It’s The X-Files: “Fight The Future” Day! The movie premiered…27 years ago already. On that topic, here is an excellent and comprehensive interview with one person that was important in the making of that movie but that we had never heard of previously: storyboard artist Gabriel Hardman, who has had a very full career since! Courtesy of the “Hey Danny It’s Mulder” podcast.
Some notes and highlights:
He did pencilling for comic books. He started doing storyboards when the comic book industry contracted in the mid-1990s. As a huge “Twin Peaks” fan, he went to a book signing with Mark Frost; in the line, he met a guy, they almost collaborated in doing a CD-ROM of what would have been season 3 of “Twin Peaks” [wow TP fans are just as dedicated as TXF fans!]; he introduced him to who became his agent, and got him his X-Files job. He was just 22 years old, it was the first big movie he worked on. The recommendations he got from working on FTF were what got his career going.
In a bungalow in the Fox lot that became Carter & Bowman’s office for the whole shoot, he came in to read the script for what was then called “Blackwood“, it was printed on red paper. He was essentially the first person recruited, and was present for all the shooting until the very last day (not just for pre-production). Robb Bihun was the other storyboard artist.
He draws visual storyboards, including camera cues, lenses, movement of camera, the frame… He submits an idea to the director, who gives notes, he refines it, does another pass… The storyboards were updated as various design decisions were being made. Nobody could come up with a good design for the big ship at the end; production designer Chris Nowak told him to give it a shot, this is the drawing that is in the making of book. He learned a lot from director Rob Bowman, practical things about filmmaking, visual storytelling tricks and ideas, how to design shots interestingly and economically.
He had a good collaboration with director of photography Ward Russell — but it can be that there can be tension between storyboard artist and DP. The DP was who said it was OK for him to direct the second unit. [This was great that he was given this opportunity!] What he shot was with a helicopter, driving the car in the desert, coming to a stop on a crossroads — the shots without the actors.
He got along well with producer Dan Sackheim — stories about Dan having trouble unboarding a helicopter, and about Dan being stung by a bee! He flew to the glacier for location scouting. Going on location makes it specific, allows to adjust the storyboards. Shooting the hives scenes: they needed a wide lens to show the big space, but it was impossible to capture the small bees at the same time. The bees ended up being computer generated, the shooting was complicated by the bees that ended up not being needed.
Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was a big visual influence: the shot of Mulder & Scully in the desert, pull out to reveal a road barricade; or the shot with kids going over a berm, revealing the secret base. There was going to be a car chase à la “French Connection” (Mulder after the ambulance that got Scully, instead of being shot in the head). The script specifically said “the car chase of Rob Bowman’s dreams”. But it got cut as there was too much in the movie already.
He still has the boards. They were pen & ink and grey marker on paper. The criterion was whether it could be photocopied and faxed well. For references for likenesses he only had some magazines and production photos — no internet, no computers.
About Carter: Carter stayed in a producer role, he didn’t get in Bowman’s way. Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World” had just come out, and Carter was not thrilled, he thought Sagan got bitter at the end — it turns out 30 years later Sagan was correct. [That magnificent 1995 book about tending the fragile flame of scientific thought against lack of education and superstition came out shortly before Sagan died in 1996.]
Gabriel’s storyboards, in sequence, were included in the Blu Ray for the movie, the whole thing lasts for an hour and it’s like a mini-movie previsualisation itself! The intermediate level between script and what became the image that was captured by the camera.
After the Gillian Anderson interview a few months ago, David Duchovny received Chris Carter on his podcast, to talk The X-Files and more. This time there’s a video version, and thanks to advancing AI and autogenerated subtitles it’s easier to pull quotes. I am also doing this to help people who prefer a text version instead of audio, or people who might want to automatically translate this page into their own language.
Overall a very enjoyable exchange with plenty of info. However, there are also some very weird parts. Once more, David tries to focus on how one becomes better after dealing with difficulties in life or in a career. Once more, Chris acts as if the world failure never applies to him and that the critics or the fans just don’t ‘get it’. There’s a lot of pop psychology that we could go into thanks to the many things said here, on why Chris has this attitude in life.
Here are the two highlights [with my comments]:
On the revival:
CC: “I thought, why why do I want to come back? What story do I have to tell? I don’t want to just come back and do a victory lap.” “I did a four part arc through two seasons to say all the things that I wanted to say. And the first story is a prelude to my point that I wanted to make.” CC goes on scorning New York Times critics calling ‘My Struggle I’ and ‘The After’ as “a dud” and “terrible”. CC: “[My Struggle I] was the episode that led us to the ending of the following season. And the big point which I was delivering, it was all a plan, was all veiled and complicated, and we get to the end and no one got the ending. I’ve already talked to you about this, that I laid it out there but no one got the ending. It’s a big, it’s a huge ending. Scully reveals that she’s pregnant, and I had a lot of haters, that Scully didn’t have agency, women are only good as mothers… I had a big idea and I put it right there, front and center, for people to make the connection that no one, literally no one, made. And you know what it is because I told you, you were the only one I told.” CC then stops talking and takes out the alien embryo prop from ‘The Erlenmeyer Flask‘!
[This is not the first time he hints at some bigger truth that ‘haters’ missed. But despite what he thinks, there’s been so much analysis by the fans that I don’t think absolutely nobody got it. Take your pick: Scully’s pregnant and this is again a miracle, possibly related to some new alien experiment, or man-made experiment, or triggered or enabled by William, who smiles at the end (and is shown hatching an egg in the teaser of the episode, having thus a life-giving force). Scully’s alien DNA generates alien-human hybrid babies (end of My Struggle IV echoing Sveta’s hybrid babies who were taken from her in My Struggle I) and the human race is slowly being manipulated into becoming a hybrid race, either by action of the CSM, or some secret human conspiracy, or by some covert action of aliens that have remained hidden for the entire revival. In terms of more general themes, the Struggles show we all have our biases and subjective truths (each Struggle episode has a point of view character) and we can get gaslighted by manipulators (CSM, William) but there is an objective truth we can reach to if we pierce through the lies. What more can the overall arc be possibly about? He should also reflect on why nobody ‘got it’, maybe these episodes are not his best work and not the masterpieces he thinks they are.]
On a new cut for IWTB:
CC: “I got just got the go-ahead yesterday to do a director’s cut of ‘I Want To Believe‘, the second movie, and I can’t tell you how excited I’m about this.” “I made it too scary basically and I was told so by the brass at Fox and they wanted a PG-13 movie, so we cut it back to be a PG-13 movie and we thought ‘OK we’ve satisfied their demands’. The critics, the people who rate the movies said, ‘no it’s not PG-13 yet, you’ve got to cut it back even further’. I can tell you that you can do more on network television, they’re more permissive than the sensors are for the movies. And so now I have a chance to go back and make the scary movie that I always intended. So it’s not just doing a director’s cut to do a director’s cut, it’s really kind of bringing to life something that for me was on the page and never got to the screen.”
[This is very surprising! Is Disney/Fox investing in this because of some new edition or 4K/UHD transfer of the movie? I’m certainly eager to see an edgier version of IWTB, but I don’t think the lack of scares or violence was its weak part. Making certain already-existing scenes longer will enhance it, but I don’t know that this will turn it into a better movie overall.]
Much more stuff follows:
All big 3 (DD/CC/GA) had lunch last week in Los Angeles. The podcast closes with the hope that they can do one all three together. [Nice that they still meet! could this be related to the recent series reboot project?]
Inside joke on set of TXF: “John Bartley, poet and a prophet / John Bartley, taught me how to off it”, to the tune of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Give It Away” [“Bob Marley” in the original lyrics; Bartley was the director of photography]
CC loves Terrence Malick and Quentin Tarantino movies. [Yay for the Malick reference!]
CC: “Story was very important”: “I did the pilot for The X-Files, I wrote a 17-page single-space outline.”
On the 3×5 cards for plotting out episodes in the writers’ room: “[Glen Morgan] actually had beautiful penmanship, and he would make these cards and so that became also competitive: who could make the most beautiful cards?” [everything became competitive in there, but in a good way!]
CC: “The great thing about The X-Files was that you were surrounded by people who wanted it to be good from the beginning. And that’s not, in my experience, always the case. Some people just show up for work. But certainly when we shot in Vancouver, it was that esprit de corps, it was the reason I got up every day to do the show, do the job.” [This team spirit comes up again and again in interviews by many crew members.]
CC: “By season 7, we were all tired.” During s7 when DD had a lawsuit against Fox, DD had his trailer checked for bugs, there was tension and distance with CC. Despite that, CC remembers seeing DD and his wife in Malibu, and hugging him. DD: “I was number one on the call sheet and you retired the number one which was really nice.”
On that “annus horribilis” when CC produced TXF S4 + Millennium S1 + preparing to shoot the first TXF movie: DD: “these are the fruits of success, that you’re going to work yourself to death.” DD on CC at that time: “I was pissed off because I thought Chris is not with us.”
CC on Millennium: “I didn’t want to do another thing, but Fox came to me and said, “You’ve got to, this is your brand, and run with it.” [Interesting that this was really a push from the studio and less of CC’s desire to expand to other things.] CC: “I pulled the plug on Millennium too soon.” “I thought [Harsh Realm] was going to be a hit and I didn’t imagine myself doing three shows.” [I can’t blame him! He pours his soul into his shows.] If not for CC’s decision, Fox would have gone ahead with Millennium season 4: “It was going to keep on going, they would have gone with it.” “I got excited about Harsh Realm because I got a chance to work with Dan Sackheim again, who had produced The X-Files pilot with me. There were a bunch of us that I was excited to work with. I thought it was a really good concept and that’s a story in itself. I thought it was and I still think it was a little bit ahead of its time.” [I can’t imagine HR going on for 100 episodes, but the 9 episodes that were produced were amazing and it was cut short way too soon. I don’t know what I would have preferred, a full season of HR or MM s4.]
CC on pottery and the creative process: “I went to film school when I was making pottery. I would have the TV on for 10 hours a day while I was making pottery.” “And then I would listen on Sunday nights… I just loved the Dr. Demento show.” “This is a story about my serialized brain.” “I could be called a production potter, which means I would sit for hours at a time and make the same thing over and over and over or the same six things over and over.” “It’s about the process. There’s something actually meditative and engaging about doing the same thing over, serialized. And what is television? It’s serialization of a concept.” [I love this parallel!]
CC remembers important experiences that made him into a writer: writing blue book essays for a writing teacher (Mr. Lackman) on Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd“; in journalism school with a teacher (Dr. Stein), writing a piece on Gaylord Carter (silent movies organist). “I’m a hard worker and I hate to hear the word ‘no’. And I wanted to be good at what I was doing.” [He has this work ethic still.]
On how CC got into Hollywood: He was next door neighbours with James Mangold [director, ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ among others]. He met his wife-to-be Dori, whose cousin was Dianne Crittenden, an agent and the casting director on ‘Star Wars’. They got him to write scripts and shop them around. [Sounds like it was quite easy for him!] CC: “The first script I wrote was… I’m from Belfflower. I wrote a script about three kids in Bellflower in the early 1970s who are baseball players, who have no idea that they can get out of the Vietnam draft, and they’re going to war because they don’t know how to not go, they don’t know about bone spurs. [Donald Trump avoided the draft claiming he suffered this ailment.] “The script is called ‘National Pastime’. It’s near and dear to me. It’ll never get made.” [Sounds like his own ‘American Graffiti’.]
In season 1, CC wanted DD & GA to go to couples therapy. CC: “You guys were at odds” “sometimes on set, that kind of thing rocks a crew” “if there is tension and you guys are the center of attention, if there is tension in that relationship, everyone knows it and it affects…”
Shooting “Squeeze” (season 1): DD had already done his ADR (re-recording voice in post-production) and was unavailable, so CC recorded his own voice for Mulder instead, for that shot when Mulder finds Scully’s cross: “damn it”. CC: “I don’t remember how you figured it out, but I remember your reaction, which was not good.” DD: “I was really pissed off and I remember you being bemused.”
The “widows and orphans” in CC’s scripts: DD: “in your chunks of dialogue, you wanted it to look symmetrical, and so you would make sure that each of your lines added up”. DD: “I’m reading your dialogue for 20 years on and off. And there’s always ellipses, ‘—‘. And in my mind, when I read a script like that, especially when it trails off at whatever in the middle, I’m thinking there’s a thought that’s not being expressed, and I’m thinking, well, what is what is the thought? And I’m always trying to fill it in.” DD: “So it it goes with my kind of philosophy that that self-imposed limitations which you’re giving yourself that it has to look a certain way are actually ways to get at deeper meaning and and freedom.” CC: “People don’t speak in complete sentences.” CC: “For me it was an exercise because I always think, if you can say it in four lines instead of four and a half it’s going to be better.” [I understand the will to have more natural dialogue. But compare a typical page of his early scripts with one of his revival episodes and maybe he’s overdoing it.]
Casting TXF: DD: “I had to convince the suits that I was the guy. And there was a line in the pilot in the description where you you described Mulder as like more MTV DJ than like FBI. So I was like, ‘Oh, he’s a bit irreverent, whatever’. So I came to the test wearing a pig tie.” CC: “We left the casting session. I actually talked to you outside and I said, ‘You’re good. I want to take you to the network’ and I said the stupidest thing, ‘I want you to start thinking like an FBI agent’.”
DD’s revelation about Mulder’s psychology: DD: “I gave thanks to you for kind of giving me a structural education in storytelling, I was coming to storytelling in a completely psychological sense.” DD: “Mulder is traumatized by his sister’s disappearance. Trauma is a word we use now, but we might not have said that back then, we could say something like PTSD now. He failed to protect her. That’s his trauma. He failed. But now he’s returning to the scene week after week and putting another young woman in jeopardy and sometimes failing, almost failing, to protect her. As if he’s trying to heal himself by protecting Scully in the way he couldn’t protect his sister. Yet he’s also reinjuring himself by putting her in danger and sometimes even having to be saved by Scully, saved by this sister proxy.” CC: “I never thought of it that way either.” “I guess you you could make a case for that. I don’t know.” [This is very insightful and I love this angle, it really makes the Mulder character work for me, to the point that it’s surprising Carter never thought of this. It’s also the type of analysis that I think fans were producing already back in season 1.]
On when DD was feeling low after receiving bad reviews for ‘House of D’, DD was mumbling/crying, CC told him “I want to hear your big boy voice”. CC: “That’s a Bill Carter instruction. He wouldn’t have said that exactly, but it was like, ‘buck up’.” [Sounds like Carter received some tough education from his father.]
CC: “Doing the X-Files was a perfect opportunity for me to talk about the world and my point of view in the world, or I should say my competing points of view, which are science and faith.”
CC: “I once told David long long ago, 30 years ago, that my first novel was going to be called Men in Their Hair.”
DD: “the reason that The X-Files was so scary in the beginning was because we couldn’t afford to show the scary things. It had to be dark” [He makes fond fun of director of photography John Bartley’s accent, who was from New Zealand] “If you have a small budget, you have to figure your way around the scare. And that explained or that drove The X-Files when it first aired, it was so dark compared to any other show on television — and I’m talking about literally — and that became its trademark, and that became the art of it.”
[FRENCH] Podcast suite et fin. Il faut bien traiter de la saison 11 après avoir fait tout le parcours de la série jusqu’ici. Comme souvent, j’aurais des remarques positives à faire sur plusieurs épisodes pour contrebalancer la pensée de groupe qui les descend en flèche — par exemple la conclusion de Ghouli qui aurait très bien pu être la fin de l’histoire de William, ou la photographie bien meilleure qu’en saison 10. Mais même cela étant dit, le sentiment d’ensemble est d’un gros gâchis qui aurait pu être mieux géré.
Carter aura toujours des idées pour la suite : je ne pense pas qu’il avait en tête My Struggle V & VI, plutôt juste des fils à poursuivre. Chez Carter il y a cette richesse de références et thématiques mais une totale incapacité à raconter une histoire, et ça ne s’améliorera pas vu qu’il n’a fait presque rien depuis 20 ans et est entouré de personnes qui ne lui donnent aucun feedback. Donc vu l’état de la mythologie après ces deux saisons de revival, il vaudrait mieux en rester là.
Ils auraient mieux fait de nous laisser sur notre faim avec nos souvenirs du passé, comme le sous-entend la fin de l’excellent épisode de Darin Morgan.
Ryan Coogler, out promoting his new supernatural horror movie “Sinners”, mentions that The X-Files will be his immediate next project. He has talked to GA about it, he hopes that there will be some scary episodes, and that old fans as well as new fans will be happy. About 27:30 in the April 16 episode of The Last Podcast on the Left:
“I’m working on X-Files. That’s what’s immediately next. I’ve been excited about that for a long time and I’m fired up to get back to it. Some of those episodes, if we do our jobs right, will be really fucking scary. I’ve spoken to the great Gillian Anderson, yes, she’s amazing, she’s incredible, fingers crossed there. I can’t wait to see her on Tron [Ares]. When I spoke to her she was finishing that up. We’re going to try to make something really great and really make something for the real X-Files fans and maybe find some new ones.”
So the rumours launched by Chris Carter already two years ago are true! (See March 2023, April 2023, February 2024, April 2024) This is the first time this is directly discussed by Coogler, and so much time has passed that many of us were doubting there was anything of substance happening. According to IMDb, filming on Tron wrapped on May 1 2024, so it’s probably been a while since he talked to Anderson. Parent company Disney has not commented yet, but given how careful big companies are with their image nowadays, I’d expect an announcement long into pre-production, when many things will have been decided.
Since talks are going on with Anderson, we can put aside the option that this will be a hard reboot. No details yet about whether the focus will be on Mulder and Scully, or — much more likely I think — focus on new characters with guest appearances by the old guard. If this indeed happens we could expect a 2026 release at best: some 8 years since season 11 already, which is as long as the gap between “I Want To Believe” and the revival season 10! If as much time passes in-universe, Mulder will be 65 and Scully 62, and their child about 7 years old. Frank Black will be 85. It has to be a “next generation” sort of continuation.
I wish Coogler luck! It will be a tough job, following up on 200+ episodes while being fresh, bringing something new to an entertainment business oversaturated with “content” fighting for our attention, saying something of substance when conspiracy theories have gone mainstream and the US is shifting even further into authoritarianism. What’s more, with today’s TV landscape it will already be very difficult for this to get actually made, and then go beyond just one season. It will be challenging for it to have any sort of cultural impact, few revivals have produced something interesting, but it could turn out…good? To be continued…
An extensive interview courtesy of the Danish podcast Conspiracy/Sammensværgelsen with Ken Hawryliw, prop master for The X-Files seasons 1-5 + the writer of the season 6 episode “Trevor” + a cameo appearance as Buyers’ colleague in “Unusual Suspects” — a.k.a. Sci-Fi Props Guy. This is a long one, Ken has a lot of stories to tell, and he has no filter! There’s plenty of interesting detail on the painstaking process to develop a script through many ideas, pitches and iterations. As always, notes and [own comments]:
Stories with props researcher Jeanne Lister, from the UK. [she’s only credited in two episodes, but obviously she helped with more]:
For Anders/Andrews Air Force Base [not clear what episode this is: the Ellens base in “Deep Throat”?]: she made a friend over the phone, a Colonel. Normally they would go through the armed forces liaison in Beverly Hills. That Colonel dispatched photographers from the Pentagon to take the photos she wanted, had the photos developed, had an F15 fly to a FedEx depot in Kentucky, in order for the photos to get to them by the next morning, 10 am!
For “Nisei/Piper Maru”: they couldn’t get satellite photos of the Panama canal and the Norfolk Virginia naval base for security reasons. Jeanne reached out to a satellite relay station during a snowstorm, they were eager to help and reprogrammed a spy satellite to take the photos and sent them using a snowcat! For the final photos they photoshopped the ship carrying the UFO under tarp.
Stories from s1-5 production:
He knew producer JP Finn from when they were 17 years old, doing theater together. JP brought him to TXF.
Typical process: at script stage, they had a concept meeting with all heads of departments. If the script was late, the writer gave them hints to prepare. He worked closely with the special effects team, set decorator, and wardrobe. More meetings with the director followed. They had only 8 days to prepare for shooting. They prioritized the prep for the first 3 days of shooting to buy time. They were very busy, they worked many weekends. It could happen that he’d work for 6 weeks continuously every day, with no day off.
The general idea was to make things as real as possible, then the audience will buy in the fantastic elements.
As the show’s success grew, the unofficial guideline from Fox was don’t worry about the budget, just don’t miss an air date.
He designed many of own props. He tried to keep a general aesthetic, especially with alien props like the stiletto and the firewand. [These props are so, so iconic!]
He and Carter liked “Apocalypse Now”, the feel of the files and dossiers in that assignment scene. He tried to do a prop using thin onion skin paper; an assistant tried to make a photocopy of it and it jammed the photocopying machines, even set two on fire!
Ken introduced Gillian Anderson to Kyle [Clotz]. He was the first Gillian and Kyle told they were engaged.
In season 1, David Duchovny was just glad he had work. “People change when they become big stars.” With success, David started asking for Armani suits. David didn’t like the way his Motorola cell phone looked big and asked for something smaller and even froze shooting on this issue. Carter said they should use those un-fancy government-issued phones that real FBI agents use. Ken negotiated with David: he wanted his head to look bigger, like all big movie stars have big heads. This was solved by having his phone run over by a train, so he could get a new phone. [Sounds like a legit story. Can a fan check if Mulder gets a smaller phone after “Nisei”?]
Carter made the announcement they were leaving for Los Angeles during lunchtime, when much of the crew was there, it was emotional. There are 3 characters in TXF: Duchovny, Anderson and Vancouver.
Back then, TV was the poor cousin of feature films. Jimmy Chow was a props guy working on features, respected in the business [in 1994 he did “Legends of the Fall” and “Little Women”], he called Ken during season 2 and told him he was doing a great job, that was validation.
Stories from specific episodes:
“Nisei/731”: the Japanese notebook had 5 pages of material copied again and again. The insert shots director was not Rob Bowman, and so the shot of flipping through the pages was not as they had agreed, and the viewers noticed (!). He dreaded the Monday morning for what people would find. Carter said “they can’t all be pearls”. [Such a minor issue!]
“Nisei” was inspired by a news story program about the Japanese version of Project Paperclip. Jeanne found the son of the reporter who did the story, sent plenty of photocopies, including classified documents. Ken burned them immediately.
“Musings of a CSM”: a specialist of the JFK assassination came over, he had graphic photos of the “real” autopsy of JFK, not the official ones. [I get the sense that Ken is an amateur conspiracy theorist himself!]
“Colony”: originally, Carter described the stiletto as an alien ice pick. Ken’s design was inspired by 1960s Star Trek and Batman, simple and graceful. There were many versions. They couldn’t make it practical (no space for a spring), the special effects team made a pneumatic version. For the later versions he scaled it up to make space for the mechanism, and even more because the alien bounty hunter actor was big.
“Teso Dos Bichos”: the burial urn was huge, it was made by local artists, they had to tear down the door of the workshop where it was made to take it out. The writer originally intended it to be in Brazil using a real tribe name, to avoid issues with that it was moved to Peru.
“Chinga”: Joanne [Service, Carter’s assistant] got some 25 live Atlantic lobsters to shoot the lobster fishing scene; many of them escaped. 20 years later, he heard news that they are an invasive species in the BC area, the conservation people are not happy, there’s a huge fine and prison for that, but the statute of limitations has probably passed. [probably!]
“Ascension”: for the scene of Scully’s belly being inflated, he was the one operating the laparoscopy equipment, also holding Gillian’s hand; she gave birth just two days later.
“The Blessing Way”: a sand painter came from Arizona or New Mexico. They had to transport the sand paintings from lot to lot.
Vince Gilligan asked Ken if he wanted to play a part. His character has his own name in the script. He was the Pete Best of the Lone Gunmen [The Beatles’ drummer before Ringo Starr].
Vince wrote his “whatever!” line because Ken said it all the time.
In his scene, he played a video game on his computer. There were laughs and applause from the crew. It was two days of work and one day of ADR. He got higher pay because he was not in the actors’ union.
He joked that his character should have come out of jail and looked for the Lone Gunmen.
The unmade episodes: Philadelphia Experiment and Monkey King/Bigfoot:
Season 4 or 5: A friend of a friend had an idea, gave Ken a script, he liked the idea, and the friend said write it with me. [This has to be Jim Guttridge, with whom he eventually wrote “Trevor”.]
Ken wanted to write about the Philadelphia experiment, almost a mythology story. In it, there was a line about “this is a plot from a B-grade science fiction movie”, Mulder’s joke was that “Nancy Allen movies are not everybody’s cup of tea”. [Allen was the co-star of the 1984 movie “The Philadelphia Experiment”. Also in “Robocop”.]
Ken gave the spec script to Vince, he liked it, liked the Mulder-Scully dialogue, and the script sat in the writers’ offices.
Gillian was an advocate for Ken to write an episode. He asked her to read the spec script (she did), in order to give a good word to Frank Spotnitz.
They gave themselves two weeks to write the full script as if they were professionals, to prove they could do it.
The story: a monk gets killed by a drug gang in the Pacific Northwest . The Stupendous Yappi with this TV show shows up to solve the mystery. The story reveals the gang is killing animals to sell body parts to Asia. It develops with the Bigfoot and the Yeti as a guardian of the forest, it ties in with the Chinese legend of the Monkey King. An environmental theme, partly comedic. [Frankly I would have loved to see this! I love episodes around nature, and TXF somehow skipped doing an episode on the Bigfoot.]
Season 5: after Christmas, a writing duo was due a script but didn’t turn it in; Ken got a call from Carter’s assistant to get the script ready. But Fox allowed two failed scripts per season and they had already reached the limit, so it didn’t happen.
Then, after they moved to LA, Ken got a writing deal. Carter read the spec script, kind of liked it, but he gave them a fresh writing assignment.
“6X17: Trevor”:
It was going to be Season 6 episode 18 but the script for 17 [“Milagro”] wasn’t ready so it was pushed to 17.
It took them 12 or 13 story pitches. It was difficult to come up with a new idea that hadn’t been done before.
After the story approval, they only had a week and a half to deliver the script.
He worked with a theoretical physicist to develop the idea. Going through things was theoretically possible if you survived a particle accelerator. There are tornado stories that sound completely paranormal. The idea was that the tornado acted like a particle accelerator and changed Trevor’s molecular structure.
Several iterations on what happened when Trevor would go through people: they would become just carbon or heavy water, but it was too gruesome.
This was quite a science-fictional idea. But for Carter, XF can’t be science fiction, you have to have “a beautiful idea”. The bad guy can’t be pure evil, he has to have a motivation, something more humanistic. Hence, Trevor wanted his child, the human element was love.
The jokes relate to Mulder’s/David’s sarcastic sense of humour, à la David Copperfield.
“Dear diary, today my heart leapt” line was in the script, it was slightly modified (had “my heart skipped a beat”).
Probably John Shiban did a rewrite, Vince did a polish. The condoms line was probably Vince’s. [Which line is that?] Only Carter and Vince were not rewritten. Carter’s assistant said you were rewritten less than William Gibson and Stephen King.
He likes old school X-Files. He didn’t want Mulder & Scully split up, he wanted them to work as a team. The splitting up was due to schedules: David wanted to be on the Larry King show, Gillian on a Vanity Fair shoot, this became more frequent in LA, they were also tired. From Vancouver, David was flying every Friday to LA.
The original character and episode title was “Roy”, it was changed (probably by John Shiban) to Trevor after Mitch Pileggi’s role in “Shocker”.
Vince liked the script, “it reads like a very good XF script”, that was validation.
Act 4 had a big action sequence. The studio wouldn’t approve it because of the budget. Trevor would have gone through many rooms through the walls. Ken actually prefers the emotional beat ending that we got.
There were more scares in the script, but they were not needed, the end result is better. Like the shark in “Jaws”, the less you see the better it works.
He was not involved in casting. He was on set for the first day of shooting. Rob Bowman got the episode just because of the directors’ rotation.
Ken and his partner had a run in with a security guard with a Dodge Neon like the one in the episode.
They got kudos from US Magazine, “thank god XF is scary again”.
He watched it with friends at home, it was surreal.
[FRENCH] Podcast sur la saison 10 de The X-Files. Que dire sur cette continuation qui désormais approche 10 ans d’âge ? La distance permet d’être un peu plus objectif, sans l’excitation initiale et avec le savoir de ce qui va faire suite (ou, dans le cas de la mythologie, de ce qui n’aura pas de suite), ce qui permet d’être plus clément sur certains épisodes mais aussi moins patient avec des défauts flagrants. En tout cas, c’est intéressant de découvrir des podcasts francophones et anglophones : les uns ne mâchent pas leurs mots avec une baisse de qualité indéniable, tandis que les autres ont tendance à voir du positif partout, peut-être parce qu’ils passent plus de temps à analyser les détails. Bonne écoute !
