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BIXBY, JEROME (Drexel Jerome Lewis Bixby 1923–1998). American writer.
Film based on his work: "It's a Good
Life" (1961), episode of The Twilight Zone;
Fantastic Voyage (animated tv series) (1968-1970);
"It's a Good
Life," segment of Twilight Zone—The Movie (Joe DANTE, John LANDIS,
George MILLER, and Steven SPIELBERG 1983); "It's Still a Good Life"
(2003), episode of The Twilight Zone.
He first distinguished himself by writing
short stories with furious energy throughout the 1950s, under his own name and
several pseudonyms; one of these, "It's a Good Life" (1953),
was later voted into The Science Fiction Hall of Fame and provided Rod
SERLING with material for a
striking episode of The Twilight Zone. While on one level only another
horror story about a demonically powerful child with vaguely science-fictional
underpinnings, Bixby's Anthony ingeniously torments adults by insisting that
they always be happy in a conventional, 1950s sort of way. With such a resonant
theme for young science fiction devotees—Hell Is Ozzie and Harriet—it isn't
surprising that this was one of three episodes later remade for the Twilight
Zone movie.
Before that episode aired, however, Bixby had
already joined the unique wave of science fiction writers who moved into film
during the late 1950s, and while one can lament that David
DUNCAN and Jerry
SOHL got their feet in the door,
at least greater talents like Richard
MATHESON, Theodore
STURGEON, and Bixby were also
garnering some assignments. First teaming up with reluctant science fiction
director Edward L. CAHN,
Bixby had an impressive debut in It! The Terror from Beyond Space,
offering a lively and suspenseful story of a rubber-suited monster who stows
away on a return flight to Mars. Perhaps it was little more than an
unauthorized adaptation of A. E. van Vogt's story "Black Destroyer,"
but Bixby knew how to make it work on the screen, and while van Vogt later
would successfully sue to be credited for Alien, Ridley SCOTT's film
actually owed more to Bixby than to van Vogt.
Bixby's second effort for Cahn, Curse of
the Faceless Man, transplanted the standard mummy story to Italy, with
its titular menace cleverly based on haunting images of the Pompeii residents embalmed
by the ashes of Vesuvius. The revenant's quest for the modern reincarnation of
his ancient lover, however, was less involving than it might have been,
principally because this appears to be another one of those movies that
employed clumsy narration to compensate for a lost soundtrack. But even an
intact soundtrack could not salvage Bixby's third film, The Lost Missile,
a contrived cold war thriller about a Communist rocket that seems poised to
destroy the world.
After a brief foray into television—providing
uncredited assistance to Curt SIODMAK
for an unsuccessful tv pilot, Tales of Frankenstein, and writing a rarely-seen
episode of Men into Space—Bixby's name next surfaced amidst the credits
of the 1996 film Fantastic Voyage. Without access to relevant
documentation, this is how one might speculatively reconstruct the project's
history: Bixby and Otto Klement developed the basic ideas—the old science
fiction trope about miniaturized people traveling through the human body, the
crucial mission of saving the life of an important political figure, and an
artificial time limit imposed by a miniaturization process that is only
temporary. The scenario then fell into the hands of David Duncan, who did something
to "adapt" the story—probably, the hackneyed addition of a
transparently evil enemy agent to the crew—before Harry Kleiner was finally
trusted to write the shooting script. For whatever reason, the resulting film
jarringly combined remarkable creativity with remarkable stupidity, and it
required the talents of Isaac ASIMOV to finally make the story palatable in his
after-the-fact novelization.
Bixby remains most celebrated, of course, for
his contributions to the original Star Trek series, which were a mixed
bag indeed. Although lauded in some quarters, "Day of the Dove"
struck me at the time as a plodding antiwar allegory, as obvious as its title.
"By Any Other Name" isn't much better, a dreary saga of alien
invaders undone by exposure to messy human emotions, but one can readily blame
co-writer D.C. FONTANA
for that episode's excesses. However, even though it is visibly nothing more
than a rewrite of Forbidden Planet, replacing Dr. Morbius with the
standard character of the secret immortal who has assumed various famous
identities throughout Earth's history, "Requiem for Methuselah" is a
fine episode, stylishly crafted and effectively understated. Even better was
"Mirror, Mirror," where Bixby again seized upon an old idea—the
parallel universe inhabited by evil counterparts to good people in our
universe—and came up with a brilliantly constructed drama dripping with
violence, sex, and even a little food for thought. Watching its concluding
scene, where a duplicate of the one unfamiliar character in the mirror universe
walks on to the bridge of the Enterprise and greets Captain Kirk, one
feels the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle slipping into place. Seeking a
single episode to epitomize Star Trek—with all its lurid melodrama, raw
emotionalism, and appealing pacifist philosophy—the Smithsonian Institution
selected "Mirror, Mirror," and they couldn't have made a better
choice.
Though Bixby never wrote for the screen
again, the impact of "Mirror, Mirror" has lingered on in the world of
Star Trek: in the 1990s, seeking some device to enliven what had become
the tedious soap opera of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, producers
introduced Bixby's mirror universe in several episodes to foreground colorfully
sinister counterparts to its stolid regulars. After his death in 1998, an
episode featuring the mirror universe, "The Emperor's New Cloak," was
dedicated to Jerome Bixby—a surprising tribute to a surprisingly memorable
writer. But more surprising tributes to Bixby would come in the twenty-first
century: first, a new revival of The Twilight Zone included an effective
sequel to "It's a Good Life," bringing back actors from the original episode to
explore the life of the adult Anthony and a daughter who seems to have
inherited his skills. Then, in the year 2007, a script that Bixby completed
shortly before his death was finally filmed as Jerome Bixby's The
Man from Earth. I have had the privilege of viewing this yet-to-be-released
film, and while it again is a story that breaks no new ground—essentially, it
is "Requiem for Methuselah" retold in a contemporary Earth setting—it has all
the hallmarks of a classic Bixby work: interesting dialogue, a carefully
constructed story, and an appealing message. Two decades after his death, it is
good to finally see Jerome Bixby's name above the title, and one hopes this
film will inspire new attention to his remarkable career.
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