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May
01
2002

USA Today: 'X-Files gives final answers Sunday

May-??-2002
USA Today
‘X-Files gives final answers Sunday
Dennis Hunt

“This was such a special series, I didn’t want it to just limp along,” says creator and executive producer Chris Carter about ‘The X-Files’. But limp along it has, at least in the Nielsens during the past two seasons.

So, after nine years and a viewership that reached a lofty 17.9 million a week at its peak, Carter and Fox agreed early this year to pull the plug on the landmark series about a team of FBI agents who investigate eerie cases. David Duchovny, who left after a limited role last season, returns for Sunday’s two-hour finale (8 p.m.ET/PT).

With co-star Gillian Anderson and new cast members Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish, X-Files’ ratings fell this season to 8.6 million weekly. “Duchovny was central to the show,” says David Bushman, curator of the Museum of Television & Radio.” He was really missed.”

Fans loved the interplay between skeptical Dana Scully (Anderson) and the maverick Fox Mulder (Duchovny), says Anderson. “You can’t duplicate it.”

Recent past aside, ‘The X-Files’ spot in TV history is assured. ‘TV Guide’ placed the series 37th on its list of the all-time Top 50 shows.

The series finale may not be the end of the X-Files. The door is open for another X-Files movie. The first, in 1998, made more than $80 million at the box office.

Over the Years, the labyrinthine mysteries of Scully and Mulder have gotten ever more complex, even as fans have left. Have the questions been answered?

-Who was the father of Scully’s baby? “If Scully is barren – and she is in the show – how is it that she could have had a miracle child? We’ve sort of said it’s possible that it’s Mulder’s child,” says Carter.

-What happened to Mulder’s sister? “She’s in the spirit world. But there’s more. It will be clearly defined in the finale episode.”

-What was Cancer Man’s relationship to Mulder? “The sense is that he’s Mulder’s father.”

In short, the truth is still out there – for now.

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May
01
2002

Houston Chronicle: Chris Carter sticks to plan

May-??-2002
Houston Chronicle
Chris Carter sticks to plan
Lana Berkowitz

In the beginning, The X-Files creator Chris Carter had an idea of how it would all end. He hoped his dream world would last a bit longer.

Carter promises answers for fans when the series ends its run after nine seasons with a two-hour episode, 7 p.m. Sunday on Fox/Channel 26.

“We will attempt to bring The X-Files full circle for those who were there at the beginning or came in between,” he said.

“Not every question will be answered like a Q&A,” he said.

Preview tapes are unavailable, but a quick check of the finale synopsis shows Krycek, Laurie Holden, X, Jeffrey Spender, Gibson Praise and the Lone Gunmen taking part. Are these flashbacks or ghosts?

“Can’t say,” Carter says, “That would give too much away.” But he does acknowledge that the Lone Gunmen are “deader than a doornail.”

He said he knew the direction he wanted to take the series when it premiered in 1993 but not the path. “That’s been the fun of it for me: the journey.”

“There’s a big part of me in this,” Carter said, particularly mentioning the development of faith. “I relate to both (Mulder and Scully) equally and appreciate their different approaches to get to the same place.”

He also appreciates the work of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as FBI agents Mulder and Scully. When he checks out earlier episodes, he likes what he sees. “Something pleases me about every one. It’s what David and Gillian brought to the show.”

“Scully does her last autopsy in the finale, and she sounds the same as when she did the autopsy in the premiere,” Carter said. “The way she speaks is the same. People think Scully has changed this season, but she has been melancholy this year because Mulder isn’t there.”

Carter has been a bit sad this season, too.

“I wasn’t happy with this year. We premiered to lower numbers for whatever reason — 9/11, premiered late, people thought the journey was complete and didn’t want to get involved with new characters.”

“That was a disappointment,” he said. “It’s frustrating when you’re doing good work and people aren’t watching. That’s why I wanted to wrap it up in a big way and move on.”

It’s not completely over for The X-Files. A movie is planned, but filming won’t begin until next summer, he said.

And what’s going on with Scully’s baby, who was recently handed over to adoptive parents in rural America? Does anyone suspect a teen spinoff?

“It’s Smallville!” Carter said and laughed that trust-no-one laugh.

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May
01
2002

The X-Files Magazine: The Next Files

May-??-2002
The X-Files Magazine [US]
The Next Files
Ian Spelling

As the X-Files series finale hit US screens, Ian Spelling caught up with executive producer Frank Spotnitz to discuss the season and the series as a whole

“We’re done,” Frank Spotnitz says. “It’s over!”

After nine years and 200-plus episodes, The X-Files came to an end in May with The Truth, the two-hour series finale. Penned by series creator and executive producer Chris Carter, with an uncredited assist from longtime co-executive producer Spotnitz, The Truth made sense of a lot of the show’s legendary mythology. With Mulder on trial, living witnesses (including Marita Covarrubias) and helpful ghosts (among them X and the Lone Gunmen), all figures from Fox Mulder’s past, were on hand to testify and/or to guide Mulder in otherworldly ways. The truth-seeking F.B.I. agent faced death by lethal injection for purportedly murdering Knowle Rohrer, a SuperSoldier who, as fans know, couldn’t die by ordinary means.

“I was pleased with the finale,” says Spotnitz, who, because The Truth was days away from airing at the time of this conversation, promised to discuss the episode in more depth next issue. “The Truth is really a culmination of the show and looks back at the show. It brings all the characters, but especially the characters of Mulder and Scully, full circle. You get the sense that they’ve completed a journey and I think it’s touching and exciting. It was quite a challenge to figure out how to do it. We only had two hours, so there were limits to what we could do, but I think we cover a lot of ground. I think it’s very satisfying dramatically and emotionally.

“I’ve really been pleased with the whole ninth season,” says Spotnitz, reflecting on the past year. “There are always ups and downs in every season of a show, but I’ve been amazed at how good a time I’ve had these last two years on The X-Files. I have to be honest and say I went into Seasons Eight and Nine with some trepidation, but I’ve been very happy to be here and we’ve done good work.

“As I said,” Spotnitz continues, “I really like the finale and I also liked the episode before that, Sunshine Days. We knew the show was coming to an end and we knew that definitively. It was the first time we’d had that luxury. At the end of Season Eight, we thought it might be the end of the show, so I very self-consciously designed Alone, the show that I wrote and directed, to be a farewell to the stand-alone episodes. I knew that even if the show didn’t end it would be the end of the Mulder-Scully era, so I wanted the Leyla Harrison character to look back on all the Mulder-Scully cases. I wanted that affectionate look back. The show didn’t end after Season Eight. This time we knew it was ending and we thought, ‘What other way can we have a farewell to ourselves and to the nine years of the show?’ And (writer-producer) Vince Gilligan had this idea to do a Brady Bunch crossover. We realized that by making it about someone’s obsession with another old TV show we could comment on our own show in the process. So while Sunshine Days felt like a very strange penultimate episode, period, it kind of did what we wanted it to do, which was to talk about the power of the fantasy of a TV show and life beyond a TV show and leaving a show behind. I thought it worked very effectively on that level. It was very sweet and touching.

“The other thing Sunshine Days did was to dangle the carrot of Scully once and for all getting proof of the paranormal,” says Spotnitz. “Scully lost that proof, but she was left something greater, which is the power of love, not to get too corny. You also got that nice shot of Doggett and Reyes holding hands. Vince was the first one to write Mulder and Scully actually holding hands, and I guess he wanted to be the first one to write Doggett and Reyes holding hands.”

Speaking again of the finale, Spotnitz reports that he spent very little time on the set during production. Part of that had to do with the fact that he was busy handling post-production chores on other episodes and part of that involved far more personal reasons. “There was just too much crying and stuff going on,” Spotnitz says. “I didn’t really want to be around for that, to be honest. I wasn’t there for the last shot, either. It was done in the desert, about a two-hour drive from the studio. Half of me wanted to go. I was going to try to make it, but I actually couldn’t get away from the office. Chris was there for the entire last week. It’s been a very emotional time. We’ve had a number of goodbyes. We had our last story meeting, our last day of filming, our wrap party and the last music scoring session at Mark Snow’s house. After that last scoring session we all went into Mark’s living room. His wife had prepared this amazing spread and we drank incredible bottles of wine. It’s all been very touching and sad and sweet.” #

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May
01
2002

Starlog: End Games

May-??-2002
Starlog
End Games
Ian Spelling

With murky questions & enigmatic answers, creator Chris Carter closes The X-Files.

It’s starting to sink in. It’s the end of The X-Files. And, like a gallon of black oil, it’s starting to seep into the warped mind of Chris Carter, the man who created The X-Files, executive-produced it for nine years, scripted dozens of episodes and directed several as well.

What began in 1993 as a cult TV favorite – about FBI Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigating the paranormal, aliens and government conspiracies – blew up to become a full-fledged phenomenon on the order of Star Trek – right down to the conventions, fan fiction and the official magazine. Now, with The Truth – the two-hour series finale Fox aired in late May – the show has come to a close.

“Only in small ways is it sinking in right now,” Carter says during a break from production on The Truth. “I sense it when I say, ‘This is the last production meeting’ or ‘This is the last casting session.’ There are lots of lasts. It’s sinking in slowly, but there is still loads of hard work to be done. We have to finish filming and then edit the finale, which will have a quick turnaround. We’ve got plenty left to do before we can really think about the end.”

Final Truths

So what’s the truth about The Truth?

“You see the return of David Duchovny,” Carter replies. “You find out where Mulder has been, what he has been up to. You see some old faces who, if you’ve been a long-time fan of the show, you haven’t seen for a while – and might wonder **how** it is you’re seeing them again. You’ll also see a really good story that brings us full circle back to the pilot. And we make some sense of the mythology. I’m not suggesting that we can answer everything or answer the unanswerable, but we certainly take a **logical**, cohesive approach to trying to answer some of the bigger questions. It’s very fitting that David is back, and it’s a chance to come full circle. He fits into this season’s story arc anyway, so it’s as if we had **planned** it this way.

“It has been interesting for us because we’ve been able to build up to this finale. The last two or three years, the final episode of each season was done without knowing if the show would be back or if I would be back. That was tough, but it’s almost harder now, because we know we have no [other] chance to go back and re-explain things. We have to hit all our marks now. Also, emotionally, we have to be honest with the characters and the journeys they go on. You don’t get a chance to go back with them, either. These are all things we’re taking special care with. I’ve never had a show that has gone 200 episodes, where I had to wrap up nine years of storytelling. Who teaches you these things? I don’t know.”

Carter himself decided to terminate The X-Files. The show’s ratings began their decline after Duchovny became a part-time player during Season Eight, and this year, with Anderson, Robert Patrick (John Doggett) and Annabeth Gish (Monica Reyes) as the leads, the ratings started off lower than ever before. Although the Nielsen numbers remained stable throughout the season – especially after it was announced that this would be the show’s last hurrah – Carter elected to leave the party before being unceremoniously tossed out on the street.

“I think there are some other good shows [now] on Sunday nights,” he reasons. “But we’re still neck and neck with the competition. And while our ratings are down, we’re actually doing the same numbers as a new hit show like Alias, so everything is relative. I don’t know what happened. You could blame it on so many things. You could say it was because of David’s departure. You could say it was because of 9/11. You could say it was because we premiered late and in heavy competition. I ultimately **don’t know** what it was, but I’ll tell you this very interesting experience I had. I was speaking at a college over the summer, and I’m in this classroom that’s full of 100 kids. I’m looking out at them and I’m thinking, ‘These kids are 17, 18, 19 and 20 years old. These kids were 8, 9, 10 or 11 when the show started. They probably didn’t watch The X-Files. I’m dealing with a whole new generation of viewers.’

“Everything changes, and sometimes you can’t quite figure out **where** the viewers have gone. They may have grown up, gotten married, changed their habits or tastes. There are so many variables when a show gets into its grey years. It was very difficult to tell Robert and Annabeth [of the decision to call it a day] because I think they feel responsible, and they’re **not**. They worked hard. They’re terrific actors and they gave everything to the show. If there’s any blame, it’s really on some mysterious x factor.

“The acting has been superior this year,” Carter praises. “The addition of Annabeth and Robert has been really fun for the writers and producers. They are excellent to work with and excellent to write for. We told X-Files stories in new ways, using the trio of Scully, Reyes and Doggett. It has been an interesting exercise telling the stories. And it has been interesting to have David gone for a year and still have him be such a looming presence on the show – even though he was not on it.

“I thought we had some great episodes. 4-D was kind of a Twilight Zone episode as was Audrey Pauley. I was very happy with the episode I wrote and directed [Improbable]. Most people probably didn’t get it, but if you watch it again and again, you’re going to see things in there that you might not have seen the first time. Burt Reynolds did a great job. I was thrilled that we were able to get Burt for the show. And I thought David did a really beautiful job on William [which Duchovny directed but did not act in]. The episode was a departure for us in that it was very talky. He did a great job with it.”

Eternal Proofs

Carter, like anyone else out there who cares about The X-Files, will never know for sure if Fox would have renewed the show for a tenth year if he hadn’t pulled the plug. The network axed Ally McBeal, another graying show that struggled to spike the ratings. “I don’t know,” Carter allows. “The X-Files is a show that provided them with success, popularity and Nielsen numbers for so long. I honestly think there was a sense of, ‘Oh dear, that show.’ It wasn’t a feather in anyone’s cap anymore. All the players have changed since this show was first on the air. What makes careers are new hit shows. I think when a series gets to be a certain age, certain people love it for certain reasons, but it’s not always the people who broadcast it week in and week out.”

Even as The X-Files fades to black as an original series, it will live on in other ways. Repeats will be ubiquitous on cable (SCI FI, TNT) and in syndication. A second film is in the works. Seasons One through Four are already on DVD, and Season Five hit stores in May as a six-disc set from Fox Home Entertainment which includes all 20 episodes (among them, Post Modern Prometheus, Bad Blood, Kill Switch and Unusual Suspects), a fresh half-hour documentary (The Truth About Season Five), Carter commentary on several shows, deleted scenes and even a DVD-ROM game.

“I’m very satisfied with the DVDs,” Carter remarks. “I wish there was more time for me personally to spend on them, but I did spend every minute I could. It was kind of emotional to sit there and talk about Season Five, especially Post Modern Prometheus [which he wrote and directed]. When you watch your own work, you’re rarely emotional about it, but there was something about that monster losing his dad that was very touching to me. Season Five was one of our best seasons. The seven mythology shows we did that year were very important in platforming to the theatrical release. But I think the thing that’s the best – and this isn’t just about Season Five – is that you get to see the good work we’ve done in one of the best, if not **the** best, reproduction formats, DVD.”

Some fans out there, no doubt, would like to see Carter’s other series – Millennium, Harsh Realm and The Lone Gunmen – receive the DVD treatment. For the record, so would Carter. “Millennium, I’m told, will be on DVD,” he says. “Harsh Realm is selling very well on video, and I guess it could find its way to DVD. I don’t know about The Lone Gunmen yet. I foresee Millennium being on DVD, certainly. It has many hardcore supporters. It was a modest hit.”

Last Facts

As for the future of the X-Files feature franchise, Carter reports that everything is proceeding as planned. Duchovny and Anderson are signed to star in a second movie, and Carter will pen the script with Frank Spotnitz, who has been the show’s co-executive producer since the second season. “The film should go into the works pretty quickly,” Carter reveals. “I don’t think we will be filming it before summer 2003. You’ll probably see it in summer 2004.”

It’s at this juncture in the conversation that Carter is informed that he has been named one of STARLOG’s Most Important People in SF & Fantasy. The writer-producer acknowledges the accolade, but doesn’t quite know how to assess his impact on the genre. “That feels odd to me, since I’ve never considered myself to be a SF maven, aficionado or even devotee,” he says. “It’s something I have a great interest in, but that interest is in a certain kind of SF, which I would really categorize more as speculative science. So far as the show [and its impact on SF], I think it drove up certain standards of quality, production-wise. It’s very regular and unflagging quality certainly raised the bar for SF shows. The X-Files is a [type of] show that you may never see again, because Fox was willing to spend the money to do it right. Right now in network television, money is tightening, and the ability to do the things that we’ve done will be far less achievable. It’s a simple matter of economics.”

Looking ahead, Carter says that beyond a rest and jumping into the initial phase of work on the next X-Files feature, he’s going to direct and co-write (with Spotnitz) a feature for Dimension Films, pen a book and, as per his contract with Fox, develop a TV pilot. “I won’t do a domesticated show,” Chris Carter says. “We did little movies with The X-Files each week, and I really want to do a show that has that scope. The X-Files had a large canvas, and I don’t want to limit my canvas by doing something that is a typical, traditional franchise show. And if you look at the shows I’ve done – The X-Files, Millennium, Harsh Realm and even The Lone Gunmen – they were big-canvas shows. They were scopey, and that’s what I want to continue to do.”

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May
01
2002

New York Times: The X-Files' Finds Its Truth: Its Time Is Past

May-??-2002
New York Times
The X-Files’ Finds Its Truth: Its Time Is Past
Joyce Millman

Is the truth out there? For the first five thrilling seasons of “The X-Files,” I wanted to believe (just like the show’s UFO-chasing hero, Fox Mulder) that all would be revealed. Surely the executive producer, Chris Carter, had a master plan in his head and my loyalty and patience would someday be rewarded.

OK, so I’m a sucker. But it was fun for a while, playing along with “The X-Files,” rooting for this little spook show on the fourth-place Fox network as it wormed its way into the popular consciousness. It wasn’t until the incomprehensible 1998 feature film “The X-Files: Fight the Future,” an overgrown sweeps episode, that it became obvious that Carter was making up the show’s “mythology” (the sadistically convoluted plot line about a secret government war on extraterrestrials) as he went along.

“The X-Files” will end its run on May 19 with a two-hour episode tantalizingly _ or, perhaps, tauntingly _ called “The Truth.” But it’s hard to get all tingly with expectation that Carter will finally wrap everything up with a tidy bow. Especially since he’s apparently planning to write a second “X-Files” movie.

Still, even with its often maddening ambiguity, “The X-Files” could give you the heebie-jeebies more elegantly and efficiently than anything else on television. Perpetually underlighted and rain-slicked, rich with cynicism, almost Hitchcockian in its command of tension and release, it was the defining series of the ’90s. It hauntingly captured the cultural moment when paranoid distrust of government spilled over from the political fringes to the mainstream, aided by the conspiracy-theory-disseminating capability of the Internet. With its high-level cover-ups, Deep Throats and adherence to the watchwords “Trust no one,” “The X-Files” tapped into still-fresh memories of Iran-contra and Watergate, not to mention Ruby Ridge and Waco.

Making its premiere on Sept. 10, 1993, “The X-Files” starred the little-known David Duchovny as a flaky FBI special agent, Fox Mulder, and the unknown Gillian Anderson as the levelheaded special agent (and medical doctor) Dana Scully. Mulder’s interest in the paranormal and his fervid quest to find his sister (abducted by aliens, he believed) had gotten him demoted to a dead-end assignment investigating the bureau’s weirdest cases. Fearful that Mulder was closing in on proof of the government’s conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrials, the FBI assigned the straight-arrow Scully to debunk his theories and be his unwitting baby sitter. Armed with their trusty flashlights, the deadpan Mulder and the stern but scrappy Scully (who soon warmed up to Mulder’s goofy charm) chased down freaks of nature like Eugene Tooms, who consumed the livers of his victims and, oh yeah, had the ability to fold up his body like an envelope and slip through the thinnest of cracks. They also uncovered possible evidence that life on Earth began from extraterrestrial ancestors, and that a cabal of government, science and industry leaders was trying to create a race of superhumans to fight a global takeover by aliens.

Sure, “The X-Files” covered the same turf as Weekly World News. But this was no campy creep show. Carter and the best of his writers (Glen Morgan, James Wong, Darin Morgan and Vince Gilligan) tackled alien abductions, clairvoyance, wrinkles in time, satanic possession and telepathic revenge with a measure of dignity and fine, low-key gallows humor. The show made sci-fi accessible to viewers who didn’t consider themselves sci-fi fans.

“The X-Files” borrowed more from hard-boiled cop shows like “Law & Order” and “Homicide” than from “Star Trek.” And it owed an obvious debt to the freaky metaphysical mysteries of “Twin Peaks” _ that show’s quirky Agent Cooper and Fox Mulder could have been spiritual twins (provided you were able to forget that Duchovny appeared on “Twin Peaks” as a fed who liked to wear dresses). “The X-Files” also left plenty of room for smart viewers to weigh the respective merits of Mulder’s open-mindedness and Scully’s skepticism. Some of the show’s “scientific” explanations were as scary as the scary monsters themselves, because they contained just enough plausibility to make you wonder. (My personal favorite: Flukeman, a humanoid parasitic flatworm, possibly spawned as a result of nuclear waste from the Chernobyl meltdown.)

Helped along by the ecstatic buzz among its Web-savvy fans, who called themselves X-philes (this may have been the first show to find its audience growth tied to the growth of the Internet), it soon broke out of its cult status. Its mainstream popularity was all the more surprising given that alien-invasion fiction usually flourishes in times of national anxiety. The Red scare and the Cold War of the ’50s, for example, inspired “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and countless attack-of-the-Martians B-movies. But the United States enjoyed security and prosperity for much of the run of “The X-Files.” So what was driving the paranoia on which the show fed?

An event that comes once every thousand years.

As the ’90s unfolded, superstition about the approaching millennium renewed interest in all things spiritual, from doomsday prophecies to fundamentalism, from the cabala to angels.

And “The X-Files” mirrored this hunger to believe. Mulder wanted extraterrestrials to be real so he could solve the mystery of his disintegrating family. Scully placed her faith in science, yet she wore a small gold cross around her neck; unable to rationally explain how she survived an incurable cancer, or became unexpectedly pregnant after she was diagnosed as “barren,” she fell back on the comfort of her Roman Catholicism and considered them “miracles.”

Indeed, “The X-Files” has been preoccupied with Christian imagery for the last two seasons. After her “immaculate conception” (apparently she was artificially inseminated with Mulder’s donor sperm), Scully gave birth last season in a hokey Nativity scene, complete with a Star of Bethlehem pointing the way to baby William, who may or may not be the part-alien savior of humankind. An episode this season also revealed that a crashed alien spaceship, carbon-dated to be millions of years old, was encrypted with passages from the world’s great religions. For Carter’s coup de grace, will the existence _ and nature _ of God turn out to be the biggest X-File of all?

Carter’s willingness to take on the big spiritual What If’s in a manner more provocative than, say, “Touched by an Angel” was one stroke of brilliance. The other was, of course, the soulful and enduring relationship between Mulder and Scully. Their partnership was professional yet deeply intimate, as typified by the odd salutation that Scully used whenever she contacted her partner by phone: “Mulder, it’s me.” We never saw them in bed together (and we were privy to only one meaningful kiss), but Mulder and Scully were clearly soul mates, throwing sparks from the tiniest hints of longing. Scully’s sexiest quality was, arguably, her luminous integrity, while Mulder (turn-ons: UFO’s, sunflower seeds, porn) was an unlikely cross between a broodingly handsome hunk and a wisecracking nerd _ part Richard Gere, part Alfred E. Neuman. Yet despite all this, or because of it, Mulder and Scully became Internet sex symbols, the thinking person’s downloads.

Mulder’s disappearance last year (Duchovny had tired of the weekly grind; he returns for the series finale) left single mom Scully looking haunted and irritable, a sad misuse of the radiant Anderson. This season, Anderson (who won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her work on the show) held a sort of X-Files Emeritus status, with substantially reduced screen time. The heavy lifting of ghoul-chasing fell to the show’s personality-free new co-stars, Robert Patrick as Agent John Doggett (the skeptic) and Annabeth Gish as Agent Monica Reyes (the believer). To paraphrase Dr. Evil, Doggett and Reyes are the quasi-Mulder and Scully. They’re the Diet Coke of Mulder and Scully.

Without Mulder and Scully at its heart, “The X-Files” is just another middling sci-fi anthology. It was once the champion of its 9 p.m. Sunday time slot (where it moved, from Fridays, in 1996), but its ratings have been soft since Season 7. With HBO’s “Sopranos” and “Six Feet Under” around (and, this season, ABC’s “Alias”), “The X-Files” is no longer the hottest show on the Sunday block. And for at least the last two years (I know, I’m being generous), the burn-out has been painful to watch.

But the truth is, even if “The X-Files” hadn’t self-destructed, it still would have been pushed into irrelevance by the events of Sept. 11. You might think a show that warns us to trust no one, that depicts human-looking alien sleeper agents living among us, would have taken on new resonance. But, oddly, it hasn’t. The show’s mythology, frustratingly teased along and built upon through the years, is by now too insular, self-referential and arcane (what was the significance of the black oil? the bees? Cassandra Spender?) to serve as a metaphor for our times. The most imaginative show on television has finally reached the limits of its imagination.

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May
01
2002

tv-now.com: The "X-Files" (William B. Davis)

May-??-2002
tv-now.com
The “X-Files” (William B. Davis)
Maelee McBee

“Bill Davis was hired to smoke a cigarette. That’s what his job was.”-Former Co-Executive Producer Bob Goodwin on CSM.

We are literally down to days before the series finale of FOX’s long running The X-Files. I recently had the opportunity to speak with William B. Davis (the Cigarette Smoking Man, aka CSM) about his run on the show, the finale and what’s next for him.

For a character who started out lurking in the background of all his scenes smoking cigarettes, the Cigarette Smoking Man became the central figure in The X-Files Mythology. A shadowy figure that we gradually discover controls the destiny of not only Mulder and Scully, but also mankind.

Generally regarded as the devil incarnate with no redeeming qualities, CSM’s portrayer, William B. Davis, prefers to believe that CSM is “doing what he thinks he has to do, not necessarily what he wants to do.” When asked if that makes him more misunderstood than evil, Davis replies, “he’s both. In a sense nobody’s ever really evil, I suppose.” When I point out that American serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims might disagree with that assessment, Davis asks who Dahmer is, and after he is filled in with the details of his crimes, Davis responds with, “yeah, it’s kind of hard to find a positive side to that.” He goes on to draw a parallel between CSM and two other notorious men in history. “I usually use somebody like Sadaam Hussein or Adolf Hitler. You can find why they think they are doing the right thing.”

In the case of CSM he believes “he was an ambitious man faced with a diabolical situation when he knew they (the aliens) were going to be invading the planet. And in effect he essentially made a pact with the devil, the devil being the aliens. In a sort of way the Vichy government did with Hitler. It seemed like it was making the best deal that could be made in the circumstances. But then it got worse and worse. The aliens wanted more and more and he became more and more ruthless. He was on a track he couldn’t get off, and eventually he kind of hollowed out his insides.”

The hollowing of those insides includes having Scully abducted, being subjected to medical testing that left her allegedly barren and gave her cancer, shooting his own son, Special Agent Jeffrey Spender, sleeping with the likes of Diana Fowley , and undergoing a brain surgery that he believes will leave his other son, Fox Mulder, dead. That’s not counting any of the back-story we are given on the character in the fourth season episode CSM, written by Glenn Morgan and James Wong. If that episode is to be believed, the man has killed presidents, rigged an Olympic hockey game and doomed the Buffalo Bills to never win a Superbowl as long as he’s alive. And speaking of alive, he’s also been killed and resurrected twice, most recently for the finale. He previously rose from the ashes after what should have been a fatal gunshot wound in the early fifth season and this time he managed to survive a tumble down the steps in a wheelchair at the hands of Alex Krycek at the end of season seven. Oh, just prior to the tumble, he is seen smoking his trademark cigarette through a tracheotomy.

On the topic of the much ballyhooed series finale, Davis, who is in one scene that is shown in two parts, is a bit tight lipped, asking, “am I allowed to tell you these things?” When asked if he is indeed alive or merely a part of a vision Mulder has, all he will say is ” here’s a clue-my make-up took four and a half hours.” After a bit of needling and wheedling, he finally confirms that CSM is indeed alive, and being taken care of “by someone new.”

When asked if he believes the finale answers all of the questions Mulder and the fans have ever had, he pauses before answering. “You see, it’s funny. Some of the questions, they get asked, they get answered and you think ‘I’m not sure about that.’ So I find myself thinking ‘I don’t know if I believe what I heard.’ So, I don’t know if the questions get answered. It’s almost like the questions get asked and answered to get the information out there, let’s move on. I thought any information that comes that easy, I’m suspect of.” When asked if CSM has any redeeming moments before he gets blown to bits in the finale, he merely laughs.

Davis counts among the highs of working on The X-Files getting to write an episode, En Ami. Davis came up with the idea to do an episode based on Richard III, in which he would pull Scully to his side, or at least make her tempted to go to his side. He took the idea to Co-Executive Producer Frank Spotnitz who then took it to Chris Carter. The idea then went through the story machine, where changes were made. In the end, “the basic structure of the story was mine and the dialogue was Chris’.”

“I wrote the script because I had never really gotten to work with Gillian, but then they wouldn’t let Scully go as far as I wanted her to. CSM was a little hung-up on Scully, and she effected him so that in the end, when he got what he thought he wanted, the CD-ROM that would give him all this power, it didn’t matter. That’s why he threw it in the lake.”

Davis says he enjoyed the episode Talitha Cumi because it allowed him to “have intellectual debates with Mrs. Mulder and we find out she had had an intimate relationship with him.” Another favorite episode of his was the sixth season “Two Fathers, One Son” arc, where he shoots his son, Special Agent Jeffrey Spender, played by Chris Owens.

“I always loved working with Chris. I was sorry to be told I had to shoot him. I always pretended, thought I didn’t shoot him, but I scared him. I guess I did actually shoot him. Those were all good times.”

Life beyond The X-Files has been busy for Davis, who plays a doctor in the upcoming ShowTime film, Damaged Care with Laura Dern, scheduled to run the day after the finale airs and based on a true story. Davis describes his character as a doctor who is caught in the middle. “I’m trying to play both sides and Laura Dern’s character comes in as a rebel and tries to fix things. We try to make things more fair for the patients, but on the business side we are trying to make a profit. And I’m stuck in the middle.” Sounds a bit like CSM.

This summer Davis will also be directing a short film that he has written and is producing called Exchange. “It’s a very tightly focused conflict about sexual power between a professor and his student.” Davis does not have a role in the film, but adds that well regarded Canadian actor Jay Brizzo has been cast as the male lead.

Davis worked the last day the show filmed on the lot. “That was kind of nice because everybody came over, Chris was there, people came and just sat around and chatted. David and Gillian were in very good form. It was just really very pleasant.” When asked how Gillian Anderson seemed to be holding up he remarked, “she seemed fine. I mean, they hadn’t finished working because they had another week to go working on location. She seemed in great form. She had her video camera out shooting pictures all over the place. She certainly wasn’t moping about.”

When asked about his emotions the last day on set, Davis pauses for a moment before answering.

“My answer to this is going to be different from anyone else’s. The hard one for me was two years ago when I didn’t know for sure whether I was dead or not, but thought I probably was. Well, we didn’t really know what was going on with the series either. I kind of did a lot of mental good-byes then. I patted the set, patted the lot and said good-bye to everybody in my head two years ago, then the goddamned series went on without me! I wouldn’t have minded if it had ended, but oh no, it went on. They didn’t use me, so for a couple of years I felt a little, well, a little out of joint and disappointed. So for me it was just a real treat to be back on the show and be there for the end. It was just one great big treat, just a pleasure. It wasn’t sad in that sense, it was just a satisfying completion.”

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