Award-winning writer Rod Serling revolutionized television. His celebrated career, including bruising bouts with executives over censorship, is rooted in the boxing ring. Serling scholar and boxing expert Christopher Benedict ventures between the ring lights and the shadow of the screenplay to offer a deftly guided tour through Serling's personal and literary history with the controversial sport. Benedict pulls back the curtain on Serling's time in the ring as a prizefighter and how that influenced his groundbreaking writing. From Serling's first ever published piece of work, a boxing story featured in The Antiochian, to the Peabody Award winning Requiem for a Heavyweight, to The Twilight Zone and beyond. Noted for finding humanity, poignancy, and pathos deep within the violent spectacle of boxing, Rod Serling's powerful influence on the genre still reverberates through modern big budget blockbuster fight films like Rocky, Raging Bull, and Million Dollar Baby. Through these ten incredible rounds you'll meet a salty cast of pugnacious pugilists and discover the unforgettable stories they inspired Rod Serling to create. The result is a knockout exploration of Serling's literary art and "the sweet science" which we call The Twilight Rounds.
"This is a knockout piece of work." -Nicholas Parisi, President of The Rod Serling Memorial Foundation and author of Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination
The Twilight Rounds seamlessly intertwines a fascinating biography of Serling's short life, with a well-sourced, enjoyably cerebral, and engagingly visual examination of Serling's unforgettable boxing-related stories." -Catherine Johnson, boxing historian and author of Then the World Moved On: The Brutal Truth Behind the Max Baer-Frankie Campbell Fight
The Twilight Rounds is a highly informative and entertaining journey." -Steve Hunt, host of the Boxing Movie Podcast and author of Heavyweight Title Fights of the 1980s
"Christopher Benedict reveals how the grit of the sport directly fueled Serling's storytelling, and it certainly managed to draw me in to that world - even as someone with no boxing knowledge whatsoever!" -Emi O'Sullivan, co-Host of The After-Hours Podcast
