Updates on some recent events

Spacecon San Antonio

June 14 – Panel with David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson and Mitch Pileggi.

• Mitch: during season 1, David said “this thing won’t last 7 episodes”!
• David would enter chat rooms, nobody believed it was him
• Mitch watched the show with hs brother, “this is dad!”: he was a defence contractor for the military, bald, glasses, suit, “constipated”
• Gillian: “because Scully was fearless, I became more fearless because of her”
• Chris would dictate them new script changes over the phone, Daivd could pick it up very easily, Mitch was slower and he was pissed off at David
• Gillian’s 10 month old daughter hit her in the eye, she had a scratched cornea, so they had to shoot a scene from one side of her face onl (that was the greenhouse scene with John Neville in Paper Clip)
• David was multitasking, while he was in the toilet in his trailer he called Chris with questions, Chris said “are you trying to prove to me you are a producer?”
• David tries to tease Mitch on Avatar, Mitch says the Skinner episodes are not his favourites. Later, when talking about sexy shows, David tells him “remember I wrote you as Skinman”
• Only David has heard of the IWTB director’s cut, he hasn’t seen it himself
• Gillian acknowledges the director of photography John Bartley
• David announces that Marty McInally passed away recently, a focus puller and camera operator in the Vancouver seasons
• What David remembers is the new things, the first episode David Nutter directed, the first Chris directed, thr esprit de corps they had to pull off something good with so much work. Gillian says that the comedy episodes got them going for such a long time.
• After years in Vancouver, shooting FTF in Los Angeles felt much bigger
• Shooting the bee domes: David had to be in his trailer for hours because they were shooting the bees first, it had to be before sundown because then they go to sleep or turn aggressive. He asked Josh [McLaglen, the first assistant director] why can’t the actors go first? The bees got a better agent than him!

Liverpool Comic Con

May 2-3 – Panel with Gillian Anderson, Nick Lea, Annabeth Gish and Brian Thompson. Not much here.

• Nick Lea’s favourite episodes are the Tunguska/Terma two-parter
• Brian Thompson listens to podcasts and mentions Donald Hoffman‘s theory of consciousness, a bit out there
• Annabeth Gish talks about the latest conspiracy theory of the day, about the death or disappearance of scientists; unfortunately it has been debunked and she is just spreading misinformation; it would make a good X-File though.

Denver Fan Expo

May 28-31 – Two panels, one with the full cast (it’s the first time they were all together since a 30th anniversary panel in 2023), and one with just David and Gillian.

Nothing of note. Like, nothing. David remembers being scared of a 1979 B-movie: Parts: The Clonus Horror.

At least some nice photos came out of this!

Marty McInally

As mentioned by David above, Martin (Marty) McInally passed away recently. He was a focus puller and camera operator in the original Vancouver seasons — starting from right after the pilot, and for all episodes of seasons 1, 2, 4 and 5 + on the second film, I Want To Believe. As a single-camera production (as opposed to multiple cameras working simultaneously, like on live TV or soap operas), The X-Files probably had one or two camera operators working at any point in time: Marty must have been among the people most present on set across the entire shooting!

Here he is (right) with director Kim Manners (left, also RIP), in a photo from the “X Marks the Spot” book.