.

On the surface, this 28-year-old film is a political thriller about the Cold War. Look a little deeper and you will find a Serlingesque message about the dangers of an out-of- control media empire and a military with its own ideas about how to operate (Ollie North, anyone?).

In black-and-white, with elegant camera work, artful editing and an edge-of-your-seat plot, the film asks the big "What if?" questions about endgame politics and national security that have become commonplace since Sept. 11, 2001, when our country actually was attacked. Some of the dark tones in the film are said to be inspired by the dark national mood in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. It makes me wonder what Serling would be doing today, had he lived a longer life.

You can participate after the film in a "talk back" session with two guests who are wise to the ways of all things Serling: Ithaca College professor Barbara Audet and Gary Ingraham, of Cornell University’s Educational Television Center who will be leading the discussion and taking questions.