Happy spring equinox!

Somewhat recently, already 4 months ago, a recording of the Millennium-focused panel surfaced, thanks to Kurt North from the X-Cast / The Time Is Now podcasts. This is the only panel from Philefest in September 2023 that had not been recorded by X-Files News, I suppose because it was not about The X-Files. The panel had Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz and Troy Foreman (producer of the Millennium documentary). Though short, this panel is excellent, on several points Carter has humorous comments followed up by very heavy stuff, and we finally got a good reason why MM is still not on any streaming platforms. Here are the highlights:

• Carter: The idea for MM came from Fox forcing him to come up with a second series! He was a big fan of “Silence of the Lambs”. He finds Fincher’s series “Mindhunter” excellent.
• Spotnitz: TXF episode “Irresistible” was an early template for MM. Among all the hours of TV they did, the Pilot of MM is the best. In the Pilot, the characters, the ideas are “closest to who you [Carter] are, closest to your worldview”. Carter does believe in the evil of the world, but we all have yellow house. There were no supernatural monsters or aliens like in TXF, it was the reality of the human condition.
• Originally two highly qualified executives had been hired to run MM [who?], but Carter and Spotnitz had to take over. There were 1500 people working daily on TXF, MM and the TXF movie, it was amazing they pulled it off.
• Why don’t we have MM on streaming? Season 2 has a lot of good music and securing music rights is costly. Carter: Disney/Fox is “cheap”. [Finally, an answer! Hold on to those DVDs!]
• Season 3 was run by Ken Horton and Chip Johannessen, they had plans for season 4, but Carter and Spotnitz don’t know them, don’t know what was Peter Watts’s fate. Fox would have done a season 4, but Carter moved MM aside to do “Harsh Realm”. Fox was chasing better ratings, but the ratings never got better than MM, it was a structural decline.
• Carter: “I’ve met evil people”, “some people have a defect”, “too many of them are lawyers”, “I know the face of evil, I’ve looked it in the eye and shuddered”.
• The reason Carter took a break after TXF was an on-set accident where a crew member electrocuted himself and was killed. [This was Jim Engh; 8X01: “Within” was dedicated to his memory.] He went to the funeral, he met his widow. Later, the widow was suing and Carter was named specifically. He was called in for a deposition, the lawyers were trying in every way to connect the deceased with him. He had enough, he didn’t want to put himself in a position to be accused. Eventually the case was dropped. [These are rare details on a little-known case, and a surprising amount of detail. Along with a work burnout and other legal issues with Fox, this was certainly a contributing factor for Carter’s break after 2002.]
• Question about common visual elements between the MM pilot and TXF: “The Red and the Black” (people with sewed orifices in their faces): Carter: both were made concurrently, it was not conscious.
• Spotnitz: Carter loved Fincher’s “Seven”. He got “Seven”‘s assistant production designer for the MM pilot. [This was Gary Wissner, credited as art director on “Seven”.]
• MM revival: the obvious way forward would be if Jordan has similar gifts and becomes a serial killer profiler herself. Carter: the number of killers has decreased in recent years, one would have to branch out for new stories. “Dahmer” was great.
• Sarah Jane Redmond originally approached Carter for a role in MM. She had the perfect affect for MM. Carter wrote the Lucy Butler role for her.
• In the MM documentary, the interview with her took place inside a church.
• Spotnitz: originally the show would not have any supernatural at all. The studio was pressuring for it. By the end of season 1 they did “Lamentation”. Lucy Butler was Spotnitz’s favourite character after Frank Black.
• What do they fear now? Carter: “the Trump administration”. If they’d do the revival, a scary title would be just “Trump”.
• Season 2: Glen & Jim had ideas, they took a huge load off Carter & Spotnitz. He watched the season like a fan.
• Spotnitz: he was exhausted after season 1, it was brutal. Carter asked him if he wanted to leave TXF for MM. It was a hard decision.
• For season 2, Jim had T-shirts printed out “99% less serial killers”. It was a different direction.
• Season 3: Chip was a poetic, artistic writer. It was a different tone and focus. Carter & Spotnitz came in and contributed, but it was Chip’s vision. The show was 3 distinct visions, a triptych. Spotnitz loved the work of Kristen Cloke.
• On TXF: “The Erlenmeyer Flask”: the hybrid idea was something Carter and Anne Simon hatched together. Carter follows current research on genetic engineering, “we are on the cusp of changing the human race”.
• Spotnitz: on the Scully effect. MM’s casting was diverse: it was not a calculation, it was not pandering, it was resisting pressure about ‘where’s the sexual tension?’ (regarding the Emma Hollis-Frank Black relationship). It’s amazing how well MM holds up. “That’s Chris’s respect for women.”
• Carter: on female producers in MM. TXF had more female than male producers, he is super proud of that. He took offense with some comments in seasons 10-11. He tried to hire a female director of photography for TXF, Sandy Sizzle, which was rare at the time; Fox’s Charlie Goldstein said ‘no way’, that women couldn’t lead a crew. [This whole bit sounds like an organized defense of their work in response to criticism Carter in particular has received, and it looks like it has touched a nerve! All of these are good points but this is somewhat misplaced: I think the criticism has centered around the writing staff, which was nearly-entirely male for TXF and admittedly more balanced in MM. Also, there are many behind the scenes things we are not aware of and now that so much time has passed Carter is opening up a bit, it’s not usual for him or in the industry to be naming people like this.]
• The leads of MM, Lance and Megan, were their first choices, no auditions, they gave them the roles based on past work. Megan had a unique intelligence and humanity. Spotnitz: when they killed Catherine he was sad and disappointed, it was not his decision.

Speaking of which: an extended cut of the Millennium After the Millennium documentary is coming on April 7 on BluRay and streaming (Amazon Prime)! (I don’t know if this will be available globally on Prime, it wasn’t in the past.)

Tags: 1013interviews, chris carter, frank spotnitz, millennium, millenniumdocu, philefest

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