Posts Tagged ‘chris carter’
Jun
26
2008
Entertainment Weekly: Burning Question: 'Independence' cameo in 'X-Files'?
Jun-26-1998
Apr
22
2008
The A.V. Club: Interview: Chris Carter
Apr-22-2008
The A.V. Club
Interview: Chris Carter
Keith Phipps
[Original article here]
Chris Carter spent the ’80s working as a writer and editor for Surfing magazine and developing TV shows for Disney before creating the TV series that made his name. Debuting in the fall of 1993 on Fox, The X-Files became one of the defining television series of the ’90s. Starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, two FBI agents charged with investigating strange cases, The X-Files mixed hard science and fringe beliefs into stories that were alternately comedic, terrifying, and philosophical. Playing Scully’s skepticism against Mulder’s credulity, it used pre-millennium tension, post-Watergate paranoia, UFO lore, and long-simmering sexual tension to create an atmosphere all its own.
It proved tough to imitate. Other Carter projects, like Harsh Realm and the X-Files spin-off The Lone Gunmen, faded quickly. The high-profile Millennium developed a cult following, but died after three seasons. Meanwhile, the 1998 release of the feature film The X-Files: Fight The Future signaled a high-water mark for the show’s grip on the pop-culture imagination, coinciding with a move of operations from Vancouver to Los Angeles after The X-Files‘ fifth season. Later seasons were notable for declining ratings and Duchovny’s limited participation.
But the cult never really went away, and this June will see the debut of the new film X-Files: I Want To Believe, which reunites Carter, Duchovny, and Anderson. Carter has remained tight-lipped about the plot, beyond revealing that it will be a standalone, not tied to the series’ overarching story about a long-in-the-making alien invasion. But in a recent conversation with The A.V. Club, Carter had plenty to say about changing times and the reasons for doing a movie now.
The A.V. Club: You’d have to be in the final stages of making this film now, right?
Chris Carter: Well, sort of. We finished filming about three weeks ago, so we’re editing now, and we’ll be editing and doing post-production right up until the première.
AVC: It’s been six years since The X-Files went off the air. Does that put more pressure on you for this movie?
CC: To make the movie, or to make the movie good?
AVC: To make the movie good.
CC: There’s always the pressure to make the movie good. I don’t know if it adds any time—I think it actually was just the right amount of time away, for me and for the audience, I hope. Those are my instincts.
AVC: Why do you think that is?
CC: There were 202 episodes of The X- Files. I think it was time to finish when we finished, but I think that there’s still a fan base out there. And they’re the reasons for me to do it again. And also David Duchovny was anxious to do another movie, as was Gillian. And it just seemed like Fox came to us and said “now or never,” so “now” was probably the best answer.
AVC: Why would it be now or never? Do you not think it would have still worked a couple years from now?
CC: It possibly could, but there was a writers’ strike coming up, and they wanted to do it before the strike.
AVC: Spoilers are now a problem in a way that they really weren’t when you were doing the series, yet you’ve done a good job of keeping the details of this film under wraps. What was that process like?
CC: Working with people you trust, and having done it before. Only showing the script to the people that needed to see it. Everybody wants to keep it a secret. It’s really, as Fox has pointed out to me, it’s the people who have a script and they leave it on their kitchen table, and somebody else looks at it, that’s how the details get out. I don’t know if we’ll stay successful in keeping the details a secret. The system is something you can’t control completely, so we’re trying to do our best.
AVC: Some fans have expressed disappointment that the film won’t be part of the overarching mythology of the show. What was the thinking behind that?
CC: It goes right back to the time we started talking about—it’s really been 16 years since the show first aired. There are kids in college now who never saw The X-Files, because they were too young, or their parents didn’t let them watch it. So I think you need to reintroduce the show, the idea, and the characters to a new audience. And I don’t think you can do it with a mythology episode. I think it’s best done with a standalone story. But we’re mindful of the characters, and the history they have together, and of that mythology, and how it relates to their personal histories. So there is, I would call it, an aspect of mythology in the show only because the characters produce that mythology.
AVC: So it won’t be completely ignored, then.
CC: It won’t be completely. What I don’t want to do is, I don’t want to insult the intelligence of the fan base, and have to take them through, I call it, a re-conceptualizing of the show.
AVC: The X-Files worked in part because it was in touch with this sort of vague, free-floating 1990s paranoia. Do you sense that our fears have changed in 2008?
CC: Yeah, they went away, and we trusted everyone. I should say, we trusted the government completely. And I think that’s changed again, and I think that there’s an element of distrust, and maybe the paranoia is different. But it was short-lived, that period of fear and trust in your government to protect your life and your interests.
AVC: Has what frightens you changed over the last 16 years?
CC: I think the longer you live, the more you see larger patterns in power and the corruption of absolute power. And I guess the things that frighten me are the same things, but now I have to say they’re an accretion of experience, and they come through being a good student.
AVC: Your roots were in comedy before you started The X-Files, and yet it began as a deadly serious show. Did you have to fight your instincts when you were first putting the show together?
CC: Well, it wasn’t a deadly serious show, there was actually humor in it, and I think David Duchovny was funny from the beginning. It was mild, though, because you don’t want to undermine, I would call it, the paranoia of the show. And it became actually a very funny show, not necessarily as a result of any of my comedic ability. It really became a comedy show as a combination of the terrific writers who came to write on it, and then one writer who really busted it open, Darin Morgan.
AVC: Fans never really embraced, in the later seasons, the idea of moving the focus away from Mulder and Scully. Why do you think that relationship resonated so strongly with viewers?
CC: I think it was, for me, an ideal relationship. It was cerebral, it was not easy, it was challenging. I think that the protectiveness he showed her, and the trust that she showed him, was something that was just lacking certainly in life, and then also in maybe entertainment relationships.
AVC: The X-Files always had at least one toe in actual science. Will that be important in the film as well?
CC: Absolutely.
AVC: Any scientific concepts that people might want to brush up on before seeing this movie?
CC: No. [Laughs.] But I never thought of it as a science-fiction show to begin with, even though it was labeled as science fiction, because I wanted it to be in the realm of speculative science, the kind of what-if, taking hard science and applying an unexplained quality.
AVC: Do you keep track of scientific developments, for your process?
CC: As much as I can.
AVC: What are your sources?
CC: My brother teaches at MIT, so I have a good source there. I did a fellowship at the Institute For Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara while I was taking some time off. I have friends who are scientists, and I read regularly science journals, etc.
AVC: You shut down your production company when The X-Files went off the air. What have you been doing in the meantime?
CC: I took some well-needed time off to think.
AVC: Lost, a show that’s obviously been influenced by The X-Files, made a big deal about announcing a definitive end point. Was that ever considered for The X-Files?
CC: No, the reason… We went to season five and we did the movie. Actually, at the end of season four, I could have left, and I might have opted to. My contract was up, and I could have left, and it would have been a successful show. But it was clear that Fox was going to—because it was a powerhouse for their schedule and for their network—the show was going to go on, and it would have gone on without me. And I had made a pledge to the actors that I would stay with the show as long as they did. And that kept me going, so there was not an end point imagined, which was a result of the fact that Fox was not going to end that show anytime without a reason to end it. And I think that it’s a luxury for the creators of Lost to be able to have an end point, and to have a network that supports it. I’m sure the network is not happy about it, because it is a business first, and entertainment second. And they get to put one before the other, which is a luxury that I didn’t actually have or imagine.
AVC: You’ve suggested that the years have made you even less trustful. Is there any sort of hopefulness to The X Files?
CC: Yeah, I think the whole concept of “trust no one,” if that was a mantra of The X-Files, is basically a desperate cry for someone to trust. And I think the show has been exceedingly hopeful, and the idea that it’s not is, I think, not looking deep into what the heart of the show is.
Apr
16
2008
USA Today: Title of 'X-Files' sequel released
Apr-16-2008
Title of ‘X-Files’ sequel released
USA Today
David Germain
LOS ANGELES — The truth is finally out there about the new X-Files movie title.
The second big-screen spinoff of the paranormal TV adventure will be called The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Chris Carter, the series’ creator and the movie’s director and co-writer, told The Associated Press.
Distributor 20th Century Fox signed off on the title Wednesday.
The title is a familiar phrase for fans of the series that starred David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as FBI agents chasing after aliens and supernatural happenings. I Want to Believe was the slogan on a poster Duchovny’s UFO-obsessed agent Fox Mulder had hanging in the cluttered basement office where he and Anderson’s Dana Scully worked.
“It’s a natural title,” Carter said in a telephone interview Tuesday during a break from editing the film. “It’s a story that involves the difficulties in mediating faith and science. I Want to Believe. It really does suggest Mulder’s struggle with his faith.”
I Want to Believe comes 10 years after the first film and six years after the finale of the series, whose opening credits for much of its nine-year run featured the catch-phrase “the truth is out there.”
Due in theaters July 25, the movie will not deal with aliens or the intricate mythology about interaction between humans and extraterrestrials that the show built up over the years, Carter said.
Instead, it casts Mulder and Scully into a stand-alone, earth-bound story aimed at both serious X-Files fans and newcomers, he said.
“It has struck me over the last several years talking to college-age kids that a lot of them really don’t know the show or haven’t seen it,” Carter said. “If you’re 20 years old now, the show started when you were 4. It was probably too scary for you or your parents wouldn’t let you watch it. So there’s a whole new audience that might have liked the show. This was made to, I would call it, satisfy everyone.”
Hardcore fans need not worry that the movie will be going back to square one, though, Carter said. The movie will be true to the spirit of the show and everything Mulder and Scully went through, he said.
“The reason we’re even making the movie is for the rabid fans, so we don’t want to insult them by having to take them back through the concept again,” Carter said.
Carter said he settled on I Want to Believe from the time he and co-writer Frank Spotnitz started on the screenplay. It took so long to go public with it because studio executives wanted to make sure it was a marketable title, he said.
The filmmakers have kept the story tightly under wraps to prevent plot spoilers from leaking on the Internet, a phenomenon that barely existed when the first movie came out in 1998.
“We went to almost comical lengths to keep the story a secret,” Carter said. “That included allowing only the key crewmembers to read the script, and they had to read it in a room that had video cameras trained on them. It was a new experience.”
20th Century Fox is owned by News Corp.
Apr
16
2008
Shock Till You Drop: A Set Visit to the X-Files Sequel!
Apr-16-2008
A Set Visit to the X-Files Sequel!
Shock Till You Drop
Ryan Rotten
[Original article here]
It began with a werewolf. I’m speaking about my interest, that is, in 20th Century Fox’s brand spankin’ new X-Files feature film. But for the sake of explanation and full disclosure, allow me to back up and come clean about a few things. As a fan once living in New York City, I attended one of the first X-Files fan conventions at the Javits Center. First in line. Opening day. Stamp “Chick Magnet” on me now. Yes, I had an appreciation of the show and, like so many out there, my fascination with the quest for truth – spearheaded by Fox Mulder and Dana Scully – checked out the back door when the ninth season rolled around and T-1000 joined the FBI with Annabeth Gish. Six years later, series creator Chris Carter, longtime contributor Frank Spotnitz and company are picking up the pieces with this enigmatic new venture.
And it may or may not have anything to do with a hirsute beast.
You see, a certain “spy photo” leaked online a few weeks prior to my receiving an invite to visit the Vancouver location of the film. Said snapshot revealed a professional exchange between Carter and a lycanthrope (some dude in a suit) on set. Was it a ruse? Something to throw us journos off the beaten path from the secrecy-enshrouded plot? Whatever the case, it was enough to stir long dormant pangs of excitement in this X-Files fan. After all, what X-phile worth his or her salt wouldn’t be excited over the prospect of a creature feature recalling the days of the Flukeman?
I ride in a production van to the Playland Amusement Park in Vancouver, Canada with all of this in mind. – hoping to perhaps eye a swatch of fur, a yellowed claw, anything to confirm, or even deny, the “werewolf” talk.
This latest X-Files marks a return home for Carter and his crew. When the series began in ’93 lensing took place in Vancouver before the production ultimately moved to Los Angeles. Familiar faces of X-Files‘ past populate the crew providing the director with a comfortable insulation. John Bartley, director of photography on seasons one through three, is working second unit alongside first assistant director and ex-Lone Gunman Tom Braidwood. Meanwhile Bill Roe, from the Los Angeles days, resumes his duties as d.p. on first unit. Then, of course, there’s Duchovny and Anderson as Mulder and Scully, respectively. They’re joined this time by newcomers Amanda Peet (Identity), Billy Connelly (Fido) and Xzibit, in a slice of arguably inspired casting.
The entrance to Playland directs one past a roller coaster – the same one used by James Wong (another X-Files alum) for the opening of Final Destination 3. But where I’m heading is to the ice rink, that’s where the crew is working today. Inside it appears the converted rink has been bisected, most of the action is predominantly occurring around a faux house facade garnished with the foliage. “This would be Mulder’s house,” co-writer and producer Frank Spotnitz informs us, greeting ShockTillYouDrop.com by the porch. He’s enjoying the warmer environs here after shooting for three weeks in sub-zero temperatures north of Whistler in Pemberton. “It matches the real house [located in Fort Langley] which is supposed to be somewhere around the Washington D.C. area in the movie.” For Spotnitz, the realization of another X-Files case, “has been a dream. I didn’t think it was going to happen – after six years, negotiations, working on the story.”
His cynicism is understandable and he estimates his commitment to a sequel was sealed in 2002 or ’03. Where things get rocky is in the ensuing years and, as Spotnitz suggests, best explained by Carter. Luckily for us, we find the director by craft service, an enormous black poodle by his side.
The years have been kind to Carter. Same ol’ friendly eyes. Defined chin. White hair a stark contrast to the puffy black winter coat he hugs tight (not to mention his dog). He’s a blue jeans kinda guy. “Fox had come to Frank Spotnitz and me and asked us to do the movie about a year after the TV series had wrapped,” he clarifies. “We said yes and had worked out a story, pitched it to them, they said yes. We went into negotiations and those, shall we say, got protracted. All of a sudden there was this other issue and that took a couple of years to get resolved.”
In the interim, Carter and Spotnitz tabled sequel notes they scribbled together and later revisited them with slightly more mature eyes. “We feel there is a lot to be proud of with the X-Files and we wanted to move forward knowing we had a real story to tell and a reason to tell it,” Spotnitz says. “I think we have that. I already think this is going to be something we’re all proud of and feel good about.”
“I was surprised by how alive they still were in our imaginations,”he adds referring to protagonists Mulder and Scully. “We arrived at what they would be doing at this point in their lives and what happened to them the last six years. For eight years I wrote and produced this show, I spent many hours thinking about Scully and Mulder so in a sense they’re very real to me.”
The sequel, as Spotnitz said, picks up six years after the show’s conclusion. Real time has elapsed which has brought about change in the lives of Mulder and Scully. What those changes are, we’re never told save for the fact that the two are drawn back into the world of X-Files by one case in particular. Carter likens the film’s air of secrecy to a Christmas present. It’s something we can shake. Something we can hypothesis about but when all is said and done, he’d prefer to have all of the details blown wide open when the sequel arrives in theaters on July 25th.
Mystery permeates every aspect of the set. Call sheets and script sides are accounted for and whisked out of public view (especially today). Absolutely no cameras are allowed. A tour of Mulder’s house gives us everything and nothing. Spotnitz guides me up the porch and through the front door into a warm, earth tone-driven living room. Issues of Scientific American are neatly scattered about. Framed black and white photographs are hung on the wall. Mulder’s digs are nice…and a step up from the apartment we’re accustomed to seeing him in. The cleanliness is befitting of a woman, however.
“You’ll notice the brown railing,” Spotnitz points out. “There was one just like that in his apartment.” The reference is a bit over my head but those fans with the photographic memories will be pleased to hear there is plenty of continuity they’ll appreciate. Take the gold fish for instance. “The tank is bigger than the one in the show.” Well, sure, it only seems right they get a big pad if Mulder is moving up. Oh, and look at that, there’s the scuba diver at the bottom of the tank.
“Mulder’s been living here since 2002,” Spotnitz adds. “Come on in here…”
I follow, awash with nostalgia the minute I enter the next room: The office. A clutter of piled-up newspapers, clippings and monstrous sketches. Removed is that aforementioned tidiness. I actually miss it. But here…here is where the eye candy comes into play. Gaze closer at one of the headlines screaming from a nearby paper and you’ll find FBI ARRESTS MODERN DAY FRANKENSTEIN DOCTOR. The ceiling above has been skewered by pencils which hang like stalactites. Sunflower seeds peek out from under the mess on Mulder’s desk where a photo of his sister rests.
Then there’s the poster.
You know the one. Series staple. Black and white, sorta fuzzy image of a UFO with big bold white letters proclaiming I WANT TO BELIEVE. Yeah, that one. Rippling with wear, but present nonetheless. Still signifying all that is “Mulder” and hung with care as a teen would hang a rock idol by his bed. “I’m not sure if it’s one of the L.A. or Vancouver posters, it is an original though,” Spotnitz notes.
So, what is Mulder and Scully up against this time…an alien menace, more government spooks, Scully’s offspring back for revenge like the Davies baby? Try an X-file that has never been covered before. Hard to believe, I know. “I have to say it was challenging after 202 hours to find something that wasn’t done,” admits Spotnitz. “That isn’t to say there are not elements – there will always be [familiar] elements – but the fundamental idea is different from anything we had done in the show. What we also wanted was an X-file, however fractured, that could serve as a mirror to Mulder and Scully – we were looking for a case that could expose things about them.”
Carter adds: “I think the first three seasons really helped lay the foundation for the rest of the show. If you look at those first three, you’ll see connections to what you’re going to see in the movie. We’re trying to scare the pants off of you. It’s not a mythology episode but it owes to the character’s lives, what they’ve been through, the relationship and the arc of the show.”
As a result, this level of intimacy with the characters means scaling back on locations and not going as global as the first film did. “[The story] comes from the heart and who these characters are,” Spotnitz reinforces. “That is part of why it’s such a pleasure to do, we were freed of the complications and the machinery of the plot which had gotten quite complicated over nine years. We didn’t really have to service a lot of that, we could just tell a really good scary, stand-alone story and go deeper into the characters of Mulder and Scully and their relationship than you could in a weekly series. Mulder and Scully bare a lot of scars from their experiences and you can’t do a movie like this without recognizing that .”
I’m allowed to sit in on a scene featuring Duchovny and Anderson. Naturally, Fox has me bound from talking about specifics. It’s a key moment and the actors are chewing it up, especially Duchovny who hasn’t lost his dry edge after all of these years. Minutes earlier, Carter recalled the first table reading of the script. “I felt a wistful moment, something came over me. It was like no time had passed and a lot of time had passed. Our lives had moved on and we’ve all come back together, it felt like family again, it felt right.”
As my day on set wears on, my search for lycanthropic evidence becomes a joke. Carter merely grins with a, “I can’t say anything.” when asked about it. I mean, seriously – who better to ask than the man standing less than five feet away from the creature in the photo? But then I have a slight breakthrough.
On the far end of the ice rink-cum-soundstage, an on-set photographer is snapping away at actors dressed like priest. One by one they file in, stand before a burgundy curtain. Click. Another priest moves in. Click. And another. Click.
Curious, I saunter over and ask what the pics are for. The photographer tells me they’ll be used as set dressing for a sequence set in a rectory. She and I carry a decent conversation about the production, working in Vancouver, past shows she’s been on, then, none too smooth, I drop the question: “So, what were those werewolf pictures all about anyway?” (Think Griffin Dunne’s delivery – “Excuse me, what’s that star on the wall for?” – in An American Werewolf in London. It’s that abrupt.) Unnamed photographer smirks and doesn’t miss a beat.
“What are they saying on the internet?” she asks me back.
“People think it’s a hoax.”
“Oh?”
“You know, to throw off us nerds from trying to ruin Chris’ Christmas surprise.”
“Interesting.”
She looks away. “I was there that day,” she whispers. “I took the picture.”
“And?
“I’m not saying,” she smiles as another priest poser steps up to his mark.
Sheesh. The truth is out here, but I’ll be damned if I can find it. Time may have passed, but it seems things never change. Good luck, Mulder.
Mar
27
2008
USA Today: 'X-Files' creator spills film details
Mar-27-2008
‘X-Files’ creator spills film details
USA Today
Derrik J. Lang
LOS ANGELES — The truth about “The X-Files” sequel — some of it, anyway — is now out there.
“X-Files” creator Chris Carter, writer Frank Spotnitz and other crew members gathered Wednesday to discuss the TV series — and declassify some information about the upcoming film.
The popular Fox paranormal drama, which aired from 1993 to 2002, starred David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully
“While this is not a mythology movie, it’s true to everything that’s come before,” Spotnitz said at the William S. Paley Television Festival. “It’s true to Mulder and Scully, who they are and where they would be this point in their lives and all of the experiences that they’ve had.”
The series first made the leap to the big screen with 1998’s “The X-Files: Fight the Future.” Plans for another film were grounded in 2005 when Carter sued Fox over syndication profits for the show. The lawsuit was later settled.
Carter, who also directs the new movie, said it takes place in the present and uses a story envisioned when the series ended. While the show’s sprawling alien mythology isn’t part of the plot, Carter said there is a reference to Scully’s seemingly supernatural son, William, who was born in season eight and later given up for adoption.
The film is due out July 25.
Carter was tightlipped about the title.
“I can’t tell you,” he said. “I know what I want it to be, but Fox has some ideas of their own.”
Jan
16
2008
USA Today: First look: 'X-Files' returns to theaters, minus alien mythology
Jan-16-2008
First look: ‘X-Files’ returns to theaters, minus alien mythology
USA Today
Scott Bowles
LOS ANGELES — The sequel is out there.
The conspiracy theories will not be.
Ten years after the first film and six years after the show went off the air, The X-Files returns to theaters with Fox Mulder, Dana Scully — and a lot riding on the bet that fans want more of the FBI’s paranormal-investigating agents.
The film, which remains without a formal title, will dump the long-running “mythology” plotline — that aliens live among us and are part of a colonizing effort — that made it one of the most popular television shows in the late 1990s but ultimately drove away some viewers who found it too complex and ambiguous.
“We spent a lot of time on (the mythology) and wrapped up a lot of threads” when the show went off the air in 2002, says Chris Carter, creator of the series and director of the new movie. “We want a stand-alone movie, not a mythology conspiracy one.”
That will come as welcome news to fans of the show’s stand-alone episodes, which included cults, ghosts, psychics and ancient curses.
Carter refuses to divulge any plot points of the movie, but says he wanted to make the film immediately after the show ended. A contractual dispute with 20th Century Fox kept it on the shelf until the case was settled out of court.
He says the delay may turn out to be a blessing.
“There’s a whole audience I want to introduce X-Files to,” Carter says. “There were kids who couldn’t watch it on TV because it was too scary. Now they’re in college. I wanted a movie that everyone could go to.”
Whether they will could be a test of the show’s legacy, says Blair Butler of the G4TV network, which caters to video-game enthusiasts and science-fiction fans.
“At its strongest, it had really creepy stand-alone episodes,” she says. “They turned it into a great franchise. But a lot of years have passed. We’ll see if it’s fallen off the radar.”
She says the film could benefit from an ironic twist: the Writers Guild strike.
“I think it could be a sort comfort food for the people who loved how original the show was and aren’t seeing original TV now,” she says.
But Carter believes they’ll be drawn by something else: the show’s stars, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson.
“For me, The X-Files has always been a romance,” he says. “They had an intellectual romance that’s very rare and restrained compared to so many relationships on TV. I think that’s what appealed most to the fans. And they’re back.”