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May
17
2002

Seattle Times: Chris Carter reflects on 'X' going ex

May-17-2002
Seattle Times
Chris Carter reflects on ‘X’ going ex
Mark Rahner

The evil FBI bureaucrats have always threatened to close “The X-Files,” and tonight it’s finally happening for real.

Agents Mulder (David Duchovny), Scully (Gillian Anderson), Doggett (Robert Patrick) and Reyes (Annabeth Gish) are riding off into the sunset or some other bright light in the series finale. It comes after nine years of government conspiracy, strange creatures and sexual tension, not to mention a few other things: achieving a worldwide popularity that rivals that of “Star Trek,” opening up pop culture to horror and the paranormal, and bringing movie-caliber production values to TV shows.

We interrogated series creator Chris Carter recently, while he was in the middle of filming tonight’s farewell episode.

Are there still a lot of loose ends to wrap up?

I realize I was saying we’re going to answer as many questions as we can. But the truth is, now having written it, it’s not so much answering questions as it is making it all make sense.

What story threads will you deal with?

Almost all the mythology threads _ or the large mythology threads _ about the two conspiracies: the one involving the government’s willful propaganda on the existence of extraterrestrials, and also this new conspiracy that came from the first, which is the super-soldier conspiracy.

Is the Cigarette Smoking Man really Mulder’s dad?

There is some indication that he may be, but we leave that open.

What did it take to get David Duchovny (who had left the series) on board for the ending?

All it took was business negotiation. He wanted to do it. He wanted to do “X-Files” movies past this, as we all do. So really it was an opportunity for him to come back to the show, which I know he missed this year _ he told me so _ and to also come back as a way to put himself back into the concept for the movies.

So there will be a second “X-Files” movie?

It’s in negotiation. Everybody wants to do it. That probably means that it will be done.

Why didn’t the show shift completely to Doggett and Reyes?

That was the plan, but when the ratings dipped this year, my feeling was I didn’t want to sit and wait for the journalists (whom) I felt would see it as an angle and a chance to flog the show. I thought that was a new show that could have built a new audience, but I wasn’t interested in seeing “The X-Files” damaged at all or criticized unfairly, so I decided to call it a day and focus on the upcoming movies.

Has the show run its course? Has it been challenging to think of new creatures and bizarre situations?

It’s always a challenge, but I honestly think that season nine had some of the more inventive episodes ever in it.

There are also rumors of a “Millennium” movie.

You know, it still could happen.

That series of yours lasted three years, but two others disappeared fast. What did you take away from your experiences with “The Lone Gunmen” and “Harsh Realm”?

My experience is that if a network is not behind the show, that the audience perceives this as a vote of no confidence and doesn’t get behind it, either. I think what’s happening is that for me, the network landscape is changing, and if you’re not a hit right out of the box they’re not prone to stick with you _ although shows like “24” would disprove that theory. All I can do is come up with a good idea and execute it the best I can and try to get them to promote it and hope that it finds an audience. It’s the name of the game. I can’t cry too much, because if people aren’t watching the show, you can’t argue with that.

Was “X-Files” an instant hit?

It was not an instant hit, but Fox was a different network then. But it was certainly enough of a hit on Fox at the time to give them a sense that they had something. It was a show that never was imperiled. It was never “on the bubble,” as they say.

What’s an “X-Files” convention like?

It’s funny. You’ll see generations, little kids, bigger kids, parents and grandparents. It seemed to be a show that could appeal to everyone. I consider myself to be a geek, and it’s a show that won the hearts of the right kind of television watcher, which is a rabid television watcher.

Costume ideas would seem to be limited, compared to a Trekkie convention.

Costume ideas are limited, and you might not even recognize them without the proper identification.

As the show’s winding down, how do you feel?

I’m glad not to have the gun of series production to my head after this for a while. I’m already sad _ I won’t admit it to myself that I’m sad _ because we’ll do our last production meeting and I’ll do a little speech and there’s a lump in my throat. Everything we do now is a last, and it’s kind of hard. It’s been my life for 10 years.

What’s next for you?

I owe Fox some more television, a year more of my, I guess, ideas and execution. And then I’ve got a movie that I set up a long time ago along with (“X-Files” co-executive producer) Frank Spotnitz over at Miramax/Dimension that’s kind of in the vein of a “Good Will Hunting.” And I signed a book deal a couple of years ago which I have never gotten around to, so I’d better get around to that.

“Good Will Hunting”? That sounds like a change of pace for you.

It is, although it involves an aspect of the paranormal. It’s about a guy who may be a kind of missing link.

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Feb
01
2002

Cult Times: Black Once Again

Feb-01-2002
Cult Times
Black Once Again

He’s played pretty much every kind of role under the sun, but Lance Henriksen still has a special place in his heart for Frank Black…

In his extensive career spanning over 30 years, Lance Henriksen must have played every type of character under the sun. While still most famous among genre fans for his role as Bishop in the Alien movies, many will also know him from his stint as FBI profiler Frank Black in Millennium. After hanging on a knife edge at the end of each season, Millennium finally shut up shop after three seasons. Does the actor wish it had carried on past this point? “It would have been nice, but believe me, everything worked out for the best,” he considers. “I’m back to films now, there’s no looking back and feeling sad about anything, it’s just the way it is. I never regret anything like that, because there are so many elements of it that are out of my hands.

“I was in a truck heading down [with some crew members] from Vancouver to LA to jump on a plane, and when [the powers that be] said it was cancelled, we cheered. We were laughing and cheering and they were going, ‘Are you laughing and cheering?’ and we said, ‘Yeah!’ They said, ‘Well, we’re kind of sad,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, but that’s the way it goes, you know? I mean, what are we supposed to do?’ Honest emotions. We were exhausted, man, we were totally wiped out!

“Here’s the thing,” Henriksen considers, when asked if Millennium’s seasonal format alterations became problematic. “Even marriages don’t work if the people involved in it don’t grow together. How can they expect a corporate thing like a television show to work if there’s no growth? You can’t just keep plodding along; if that happens, you’re wasting your life. And I think it was some of the best television I’ve ever seen, some of those shows that we did on Millennium. I’m not just wagging my own tail, I honestly believe that. Some of those shows were good writing and were shot really well and the actors that came to visit on those shows, some of them were incredible and it went very well. That’s all you can ask for. I just think one of the reasons it went out was because it didn’t grow. Change is not necessarily growth.”

In many ways it was up to Henriksen to keep viewers tuning in, with Frank Black being pretty much the only unchanging element of the ongoing story. Unfortunately, it was something of a case of one step forward and two steps back.

“Yeah, from one show to the next you didn’t know who was your enemy and who was your friend. Yet you couldn’t express it. It wasn’t like they’d let Frank Black sit down and say, ‘You know, I feel like I’m going really insane, one day you’re my friend, the next day I wanna kill you.’ The humour wasn’t allowed, and neither were the street smarts. I really am gonna look forward to doing a show where there’s humour, even in a dramatic thing. We know that five minutes after you almost go off the road in a car and you’re almost killed, you’re laughing. You have to, you have to let it out, and that’s the thing that was missing. I don’t care how much of a dirge anybody thinks sells, it doesn’t, not as well.”

When Millennium finally bit the dust, Chris Carter offered Frank Black and Henriksen the chance to come back for an episode of The X-Files, the Season Seven episode cunningly entitled “Millennium.” Curiously, the story related the news that the Millennium Group were all being killed, only to be reanimated as zombies, leading Mulder to enlist Frank’s consulting help on the case. Fans of the original, however, were wondering how long this had been the Millennium Group’s ultimate, rather ridiculous, plan and what had gone wrong. They weren’t alone, agrees a chuckling Henriksen.

“I gotta tell you, man, the way I got pitched this by Chris Carter, the reason I went on The X-Files, he said to me, ‘This is gonna be closure for Millennium,’ and I went, ‘Oh God, great, Chris, I can’t wait to read the script.’ So the day I got to the set to do the show, I get the script and I’m facing zombies. Now what has that got to do with the closing of Millennium? Absolutely nothing! And I thought, ‘That’s closure for Millennium, all right. Yeah, right.’

“I thought, ‘They’re gonna give dignity to Millennium and here comes a show on The X-Files to give it dignity and it became zombies! I went, ‘Oh shit, I’m going down in flames!'” He bursts out laughing again. “I have to laugh about it, man. But you get sold the bill of goods. If somebody says to you, ‘This is a tribute to something’, you’re gonna want to believe it, and so you go, ‘Oh good, okay.’ And then when you get there and it’s in a taste and style that you’re not interested in, it’s pretty funny. Now it’s hysterical!” he chuckles again.

But would he ever return to The X-Files for another try? “They wouldn’t want me on there!” he laughs, continuing, “Listen, I’m a little bit like a boxer. You put the opponent up in front of me and I’ll deal with it, you know what I mean? And I don’t mean The X-Files is the opponent in a negative way, I mean it’s a sport. What we do, acting, is a combination of a love affair and a sport. I’d try anything and I’ll go for it. I’m not afraid of anything.

“I’ve never tried to have a career where I’ve calculated [everything]. It’s been more like a farm where you get up in the morning and you step out and you smell the air and you get out there and you try to grow something. I hear they’re gonna do an X-Files movie and I think they’d be insane not to bring Frank Black into it. Without zombies,” he laughs. “Bring him into the mix, man. He’s a force to be reckoned with, or at least he’s game, he’s adventurous. He’s not just sitting in an office somewhere. He can handle anything.”

While he’s waiting for this offer, though, Henriksen has a nice little sideline going on: he makes and sells his own pottery, each piece hand-crafted. “Everybody needs labour,” he begins, keen to discuss his work. “You do, I do, everyone does. There’s rest in labour, there’s pride in it. You’ve gotta be able to do something, even if it’s just digging in a garden, but you gotta do it every day when you’re not doing the thing that makes you a living. Now, acting is certainly an art form, but pottery for me is spiritual.

“I make pottery, dinnerware and stuff, that people can eat off and use. It’s not just artsy stuff like gargoyles, but when you put food on my pottery, it looks really beautiful, it makes you feel like this is an occasion, and that’s what I work for. I love doing it. We’ve put up a website this year for the first time and it’s paying off because it’s getting exposure. I don’t like galleries. I think galleries are just extortionist. I don’t wanna go that route.

“I took a 1973 military truck and restored it completely,” explains the actor when asked how he’s been getting his work out to the public. It’s not the kind of truck you’d miss either, as the name of the pottery, ‘Screaming Red Ass’, is on the side. “What [that] means,” explains Henriksen, “is during the Second World War there was an American flying fortress; they painted a jackass on the nose of their airplane and put ‘Screaming Red Ass’ [on it]. Pottery just takes itself so seriously, I like to be more blasphemous about it. I don’t wanna be considered one of the old ladies that are making teacups. And that truck, I sell pottery right off the back of it; I get to meet people and talk to them about what they like.”

Of course, making pottery is a useful skill to have when you’re an actor and not always employed. “It’s not only that,” Henriksen reveals, “But I will not sit around and wait for somebody else’s call to live. That’s a big mistake. If I’ve got a movie to do and I have a month to get ready for it, I do it organically. So it’s very important for me to have a good sense of time, time being used well and time just lived. I’m not waiting to live any more of my life.”

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Jan
01
2002

Kodak InCamera Web Exclusives: David Nutter: A Director's Perspective

??-??-2002
Kodak InCamera Web Exclusives: David Nutter: A Director’s Perspective

[Original article here]

nutter

Director David Nutter and script supervisor Kathleen Mulligan go over script with Eric Close (center) who stars in “Without a Trace.” (Photo by Gale Adler/CBS © 2002 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

David Nutter: A Director’s Perspective

David Nutter is a director and producer of compelling television programming who specializes in pilots. He has directed 15 pilots for television series, and all 15 have been picked up for production as series – an unparalleled record of success. Nutter attended high school in Dunedin, Florida, and studied at the University of Miami, where he realized that his dream of being the next Billy Joel might not pan out. He took a film-related class, loved the process, and decided to pursue a career in motion pictures. His first directorial effort, Cease Fire, met with critical acclaim and led to a shot at directing episodic television. Since then he has earned three Emmy® nominations as a director, and shared an Emmy for Best Direction for his chapter of the Band of Brothers miniseries. His credits include episodes of Entourage, The X-Files, The West Wing, ER, Nip/Tuck, The Mentalist, Without a Trace, Millennium and The Sopranos. He also directed the feature film Disturbing Behavior.

Question: How did you become interested in a career in filmmaking?
Nutter: I loved music, and I always wanted to touch the audience’s emotions. I love drawing that out of people, and found that I could do it with my directing style and the way stories and images work together. Music and storytelling with images both require rhythm. In 1981, I was making decisions about what I wanted to do with my life and I saw a movie called Reds, directed by Warren Beatty and photographed by Vittorio Storaro (ASC, AIC). It was such a powerful experience for me, not just because of the story it told, but how the images and the visual style of the storytelling went hand in hand. It was so wonderfully dramatic, powerful and emotional, and the images felt so delicate. I find that when film comes across as a delicate thing, that makes it precious. I am always trying to find the precious part of the story, and trying to expose that as much as possible, because it is what people will want to see.

Question: How did you break in?
Nutter: When I moved to Los Angeles, I couldn’t get arrested directing traffic. I was out here for a year. One day, I played golf with a few friends and a guy happened to join us. His name was Patrick Hasburgh. He had just created a show called 21 Jump Street. I had directed a low budget movie that had received some critical acclaim, but not much else. We played 18 holes, and afterward he called his producer and told him to hire me to direct an episode. I really owe so much – everything – to him, and all because of a golf game. Those are the steps that you make in your life; you go with your gut. I almost didn’t go golfing that day, and it’s taken me to this part of my life. You never know what it’s going to be or when it’s going to happen, but you always have to be prepared to grab onto that ring.

Question: What do you look for in a cinematographer?
Nutter: I look for someone who really understands the story and what is necessary to tell it. It’s all about telling a story where there is no curtain; where we as filmmakers are invisible. I believe the camera should be invisible. The tone should be fitting for the story. The attitude of the camera, and the feeling we’re trying to put across to make that emotional connection with the audience has to be seamless. It’s not always about this or that particular shot. It’s about a series of shots, like a series of notes that builds to the final crescendo. I also need someone who understands that there is so much material one needs to get in a limited amount of time. With the crazy schedules we work under, I need someone who is responsible and pragmatic as well.

Question: How did you connect with cinematographer Bill Roe (ASC)?
Nutter: I met Bill when I was preparing to direct Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It was the biggest pilot at Warner Bros. at that time, and it was my second project with Jim Cameron’s fingerprints on it. I had previously done Dark Angel. It was very important to work with someone who got it, who was fast, and who understood the scope and integrity of the material. Bill and I had crossed paths many times, but never had a chance to work with each other. He was one of the guys who had survived The X Files for many years in Los Angeles, and had made it so perfect and made it look so wonderful.

Question: Describe your collaboration with Bill.
Nutter: For me, the performance is most important. But I am also a big believer in blocking the actors. I have ideas and suggestions relating to every piece of the puzzle that I need to sell a particular sequence or story. When you’re working with someone fantastic like Bill Roe, you create a shorthand with each other. When we began working on Sarah Connor Chronicles, we watched a lot of different films and talked about still frames from different movies. We talked about every situation, including densities and exposures, layers of the images, everything. Then, we just jumped in and did it. I had seen so much of Bill’s work and respected him so much that I knew he had the ability to make it fantastic. Now, it’s surprising how little we speak. We bring our ideas and collaborate on putting the pieces together.

Question: You’ve done 15 pilots, and every one has been picked up. Also, every one has been originated on film. Why is shooting on film important to you?
Nutter: In the case of Eastwick, Bill and I felt it was important because that story needed to be lush. We were telling a story of beauty with these women, who were going to be right out there for the audience. We wanted to give it a sense of majesty and a mystical feeling. I thought that the best way possible to do that, of course, was film. Warner Bros. recognized the necessity of giving this pilot the pop that it needed. I just don’t feel that video is at that level, where it can be matched one on one with film. Maybe it will happen eventually, but I haven’t experienced it yet. I think with respect to portability, and depth and richness, film might be matched someday, but never improved upon. Today, you can do so much with the latitude and the sense of light you get with film. You have so much flexibility in color correction to make things seamless. It all goes back to evoking that emotional response.

Question: Take us through the post process, and how you extend your storytelling using those tools.
Nutter: I’m there every day for the editing and sound mixing process. Editing and sound, as well shooting, are things that I take very seriously and personally. When it comes to color correction, Bill has used Tony Smith at Riot in Santa Monica going back to The X Files. We talk to Tony about the style and tone of the images. We gave Eastwick, for instance, a real burst of color. Bill comes in and spends time with Tony, and then I come in and we’ll all watch together. There is a tremendous amount of work that gets done in editing. There are so many opinions about the best way of doing something, especially when you are trying to sell a pilot. I’m often fighting to keep it as close as possible to how I originally envisioned it. You are also dealing with the clock – not so much how much time you have to do it, but the amount of time you have to tell the story.

Question: What is your advice to aspiring filmmakers who are just starting out?
Nutter: The world today is so very different with respect to making films. It’s not for just the privileged or the people who have the money to go to film school. You can grab a camera and just shoot stuff and put it on YouTube. So again, I think it’s about content and finding something that is interesting. With respect to technical things and also many creative things, there will always be someone who is better at what they do than you are. But what they don’t have is you. I always tell people to find themselves, and find out what they are most capable of doing – what they like to do the most – and try to tackle that. All the young students want to be directors but they are not all going to become directors. The key is honing in on the specifics of what really turns them on and really attacking that.

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Aug
23
2001

AOLchat/TV Guide Online with Chris Carter

Aug-23-2001
AOLchat with Chris Carter

Chris Carter: Hi. Ready for any and all questions…

Question: Chris, Lucy Lawless is well known for her role on Xena. How do you think fans will react to her playing an Agent on The X-Files?

Chris Carter: Well, I hope they like her. 🙂 We had a chance to cast someone who I had met at the…I think 1997 or 98 Emmy Awards. She came up to me and introduced herself, and said she was a fan of the show. Late last year, when it was announced that Xena wouldn’t be coming back, she and her husband sent me a nice note about what fans they were of the show. I took that as an opportunity to take someone who was a fine actress, who would clearly be looking for a role different from the one she had played for the last number of years, and figure out a way to use her in the show. And it just so happened that how we were plotting out Season Nine that she fit perfectly into the X-Files mythology. It’s interesting that Lucy studied acting in Vancouver under Bill Davis, who played the Cigarette-Smoking Man for so many years.

Question: are you really into sci-fi stuff or would you like to expand to another category?

Chris Carter: I never considered myself a science-fiction writer to begin with. I always thought of the X-Files as a mystery show that dealt with the paranormal. Now I’ve been labeled as a science fiction writer, and it’s accurate. But it is a limiting label. So, I am interested in doing something outside of that label, but that doesn’t rule out a good mystery or thriller story, which is what the X-Files primarily is.

Question: were you disappointed that Mulder left or were you excited about the new opportunities that opened up?

Chris Carter: Well, we were all sorry to see David go, but it was an understandable decision. Anything that presents itself as a problem to TV producers or writers seems like a bad thing. But, it can be a constructive thing, if you can figure out a way to solve the problem. So, what we’re doing is taking a situation — a Mulder-less X-Files. We’re adding some new characters. While it is still a 2 or 3 lead show, there are many more ensemble situations this year that I think will make the show better in some ways.

Question: With the shady disposal of the Cigarette-Smoking Man in Season 7, are we to expect any re-appearances or more satisfying closure for the almighty CSM in Season 9 ?

Chris Carter: Anything can happen on the X-Files.

Question: Chris, your shows are fantastic! “Millennium” was truly the best show on television. Any chance that it (or any of your other wonderful shows) will be released of video or DVD?

Chris Carter: They’re talking about Millennium on DVD. Beyond that I wouldn’t think there is much hope for Harsh Realm, or Lone Gunman. But, I think there are a lot of people asking for the Millennium DVD, so I think that will happen.

May I just interrupt to say “Yaaaaay!”? Thank you. *g*

Question: Chris, thank you so much for adding Carey Elwes to the cast! “The Princess Bride” has long been a favorite movie, and I’ve always thought he would be great on TXF. What are the biggest changes we’ll see early on next season, mythology-wise?

Chris Carter: Well, Cary Elwes plays a pirate with a patch on his eye, so that will be a big change..

It’s Dread Pirate Brad! LOLOLOL

Chris, cont’d: I think you’ll see when you watch the first episode, there will be some obvious changes. I won’t go into them, but they are obviously the result of the introduction of new characters, and ones who have had relationships that aren’t about sexual restraint.

Question: Thank you for bringing us The Lone Gunmen series, even if it was unfortunately brought to an end. Any chance the guys (with Jimmy and Yves?) might be appearing in Season 9?

Chris Carter: Yes. You’ll see them in the first and second episode. We’re just pulling a trick on Fox. The X-Files the ninth season will just be starring the Lone Gunmen.

This one had me ROTF. Way to go, Chris! *g*

Question: Mr. Carter, will there be a resolution to the cliff-hanger season finale of “The Lone Gunmen” on “The X-Files”?

Chris Carter: Yes. But, you really have to have been a careful watcher of that program to understand what it is.

Question: Will Doggett’s son’s disappearance become part of the mytharc?

Chris Carter: It certainly is something that has shaped his character. So I would say that it won’t be the replacement for the Mulder/Samantha search, but it is something that informs his approach to life and his relationship with Monica Reyes.

Question: Hi there, Mr. Carter. I really like the new characters and I think they bring a lot of very positive energy into the show. I’m more excited about the X-Files than I have been in years. How much will Scully be working with Doggett and Reyes?

Chris Carter: From the first episode we’ll see how she works with them, even though she is a mother. She is drawn back into the X-Files by the biggest mystery in her life.

Question: Can you make Cary Elwes say ‘As you wish’ on the X-Files?

Chris Carter: Yes. 🙂

GREAT question, even better answer! LOL

Question: What’s the best movie you’ve seen in the last year?

Chris Carter: I haven’t seen that many movies, but I’ve seen some good ones. Last night, I saw the Apocalypse Now re-release. It was nice to see it on the big screen, but I though the original release was superior. We’ve had screenings of a couple of movies here recently. We saw Planet of the Apes, which none of us liked. And we were all big fans of the original. And the guy at Miramax/Dimension sent us a print of The Others, and we liked that. We thought it was really smart and really scary. And you can’t take your eyes off Nichole Kidman. It was scary like my favorite scary movies. They made a movie based on Henry James’ Turn of the Screw, called the Innocents. It had two creepy kids in it, and the two kids in this were even creepier. It also had a lot of good moments that weren’t effect-driven, which was nice to see.

Question: Will Scully’s pregnancy be fully explained in the next season?

Chris Carter: Yes. It’ll be explored extensively. Explained? You’re asking a lot for the X-Files.

Question: How are you doing on the next X-Files movie? Have you even started?

Chris Carter: We’re talking about it now, pretty actively in fact. If all the business can be worked out, we could see a new X-Files movie in the next few years.

Question: Chris, are Gillian and David going to make a 2nd X-Files movie?

Chris Carter: But, there’s less interest while the series is ongoing. And, yes that’s the plan to have David and Gillian in it.

Question: Are Krycek, CSM, WMM, and other people from the Consortium really dead?

Chris Carter: That’s a question that you have answer specifically… But, I will say that it looks as though all of them have met real and final ends. But, one of them is possibly still alive.

Question: Is there any chance of us seeing the faceless rebels or even Marita this season??

Chris Carter: Marita has been busy working with Jim Carrey. And, if we make any more budget cuts, we’ll have to see more of the faceless rebels, because we won’t be able to cast real actors. 🙂

Question: Will we be seeing a different side of Scully now that she’s a mother…maybe more of a motherly side?

Chris Carter: Yes. We’ll be doing the breast-feeding episode. 🙂 I think she’s going to have to balance her life between being a mother, and being a person who is still looking for the truth.

Question: Hi! Loved season 8! Keep up the great work! But we have to know FOR SURE, who’s the father of little baby William? And how is it gonna work without Mulder to play daddy?!

Chris Carter: We’re going to turn the X-Files into a sitcom called “Everyone Loves Mulder.”

Question: What did you do over the summer, we heard you were on island or something catching up on your surfing?

Chris Carter: I went on an amazing surf trip this year to Indonesia.

Come on, we want pictures! *g*

Question: Are you influenced by any current TV shows or movies?

Chris Carter: I loved the movie “The Insider,” and I think any contemporary movie… that and “L.A. Confidential” are movies I watch again and again… so I would have to say that I’m influenced by those movies.

Great taste in movies. *g* Maybe we’ll see him at Russell’s concert Sunday night. *g*

Question: I heard a rumor that there’s gonna be a new syndicate…is it gonna be headed by Director Kersh (I hate that guy).

Chris Carter: Kersh is wrapped up in a case that begins the X-Files season, but his involvement in it is, and in any larger conspiracy, may not be what you think.

Question: Will there be any scripts written by cast members? Famous authors? Aliens?

Chris Carter: Yes.

TV Guide Moderator: Is that a first?

Chris Carter: We’re going to have two of them written by aliens this year. That’s a first. And if they do well, we’re thinking about bringing them on staff.

Question: Are there any plans to “intensify” John Doggett this season? We all love watching him let loose on villains!

Chris Carter: Yes. We love his character because he wears his heart on his sleeve, and he is quick to act and do the right thing. So, I think you can expect to see more of that.

TV Guide Moderator: Was Doggett a collaborative character or was it from one person?

Chris Carter: I think it was something that we all talked about, but I wrote his voice. So, I think he was someone we all came up with together, but his voice came out of my head. But, it was something that was helped in a large degree by casting Robert Patrick.

Question: Will there be some humor oriented episodes in Season 9, or is the Doggett/Scully dichotomy not developed enough yet to play off of it?

Chris Carter: It’s tricky because Scully’s a mother, and there’s great suspicion that Mulder is the father, so you have a relationship that is unresolved and largely unspoken. So, I think it’s a little early to see Scully and Doggett get together. But, I think the humor this year will come out of situations. And also because we know Doggett better, and we’ve established his character, so we’ll see him lighten up. So, we should see that with Scully, and with Monica Reyes.

Question: How have the changes in technology affected the filming of the XF over the years and what effects do we expect this new technology to have on the XF in the future?

Chris Carter: The practical technology hasn’t changed all that much. The effects have become, I think, cheaper because of the advances in technology. You can do more in less time, so you can do it on a TV schedule. But, technology itself is still used best on the X-Files as a storytelling device, because we are all still so afraid of it.

Question: How do you feel about the movie on TV? Is it edited?

Chris Carter: There are some real slight, and you may not even notice them, deletions from the movie to fit the time format. Rob Bowman, the director, did them himself, so we’re all satisfied. It is going to show on Fox on Friday, September 14th, at 8:00.

TV Guide Moderator: Thanks so much for chatting with you!

Chris Carter: Thank you!

TV Guide Online: Tune into The X-Files on Fox on Sunday nights. Don’t miss your chance to catch the network television premiere of The X-Files movie on Sept. 14th on Fox. And visit www.thexfiles.com for all news and information about the series. Thanks for coming tonight.

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Apr
01
2001

Emmy Magazine: The Chris Carter Workout

Apr-??-2001
Emmy Magazine
The Chris Carter Workout
Barry Garron

Maybe he’d rather be surfing, but since the success of his X-Files, Chris Carter’s idea of hanging ten is keeping both hand on the keyboard. Now with two series on the air. Those long days keep getting longer.

Let’s start with this: Chris Carter says he’s not a workaholic. If you can believe that-and many people have trouble doing so-the rest of the story is going to be fairly easy to swallow.

That’s because the rest of the story is about how Carter, creator and executive producer of The X-Files and, as of March, The Lone Gunmen, crafts his series and his beliefs that (a) TV is a business that’s comfortable with failure and (b) Hollywood is a place that eschews hard work. Sure, those propositions are debatable, but not as much as Carter’s notion about his affinity for work.

Being a workaholic, he says, suggests a compulsion to work. As he speaks, Carter sits in his production office on the 20th Century Fox lot in West L.A., where you can usually find him between six-thirty each morning and evening. “My compulsion is to make something good and right-to be as good as it can be. So I’m a quality-aholic,”

It’s a distinction that probably matters more to Carter than the rest of the world. According to him, if he didn’t have to spend all those hours getting things right-if he wasn’t so afraid of failure-if he didn’t have to thoroughly satisfy himself that the hard work of his production team was going to have a satisfying payoff for viewers-well, he’d be out the door and down at the beach in Santa Barbara, surfboard in hand.

Fat Chance.

“I don’t see anyway around it if you want to make a successful television show,” he says of the long hours. And each award and scrap of praise makes him work all the harder, he adds, if only to live up to the accolades.

Robert Patrick, added to The X-Files cast this season with the reduced presence of David Duchovny, professes amazement “at how easy Chris is to find. All you have to do is call his office. He’s there every hour of the day. That poor guy works his ass off.”

So maybe it’s a lost cause for Carter, forty-four, to deny his addiction to work. If it’s the truth, it’s out there anyway. Besides, this soft-spoken, intense, idealistic, fiercely loyal, often demanding storyteller has no shortage of other thoughts worth considering. For example, about TV: “It’s a business where they dare you to succeed and, if you take that dare, you’re taking the chance of failure. I’m just kind of realistic about that.”

That sounds straight forward enough-until you remember that Carter, despite his oft-confessed fear of failure, refuses to play it safe. Cop shows, medical shows, lawyer shows? Forget it. Carter wants to do shows about FBI agents who investigate the paranormal (The X-Files), about an FBI agent who sees through the eyes of the criminals he pursues (Millennium), about a soldier trapped in a life-and-death world of virtual reality (Harsh Realm), and, now, about a team of bumbling but earnest investigative reporters who uncover amazing crimes and conspiracies (The Lone Gunmen).

The X-Files, for which a ninth season was under discussion at press time, has achieved TV legend status but, like most unconventional shows, selling the premise wasn’t easy. Fox executives had to be persuaded that viewers would rally round a series that capitalized on fear and that Carter’s chosen leads-Duchovny and, particularly, Gillian Anderson-were right for the parts.

“The X-Files is the result of my setting out to do something that wasn’t on TV at the time, which was a good, scary show,” Carter says. “I would say that the idea of the show has always been to scare people.” Not surprisingly, among his favorite shows growing up were Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the classic mystery anthology series; Night Gallery, the supernatural anthology series with host Rod Serling; and The Night Stalker, the mid-seventies fantasy series in which a reporter stalked a new, mysterious murderer each week.

As X-Files developed, he realized that it also must be about Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, the believer and the skeptic who became instant hits with viewers. “I think the show succeeds best when it succeeds with these characters,” he says, “and it succeeds wonderfully when it succeeds in its storytelling and its character development.”

Millennium lasted three seasons and Carter considers it a success, too, though clearly not of X-Files proportions. Harsh Realm is another story, though. Introduced last fall, it lasted only three episodes. Doug Herzog, then Fox president, failed to nurture or promote the show, Carter says, and likely didn’t understand it. The producer concedes that in fulfilling a network request, he may have tried to pack too much background and exposition into those early episodes, asking too much of viewers. “It was a huge disappointment because I think we had done good work and nobody ever knew the show was on.”

He has a different sense about Lone Gunmen, a spinoff of X-Files, though hugely different in tone. “You can feel when a show is working and you can feel when a show is inspired,” he says, “and this feels inspired. The stories make you laugh just hearing the log lines.”

While The X-Files is a drama with comedic elements, Lone Gunmen – starring Bruce Harwood, Tom Braidwood, Dean Haglund, Stephen Snedden and Zuleikha Robinson-is a comedy with just enough drama to provide the framework for the plot. Viewer exposure was guaranteed by a launch on the popular Sunday-night Fox schedule. “It’s about misdeeds at all levels of society,” Carter says. “But it’s really about the disenfranchised little guy or some injustice that’s overlooked or buried. These guys pick up the cases that no one wants to take.”

Because Carter is not a producer who abandons one creation for another, he found himself doing double duty much of this season, splitting his time between the two shows. “We don’t just write these scripts and hand them to someone to produce them,” he says. “We spend a lot of time talking about what we should see when, where the camera should be, delivery of information.” Let the camera tell as much of the story as possible, Carter maintains, but don’t make it a character. “These shows are very cinematic in their approach,” he explains. “They require a relationship between the crew, the production personnel, the director and the writing producers. It’s a very collaborative and cooperative endeavor.”

Although Carter keeps tabs on every step in the process, most of his time is spent writing, which becomes more challenging with each succeeding episode. But this is where he shines. He has the ability to focus instantly on the material and filter out all distractions. Yes, it’ll take time to get it right, and he tries not to rush the process.

“I always say that we don’t just write the scripts for some future audience,” Carter says. “You’re writing for the crew, you’re writing for the cast. You’ve got to keep them entertained. And if [you do], most likely, you are well on your way to being successful.”

Though there was no way of predicting that Carter would become one of TV’s leading producers-or, for that matter, one of Time’s twenty-five most influential people in America and one of People’s fifty most beautiful people-his propensity for hard work and writing were obvious from an early age. He grew up in the working-class L.A. suburb of Bellflower and graduated from Cal State Long Beach in 1979 with a degree in journalism, having taken a semester off to help a carpenter friend build a house from scratch.

A devotee of surfing from age twelve, he took his first job after college as a writer and editor for Surfing magazine. Starting at the keys of an IBM Selectric taught him the discipline of writing. “It’s not necessarily that I learned to be a writer there. I learned that an enormous part of being a writer is keeping your butt on the chair and your fingers at the keyboard.”

His father, a foreman on a construction crew, took pride in being the hardest worker on every job. The lesson wasn’t lost on young Chris and his younger brother, Craig, now a science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The truth is, I work in what I consider to be a very blue-collar business. It’s a very hard-working environment, and if anybody takes on the air of king or prima donna, you’re in big trouble. My management style is always to work as hard or harder than anybody. My forebears were dairy farmers and flower growers. They were up early and working early. And I say to my wife sometimes, ‘I feel like I’m just doing another version of milking the cows.’ I feel that those hours are the hours I’m genetically disposed to keep.”

One can sense a sort of pride in the amount of time he spends at work. But if you ask Carter what he’s really proud of, he’ll say it’s the longevity of The X-Files and the team he’s assembled at Ten Thirteen Productions (named for his birthdate, October 13, and for his lucky numbers). At the same time, he knows that, to some extent, his philosophy makes him an outsider in the industry where he’s been so successful.

“There is an attitude that effort is vulgar,” he says. “I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s a pervasive attitude. Hard work is for those guys, somebody else. If you can’t be a deal-maker, and if you can’t be out there in the trades, you’re just a content producer. And that’s kind of an irritant to me.”

Another irritant is what he calls the “dabblers” in television, the Hollywood hotshots of the feature world who descend from the film equivalent of Mt. Olympus to dip their toes in the TV waters. They have an idea and maybe a script, and maybe they’ll even direct the pilot. Then someone else runs the show.

“This is not a business for dabblers,” Carter says. “I think that’s why there’s a lot of failure, why television gets a bum rap sometimes. If you look at the good television shows, they are not created by dabblers.”

In 1985, Carter signed a development contract with Walt Disney Studios. Later, he moved to NBC, the result of a meeting on the softball field with Brandon Tartikoff, the late president of NBC Entertainment. Carter went back to Disney in 1989 but, three years later, signed an exclusive deal with Peter Roth and Fox to develop new series. His latest deal with Fox, signed in September, 1998, reportedly spans five years and is worth as least $30 million. Industry experts have speculated that, with all profits from TV and film factored in, it could be worth as much as $100 million. Carter has his own perspective, though.

“The truth is, there’s not a whole lot I want in life,” he says. “I’d love to go surfing when I want to go surfing, where I want to go surfing. I’d like to make sure my wife [screen-writer-novelist Dori Peterson] [sic] has everything she wants in life. That’s very important to me. Beyond that, it is just insurance. You’re forced to be motivated by money in Hollywood because they make it about money. The deal is dishonest and everyone knows that. You are working with a [studio] partner and, in success down the line, there’s going to be a problem because this is a business of not just manufacturing, but a business of accounting.”

Hollywood is about more than dollars and cents, Carter says. “Money is a certain form of justice in Hollywood and no one is an idiot. If they said they were lopping off a few million dollars, would I work as hard? Basically, the virtue of being a hard worker is people get to take advantage of that. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be paid for it.”

In 1998 Carter turned The X-Files into a feature film, and a successful one at that. Reportedly, the movie, shot on a budget of $63 million, had a worldwide gross of $185 million. Carter would like to make more movies, including a second film based on the series. He also plans, sometime this summer, to write the first of two novels for Bantam Books.

And then there’s the Carter Foundation, begun last year, which has issued several thousand dollars in scholarships to needy college freshman who intend to pursue a science major. Carter plans to double the amount this year.

“You know where the money’s going in big universities now?” he asks. “Film schools. Everybody wants to be a film-maker, so they’re pumping money into film schools but they’re not doing anything for science programs. I figure that anything I can do to turn the tide on that would be a smart thing.”

Not long ago, Carter was asked what advice he would give to aspiring writers. His answer should come as no surprise. “Work really, really hard,” he said. “A lot of people come up to me and say, ‘I want to write.’ And I always say, ‘What’s stopping you?’ It’s a matter of sitting down in front of a computer, a notepad, a typewriter and doing it. You’re about 90 percent of the way there if you can do that.”

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Jan
06
2001

Fandom.com: X-Files Music: Composer Mark Snow: The Ambience Is Out There

Jan-06-2001
Fandom.com
X-Files Music: Composer Mark Snow
The Ambience Is Out There
Randall D. Larson

For the last eight years, The X-Files has been mesmerizing its television audiences with its mysterious entities, government conspiracies, alien abductions, malevolent mutants, and whimsical creatures, all wrapped up in a detective-show type format. Among the various elements that bred its dark, pensive ambience has been the musical contributions of Mark Snow, the only composer the series has utilized thus far. Snow’s ominous musical atmospheres have intensified the show’s sense of apprehension and otherworldliness, while also supporting its eclectic storylines and rampant creativity.

Although X-Files, has given Snow his greatest claim to fame, the composer actually has been scoring television since 1976. He studied oboe at New York’s Julliard Academy of Music, where he became friends with Michael Kamen, another music student who would end up working in film. The two of them formed a band they called The New York Rock and Roll Ensemble in the late 1960s. It was an encounter with “Planet Of The Apes”, including Jerry Goldsmith’s modernistic 12-tone music, that caught Snow’s attention and directed his path towards a career in movies.

Aided by his wife (sister of actors Tyne Daly and Tim Daly; daughter of James Daly), Snow gained introductions in Hollywood and started working as a composer for Aaron Spelling on the TV series, “The Rookies”. Other assignments followed, including “Starsky & Hutch”, and before long Snow found a comfortable niche scoring for television. He got involved with The X-Files at its inception, and his music has gone on to become another character in the series, as prevalent and as important as Skinner, the Cigarette-Smoking Man, or the Lone Gunmen.

Snow’s main theme is a rhythmic amalgamation of synclavier and an electronically reprocessed melody whistled by his wife, which was sampled and doubled with a music software program called Proteus2. That simple 5-note motif musically symbolizes all that the X-Files is about, with its furtive, spooky ambience and a rhythmic cadence of adventure and investigation.

During the show’s first season, Snow emphasized a brooding, ambient soundscape, but as the series progressed, he found more opportunities for musical development. “From day one, with the pilot, everyone involved from Chris Carter on down wanted a lot of music,” says Snow. “At first he was talking about ambient, atmospheric, basic synth-pad material, and that’s what I did at the beginning. It got boring and too ordinary, so I opened it up. Chris didn’t mind, and after the first year he just let me go off on my own. As the years went on, it became more musical and less sound design-oriented. Now it’s a pretty good mix of the two.”

Snow likes to maintain an open palette of sounds for his X-Files scores and relishes the freedom he’s given to compose a variety of musical styles while maintaining an overall atmosphere of ominous danger. “It seems that people respond to my suspenseful music as if it’s this really new approach, but it’s really just the style of music I’ve come to love over the years, since I was a student,” says Snow. “Music by Varese, John Cage, all the real atonal material that perhaps I like more than some other composers. I think some of those sounds and techniques work great in suspense. On The X-Files, I mix that with a more traditional scoring approach.”

“Musically, the show has evolved from being more ambient, sound-design kind of material into some melodic music, in a dark, Mahleresque style,” said Snow, who has received several Emmy nominations for his X-Files music. “What is great about it is that I can go back and forth. There’s always a combination of the two styles. I’ve done flashbacks and dream sequences that are all very aleatoric and tonal, avant-garde sound design, with wonderfully weird combinations of sound and music, and then it goes back into the style of Mahler or Bruckner or late Beethoven!”

The variety of the series, which contrasts the ongoing mythology stories with a number of stand-alone, monster-of-the-week episodes, gives Snow plenty of opportunities for musical diversity. “When we have these stand-alone-or what I call ’boutique’-episodes, some of which verge on black comedy, there’s a lot of cute things I can do,” says Snow. “The big mythological/conspiracy/cover-up shows are fairly drab, and there’s not much room for anything but the real dark approach.”

In Season 4’s tongue-in-cheek episode “Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space,'” Snow arranged a cheesy muzak-version of the show’s main theme, which plays during the alien autopsy sequence-the only time he’s used the show’s title theme in the body of an episode score. His music for “The Post-Modern Prometheus” in Season 5 paid homage to John Morris’s score for “The Elephant Man”, a film whose storyline and visual style shared a lot with this episode. The 6th Season episode, “Triangle,” gave Snow the opportunity to compose Swing music for sequences occurring on a 1940s cruise ship. More recently, in Season 8’s “Via Negativa,” Snow crafted a powerful and frightening amalgamation of electronic and acoustic patterns and sounds that leant a potent, nightmarish mood of apprehension in the dream sequences. In an earlier 8th season episode, “Invocation,” Snow adapted the children’s folk song, “All the Little Horses,” into a variety of arrangements for piccolos and voices that become a haunting musical description of the kidnapped boy whose sudden reappearance, 10-years later, opens up a ghostly tale that could have come out of “The Others”.

Snow has anywhere from three to five days to write up to half an hour of music for each weekly episode. “The hardest part is the beginning,” he says. “Figuring out the palette of sounds and instruments, and doing that first cue. After that’s done, it starts falling into place.”

When X-Files creator Chris Carter created Millennium, about a former FBI agent with a psychic affinity for profiling the murderously depraved, Mark Snow came along to supply the music. While both shows dwell on dark subjects, Snow provided a somewhat lighter tone by contrasting the darker music with an element of quasi-Celtic folk material. “When they first came to me, they said they wanted the music to depict good and bad, heaven and hell, hope and horror,” says Snow. “I asked them, ‘Which is it more? Is it more dark or more light? Is it more horror than hope, or what?’ And they said ‘Yeah.’ So I came up with this single voice, which turned out to be a solo violin, with this dark percussion accompaniment. I had these folky, Celtic violin solos with the sleek, dark synthesizer rumbling. I’d gotten into more specific dark music with this Celtic contrast, whether it’s solo violin or solo harp or solo woodwind. That seems to have worked well.” The expressive violin tends to speak for the heart of Frank Blake, the show’s reluctant hero, while the synthesizer patterns represent the darker world in which he works, confronting the various faces of evil.

Snow got his biggest feature assignment to date from The X-Files movie in 1998. With the canvas of a widescreen theatrical feature, Snow had the opportunity to expand the scope of his television music and orchestrate it much more broadly. Most pleasing was the chance to redevelop themes, motifs, and stylisms he’d composed for the show’s 30-odd musicians into a full orchestra of 85 players. “Ninety percent of the score is big orchestra combined with electronics,” Snow said at the time of the film’s release. “I think the best thing, thematically, that’s come out of the feature is the X-Files Theme itself, which was harmonized and orchestrated in different settings that have never appeared on the TV show. The TV version is sort of a one-note pad with simple accompaniment. With the feature, I’ve put different kinds of harmonization to it. It doesn’t happen every place, but it happens enough that anyone who knows the theme would recognize it.” The orchestration was fairly standard but the inclusion of extra basses and five percussionists gave the music a deep dynamic and a wider scope.

Snow created a few new themes for the movie. “There is a veiled theme for the Cigarette-Smoking Man,” said Snow. “It’s not as much melodic as it is harmonic. It’s a bunch of minor chords going from one to another. There’s a theme for the Elders, the Well-Manicured Man, and the older conspiracy figures.” Some of these themes were carried into the 1998 TV season finale, which acted as a sort of prelude to the movie, which was released later that summer.

Far from the TV series’ five days, Snow had a lavish five months to compose 75 minutes of music for the X-Files feature. Snow said that a major concern on the feature was to carry through the honesty of the music from the series into the size and scope of widescreen cinema. “My biggest challenge was in understanding how to make that jump without it seeming like a score by Jerry Goldsmith or James Horner or another big name movie composer.”

Snow went from the X-Files feature into another feature film thriller called “Disturbing Behavior” before returning to Ten Thirteen productions for the new season of The X-Files. Snow still finds time to score about five or six feature or TV films a year, including such TV thrillers as Dean Koontz’s “Sole Survivor,” “Stranger In My House”, and Dean Koontz’s “Mr. Murder”. Quite unlike his X-Files music, his scores for made-for-TV movies-dramas, murder mysteries, Westerns-have been quite romantic and melodic. He provided a lavish and harmonious score for ABC’s Jules Verne fantasy, “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea”. He also composed the theme for the TV incarnation of “Le Femme Nikita”, and provided music for some manic episodes of “Pee Wee’s Playhouse”. In 2000, he wrote a score for an action video game called “Giants”.

But The X-Files remains inescapable for the composer, whose career continues to be defined, if not restricted by, his musical efforts for Mulder and Scully and company. “If there’s any sense of style that I have now, it was really The X-Files that put me over the hump and got me up into another level,” Snow said. “It made me experiment with a lot of different approaches, and it made me comfortable with that.” In fact, with the 2001 debut of a spin-off series, “The Lone Gunmen”, Snow will continue to lay down the fundamental ambient atmosphere that intensifies the X-Files world. The series, set to debut in March, should give Snow some new opportunities as he musically characterizes the personalities of the conspiracy-busting trio. “The main theme starts out with the Star Spangled Banner, ala Jimi Hendrix guitar solo,” said Snow. “Then it goes into a rhythm pattern, and then into the main tune from guitar. It sounds a little like a hipper version of “Mission: Impossible”. It has that spy vibe to it.”

Snow also scored Chris Carter’s short-lived 1999 series, Harsh Realm, laying down an X-Files-ian atmosphere but deriving his approach more from the duality of the series’ setting, half in the real world and half in the virtual reality of Harsh Realm. “In the most simplistic way, I’ve used conventional, traditional instruments like pianos and strings for the real world, and more of the sound design in the Harsh Realm world,” said Snow. There was a blurring of the edges on occasion; for example, when Snow needed to accentuate an emotional moment in the virtual world, he’d bring in the strings, creating an emotional crosslink with the real world that also enhanced the symbiotic relationship between the two as emphasized within the series.

With The X-Files entering its eighth season this year, Snow introduced a new tonality in the form of a lilting melody for solo female voice associated with Scully, which will be heard throughout the season. “Since this whole season is going to be so Scully-intensive, Chris Carter thought there should be a theme for her during the contemplative moments of the mythology episodes-something that spoke for her emotions.” The vocalist for the theme is Nicci Sill, who previously sang Snow’s theme for “Le Femme Nikita”. The vocal was initially intended to be wordless, but as she vocalized the part Sill began repeating in barely discernable voice the phrase “We are near,” which Snow felt was more than appropriate considering the fact that the aliens have kidnapped Mulder and are closer to the cast than ever before. “With the first episode of the season, the aliens have Mulder, and Scully is close but never quite there. But when she was singing it, it sounded like some ethnic incantation of some sort.”

The lack of a real soundtrack CD from The X-Files has been a source of frustration for many. A CD that came out in 1976, called “Music in the Key of X”, was nothing more than a collection of rock tunes inspired by the show, plus a version of Snow’s theme music. A very odd creation was also released that same year, “The Truth and the Light: Music of the X-Files”, merging seemingly random bits and pieces of music from the show with random bits of dialog and sound effects, creating a bizarre sound collage that pleased few people. “That mistake will never be made again!” grins Snow. “Somewhere, Chris Carter heard this voice-over thing and thought ‘That was great, we gotta do it!’ Actually, I thought it was pretty cool up to a point, but it got a little out of hand. And it was incredibly problematic-all the actors wanted a royalties, and so forth.”

To date the best representation of the show’s music appeared on a compilation CD entitled “The Snow Files”, released by Silva Screen in 1999. In addition to an impressive variety of excellent music for films and television, a very faithful arrangement of Snow’s X-Files music was performed by composer and synthesist John Beal, under Snow’s direction. (The actual music tracks were not available for licensing on the disc; but Beal’s arrangements are very fine and true.) Still, there is ongoing talk in the hallways of 20th Century Fox about the possibility of an actual soundtrack release, and hopefully one will be forthcoming in the future.

While more opportunities to score feature films would please Snow, he is finding plenty of satisfaction scoring quality television such as The X-Files. “I’ve been very lucky, because the quality of X-Files and Millennium is so good, in general, that it is like doing a mini-feature every week,” says Snow. “I’d like to graduate some day to where I’m not doing episodic TV, and I’m doing three, four, or five movies a year, where I really could expand my career from film to film. But the graph of my career is still amazing to me. I haven’t gotten into the negative yet. There’s so many guys who have come and gone, who have been so blisteringly hot and then fell off, so I really can’t complain when I look at it from the perspective of the business.”

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