It's only appropriate that writer-director Matthew Robinson's debut film open this Friday. After all, it's the 50th anniversary of the first episode of "The Twilight Zone" -- a show, oddly enough, that gave spark to his new comedy "The Invention of Lying."

"I was sick in bed and watching a three-day 'Twilight Zone' marathon," recalled Robinson in a recent @ The Movies interview. "Sort of being inundated with large sci-fi ideas, I woke up one morning with an idea of a world where lying doesn't exist -- and being shocked that it wasn't an episode of 'The Twilight Zone' -- it felt like the best episode of 'The Twilight Zone' that doesn't exist."

Robinson said he didn't have any grand plans for the idea at first. In fact, he initially envisioned it to be a lot shorter than anything you'd see on Rod Serling's classic television series.

"I didn't think it was anything better than a 'Saturday Night Live' sketch, so I just sat down and wrote the opening date scene between a loser and a beautiful woman on blind date in a world where no one can lie. I thought that was just a hoot, but then sat on it for about a year. When I came back to it I thought, 'What if that guy on that date invented that ability to lie? I bet he could do a lot of interesting things.'"

Opening in theaters Friday, "The Invention of Lying" stars Gervais as Mark, a lonesome loser of a writer in a world of painful truths where people like his handsome colleague, Brad (Rob Lowe), can be an honest jerk and no one blinks an eye; an amazing world where even politicians' and advertisers' words are worth their weight in gold.

But Mark's life changes dramatically when he develops the ability to lie, which leads him to fame and fortune, but not to the woman (Jennifer Garner) he truly loves. Worse yet, as his lies pile up, his world starts to spin out of control.

"The Invention of Lying" got its legs in 2007, when Robinson said Gervais got involved in the project in a way that you couldn't make up.

"It was mind-blowing because Ricky called me personally to tell me that he'd read the script," Robinson recalled. "(Producer) Linda Obst had taken the script with her on a trip to England with the hope of convincing him to read it, even though we all knew we had a small chance it happening since he previously told her on the phone, 'Don't bother pitching me anything. I'm not interested.'"

Needless to say, when Robinson got a call in Los Angeles from the British funnyman, he thought it was, well, a joke.

"I accidentally left my cell phone when I went to an 11 a.m. showing of 'Grindhouse' at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on a Friday morning -- it's a thing unemployed writers tend to do -- when a long string of numbers appeared on my cell phone about halfway through the movie," Robinson remembered. "So I went into the lobby and Ricky Gervais told me that he read my script and wanted to attach. Three weeks later I was in his office in London rewriting the script."

The great thing is, the two writers penned the script just as Robinson had originally imagined it.

"When Ricky and I started writing, the goal was to write the funniest episode of 'The Twilight Zone' ever," Robinson chirped.

"The Invention of Lying" presented a unique opportunity for Robinson in that the first-time filmmaker got to not only direct the film, but co-direct it with the man behind the hit BBC comedies "The Office" and "Extras." It's rare enough for a relatively new writer to direct his own script, much less with a talent the caliber of Gervais by his side.

"Both of us originally planned to find somebody to direct it, and have Ricky star in it and both of us just write it," Robinson said. "But the more we fell in love with the project and the more time we spent working on it, the more fearful we were fearful that someone else would not get it the way we do. Ricky said, 'I can't conscionably give this to someone else. I'm scared, but at the same time, I'm equally scared of directing it myself and ruining it. Do you want to maybe to do this together so we can't blame each other for ruining it?'"

Robinson said he jumped at the opportunity without hesitation.

"It had been a dream of mine forever to direct -- it had been a dream of mine to be a working screenwriter so I was happy to have that box checked off," Robinson said with a laugh. "To be able to check off both boxes on my first project was a thrill."

Back to reality: While "The Invention of Lying" is truly a high point in Robinson's life and career, he honestly says that he'd much rather live in a world where lies are told rather than in the fantastical one he imagined that was ruled exclusively by truths. A world without lies would simply be boring, he said.

"One of the best parts of being alive is trying figure out that gray area between the truth and lying," Robinson observed. "I'm so glad that it's so hard to tell what the truth is sometimes. I think very depressing to live in a black and white world where we knew what everything was -- that there was no room for potential or optimism, or imagination or deceit."

"In this world we get to choose what we believe our reality is, whether it's a religion we follow or a woman you fall in love with," he added. "The ability to choose your own free will and what reality is, is one of the greatest gifts of lying."