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(1917–2000). American actor and director.
Appeared in and directed: "The Sacred Mushroom,"
episode of One Step Beyond (1961); "The Return of Andrew Bentley,"
"Portrait without a Face," episodes of Thriller (1962).
Directed: "Pigeons from Hell" (1961), "Man of Mystery"
(1962), episodes of Thriller (1961); "The Double Affair" (1964), episode
of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; The Spy with My Face (1965); "Errand
of Mercy" (1967), episode of Star Trek; "There Aren't Any More
MacBanes," episode of Night Gallery (1971); The Legend of Hillbilly
John (1973); Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (tv movie) (1973); "The Man
Who Could Not Die" (1979), "Phantom of the Rollercoaster" (1979) (two-part
episode), episodes of Wonder Woman; "Red Star Rising" (1983), episode of
Whiz Kids.
Also directed: episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents,
The Sixth Sense, and Fantasy Island.
Produced: Time Stalkers (tv movie) (Michael
Schultz 1987).
One of them
has long been understood, but was not yet apparent in 1960: in television, the
nexus of creative control is the writer, not the director. The distinctive
elements of a series episode must be in the script, since the frantic pace of
television production makes the director more of a traffic cop than an auteur.
Serling produced and wrote numerous episodes of The Twilight Zone,
imposing a distinctive personality on the series; Newland produced and directed
every episode of One Step Beyond without achieving that sense of
artistic unity.
This might
relate, admittedly, to the second lesson conveyed by the work of Serling and
Newland—that in science fiction and fantasy, there is a vast difference
between entertaining and persuading. Serling unambiguously presented himself as
a storyteller, offering artfully polished fables with pithy morals for our
modern age. Newland presented himself more as a journalist; he apparently had a
genuine interest in unexplained phenomena, and he repeatedly assured viewers
that the stories staged for One Step Beyond were all based on true
events. To my knowledge, no one has proven this by means of persuasive
research, but the very claim required each episode to seem unstructured and
ragged, more like documentaries than dramas, often ending indecisively and
lamely with questions left unanswered. A heavy reliance on unknown and usually
unremarkable performers, perhaps influenced by budgetary considerations,
reinforced this atmosphere of rough-hewn reality. As a result, episodes of One
Step Beyond might be unsettling and thought-provoking—could such a thing
really happen? what could possibly explain it?—but they rarely qualified as
memorable filmmaking, which explains why One Step Beyond only lasted two
seasons, and why its later successor Next Step Beyond expired even more
quickly, in contrast to the longevity of The Twilight Zone. It was not
until the 1990s that Chris CARTER's The X-Files demonstrated that a
series delivering a message about strange goings-on in our midst could only
succeed by integrating Serling-like craftsmanship with its Newland-like
sincerity. Despite his weekly appearances on One Step Beyond, he made no effort
after its cancellation to revive his intermittent acting career, concentrating
instead on directing and producing. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s,
Newland directed a few films, but he otherwise restlessly roamed from
series to series, never settling into regular employment; and despite
several assignments for mundane series, he continued to demonstrate
a special preference for fantasy and science fiction. He directed
for the best series—Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Man
from U.N.C.L.E., Star Trek—for the worst series—The
Sixth Sense, Fantasy Island, Whiz Kids—and for
series that fell between those extremes—Thriller, Wonder
Woman; he even worked for former competitor Rod Serling on an
episode of Night Gallery. Despite the aforementioned limitations
on the powers of a television director, there is sporadic evidence
of unusual talent: his episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,
"The Double Affair," was expanded for theatrical release as The
Spy with My Face; his Star Trek episode, "Errand of Mercy,"
employs omnipotent aliens to singularly critique both William SHATNER's
Captain Kirk and his Klingon counterpart as childish belligerents;
many found his unfortunately-titled film The Legend of Hillbilly
John haunting and lyrical; and a television movie he produced,
Time Stalkers, was a complicated but cohesive time-travel adventure.
But someone undertaking the task of making a case for Newland would
also confront the paradox of other productions that displayed no special
virtues.
Overall, then,
one sees eerie resonances between the lives and the television series of both
Rod Serling and John Newland. Serling's career fit the classic pattern of a
great man's rise and fall, an aesthetically pleasing narrative suitable (as
noted elsewhere) for summing up in the manner of an episode of The Twilight
Zone. Newland's career appears to fit no pattern, progressing in fits and
starts before fading from view, but it offers disquieting hints of a hidden
truth as yet unrevealed, in the manner of an episode of One Step Beyond.
The truth may or may not be out there.
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