"What You Need", Poll and discussion thread

A street peddler (Ernest Truex) knows what people need before they need it. With Steve Cochran.
Originally aired December 25, 1959.

Full video of the episode on CBS.com
List of musical cues

This is the preferred thread for any and all of your "What You Need" posts--facts, opinions, questions, speculations, and whatever else you can think of.* You can also give your opinion of the episode on a 1 to 10 scale, in the poll shown above.

Let the discussion begin!

*More specific instructions and suggestions about posting questions/comments related to this episode are located here.

this one was pretty good. had a well enough ending to give a surprise. a true TZ at it's best.

Another one I like a lot. It comes off as being dark, but the just desserts (deserts) lightens it up in the end.

I think our friend Pedott comes off as a person who feels he carries a burden of giving people what they need which appears to be his life's calling. He doesn't seem to take joy in giving for positive results. And seems to cower when giving to Renard. One wonders why this person is in the form of an old man. He has a lot of power. But comes off as an easy victim.

Leen

If you were to bump into this strange old man, what do you think he'd pull out for you? What is it that you need at this very moment?

I've been watching the TZ rotation on SciFi and this is the first time I've seen this episode. I liked it, pretty cool. Reminded me of Stephen King's 'Needful Things', but Pedott was not quite the evil, devilish man as the owner of the shop in King's novel. I think Pedott shows some contempt in what he does because he probably runs into people like Renard all the time, who lose control and always come back to bully "what they need" from Pedott. Cool twist at the end.

A good episode. Poetic justice, Zone-style. Love it.

I remember on the old 5thD site, Jackie had a list of in-jokes shown or mentioned on the show. One of them was race Renard's pen dripped on. One of the horses was named Time Element, and two of the jockey names were Serling and Beaumont.

I think it's good, not great. There are too many things that seem cliched to me and make it hard ro suspend disbelief.

I had never noticed the backwards footage before the first commercial until I read it on the 5d board. Since then I've seen it in three other episodes: "Where is Everybody", "A Nice place to Visit", and "Escape Clause". Anyone else find any of these or more?

I know where it occurs in "What You Need": leading directly into the first commercial, as the cigarette smoke goes in the wrong direction. That's one I noticed even before seeing it mentioned on 5D. Where does it happen in these other episodes, though?

I assume you're not counting some intentional backward footage for special effects. Two that come to my mind are the reassembled bottle at the end of "The Man in the Bottle" (try running it in reverse, and you can tell that there's a small explosion that breaks the bottle and creates smoke), and the car that stops just short of Ollie's head in "You Drive" (as documented in TZ Companion, for safety the car was driven away in reverse from Edward Andrews).

In "Escape Clause" it's right before the second commercial, right after "behold, the new Walter Bedeker". You can see it if you watch the curtains behind him. In "A Nice Place to Visit", it's right after Rocky picks out his tie, and right before he comes out in his new clothes. In "Where is Everybody" it's very brief, and it's possible that I'm imagining it. It's right before the first commercial, after "I know it, I'm going to wake up". Watch him squint as he drinks his coffee and then do it again just before the fade out, and then tell me if I'm crazy.

One of the near-great ones for me. I gave it a 9. I think the covert theme of this one (or one of them) is loneliness and the different ways that people deal with it... including Pedott.

That's a good question, NYR. Sorry I didn't have a good answer. Whatever it is, it'd probably be a surprise, I guess--that is, if I needed anything he could supply....

I've got to keep my eye out for those scenes you mentioned, cadwallader. I wonder if any of those episodes had the same editor? Wait, let me look it up... "Where Is Everybody" was edited by Roland Gross (his only TZ ep, as you might guess), "Escape Clause" by Bill Mosher, and "What You Need" and "A Nice Place To Visit" by Joseph Gluck. Between them, Mosher and Gluck edited 32 of the 36 Season 1 episodes, so you'd expect a duplication in there somewhere. My guess is that running film backwards might have been a standard editor's trick, perhaps especially on occasions when they were a little short on good footage.

Oh, another thing. I mentioned in another thread that Rod Serling was a much bigger baseball fan than football fan. It can't be coincidental that Renard, the bad guy, mentions football as a possible sport to bet on before he mentions baseball, can it? Offhand, I can't think of another time that football is even mentioned in the Twilight Zone (although it must have been sometime), let alone mentioned ahead of baseball. Meanwhile, Lefty, the baseball pitcher, is a good guy. (At least three Serling episodes contain references to left-handed pitchers. "A Penny For Your Thoughts" has one, too, although it doesn't occur in George Clayton Johnson's original script. I wonder who put it there?)

See also http://www.ibforfree.com/members/index.php...st=0&#entry3832.

I was about to say the following:

Believe it or not, it took only one episode for a football reference. There's the Oakwood High School football schedule in "Where Is Everybody?" I agree, though, that football is well behind baseball in the Twilight Zone.

Then I decided to check the DVD, and it's a basketball schedule!

I'm certain of at least one TZ hockey reference, and for now I'll let someone else try to come up with it.

I'll bet it's "The Big Tall Wish." That reminds me of the expression, "I was at a fight the other day, and a hockey game broke out."

A shower. But to quote from a movie, "I don't think he has anything in that black bag for me!"

Leen

At the time the original Twilight Zone was being made, late 50s early 60s, boxing, baseball and horse racing were much more popular sports than football. Pro football really didn't hit it's stride until the mid sixties when the NFL signed on with CBS and the AFL signed on with NBC. In fact, the first Super Bowl played in January of 1967 wasn't even a sell out.

Oh yeah...an obscure episode called "Mr. Bevis" mentions that Bevis likes football, and shows him playing football with kids in the street. I suppose I didn't remember that one because, like Serling and unlike the "real" Bevis, I've always been more interested in baseball than football, too.

I had forgotten about this , but now that you mention it, there's another episode in which an adult plays football with children. Would you like to try to identify it?

Wait...got it! "Mr Dingle, The Strong"!

Home run! ... er, I mean ... Touchdown!

Good episode, although not in my top 20. I like the subtle change of atmosphere (and accompanying music) when Pedot senses the malevolent presence of Renard (French for fox). Also enjoy the appearance of Arlene Sax from my favorite episode, Twenty-Two.

http://www.leapinbass.com/zone/picture_pag...01/tz012-02.jpg

Good story. I like the Pedott character, although "sidewalk salesman" as an occupation seems strange to relate to today. Selling matches out of a suitcase must have been the norm back in the '50s (just a few episodes earlier, Ed Wynn was a sidewalk salesman in "One For the Angels").

I like the steps Pedott takes to assure his survival. He seems so docile but what he does to Renard is vicious.

I just watched this one agains this morning.

It has one of the gloomiest Rod intros. And the cafe/bar where Pedott runs into all the folks that need something is equally as gloomy and depressing.

"You're looking at Mr. Fred Renard, who carries a chip on his shoulder the size of the national debt. This is a sour man, a friendless man, a lonely man, a grasping, compulsive, nervous man. This is a man who has lived thirty-six undistinguished, meaningless, pointless, failure-laden years and who at this moment looks for an escape--any escape, any way, anything, anybody--to get out of the rut...And this little old man is just what Mr. Renard is waiting for."

Yay Rod!

Leen

A shower. But to quote from a movie, "I don't think he has anything in that black bag for me!"

Leen

So, Pedott is the Wizard of Oz! My, how exciting!

Why does Perdott become so somber when he first encounters Renard? Does he know that his (Perdott's) safety is now in jeopardy, or does he see Renard's end, or both?

That line was reused in TZ: The Movie to describe Vic Morrow's character. Similarly, the "end-beginning-nightmare" intro of "In His Image" was reused for the "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" segment.

Yeah, he says at the end that he saw his own death - "you were going to kill me".

Great performance by Treux, and a story interesting in its own right.

9/10

An excellent episode........I gave it an 8.
If this is the norm for future seasons, I can't wait to see them all.

Tz Dz Fan

I have noticed that most sources list two women in the credits:
Arlene Sax (girl in bar) and Judy Ellis (woman on street).

However the actual end credits of the episode list only Ms. Sax
and Doris Karnes, who is credited as Gretchen in the episode
"The Lateness of the Hour." No woman in that episode resembles
anyone in "What You Need." (?) Also listed is Fred Kruger (!) as
"man on street." That wouldn't be Elm Street by any chance?!

Hmmm, interesting. Sounds like the original credits made a mistake, but the other sources corrected it. Nice catch, kanamit!

Incidentally, I can't find Doris Karnes on imdb.com at all.

"The Lateness of the Hour" is her one and only credit on tvtome.com
in TV series, specials, guest spots, movies, shorts, any visual media.

"What You Need" is the only credit on tvtome.com and on imdb.com
for Judy Ellis.

Who are these people who seem never to have acted before or again?

How does Renard learn where Pedott lives so that he can already be in Pedott's room when the latter comes home? He didn't know Pedott's name yet, so he couldn't have looked up Pedott's address anywhere, and he couldn't have both followed Pedott and beaten him to his room.

Why did Renard assume that the shoes were what he needed? They were just sitting in Pedott's case along with dozens of other items. It's not as if Pedott handed him the shoes as he did with the scissors.

Why would Pedott be carrying around a bus ticket to Scranton? He gives the impression that he doesn't recognize it's what Lefty needs until he looks into Lefty's eyes.

I've wondered this myself. My best theory right now: Renard asked around at the bar, or elsewhere in the neighborhood ("Where does that kooky old man live, the peddler?"), then broke in. Arguably unlikely, but possible.

Here I can answer with some confidence: Pedott reacts when Renard finds the shoes in such a way as to suggest that that's the item that Pedott doesn't want him to take.

That's got to be magic in some form, I think. This suggests the existence of two magic talents--1) Pedott's ability to see into the future and 2) his ability to produce whatever item is needed--which violates George Clayton Johnson's philosophy of fantasy as quoted in Zicree: "If anything is possible, then nothing is interesting. The game must be like a game of chess, it must have restrictions set on it. A man with one miraculous talent but not two." Johnson didn't write this episode, of course, but it's a good philosophy anyway.

Can we therefore speculate that Pedott's act of looking into the future changes the future that he is looking into, and that his two seemingly different abilities are really two aspects of the same talent? To paraphrase Julius Forstmann, "I think I just did." This could be argued to be just a linguistic distinction, but I don't think it is.

By the way, Dan, I've no longer so sure that Renard's shoes are in the wrong place at the end of the episode. It's hard to tell, for me anyway, but I think they might be on the correct street after all.

This will undoubtedly go off topic, but my curiosity is too aroused to let this pass. Could you please explain this? I never even heard of him until I did a Web search. I see now that he was an industrialist, but I don't see any quote that could be obviously paraphrased to this.

This will undoubtedly go off topic, but my curiosity is too aroused to let this pass. Could you please explain this? I never even heard of him until I did a Web search. I see now that he was an industrialist, but I don't see any quote that could be obviously paraphrased to this.

This anomaly, on the other hand, can be explained as the result of a brain-fart by its author. I was thinking of Sam Forstmann from "Ninety Years Without Slumbering." Julius Forstmann was an industrialist who owned a textile mill in Garfield, NJ where my great-grandfather worked (you see the other connection with "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" there--Sam Forstmann was due to become a great-grandfather in that episode). The main library in Passaic, NJ is named after him.

You're welcome in advance, Dan...

Thanks (in hindsight?) not just for the answer but also for teaching me something about my local history. At first I thought you might have meant Sam, but when I found there was a Julius, all bets were off. The Web search also mentioned the Passaic library.

If brain flatulence is possible, how about anal cognition?

To quote Lieutenant Katell: "God help us, I hope not!"

Submitted for your perusal as per Beev's request one newspaper with some very interesting names in the list of jockeys.

This to be eventually appearing in the spittle thread.

http://img163.echo.cx/img163/6646/whatyouneed1dz.jpg

Thanks, Leen!

Matthew Cregg called this "the mother of all in-jokes" on the old Fifth Dimension site. I know who the real-life Serling, Houghton (producer), Clemens (director of photgraphy), and Denault (assistant director) were. Jack Swain was credited as director of photography on some later TZ episodes, and may have also done some early uncredited work for all I know. (Zicree mentions that Clemens had to turn over his duties on "Time Enough At Last" for a half-day to an unnamed "replacement.")

Also notice that the handicapper is "Nelson," one of many in-joke references to production manager Ralph W. Nelson during the series. Nelson no doubt holds the record for episodes mentioned in an in-joke. (The 5th D mentioned "Walking Distance," "I Shot an Arrow into the Air," "A Hundred Yards over the Rim," "Once upon a Time" and "Dead Man's Shoes.") By the way, the Ralph Nelson who directed "A World Of His Own" is someone different.

Edward Denault, whose name is used for the winning jockey here, also had his last name mentioned in "The Purple Testament," another first season episode about a man who can predict the future.

Not only was it not a sell-out, but it was simultaneously broadcast on both NBC and CBS! And the original videotape was taped over, so there is no original copy of Super Bowl I! Read Morgan also appeared in the first 2 Back To The Future movies, he was the cop that Doc Brown bribed to let him conduct his "Weather Experiment"