Archived from the Eat The Corn Facebook page.
May 29, 2023 18:44
The first interview ever with Brad Follmer, courtesy of @[100064600333206:2048:The X-Cast\: An X-Files Podcast]! He was Chris Carter’s assistant on #TheXFiles from mid-season 7 (the first episode he is credited in is First Person Shooter) to season 9, and he is credited as staff writer in season 11. Unfortunately the sound quality is not good, but here are the key takeaways:
- The first episode he watched was X-Cops, preparing for an interview to get a job on the show; he still hasn’t watched the entire series.
- Cary Elwes’ character was named after him. Elwes used to call on the phone: “This is Brad Follmer calling, is this Brad Follmer?”
- He remembers Burt Reynolds being on set shooting the casino scenes for Improbable. After shooting, Reynolds sent Carter *half* an award he got (People’s Choice Award for Evening Shade).
- The Mulder family (Carter’s mother’s family) were dairy farmers. Carter knew what time every Starbucks in LA West Side opened and he was always the first one in the office every morning.
- David Duchovny (unclear if it was him because of the audio?) used to call to ask for scripts to auction off, he gave Follmer the nickname Bartleby, from the Herman Melville short story about a clerk who says when asked to do tasks: “I would prefer not to”.
- The Lone Gunmen pilot (the one about a plane crashing into the WTC made 6 months before 9/11) was being prepared around the time Carter and Spotnitz were called on a CIA outreach program to discuss potential national security threats with Hollywood writers, but because of scheduling they couldn’t attend.
- Wade Allen was Carter’s personal trainer, Carter thought that Annabeth Gish could do some training, and that’s how she met Wade, they later married.
- Shooting Requiem: Carter was very secretive about the ending, he wrote the last pages the day of the shooting, he was driving to the shooting with 3 copies of the last pages of the script on a Friday night, to Big Bear mountain, a 2-3 hours drive from LA but with traffic, with the crew waiting.
- Carter’s research question for The Truth: what’s the government’s most secret facility?
- Carter’s research question for Fight Club: what are other nicknames for the boxing ring, like the squared circle? Via his mother, Follmer found Mohamed Ali’s trainer Angelo Dundee to ask!
- Follmer and Gabe Rotter did write the script for an episode for season 10, initially as a back-up in case Carter didn’t manage to do his 3 episodes – about fungi causing zombies (audio unclear?). They boarded it, they wrote a draft, then Duchovny was going to be available only for limited days so they rewrote it, then Anderson was going to be available for less days so they rewrote. Things were very close to Carter directing it, they tried to shoehorn it to be produced as a 7th episode. When season 11 was made, there were other ideas, so it was never made.
- Since the revival, Follmer has worked with Carter, one has helped the other in projects, and he has worked with Gabe Rotter and Ben Van Allen on various projects that haven’t materialised yet.
May 30, 2023 15:24
[SPANISH] Estos primeros 12 a 16 números del cómic, de Stefan Petrucha (yo digo Petruka, no sé) y Charlie Adlard, fueron unas de las primeras cosas que encontré como fan de #TheXFiles, y todavía quedan siendo unas de mis cosas favoritas que produjo la “marca” TXF! En éste podcast se habla mucho de esos, y de varios detalles sabrosos de cómo se hicieron. Es verdad que se adelantaron con muchas cosas que hizo la serie después (Tunguska, Unruhe, Field Trip…yo añadiría Demons y José Chung con lo del control de la mente y de no saber que era la verdad y que no).
May 31, 2023 14:01
Sad news – John Beasley, Emma Hollis’ father in 3 episodes of Millennium, has passed away. I also knew him from some episodes of Treme.
https://tvline.com/2023/05/30/john-beasley-dead-cause-of-death-everwood-irv-harper-dies/
Jun 08, 2023 15:44
Frank Spotnitz was interviewed following yet another “whistleblower” story in the news related to UFOs secrecy in the US intelligence. (Actual revelation? Fake news? Useful idiot? True believer? Who knows?)
The site needs a VPN to be seen by European visitors… Here’s what it says:
“The X-Files” producer Frank Spotnitz told NewsNation’s “Banfield” he’s a skeptic of the military whistleblower’s secret UFO claims but he would “love to be convinced.” Spotnitz said the claims could have a positive, profound effect on humanity. “Aliens are like trying to prove there’s a God. If you could, that would have profound effects on everything,” Spotnitz said. “It would change our understanding of each other. … It might bring us closer together because there’d be this other threat that’s not human. We’re always looking for the bad guy, but in this case, it wouldn’t be other people, it’d be someone else out there.” Spotnitz also revealed that he’s still in touch with Chris Carter, producer for “The X-Files.” Spotnitz said that Carter is less skeptical than he is about the recent claims.
(Thanks Adam Silva)
https://www.newsnationnow.com/banfield/ufo-claims-could-be-positive-x-files-e-p/
Jun 19, 2023 21:09
25 years since the absolute #TheXFiles summer blockbuster, whose tagline became the title, “Fight The Future”. 25 YEARS! Here’s the trailer, hard to describe the excitement when this first aired on TV and I recorded it on VHS.
Some trivia:
- the trailer was originally released 21 November 1997, well in advance and barely after principal photography had finished! In theaters, it premiered with… “Mortal Kombat” (lol) and “Alien: Resurrection” (https://groups.google.com/g/alt.tv.x-files/c/Ma4PJv2f8rE/m/JuZM7qgJsYkJ)
- the music used toward the end is from the soundtrack to… Baz Luhrman’s “Romeo+Juliet”, by Nellee Hooper/Craig Armstrong/Marius de Vries, track “Escape from Mantua” (https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ_Wiuwz67I)
- the trailer saw the debut of the modified TXF logo, allegedly because “20th Century Fox” and “Fox TV Studios” wanted to differentiate their products.
Jun 29, 2023 19:38
A nice interview with Chris Carter (CC) from last week, with #TheXFiles Diaries, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the release of the Fight the Future (FTF) film.
https://xfilesdiaries.libsyn.com/127-fight-the-future-with-chris-carter
Some well-known stories, but also some new information, summarized here [plus my comments]:
- Dori (CC’s wife) and Mary Astadourian (Ten Thirteen vice-president and CC’s assistant) were in the Hawaii trip together with CC and Frank Spotnitz on Christmas 1996, when they came up with the storyline for FTF [who took notes, I wonder? :D]
- The FTF story was the only story they developed for the film, that’s all they had time for
- CC is happy that FTF was made on budget, Fox was scrutinizing them carefully, all the more because James Cameron’s Titanic was going way over budget!
- The feature and TV business branches of Fox didn’t talk to each other: the second unit (was shooting ice scenes) got news that the movie was greenlit before CC knew of it!
- CC watched Mission: Impossible as a kid, that’s where he knew Martin Landau from
- Strughold, Bronschweig, Kurtzweil: the movie’s German names are just a coincidence [so much for reading into that…]
- CC’s grandfather (Carl Gerhard Busch) was German
- Throughout the series, CC didn’t like the way that DD ate sunflower seeds
- The almost kiss in the middle and the mouth to mouth scene at the end, there was no intended correlation, these were coincidences [so much for reading into these two scenes rhyming…]
- DD kind of contributed with the idea of a love triangle between Mulder-Scully-Fowley [and CC ran with it!]
- CC confirms that the Well-Manicured Man committed suicide [because he was done for, and to give Mulder a head start – if anyone was still doubting that]
- For those wondering about Washington DC geography: when Mulder tells the taxi to go to Arlington, he’s heading to another bar
- During the construction of the geodesic domes in the ice field, a worker spent the night in one of them, and he says that there was a polar bear around
- Mark Snow’s wife is the one whose whistle can be heard at the end of the IWTB soundtrack
- The Foo Fighters were going to play at the FTF premiere after-party but they cancelled at the last minute
- Mulder peed *below* the Independence Day poster (not *on*), this was done as an appreciation of the movie [my life is ruined!]
Jul 18, 2023 18:04
A mini-#TheXFiles reunion at the WGA & SAG-AFTRA strike picket line in front of Fox studios today, where the series was shot! #WGAstrike #SAGAFTRAStrike solidarity! David Duchovny, Annabeth Gish, Rob Bowman, John Shiban, Steven Maeda, Daniel Arkin, Tom Schnauz and more were there — with slogans like “the residuals are out there”! Here’s an interview with director Rob Bowman: “I’m here to support my brothers and sisters in the Writers Guild. If somebody compliments something I’ve done, I always say, ‘I get my inspiration from the script.’
+ more here:
https://www.givememyremote.com/remote/2023/07/17/the-x-files-reunion-wga-sag-aftra-strike-david-duchovny-rob-bowman/
https://deadline.com/2023/07/actors-strike-david-duchovny-x-files-reunion-rosario-dawson-hilary-duff-1235440044/
https://tvline.com/news/david-duchovny-picket-sign-the-x-files-the-residuals-are-out-there-strike-1235014917/
https://twitter.com/possumlives/status/1681049151654748160