Posts Tagged ‘ftf’
Aug
09
1998
Der Spiegel: Attention, conspirators!
Aug-09-1998
Der Spiegel
Attention, conspirators!
Translated from German by Bettina Steiner
[Original article “Achtung, Verschwörer!” here]
Script writer Chris Carter has created one of the most successful TV series of all time: The X-Files. Now he is taking his FBI drama about extraterrestrials and conspiracy to the big screen – and proving once more how deeply he is looking into the mad world of America.
Conspiracy mania is catching. On the way to the interview with Chris Carter, the creator of The X-Files, the radio announces that CNN and “Time” have pulled back a disclosing story as false report. The TV channel and the US magazine had maintained that US troops had sprayed poison gas on their own comrades during the Vietnam War. That would have been a scandal. And now this: the whole poison gas number is supposedly not true; responsible journalists have been fired, the kowtow to the public has been performed. What sounds like a normal press disgrace makes you think we are under the influence of X-Files paranoia. Is it really a false report? Or isn’t it more likely that conspiring forces in high government or military circles have forced CNN and Time to pull back the truth? Do we sense a conspiracy here?
Chris Carter laughs. Yes, he too has heard the news on this hazy, cool summer day in L.A. Yes, he too promptly thought of a cover up of the truth. “When I hear something like that, I immediately think: sure thing.” Suspicion is a part of Carter’s job. With his series “The X-Files”, the 40-year old provides America – and by now the whole world – with fresh food for thought for the current hobby: thinking up conspiracy theories. The poison story will go into his files like hundreds of other newspaper articles, letters or internet rumors.
In 1993 Carter had the idea to put two FBI agents on the trail of the unexplainable. In spite of FOX’s heavy doubts he developed his project up to maturity and works as producer, script writer and sometimes as director. He has just recently signed a contract for two more years. His cultishly honored TV ghost story brought Carter on the Time list of the 25 most influential US citizens last year. About 20 million Americans – and up to 5 million Germans – turn on their TV sets every week when special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) chase after bizarre phenomena. Allegedly those files are stored in the poison cabinet as X-Files that leave the realm of rationality: aliens, UFOs, killer viruses, ghost healers, parapsychological transmissions, mutants, voices from beyond and “secret” messages that flicker over the TV screen.
At the end of its fifth season the claustrophobically sinister X-Files are more popular than ever. There are the hardcore fans, called the “X-Philes”, who meet at conventions to indulge in the bliss of paranoia; the internet is full of fan pages; dozens of handbooks provide summaries and reviews of all episodes, meticulously study the biographies of the actors, and put together encyclopedias of X-terminology. The two main actors, previously virtual unknowns, are enveloped in an almost extraterrestrial fuss. And in the meantime even the TV establishment has presented the black sheep X-Files with numerous awards – this year the series is nominated for 16 Emmys. It was only a question of time until the dark powers would find their way onto the big screen. X-Files: The Movie (directed by Rob Bowman) promises answers – rather mysterious to outsiders – to many of the questions that move X-fans, not the least of which is if the dream couple Scully and Mulder will finally kiss. Skillfully the 60-million dollar movie picks up the plot threads of the last television season.
Among much mysterious murmur, it’s about aliens who have waited for their great hour in caves for millennia and want to dominate the earth, now of all times, with the help of a killer virus. An international secret organization of distinguished older gentlemen (among them Armin Mueller-Stahl) helps them by raising bees in Texas and corn in North Africa. That sounds like high nonsense? It is. But would anyone ever have questioned the credibility of Star Trek? The tactics behind X-Files: the Movie are easily seen through: the film is supposed to help the fans who suffer from withdrawal symptoms to get over the summer (the last episode was shown mid-May) and at the same time to draw the normal action-hungry viewers who already survived Armageddon.
The movie had a considerable first weekend of over 30 million dollars at the box office because it was compulsory for the X-Philes. Carter is already planning at least one sequel. The puppeteer of the X-Files is a camouflage man. He adjusts to his interviewer in every posture: if he crosses the arms in front of his chest, Carter does the same. If he puts his hand thoughtfully to his chin, Carter follows suit within seconds. That way, it is taught by communication trainers, you pretend consent between the debating parties. But for the other Carter’s pantomime is a bit spooky. Carter places his words carefully, makes long pauses in the middle of a sentence until he thinks he has found the right word. He doesn’t want to give anything away, to make any remark he might regret – a control freak. Carter is clever, ambitious, and so crazy about details as auto-didacts with an eternal inferiority complex can be. Above all he is proud that the scientific facts in the X-Files are being researched at great expense and that the series has a large following among scientists. Suddenly he tells me that his brother teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the American elite school for natural sciences and is “much more educated” than he. And the sound of his voice makes me suspect that it still troubles him up to this day. Born in 1957 in Bellflower, a suburb of Los Angeles, the son of a construction worker had a modest education in journalism at California State University. After that he started writing articles for the magazine “Surfing.” For years he followed the big waves, worked his way up to editor of the magazine, and then fell in love with a script writer.
She made him write scripts himself and send them to producers. In 1985 Jeffrey Katzenberg, at the time head of the Disney studios, gave him a chance and Carter spent the next years working at unimportant TV shows most of which saw the light of day only briefly. But he had learned his trade. He realized that nobody was giving the American viewers the creeps. Nobody dared to go near the shocker genre that grew ever more successful on the big screen – the cannibal drama “The Silence of the Lambs” had just started at the time. And nobody took up the raging UFO hype.
So the idea for the X-Files was born. Carter remembers movies and tv shows that had impressed him in his youth, above all the almost forgotten horror series “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” but also TV classics like “The Twilight Zone” (1959-65), dedicated to parapsychological phenomena, the Watergate movie “All the President’s Men” (1976) and the conspiracy thriller “The Parallax View” (1973).
And now today Carter exploits relevant UFO and paranoia literature as well as the post-war B-movie shockers, and his stories often walk the fine line between science and futuristic nightmares. The eclectic’s main talent, however, consists of taking contemporary history, changing it and transporting it into the realm of mania. He starts his stories on a factual basis and from there lifts them into delirium. The real fascist idea of world domination appears in Carter’s stories dressed up as the theory of an extraterrestrial occupational power trying to dominate the earth. It appeals to him to make such connections that always also throw back a light on the mania of reality. Therefore the better episodes of the X-Files can be seen as intellectual exercises – and Carter knows this very well. If he is not careful he talks with an ostentatious seriousness of the “mythology of the X-Files” as if he had created Homer’s Odyssey. Nevertheless he tries with all tricks of the television world to pull even the less pretentious horror fan in front of the TV. The X-Files are full of allusions and Carter has developed his technique of weaving plot threads over months or years into a black art.
In the interview he hides behind cliché: “I want to scare people and I want to entertain them.” And you should believe that this is the reason for his extraordinary success. But that America should fall under the spell of his secretive art of horror just now cannot be explained by a higher tolerance for violence among the viewers and the widespread belief in slimy little E.T.s. What really differentiates the X-Files from its imitators is its basic intellectual premise: the government deceives and betrays its subjects wherever it can. Although sceptical Scully and parapsychologically open-minded Mulder fight relentlessly for the truth, behind each conspiracy they unveil there is a bigger one. Their opponent is the State and it is omnipresent and omnipotent. The X-Files profit by the fact that each conspiracy theory is built up like a classical drama: heroic admonishers and prophets of doom revolt against inscrutable villains and the war where everything is at stake – the conception of the world and the fundamentals of religion – always rages. Any fanatic worthy of the name sees themselves at the edge of the apocalypse: the time left for the heroes to stop the end of the world is always way too short. Such a countdown brings suspense – like the bombs that tick at the end of each James Bond movie. Many episodes of the X-Files work according to this apocalyptic pattern. One of the central slogans of the series is “Trust no one”. With this insecurity strategy, the series hits its mark right in the middle of an uneasiness and scepticism of authority that has developed more and more in America in recent years. A movie like Oliver Stone’s “JFK” (1991), that wanted to prove a plot in the highest circles behind the Kennedy assassination, is typical for the pathological mind of the time. For Carter, Stone is a great filmmaker. In the X-Files, he thinks “we give people’s frustrations a forum”.
The Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, a former professor of mathematics, who attacked the system with parcel bombs and sent confused treatises to the press, and ex-soldier Timothy McVeigh who blew up the government building in Oklahoma City in 1995 killing 168 people are only the best known examples of an aggressive minority that hates the state and wants to fight it. Conspiracy fanatics exist since the United States declared its independence. In the last century the Catholics, Mormons and Free Masons were under suspicion; around the middle of this century, at the time of the cold war and the McCarthy witch hunts, rightwing zealots detected a communist plot that allegedly wanted to destroy freedom and democracy. But it was always outside forces or minorities that were to be smoked out by patriots.
Today on the other hand, the danger is suspected on the inside. “The collective American psyche is turning more and more against its own government and against any authority, and nobody can dictate an American citizen what to believe” lectures an unauthorized handbook on the X-Files. “The American public is totally estranged from its state, shocked that the treason has not ended since Watergate: the Iran-Contra affair, Whitewater and many other disclosures show that the power is in the hands of people who are just as mortal and fallible as those whom they govern.
Surely Carter, molded by the Watergate era, would have little to say against these sentences. Of course he finds an assassin like McVeigh “disgusting”. “His deed only shows the banality of evil.” And really, nobody can accuse the X-Files of calling to violent rebellion. The script protects itself from too much closeness to fanatics not least by the sharp humor with which Scully and Mulder keep uneasiness at arm’s length.
“The series is neither about paramilitary groups nor does it propose revolutionary tactics” Carter says. “It only suggests to the audience to question authority and not to trust any institution.”
Trust No One. This slogan may sound sinister but it is really “an outcry,” Carter says, because “everybody wants to trust someone after all.” And he himself? “I am a very suspicious person. Just look at the world we are living in: you always have to be on your guard, you never know who is filming you, who is taping telephone calls, who is investigating you. I cannot imagine anything that hurts more than to be betrayed like that. We are all living in a world where you have practically no private sphere anymore, where we are not in charge of our own lives anymore.”
Recently Carter read an article about prisoners who have gotten information about their guards over the computer – to blackmail them. “Just imagine that! The system is designed in a way to take all security away from you.” Carter is getting worked up. He slows down, breathes deeply and laughs. “Now I sound paranoid.” Right. Does he believe in a conspiracy too? “No. I firmly believe that not even a group of three people can keep a secret.” But sometimes secret services approach him. “Then they tell me ‘You don’t know how close you are to the truth.’ That is a really scary thought for me.” Has he ever received death threats – no matter if from the FBI or the paramilitary? “God, no, and I don’t want any either.”
And what about the extraterrestrials? Carter shakes his head. He does not believe in aliens, even if he says that he would like to. “I am a sceptic. But when my parents died six years ago I wanted to see their spirits very badly. I tried to conjure up a ghost at the foot end of my bed.” It did not work. But he thinks that everyone share this longing for the beyond. “We all want to drive through the desert at night and see something that our school-learning cannot explain. A UFO maybe. We all want to make that experience, that there is something out there that is bigger than us. For that reason the Greeks and Romans invented their gods. We want to know that we are not alone in the universe. Wouldn’t you like to cross the border to something unimaginable? I would. Anytime.”
What if extraterrestrial life really existed? Carters answer is unusually fast. Apparently he has thought about it at great length – and the intellectual game fascinates him. “Then there would be anarchy. We would have to throw everything away, the Bible, the foundations of our history, everything. We would have to start totally new. Extraterrestrial life would put everything in question.” What would he do if an alien army would contact him tomorrow? Chris Carter smiles and gives the only answer that you can give in Los Angeles. “I would try to get them to sign a movie contract.”
Aug
05
1998
Mixdown Monthly: Mark Snow: The X-Files
Aug-05-1998
Mixdown Monthly
Mark Snow: The X-Files
Andrián Pertout
[Original article here]
Andrián Pertout speaks with Mark Snow from Los Angeles about life as a screen composer, and the soundtrack to the ‘Fight the Future’ X-Files movie.
Composer and seven-time Emmy nominee Mark Snow’s musical genesis was officially initiated in Brooklyn in his early teens, and with the dual blessing of pianist mother and drummer father, the career of one of film music’s great inspirational forces of the 90s was set in motion. He began as a piano student, and in his early development also embraced the art drumming, although in the years that followed the oboe became his principal artistic voice, and Mark went on to explore its expressive boundaries through performances in Baroque and Renaissance music concerts. It was at New York’s Juilliard School of Music where he developed his compositional skills under the collective guidance of jazz arranger Hall Overton, oboist Melvin Kaplan, 12-tone composer George Tremblay and composer Earl Hagan, and this was also the setting for his meeting and establishment of his future association with Academy award-winning film composer Michael Kamen. In the late sixties the ‘New York Rock n’ Roll Ensemble’ was formed, and together they toured and recorded for the next five years, signing a contract with Atlantic Records. After a short period of producing, in 1974 Mark relocated to Los Angeles where he began writing for film and television. Today he has over seventy TV movie and mini-series credits to his name, which include ‘The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All’, ‘An American Story’ and ‘Something About Amelia’. His most prominent work to date has been ‘The X-Files’ and ‘Millennium’ series directed by Chris Carter, and his latest offering is the soundtrack for ‘The X-Files’ movie. This work presents the sonically awesome marriage of state-of-the-art sampling technology with an eighty-five-piece orchestra, and is bound to further elevate Mark Snow’s musical reverence and worldwide cult status.
How did you initially enter the world of music?
MS: “Well, my parents were musicians. My father was a drummer, my mother was a piano player, and they wanted me to be involved in it and so I started taking piano lessons at thirteen years of age. Then I switched to the oboe of all things, and played that in high school. And then I went to the Juilliard School of Music where I was an oboe player, and played in many orchestras and chamber music groups in New York City, and decided that what I really wanted to do was to be the guy who wrote the music rather than the one who played it. So I started seriously getting into composing, and then my wife had some family in California in the business who had came out here, and six months after we landed I got my first job composing, and slowly but surely it started going. And that’s the short form story of it all.”
What memories do you have today of your years at the Juilliard School of Music, and how do you perceive its influence on your compositional approach?
MS: “That’s a good question because I don’t think a place, a school or an institution can change a person. They can have equipment and some inspiring teachers, but I really believe that when somebody is really, really hell-bent about doing it, or is really interested in it, there’s nobody that can sort of keep you down, and you find ways to do the things that you really want to do. And I think I could take advantage of all wonderful things at the school, with the different teachers and having extra classes, getting friendly with some of the teachers and going to their homes, and soaking up all their experiences. So I really was a sponge wanting to absorb all this stuff. And maybe for someone else it was a bad experience, but for me it was good, although I think it would have been good no matter what the school I was at.”
Do you have a personal list of composers that you regard as a major source of inspiration in the direction of your career?
MS: “As an oboe player, most of the music I played was from the early Classical, Baroque and Renaissance time, and some of those composers were very influential to me. Some of that early music has a very, almost rural, folk, Celtic quality to it which I really love, and after that there are composers like, oh God, the obvious are Handel and Bach, Vivaldi, you know, earlier composers. I also think the great modern composers like Bartók, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy, Schoenberg and Webern have been very influential to me, and I’m sure to a lot of my colleagues as well. And in terms of film composers, I suppose Bernard Hermann and Jerry Goldsmith, and of recent, someone like Thomas Newman, Elliot Goldenthal, these are people that I really admire.”
What is involved in the job of composer for ‘The X-Files’ series on a weekly basis?
MS: “Well, I get a script to read, which just basically gives me an idea of the story but doesn’t really help me start thinking about what the music should be. After that I get a video tape of the cut, final locked version of the episode, and that’s when I start thinking hard about it, when I start improvising in my studio with some of the scenes, and these improvisations start to become more solid and become more formed and well though out. And layers of stuff are added until the final piece in done, and then you go to the next scene, and the next scene, and so forth and so on. And there’s usually about thirty minutes of music in each of these shows, and they usually give me about anywhere from three to six days to do it, depending on how tight the schedule is.”
How do you generally go about turning dramatic elements into musical expression?
MS: “I think you see what goes on, on the screen, and you have an emotional reaction to it. And music is so abstract and so subtle that you could for example get twenty really fine composers in a room, show them the same exact piece of film, and they would have twenty different responses to that, but they would all be excellent. I mean, you might like one more than the other, but they would all be really, really good. That’s always been a wonderful experiment I’d love to do. You know, get the top composers in a room with an orchestra and give them a week to write a five minute piece, and see the different approaches.”
Although your sounds are technologically enhanced, they have obvious natural origins. What synthetic processes do you utilize to create your textures?
MS: “My background really is acoustic, it’s really about writing things down on paper, having the scores copied, and musicians performing them with me conducting the orchestra. So it was only in the last eight years that I’ve gotten into my home studio with my electronic set-up, but because of the way technology is today. It’s so facile, and these things sound so real, because they are real, they’re samples of real instruments. And when I mix those in with some electronic sounds, that’s where I come up with the hopefully cool soundscape of the X-Files. I could have a live violin section, live strings, live woodwinds and live brass, all kinds of electronic keyboards, plus there’s tones of libraries of sounds made with the most unlikely things, and in combination. Like thunder mixed in with a lion’s roar, that’s pitched down three octaves and mixed in with a basketball dropping on the gymnasium floor. And that’s just a simple, small example of how creative one can be.”
In a previous interview you mention how the famous X-Files sound is actually your wife whistling. Is that true?
MS: “Oh yes (laughs). Now I can set the record straight. It’s not my wife whistling after all, but it is an electronic sample of somebody whistling, I’m not exactly sure who. But when I first did it someone said to me, ‘Gee, that can’t be from electronics, it’s gotta be somebody.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, blah blah blah, yeah, yeah my wife!’ Who happens to be a really great whistler, so I guess that went through the wires. But I think I’m man enough now to admit that that was a stretch (laughs).”
What is in your home studio?
MS: “My main instrument is a thing called the ‘Synclavier’, which is a digital recording device. It is basically a piece of architecture that holds many, many millions of sounds and different libraries, which are incredibly easy to call up on the keyboard, and then instantly record into the machine, to play back quickly. I think it’s one of the reasons that I can do the shows quickly, because it’s so facile and elegant. And I have some other samplers that are connected into it as well, so via the MIDI connections I can get all these combinations working pretty quickly. And maybe a third of it is MIDI, the rest of it is digital samples from the Synclavier machine. Then when I finish recording I get my engineer in, and he mixes it down to a small format, you know, DAT tape or digital tape, and that goes out the door.”
Tell me about the soundtrack that you produced for the ‘Fight the Future’ X-Files movie.
MS: “The X-Files ‘Score’ album, yes that is interesting because it has an eighty-five piece orchestra. And you know, live instruments are never in the TV series, so at the moment are only in the film score. The other thing that is interesting and different is that the X-Files theme with the whistling is never used in the TV show as background music, and in the film score it’s used quite a bit, where the orchestra plays it with different harmonies, and you know, fast and slow, and sad, dangerous, different variations of it. So that turned out to be the theme of the movie score, but never used in the TV show.”
How has your approach to the music for Chris Carter’s ‘Millennium’ series differed to that of his ‘The X-Files’ series?
MS: “With Millennium, because of the nature of the show, and since so much of the material of the show is based on sort of medieval and mystical, old, gothic, religious overtones, they wanted something that had a slightly religious, mournful, timeless, somewhat antique sound to it. And I thought using the solo violin playing this somewhat, I don’t know, Celtic, folky type, mournful melody might be a really interesting way to go, and they all loved the idea. And a lot of that music is pretty simple, and stays as much as I can to that sort of old, antique, pseudo religious sound.”
What other projects do you have coming up in the future?
MS: “I just finished another movie for MGM called ‘Disturbing Behaviour’, and it was directed by David Nutter who had directed some X-Files episodes in the past. And it’s a story of teenagers who are in highschool, and there’s a sinister plot that evolves while they’re there, and that’s all I’ll say at the moment (laughs). I’ll also be going back to the X-Files season number six and Millennium season number three, starting this September, and there’s talk of some other potential movie things. So right now I’ll be going on holiday to Bora Bora actually, getting a little close to you guys, and then I’ll be off for a while actually until September.”
“The X-Files Fight for the Future” soundtrack distributed by the Elektra Entertainment Group/Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. For more information visit WEA Records Online.
Jul
10
1998
Entertainment Weekly: 'The X-Files' Movie Decoded
Jul-10-1998
Entertainment Weekly
‘The X-Files’ Movie Decoded
Benjamin Svetkey
[Original article here — Published in issue #440 Jul 10, 1998]
What exactly do black oil and killer bees have to do with the price of corn in Tunisia? We get to the bottom of all “The X-Files” mysteries — sort of.
Let’s get this straight. Aliens from outer space have been hiding on earth for millions of years, hatching a secret scheme to colonize the planet by infecting swarms of killer bees with Gooey black stuff that turns humans into zombies. meanwhile, a shadowy quasi-government group known as the Syndicate has been helping the aliens by bombing buildings in Texas and growing corn in Tunisia. It all makes perfect sense—except for the part about the aliens, the killer bees, the black gooey stuff, and those cornfields in Tunisia.
Maybe we’re thicker than Martin Landau’s hairpiece, but we’re still trying to figure out what the heck happens in the X-Files movie. Of course, some degree of enigmatic uncertainty is to be expected when X marks the spot—it’s one of the things that has made the Fox TV series so irresistibly eerie these past five seasons—but we doubt even Cancer Man could unravel all the twisty plotlines coiled into this film. Ambulance-driving assassins? Flying saucers buried in Antarctica? Glenne Headly playing a bartender? If the truth is out there, it’s sure playing hard to get.
Not that anyone cares. As amusing as it is confusing, the X-Files film has grossed more than $55 million since its June 19 opening, pretty much guaranteeing that at least one more X flick is sure to follow. Before that happens, though, we’d like to take this opportunity to raise a few dozen nitpicky (and not-so-nitpicky) questions. Be warned: If you haven’t seen the film, keep an eye out for the !, which indicates answers giving away key plot points. At least we think they’re key plot points—we’re not entirely sure.
WHAT’S THE BEE STORY? The aliens spend millions of years cooking up a plan to colonize Earth—and this is what they come up with? Getting killer bees to cross-pollinate with corn that’s been infected with a zombifying black-oil virus, then presumably having them buzz around stinging every person on the planet? Well, we checked into it. In reality, bees don’t cross-pollinate with corn. What’s more, according to experts at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, it’s impossible to grow corn in the arid terrain of Tunisia. Even more incredible: Are we really supposed to believe that Mulder and Scully could have been trapped in that huge artificial hive with hundreds of thousands of bees and not get stung?
“I’m telling you, we did it,” insists the man who is Mulder, David Duchovny. “We ran through that scene 15 times and never got stung. What they do is take away the queen bee—put her in a nice trailer and let her kick back—and the worker bees aren’t as aggressive.” His costar Gillian Anderson backs up the story: “The bee wrangler was throwing buckets of bees at us,” she says. “But it wasn’t so bad. The only people who got stung were the people who were most afraid of being stung.” As for bees cross-pollinating with corn, X-Files creator Chris Carter says sure, it could happen. “Remember, it’s mutant corn,” he points out. “It’s been genetically altered to attract bees.” He doesn’t think cornfields in Tunisia are such a stretch, either. “We filmed that scene in Bakersfield, California,” he says. “Believe me, it was plenty hot there.”
WHY BLOW UP A PERFECTLY GOOD BUILDING? Early in the film, the Syndicate plants a bomb in a Texas office building where the bodies of four black-oil victims are being kept. Can’t the Syndies think of a way to destroy these incriminating corpses that wouldn’t wipe out hundreds of bystanders? And why did they bother to phone in a bomb threat if they actually wanted the building to explode?
“If Mulder and Scully hadn’t found the bomb, hundreds of people would have been killed—that’s the whole idea,” explains X scribe Frank Spotnitz, who cowrote and produced the movie with Carter. “Those bodies would have been lost in the group.” Calling in the bomb threat was merely the Syndicate’s “cover story so it would look like a terrorist fringe group did it.”
Duchovny provides another explanation for the eye-grabbing kaboom: “It’s kind of a big cheat to start the movie,” he admits. “It gets your attention at the beginning.” That it does. However, no real buildings were harmed during the making of this motion picture. Instead, X’s F/X experts built a facade in front of a real office building and blew that up. “The real building wasn’t touched at all,” Carter swears.
! WHO CALLED THE KILLER PARAMEDICS? The fake ambulance the Syndicate sends to kidnap Scully—how did that happen? The Syndies couldn’t possibly have known an errant virus-carrying bee was hiding in Scully’s collar waiting to sting her and put her into a coma. Also, is the ambulance driver seriously trying to kill Mulder when he shoots him through his window—or did he deliberately just graze him?
“The ambulance driver wasn’t instructed to kill Mulder—that was his own idea,” thinks Spotnitz. “And Mulder’s phone had been tapped, which is how the Syndicate knew he was calling for an ambulance. We had a scene explaining that, but it got cut. These sorts of questions make me nuts. Frankly, the answers weren’t interesting enough to put in the film.”
Here’s one that’s interesting enough: “Why doesn’t the Syndicate just kill Mulder?” asks Duchovny. “That’s always the question. There’s the suspicion on the show that he’s somehow helpful to them. That’s possible. I think Mulder is the worst FBI agent in the world. He spends millions of dollars investigating these paranormal phenomena and never comes up with any evidence. He’s the Kenneth Starr of the FBI.”
WHERE HAVE ALL THE CUTE ALIENS GONE? The ones we meet in the movie are so vicious they make Sigourney Weaver’s Alien nemesis look like Big Bird. What happened to the silvery big-eyed ETs from the TV show? And what about the others missing from the series? Like Alex Krycek? Or the eyes-sewn-shut zombies from last season? Or the clones of Mulder’s sister? Or Mulder’s sister herself, for that matter?
“There was a scene in the film about Mulder’s sister, about the meaning of her abduction, but we cut it,” reveals Carter. “There was just too much information. You can’t fit everything into one movie.” Still, Spotnitz promises there is a connection between the kill-first-abduct-later aliens on the screen and the big-eyed ones on the show. “But I can’t tell you about it yet,” he says, hinting that the issue will be addressed this fall in the show’s sixth season.
! AT LEAST TELL US WHY THE ALIENS WAITED SO LONG TO ATTACK. Not a chance. “That’s something you’ll learn on the TV show” is all Carter will say. “Keep watching.” Spotnitz won’t talk either, although he will explain why the saucer in Antarctica suddenly blasts off at the end of the movie. “As soon as Mulder injects Scully with the antivirus, you see her nutrient tubes get corrupted and the ship starts shimmering and shaking,” he says. “Clearly the antivirus is a contaminant that sends the ship away.” Clearly.
! WHAT DOES ‘THE X-FILES’ HAVE AGAINST FEMA? This harmless, huggable bureaucracy—the Federal Emergency Management Agency—does nothing but pull kittens out of trees during floods, yet it’s portrayed as a traitorous Syndicate front with powers to suspend the Constitution. “From what I’ve read, FEMA can declare martial law,” insists Carter. “They figure prominently in all the conspiracy literature.”
Morrie Goodman, director of communications for FEMA—which has been so nervous about X-Files-inspired terrorism it ordered security beefed up during the opening—begs to differ. “There’s nothing in the film that has anything to do with reality as it pertains to FEMA,” he says coolly. “These fringe groups believe we have all kinds of powers. All FEMA does is respond to floods and other disasters.” He promises the agency has no current plans to declare martial law and unleash swarms of alien-DNA-infected bees. “Not this week,” he says.
“Maybe we got FEMA mixed up with PETA,” Duchovny suggests. “We’ll have to put Babe the pig in the sequel.”
WHAT’S UP WITH SCULLY’S WARDROBE (I)? Not that we’re complaining, but when did the dowdy agent develop such killer fashion sense? Is it a side effect of alien abduction? “In the beginning of the series, I was into the frumpy FBI agent look, but I got tired of it pretty quickly,” Anderson says. “I’ve been paying more attention to my clothes. And with the movie, we had more money, so we could start doing things with Italian fabrics and stuff.”
Carter, always a stickler for verisimilitude, resisted the makeover at first but ultimately came around. “I met with an actual FBI agent who really was a babe,” he says. “She dressed beautifully. So they’re not all dowdy.”
IS THAT WHO WE THINK IT IS POURING DRINKS? Yep, it’s Glenne Headly (Steppenwolf veteran and star of Mr. Holland’s Opus) doing an uncredited bit part as a bartender. According to her agent, Headly did the scene—a brief but memorable turn in which she cuts Mulder off after he drunkenly rambles on about extraterrestrials and government cover-ups—because she’s a huge fan of the show. According to Duchovny, she was indispensable. “I was worried about that scene,” he says. “It just seemed like a lot of exposition to explain who Mulder was and the history of the show. But she made it funny. Glenne Headly saved my ass in that scene.”
NOT THE STRUGHOLD? Armin Mueller-Stahl plays an evil Syndicate overlord named Strughold. Any relation to the real Strughold, the Nazi scientist who conducted experiments on prisoners during World War II—and whom the U.S. secretly brought over afterward to work on the space program?
“He’s either related to him or a big fan,” guesses Duchovny.
“Very good,” says Carter. “You got it.” He also cops to planting a few other nonfiction names in the film. Martin Landau’s flaky doctor character, Kurtzweil, is inspired by a real doctor who supposedly died under suspicious circumstances (Carter says he read about him in the conspiracy literature; this guy definitely needs to join a new book club). And Stevie, the boy who finds the ancient alien goo at the beginning of the film, is named after one of Carter’s boyhood friends (“We used to dig holes a lot, just like in the movie”).
WILL MULDER AND SCULLY EVER KISS? “I think so,” says Duchovny, who almost smooches with his costar in the movie. “If you tease the audience too long they get frustrated.” Good luck convincing Anderson. “It’s not appropriate,” she says. “The series isn’t about our relationship. If it happens, we should wait until the very last episode.”
! WHAT’S UP WITH SCULLY’S WARDROBE (II)? At the end of the movie, when Mulder finds Scully frozen inside that buried flying saucer in Antarctica, she’s buck naked. Moments later, she’s dashing through the snow in a cozy ski suit. Where’d she get it? And while we’re on the subject, how do the two of them get home after the saucer takes off? The Sno-Cat Mulder arrived in is nowhere in sight.
Duchovny clears things up. “I was wearing three layers of clothes, so I gave her some of mine,” he says. “That naked scene, by the way, wasn’t in the original script. But my wife [that would be Tea Leoni] read it and said, ‘You’re missing a great opportunity—it’s the one time Mulder gets to handle Scully naked.'” Not quite as naked as Mulder might have liked. Recalls Anderson: “He was supposed to pick me up naked and throw me over his shoulder, so that we’d be cheek to cheek. But we didn’t film it that way. If you’re not going to see David’s bare butt, you certainly aren’t going to see mine.”
Oh, and according to Carter, Mulder’s Sno-Cat was “parked behind a snowdrift,” out of camera range, which is how they got home (never mind that it had run out of gas). Duchovny offers another scenario: “It was all downhill, so we just got on our asses in the snow and slid the whole way back to D.C.”
SPEAKING OF DUCHOVNY’S BUTT—WHERE’S THE BEEF? What happened to Mulder’s much-talked-about naked-butt shot? The David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade is demanding to know. “We shot it,” says Duchovny. “It was me in a hospital gown. But the sight of my bare ass 40 feet high on the screen was just too frightening even for X-Files fans.”
“David is being modest,” says Spotnitz. “It wasn’t so bad. We just needed to cut that hospital scene and the butt shot seemed gratuitous.” Carter, though, sounds like he regrets the trim: “I’m looking at the shot right now,” he says. “We blew it up and framed it for posterity. In fact, we’re thinking of making the next movie all about David Duchovny’s butt.”
Fine. Just so long as it doesn’t cross-pollinate with any corn.
(Additional reporting by Daniel Fierman)
Jul
08
1998
CNN: Chris Carter having a splash with 'X-Files'
Jul-08-1998
CNN
Chris Carter having a splash with ‘X-Files’
LOS ANGELES (CNN) — Chris Carter is riding an amazing wave. The creator of “The X-Files” has watched as his Fox television show has transcended its rocky start and turned into the “Star Trek” of the 1990s, developing a cultish following highlighted by the release of his “The X-Files” movie this summer.
All the while, Carter has been hailed as a creative visionary, and a pretty good surfer, as well. Showbiz Today Correspondent Paul Vercammen caught up with Carter in Los Angeles recently, where the two spoke about wave-riding, writing, and Vin Scully.
Carter, on writing as an athletic endeavour
CHRIS CARTER, CREATOR OF “THE X-FILES”: Writing is a little athletic for me. I get worked up a little bit when I do it. So I guess I’m a little bit like that composer conducting. There are a lot of things that go into what I do, but I think athletics really sort of shaped my ethic.
Gillian Anderson’s character was named after legendary Dodgers announcer Vin Scully. Carter, on naming Gillian Anderson’s character
CARTER: You know, Vin Scully was always the voice of God. When I was growing up my mom would fall asleep with Vin Scully in her ear on the pillow. I can hear him right now. During Sandy Koufax’s perfect game against the Chicago Cubs, I can hear his voice. and I named (Gillian Anderson’s character) Scully after him. I’ve never been able to tell him that. I’m sure he knows now.
With its mysterious plot lines and non-conclusive endings, Carter had a hard time selling “The X-Files” to Fox Carter, on selling “X-Files” to Fox
CARTER: “The X-Files” was a hard sell because people didn’t know what it was. The network didn’t understand what it was that they were buying and at the beginning, they wanted us to have closure. They wanted us to put the cuffs on the bad guy at the end of each episode.
Carter, on the conspiracy plot line
CARTER: The conspiracy is what originally fueled the show, and was the sort of core idea which drove the series — the conspiracy of the government to keep the truth about the existence of extraterrestrials from the public. And that is the story we’ve gone back to, it was the original story. It has now become the movie and we answer a lot of questions about that. And as any hard core fan knows, there are a lot more to answer.
Carter, on working with Martin Landau and other top-name actors
CARTER: It was a thrill for me to cast these guys. I’m a big fan of all of them. That’s why they’re in the movie. But they are not just marquee names, they are great actors and character actors who have added to “The X-Files” now in an interesting way. I have a secret desire to see them in the series. Next year, in some way. It’s going to be a difficult trick to get them to come and be a part of the series.
If the surf’s up, Carter has a hard time concentrating on work Carter, on the science of ‘The X-Files’
CARTER: I know we get our science right and because Scully’s point of view is a scientific point of view, the science has to be great. We’ve had a big following in the science community, by the way. And even in the movie the science is absolutely accurate. I went over the genetics, I went over the biology with a friend of mine who is a Ph.D. and teaches at UMASS (the University of Massachusetts). So everything in the movie comes from a scientific base. We’ve done that from the very beginning, we’ve had a lot of nitpickers try to pull our science apart, but it’s that hard core science which really is the foundation and the jumping-off point for the rest of the series.
Carter, on his first love: surfing
CARTER: When the surf is really good, it’s hard for me to concentrate on work. So I really have to watch when and where I surf — I won’t get anything done if I get the fever. Then it’s like I come into work and I’m wet and waterlogged and ready for lunch.
Jul
03
1998
Seattle Times: Man behind The X-Files exhibits same stoic calm as his characters
Jul-03-1998
Seattle Times
Man behind The X-Files exhibits same stoic calm as his characters
Keith Simanton
In The X-Files movie, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully get attacked by bees, bad guys and some serious bio-hazards, but their voices rarely rise above the pitch of faraway freeway traffic. They must get it from their boss, creator and principal writer of The X-Files, Chris Carter.
On the phone, Carter sounds as implacable as his stoic main characters. That’s quite a feat, as The X-Files movie was a gamble in many respects, and as dicey a deal as the television show ever was. (It’s made a respectable $55 million to date.)
The film takes off from the fifth season’s finale and incorporates characters and mythology scrupulously developed by the show. The X-Files also aims to be a solo event that doesn’t rely on past knowledge or the total support of the show’s 20 million fans.
Yet Carter is too busy to sit back and count box-office returns. The X-Files series has already finished the third show of its sixth season. Carter spent five years in Vancouver, B.C., where the show’s first five seasons were shot, but complains he never had a weekend to go skiing at Whistler.
Part of his packed schedule, no doubt, is compounded by the show’s move from B.C. to L.A. The move was precipitated by David Duchovny, who stars as Fox Mulder, marrying L.A.-based actress Tea Leoni. But the relocation had been discussed by others long before the Duchovny nuptials.
And where, now, is he going to find locations for the show’s frequently used big, spooky, foggy forests?
Well, we’ve told a lot of forest stories, and now I suspect we’ll begin telling desert stories, he says with a laugh. Then he quickly turns serious. There was a lot of terrain we couldn’t cover in Vancouver. But the show was never really meant to be located there, and, as Duchovny had frequently put it, and Carter agreed, it was a three-week shoot that turned into five years.
His other show, Millennium, will remain in B.C. For The X-Files, however, he says he’ll miss the way Vancouver embraced the show and allowed more license than other productions would enjoy. How people would embrace the movie is still preeminent in his mind, however. The film answered a lot of questions, but not the ones that people most want to know. A few scenes about Mulder’s abducted sister were cut from the movie.
Carter promises that the information is in the novel and will be included in the DVD release of the film (he is nothing if not a shrewd marketer).
He’s also an entertaining writer, balancing a sarcastic sense of humor with a true ability to unnerve and scare. He suffused the show and the film with a symmetry, but he’s a tad unnerved, as he’s not sure people are noticing his efforts. At the beginning of the movie there’s a boy who falls down a hole, at the end there’s a man who falls down a hole and there are other things that aren’t getting much comment, he says. Sometimes his subtleties even escape the actors. When Gillian Anderson was told by Entertainment Weekly that the Blythe Danner character in the film is a representative of what Scully would have become if she hadn’t been assigned to the X-files, Anderson wanted to go back and reread the script.
While there may be a hint of letdown in Carter’s voice that some of his nuances were being missed, but he is still sanguine about the whole thing.
After all, The X-Files had half its roots in the sometimes frightening, sometimes hokey Darren McGavin TV show The Night Stalker, and it has ballooned into a multimillion-dollar industry with obsessed fans and worldwide attention.
Carter is riding high on that crest, and with the The X-Files a sizable hit, it doesn’t look as though he’ll manage time to finally hit those slopes.