Returning to The Gallery
Rod Serling's Night Gallery continues to capture the imaginations of audiences even after 40 years of being on television. It most certainly was the inspiration behind Thomas Amo's latest novel, "Midnight Never Ends." We sat down with the man himself this week, to find out just exactly why did he decide to go back to the dark cooriders of one of teleivison's most imagnative anthology series produced.
NA: You watched this show when it originally aired, is that right?
TA: I did. Well, I tried to. It was on late and I was 7 years old at the time. The advantage to having older siblings is you sometimes get to see the good stuff because they are fans of horror too. The disadvantage is they are in control of the channel changer. Fortunately, for me, my sister loved shows, like Dark Shadows, Night Gallery, Lost In Space, The Outer Limits, Thriller.
NA: So, take us back, it's 1970 and you're 7 years old. The show is pretty campy by today's standards, did it scare you back then?
By Arabella Fox
TA: Oh, heck yeah! The combination of Rod Serling's intro, the gallery set, and Tom Wright's original paintings, were more than enough to set my imagintion into overdrive. By time the show was in its third and final season, I was 10 years old, and was getting away with staying up late a bit more than I did when the show fist aired. You have to understand in those days, there was no such thing as a DVR. Hell, there weren't even VCR's yet. Not for public consumption anyway. So, if you missed an episode.... you missed it. You could only hope for a re-run over the summer. But as far as scary content goes, more of it was in your mind than on the screen.
NA: What made you want to tackle this genre for your latest novel?
TA: I had never written an anthology before. Short stories weren't really my thing. I either wrote, full length novels, screenplays, or plays for the live theatre. And it had been over a year since I published a novel. I was looking for a new book to write, and I wanted to go back to horror, as I had just spent two years in the young adult genre with "Forever ME."
NA: Just how exactly did the muse stike you for MNE?
TA: Oddly enough, insomnia. Wide awake at two in the morning, I found myself channel surfing. Avoiding all the infomercials until I swtiched to ME-TV. and I happen to catch Night Gallery right from the opening credits. I hadn't watched an episode in years, probably a decade, truth be told.
I don't remember which episode it was that night, but it was enough to get me thinking. As I began to plan the book out, I knew I wanted it to have the flavor of NG and not just be a carbon copy. The one thing I felt was most important was, I wanted to bring back the artwork. For me, that was just about the biggest part of NG, the artwork. I contacted my friend Jeannifer in Jakarta. She's an international artist and I've been fortunate enough to have her work with me on all of my novels. She's a brilliant painter and I knew if anyone could capture the mood of NG it would be her. I had her study Tom Wright's paintings and she instantly understood what I was after. Within a week she had the first painting done for the story. "Nobody Dies on the First Floor."