X-Files mythology, TenThirteen Interviews Database, and more

Archive for the ‘Interviews: Online’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
Aug
02
2012

Examiner: Frank Spotnitz on how 'The X-Files', Hitchcock paved the way for 'Hunted'

Aug-02-2012
Frank Spotnitz on how ‘The X-Files’, Hitchcock paved the way for ‘Hunted’
Examiner
Danielle Turchiano

[Original article here]

“When The X‑Files started, the word ‘mythology’ was not in the vocabulary to describe television, and I think we kind of stumbled upon the whole method of telling stories that way by accident, because of Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy at the end of season one,” Frank Spotnitz considered how his old series paved the way for his new one, Hunted for Cinemax.

“But it amazed me, because the Internet was just sort of coming online at that point, and I remember news groups that I would look at at the beginning of the second season of The X‑Files to see how observant fans were. These are the die-hard fans, not most of the audience, but I think we began to realize that you could thread clues, and you could wait quite a long time. You could wait sometimes two or three years in the case of The X‑Files before you picked up that thread again, and not only would people follow it, they would love you for it, because you were rewarding their loyalty and their intelligence.

“It’s hard to think back to the mid ’90s, but at that point, people thought television was not particularly sophisticated, and I realized just the opposite was true. It’s very hard to be as smart as your audience, and so it emboldened us to be very ambitious with the ideas we tried to convey…I took many, many things away from The X-Files experience, but the main things were: Be ambitious, be as great as you can be, and trust in the intelligence of your audience.”

Those are the things Spotnitz is now trying to do with Hunted, a certainly ambitious series shot and set in Europe about a woman (Melissa George) working for a secretive and elite espionage service. Since she is not working for a government but instead a private sector, questions start to set in regarding if she can actually trust the intelligence she is given and the people hiring her.

“In our show, the reality is these operatives are not told who their employers are, so if you’re trying to do a paranoid spy thriller, as well, I thought that’s really interesting, not knowing. Should you succeed? Maybe it would better if you fail– better for the world if you failed. So I met many, many people who are in this business and they have many very frightening stories to tell, and I put as many of them as I could into the first season!” Spotnitz revealed.

Calling the spy genre one of his favorites and referencing The Prisoner, The Saint, Mission Impossible, I Spy, Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the James Bond franchise as his influences, Spotnitz wanted to take storytelling back to a simpler time with Hunted. He pointed to Hitchcock as that kind of master of paranoia and suspense in genre storytelling, hoping to model himself and his projects on some of Hitchcock’s early (silent) works.

“I would always rather do it without dialogue,” he bravely admitted. “I would always rather let the picture tell the story. And that’s one of the first things you give up usually in series television because there is so little time and so little money, you’re churning through directors, you can’t trust it will work without dialogue. In this case, [though] I was incredibly fortunate to have great directors, beginning with S.J. Clarkson, who directed the first two hours, and we worked so closely together…we didn’t need to have words. And so there are long sessions with no dialogue, and to me, it’s pure; it’s cinema.”

Additionally, Spotnitz pointed out that this kind of storytelling allows the audience to be more engaged with the show because they’re not being “spoon-fed everything.”

“There are things in this show where it happens in an episode and you don’t know why that was there, and you wait two or three episodes and you go, ‘Oh, that’s the connection.’ And we’re not telling you; we’re trusting you as a viewer that you’ll piece it together, and it’s more exciting, I think,” Spotnitz considered.

Over the course of eight, one-hour episodes, Hunted will visit Morocco, Scotland, Tangier, and London, to name a few, each time delivering a little bit more information about what’s really going on with the greater mystery in which George is mixed up.

“It’s one of those shows that when you get to episode eight, if you were to go back and watch episode 1 again, you’d see it was all there,” Spotnitz previewed. “It was all hidden in plain sight. You know, it’s not a mystery that’s cheating, withholding pieces. It was there if you were paying attention, and that’s very satisfying for me as a viewer when I watch mysteries like that, so there’s a lot of clues in those images that will make sense when you get to the end.

“We wanted it to be cinematic, and that meant really going to the locations, [too]” Spotnitz, who credited Cinemax for their support in allowing his big ideas to come to fruition, explained.

“It’s a lot harder and a lot more expensive, but you see it. I mean, it looks fantastic, and you see London in a way that people, especially in America, that you rarely get a chance to see. So it was really exciting for me to have the opportunity, especially as an American, to go to Europe and have the opportunity to take advantage of all these unbelievable locations that we just don’t get to see that often in this country.”

Hunted premieres on Cinemax in October 2012.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Interviews: Online | No Comments »

Aug
02
2012

Collider.com: Writer/Producer Frank Spotnitz Talks His Desire to Make a Third X-FILES Movie and the Possibility of a MILLENNIUM Movie

Aug-02-2012

Writer/Producer Frank Spotnitz Talks His Desire to Make a Third X-FILES Movie and the Possibility of a MILLENNIUM Movie

Collider.com

Christina Radish

[Original article]

The X-Files writer/producer Frank Spotnitz has created the compelling eight-episode international espionage series Hunted for Cinemax, to premiere on October 26th.  The story follows Sam Hunter (Melissa George), a skilled operative for Byzantium, a secretive private firm involved in global intelligence and espionage, that may have personally been responsible for orchestrating an attempt on her life, leaving her with no idea who to trust.

While at the TCA Press Tour, Collider spoke to Frank Spotnitz for this exclusive interview.  We will run what he had to say about that series closer to its premiere, but we did want to share what his comments about whether he still wants to do a third The X-Filesmovie, why it would be a cultural crime not to finish the series, how it would need to happen pretty soon, and what he’s most happy about when he looks back at his work on the series and movies.  He also talked about what it might take for a Millennium movie to happen.  Check out what he had to say after the jump.

Collider: Do you feel like you’ve closed the book now on The X-Files, or is there still another chapter to tell there?  Do you still want to do a third movie?

FRANK SPOTNITZ:  I absolutely do!  I think everybody should write to 20th Century Fox.  I’ve been saying for years now that I feel it’s a cultural crime that they have not finished the series.  The second movie did not perform the way anybody wanted it to at the box office.  I’m proud of that movie, but it makes sense to me that it didn’t.  It was released at the height of summer, and it was a story-of-the-week.  That’s not what the movie-going audience wanted.  The movie-going audience wanted the aliens.  That’s what they know The X-Files for.  And that story is not done, and it should be finished.  I don’t think it’s too late, but I think it’s gonna be, pretty soon.  I’m still agitating with everyone I can grab to say, “Let’s make this movie while we still can!”

When you look back at the time you spent making the show and the movies, what are you happiest about, and are there things you still wish you could go back and change?

SPOTNITZ:  Oh, yeah, always!  Unfortunately, my personality is that way.  It’s true with Hunted, too.  I’m like, “Oh, that’s good, but this wasn’t good enough.”  I just look to what I consider failures.  Other people might be like, “Oh, that was great,” but I’ll be like, “No, to me, that was not.”  I’m sure with The X-Files, there are plenty of things that I wish had been better.  But, The X-Files was the central experience of my professional life.  It was my first job in television.  It taught me everything that I’ve taken with me since, and it was a huge success.  I just feel so blessed to have something like that in my life.  How many people get to be a part of something like that?  I really made a lot of close friendships, with Chris Carter and Vince Gilligan, and I’m still friends with a lot of the actors.  I still see Gillian [Anderson] and talk to David [Duchovny].  It’s a treasure and a blessing to have something like that. 

Lance Henriksen recently talked about his desire to make a Millennium movie.  Is that something you’d like to go back and revisit?

SPOTNITZ:  I would!  It’s a harder case to make for Millennium because Millennium was one of those shows that was a critical darling, but never found the mass audience that it deserved.  But, I get asked about that.  There are amazing fans for both series.  The Millennium guys are publishing a book this summer.  They’re really clever about trying to make this happen.  If they knocked on my door and we could do it, I would absolutely do it, but it’s a tough sell.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Interviews: Online | No Comments »

Jul
23
2012

Salon.com: Vince Gilligan: I’ve never Googled “Breaking Bad”

Jul-23-2012
Vince Gilligan: I’ve never Googled “Breaking Bad”
Salon.com
Erik Nelson

[Original article here]

[Extract]

You went to the “Chris Carter School of the Dramatic Arts” with “The X-Files.”  What did you take away from there? I’m interested, as you now approach the ending of “Breaking Bad.”  Because, I don’t remember “X-Files” really ending.  I remember it just sort of dissipating.  Maybe that is unfair, but I don’t get a sense that there was closure. And is that something you keep in the back of your mind as you approach the end?

I think about it all the time because I can tell you we worked our butts off from that show. And it’s just a function of raw numbers.  We had 202 episodes of that show when we were done, after nine years. I was, I am proud of that show. I have to admit, I’m more proud of “Breaking Bad” because it is my personal baby. But it was a wonderful, wonderful job. But when you have that many episodes, you’re going to have some clunkers, especially when you’re working at the pace that one works at in network television. That’s why people say, “Oh, you know, cable is better than network.” You hear that a lot. Network is the hardest work going. My hat is off to anyone doing a network TV show because they’ve got to do 24 in a season, 25, 26 in a season, and we’re dilettanting around doing 13 or 10 or eight or whatever. And that’s the way I want it, by the way. I don’t ever want to go back.

With a show like “X-Files,” I learned a lot of lessons. Chris Carter was a great boss, a wonderful boss. And I learned how to produce television. I learned how to write for television. I wouldn’t be doing this job now. Wouldn’t know how to do it if it weren’t for “The X-Files.” But, honestly, ”The X-Files” was a bit of a cautionary tale for me, because we were busting our asses all through Season 9, but the rest of the world, in hindsight, felt like they had moved on around Season 6. They were into other things.  And that was an unpleasant feeling, and it would’ve been even more so, if I had actually created the show. So a big lesson I’ve taken away from it is I want to end “Breaking Bad” as well as I can possibly end it. But I don’t want to end it a season or two or three too late. I want to go with people wanting more. I’d rather go out with people saying, “You are absolutely out of your mind to be ending this thing now. You’re at the height of this thing, you’re crazy to end it right now.” I’d rather have people say that to me with bewilderment, than to hear people in passing say, “’Breaking Bad,’ I used to love that show. Is that thing still on?” One is far worse than the other.

Tags: ,
Posted in Interviews: Online | No Comments »

Jun
04
2012

The Hollywood Reporter: Killed Characters, Fired Bosses and Canceled Shows: TV's Top Drama Showrunners Tell All

Jun-04-2012
Killed Characters, Fired Bosses and Canceled Shows: TV’s Top Drama Showrunners Tell All
The Hollywood Reporter
Matthew Belloni, Stacey Wilson

[Original article]

[Selections only]

This story originally appears in the June 4 Emmys Watch special issue of The Hollywood Reporter.

On a sunny morning in early May, six of television’s busiest showrunners enjoyed that rarest of luxuries: two hours away from writers rooms, sets and, most frightening, blank computer screens. Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), 45, Howard Gordon (Homeland), 51, Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Scandal), 42, Glen Mazzara (The Walking Dead), 44, Veena Sud (The Killing), 45, and Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire), 52, run some of the most powerful and critically lauded drama series on TV. In a candid discussion about the pressures of their jobs, The Hollywood Reporter heard how some have killed off popular characters, how Mazzara coped with replacing his boss Frank Darabont, the rave reviews Gilligan receives from addicts for his spot-on meth recipes and Gordon’s struggle — shared by the others — to live a life despite “being perpetually haunted by these stories.”

THR: What has been your most challenging moment with an actor?

Gordon: Where’s this running? (Laughter.)

Gilligan: I remember a good learning moment for me. It was on The X-Files, and I had written the scene where Gillian Anderson was about to get an ice-pick lobotomy by this crazy guy who’d strapped her to a dentist chair. I wrote that she was coming out of some deep anesthetic, and the scene needed to be scary. But I’m like, “This is not scary, because she’s not scared. She is drugged!” So I had to ask them to reshoot it. She was very upset with me. I don’t blame her. I sent her flowers. I learned from that that you got to be careful what you put on the page.

Tags: ,
Posted in Interviews: Online | No Comments »

Apr
05
2012

ScreenDaily: The X-Files writer Frank Spotnitz talks new UK spy series Hunted, working in the UK and a feature sequel to The X-Files

Apr-05-2012
The X-Files writer Frank Spotnitz talks new UK spy series Hunted, working in the UK and a feature sequel to The X-Files
ScreenDaily
Andreas Wiseman

[Original article here]

Frank Spotnitz talks to Screen about new UK spy-thriller series Hunted – produced by Kudos and BBC – and the UK as an exciting hub for big-budget TV.

The X-Files writer Frank Spotnitz was at MIPTV this week to discuss his new UK spy series Hunted, produced by Kudos Film & Television and the BBC for BBC One in the UK and HBO sister channel Cinemax in the US.

Hunted, directed by SJ Clarkson, sees Melissa George star as a British spy working for a private intelligence agency. After an attempt on her life by a colleague, George’s character Sam goes undercover not knowing who tried to kill her or who to trust.

Adam Rayner, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Stephen Dillane co-star in the thriller which according to US writer Spotnitz has a budget “competitive with US network shows and one very generous for the UK.” Shooting was on location in London, Wales, Scotland and Morocco.

Researching the show was an eye-opening experience for the London-based creator, writer and executive producer of the show: “It was a challenge at times because of how secretive private spy agencies are. It’s not an area I was very aware of until I went looking for it. Most private contractors don’t want to be noticed. Their websites are dry and boring and they don’t want the wrong kind of attention. I talked to people who run these companies in the US, UK and Switerland and then I researched the type of personality working at them.”

Spotnitz initially developed the series with The X-Files star Gillian Anderson but when she was unavailable they selected Melissa George from around 200 actresses who read for the part.

Is there something of the Dana Scully about Sam? “If you look at Dana and Sam on paper you might say they are different, but yes, they are both strong, very capable women. Sam’s world is dangerous and threatening, to a greater extent even than Dana’s. She has to construct a wall of invulnerability.”

After working with Kudos on Hunted and Left Bank Pictures on 2011 series Strike Back, Spotnitz sees scope for further collaboration in the UK, which he believes represents an increasingly attractive option for US and international writers and producers: “I now live in London with my family. It is really exciting being here at the moment. A lot more production is going to take place on this side of the world and sold back to US and elsewhere. The talent and location here are thrilling. So many writers I speak to in the US are jealous of my opportunity here so I’m not in a hurry to leave. The tax credit will be a huge help to the local industry.”

“Europe is in a unique position because TV co-productions make a lot of business sense and can be very creatively exciting if they maintain integrity,” continued Spotnitz. “The idea must be international but not cynical. The production shouldn’t be cobbled together for financing purposes. The last three years the US market is opening up to internationally produced content. The broadcasters there are looking to do them now because they can be bargains.”

Spotnitz is currently working across a slate of TV and features, one of which is long-in-the-works crime-thriller The Star Chamber. He also continues to push for a sequel to 1998 feature The X Files: “There is a very active and relentless fan campaign for a last movie. I do feel like it would be a terrible shame if that didn’t happen. It feels wrong not to give it an ending around the alien colonisation of earth. David [Duchovny] and Gillian [Anderson] feel the same. I have a clear idea of how it would go and I’ve been talking to Chris Carter about it for a long time. I’ll keep banging the drum whenever I meet the Fox guys [the studio holds the sequel rights but was disappointed by the original’s lackluster box office].”

Hunted will air in the UK and US in autumn 2012.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Interviews: Online | No Comments »

Mar
28
2012

The Daily Beast: Gillian Anderson on ‘X-Files,’ ‘Downton Abbey,’ ‘Great Expectations’

Mar-28-2012
Gillian Anderson on ‘X-Files,’ ‘Downton Abbey,’ ‘Great Expectations’
The Daily Beast

[Original article]

Gillian Anderson, famous for ‘The X-Files,’ stuns as Miss Havisham in Sunday’s ‘Great Expecations.’ She tells Jace Lacob about turning down ‘Downton Abbey,’ her British accent—and possibly playing Scully again.

Gillian Anderson is no stranger to strange worlds.

The former star of The X-Files, which became a worldwide hit and spawned two feature films, Anderson has, for now anyway, traded in Dana Scully’s FBI-issued handgun and severe suits for the tight-laced corsets and flowing frocks of such period dramas as Bleak House, The House of Mirth, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, The Crimson Petal and the White, Moby Dick, and Any Human Heart, in which she played a deliciously conniving Wallace Simpson, complete with a false nose. But it’s Anderson’s jaw-dropping turn as Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, which airs Sunday evening on PBS’s Masterpiece Classic after a three-night run in December on BBC One, that erases any trace of Scully’s bravado.

An Anderson role in a period piece seems de rigueur these days: she was also very nearly in ITV’s critically acclaimed costume drama Downton Abbey, but turned down an offer to play Lady Cora Crawley, a role that went to fellow American Elizabeth McGovern. “They’re still mad at me,” Anderson told The Daily Beast. “Every time I see [creator] Julian Fellowes, he says, ‘Why?’ I’m very finicky.”

It’s no surprise that after her legendary turn as the emotionally haunted Lady Dedlock in Andrew Davies’s 2005 adaptation of Bleak House, which earned her Emmy Award and Golden Globe nominations, Anderson has a fascination with severe or extreme characters. In Great Expectations, adapted from the Charles Dickens novel by Sarah Phelps and directed by Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones), she stars as the malevolent and tragic Miss Havisham, whose blackened heart leads her to destroy the innocence of young Pip (Douglas Booth) and Estella (Vanessa Kirby), and doom whatever chance of love either has.

gillian-anderson-interview-lacob-main
Todd Antony / Courtesy of BBC Pictures

There was much grumbling in the British press about Anderson being the youngest actress to play Miss Havisham, who is traditionally portrayed as a skeletal old woman still dressed in the tattered vestiges of her wedding gown, clutching at the last shreds of her youth, while already standing in her grave. (Helena Bonham Carter will play the role in a feature film version of Great Expectations, out later this year.)

“I appreciate the purists out there who have studied Dickens,” said Anderson, elegantly dressed in a flowing white blouse and gray skirt, and seated in an empty banquet room at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena. “But the facts are, from my understanding, Miss Havisham is around 50. That is not far from 43, which is what I am. They keep talking about me being the absolute youngest, when actually the actress who played her in David Lean’s version was 46.”

“I expected when I kept reading this stuff that I was going to read that she was 75,” she said of Martita Hunt, who played the wild-haired Miss Havisham in the 1946 classic. “They just have to harp on something.”

“If a good script comes along for another film, then I’m up for it and so is David. So is [creator] Chris [Carter]. I don’t see any reason not to do it.”

Indeed, by making Miss Havisham closer to Pip’s age, the production has heightened the sense of tension, both sexual and psychological, between the two characters. “She’s not an old crow and fawning after these children, which would end up being really creepy,” said Anderson. Likewise, an additional patina of tragedy is added to the deeply disturbed character, whom Anderson imbues with a blend of ghostly transparency and obsessive madness. Pip telling her that she could have filled her decrepit home, Satis House, with children of her own cuts even deeper—she still could choose to open herself up to love. Instead, her downfall is that she can’t let go of the poison in her heart or the heartbreak in her past.

Anderson herself is more or less a Dickens novice. Her experience of the author, who would be celebrating his 200th birthday this year, is limited to her own work in adaptations of Great Expectations and Bleak House.

“I can’t remember if it was high school or college, but I attempted to read A Tale of Two Cities and I don’t recall getting through it,” she said. “I don’t think I gave him more thought until he came into my life in this respect. One of the only things that I have regrets about in my life is my experience of school and education. I wish I had known how important it was to pay attention … My first foray into a lot of the classics has been through my work. It’s only after falling in love with the screenplay or adaptation that I’ve then gone on to read the novels themselves.”

Anderson was a bit of a teenage hellion. A far cry from the sleek and sophisticated star these days, the teenage Anderson dyed her hair multiple colors and had her nose pierced. (In an infamous anecdote, she was arrested on the eve of her graduation for trying to glue the gates of her school shut, but according to an interview in US Weekly, she got off with community service and spent a week cleaning a YMCA.) Born in Chicago, she was shuttled with her family around the world for much of her childhood: a stint in Puerto Rico as a baby, a childhood spent in London, and then, at age 11, her formative years spent in Grand Rapids, Mich., where her English accent marked her as an instant outsider.

That accent still turns up on occasion, particularly when she appears on British talk shows like The Graham Norton Show or Parkinson, where Anderson deploys the cut-glass tones of one of her well-heeled characters. On this day, however, there is not a trace of Britannia in Anderson’s speech.

“When I’m in London, my partner’s British, my kids are British, and I’m surrounded by Brits,” she said, laughing. “It’s near to impossible for me to maintain my American accent in the midst of that. My first language was with a British accent … I could understand why it would be confusing for people in the States who aren’t used to me with a British accent, but I didn’t lose my British accent until well into college. Even when I started doing The X-Files, I was only a few years away from having decidedly losing it. It’s completely natural to me. When I try, in London, to not speak with a British accent or to keep it American, I just sound like a f–king idiot. It turns into some weird eurotrash thing.”

It was Anderson who raised the specter of The X-Files during the interview. After playing skeptical FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in Fox’s science-fiction thriller for nine seasons and costarring with David Duchovny in two spinoff feature films, 1998’s The X-Files and 2008’s The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Anderson was widely believed to have finished with the character and the alien-themed franchise. Not so.

“Not at all,” she said. “If a good script comes along for another film, then I’m up for it and so is David. So is [creator] Chris [Carter]. I don’t see any reason not to do it if the script is good and Fox wants to go ahead and put the money behind it. Now I don’t know if there’s a script, I don’t know whether Fox is even remotely interested, so it’s completely out of my hands. But I’d be up for it.”

Still, the entrenchment of Scully in pop culture has had its potential pitfalls, given how long Anderson portrayed the religious medical doctor-turned-FBI-field agent—she appeared in all but four of the show’s 202 episodes—and there was the risk that the actress could be pigeonholed afterward.

“There was definitely that concern coming off the series and wanting to do as many different things as possible,” Anderson said. “There is an argument that every time I decide to do another [X-Files] feature, it complicates that even more in that it solidifies me in the audience’s mind more as that character … [But] I’m not going to choose not to do it because people might be closed-minded.”

While another possible X-Files film percolates in the background, Anderson will star in the five-episode BBC Two psychological thriller The Fall, which will be shot in Belfast beginning this month and air later this year. In the project, from writer Allan Cubitt (Prime Suspect), she’ll play Metropolitan Police Detective Superintendent Gibson, who travels to Belfast to hunt a serial killer who is striking at random. The action swivels around the lives of those enmeshed in the killing spree: the victims’ families, the murderer, and Gibson herself.

“It’s so good,” said Anderson. “It’s like a miniseries; it’s only five episodes. It’s as close to Prime Suspect as I’ve ever read, which is very exciting because that was so well done and I really like this character.”

For Anderson, who said she’d also love to do a play in New York, The Fall represents yet another opportunity to do something different, in this case, short-form programming with a limited run.

“Why there have to be so many rules about what one should or can or cannot do is just so bizarre,” she said. “This is a time for experimentation and certainly there are a couple of networks that have been dabbling in short stacks of [programming], and that’s always refreshing to hear. All the stuff that’s now being shot over in Europe instead of in the States feels like it’s becoming more international than ever.”

“Surely in the world,” she said, “there’s room for everything.”

Tags: , ,
Posted in Interviews: Online | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »