The Carousel is a short film essentially centered on one episode of one of my favorite television series, The Twilight Zone. In TTZ creator Rod Serling‘s hometown of Binghamton, New York there stands a carousel, a carousel which inspired one of Serling’s most personal episodes, “Walking Distance,” starring Gig Young.

In the episode, Young more or less plays a stand-in for Mr. Serling, a middle-aged man who returns to his idyllic hometown and soon discovers (because yeah, … The Twilight Zone) that he has returned on a random summer night of his childhood – literally. The realization is punctuated when he soon encounters a younger version of himself, who he proceeds to follow home. As the episode is discussed in the film, we gain a new insight into what this journey likely meant to the man (Serling) who brought the tale to life.

The short, which runs 12 minutes in length, also jumps ahead to the present day, showing the restoration of the original carousel. Filmmaker Jonathan Napoiltano interviews with the restorers of the carousel, who are using this and other popular episodes of Serling’s work as inspiration, in addition to Rod Serling’s daughter, Anne, who offers an illuminating perspective about her father for the audience.

 

And with this, I conclude my Tribeca 2016 coverage. Until next year …