Dec-17-1993
USA Today
Duchovny’s strange encounter of the Fox kind
Jefferson Graham

David Duchovny normally spends his time in Vancouver, British Columbia, where Fox’s creepy cult hit The X-Files is filmed.

But this is Christmastime, and Fox likes its stars to get into the holiday spirit. Duchovny was called down to the Fox lot to shoot promotions of him and co-star Gillian Anderson exchanging gifts. On The X-Files, Duchovny plays an FBI agent who investigates paranormal phenomena. He often looks through a telescope in his search for alien beings.

So, on the Fox promo, he’s looking through the scope, but the only out-of-towner he finds is Kris Kringle.

Ah, to work for the Fox network.

Besides the promos, Duchovny also found time to report the morning weather on Fox-owned KTTV in Los Angeles and have breakfast (orange juice and hot cereal) with USA TODAY.

The X-Files has been renewed for the entire season by Fox, despite cellar-dweller ratings. It’s a cult hit that the Twin Peaks and Quantum Leap contingent have discovered; the show just hasn’t made its way to the general audience.

“Anything that’s weird or tinged with sci-fi will be a candidate for a cult show,” says Duchovny, 33. “But this show deserves to be very popular.”

The actor, who is single, was born in New York City and spent many years in school until he decided his only skill was teaching. Rather than pursue that, he began acting – his first role was in Henry Jaglom’s movie New Year’s Day – and came to Hollywood at age 29.

He got small parts in other films such as The Rapture, Chaplin and Kalifornia. He also appeared in three episodes of Twin Peaks, playing a transvestite, and 20 episodes of Showtime’s The Red Shoe Diaries as the host/narrator.

Then Fox sent him a copy of the X script.

“My only concern was, I thought it was too good to be a series. I also didn’t know where the show could go. How do you do a show about UFOs every week?

“What I found was that the subject was unlimited,” he adds. “The show isn’t just about UFOs, but about things that are strange, weird and unexplained.”

Duchovny believes that’s why the show has struck a chord with some people. “We’re a show that’s good, scary and fun. There’s not a lot of scary stuff on TV anymore, and people really like to get scared.”

Duchovny enjoys working in Vancouver. His one beef: The producers should build a motel room set. “Every week we drive around for 45 minutes going to another seedy motel room in a hideous location. Why not just build one and change the sheets every week?”

Working on a show about weird stuff has given Duchovny a better appreciation for the supermarket tabloids. He recalls a recent headline from the Weekly World News about extraterrestrial hamsters who had come to take over the earth. They look just like regular hamsters, says the story, except they have bright green eyes and tattoos on their ears.

This really cracks him up. Especially the part about how the alien hamsters, not realizing we earthlings were so big, were forced back home.

“Before, I would just glance over and notice how much weight Cher lost,” he says. “Now it’s UFO and alien stories. I don’t know which is more important, but that’s where my eyes are going these days.”

Dec-12-1993
Los Angeles Times
Fox’s ‘X-Files’ makes contact with a Friday-night audience
Joe Rhodes

They are out there, watching, trying to make contact. Chris Carter suspected this even before he created “The X-Files,” his Friday-night Fox drama about a pair of special-assignment FBI agents exploring all manner of unexplained phenomena, everything from alien abductions to abominable snowmen. But now Carter knows for sure. He has spoken to them, received their messages. He has seen them with his very own eyes.

“They are credible, sane, believable people,” Carter is saying, talking about the thousands of X-Filophiles who have latched onto the show in its first few months, many of whom have gone to the trouble to write, call and mention that, oh by the way, they’ve had contact with extraterrestrials themselves. “They wholeheartedly believe they have had these experiences,” says Carter, who has gotten word of a growing “X-File” cult not only from letters and phone calls but also from a flurry of activity on computer-modem bulletin boards. “And who am I to say they haven’t?”

And, what’s more, they’re not alone. According to a 1992 Roper poll, more than 2% of all Americans believe they may have been abducted by aliens and at least 16% believe they’ve had some kind of contact with beings from another realm.

“That’s an amazing amount of people,” says Carter, who knows a hot demographic when he sees one.

“That’s millions of people who believe.” Which may explain why “X-Files” ratings, although low by traditional network standards, are higher than anything the Fox network has ever seen on a Friday night, high enough for the network to order a full season’s worth (22 episodes) of the series in spite of its usual aversion to hourlong dramas and high production costs. (Even though filming in Vancouver is cheaper than L.A., each episode still costs about $900,000.)

Carter, you should know, is no saucerhead. A lifelong Southern Californian who wrote for Surfing magazine before he became a television writer and producer, he didn’t create “The X-Files” to convince American TV watchers that UFOs exist or that the FBI has special secret files jam-packed with proof. “It’s just that I wanted to do something that was scary and suspenseful and smart,” he says.

Carter does his best to keep “X-Files” as hooey-free as possible, not an easy task considering that his main characters (David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully) spend a great deal of each show arguing about whether a particular crime has a logical explanation or might have been caused by visitors from outer space.

“The first few episodes,” says Duchovny, whose character tends to look for supernatural causes for everything from unsolved murders to missing socks, “nobody believed me and I was always right.”

That will change. “Sometimes,” says Anderson, “I have a logical theory that is right. And with a lot of the ‘X-Files,’ we don’t know what the real answer is. It’s kind of left up to the audience to decide what they believe.”

None of this was an easy sell. Carter had to persuade a squadron of Fox executives — including Fox owner Rupert Murdoch himself — that the premise had enough possibilities to fill out a long-running series.

The show has already moved from the obvious cases — your aliens, your Bigfoot, your spontaneous human combustion — into more abstract realms, such as the limits of artificial intelligence. Anything, Carter says, that could be construed as “a speculative scientific possibility” is potential fodder for the show. In the early going, that phrase was a problem for some of the network suits, who were a little unsure about what exactly they were agreeing to put on the air. One question Carter was asked at almost every meeting was: “What exactly is an X-File?”

“It’s like obscenity,” Carter told them. “You know it when you see it.’

The production offices and sound stages where most of “The X-Files” is filmed are in a converted brewery on the southwestern edge of downtown Vancouver. Carter’s office, which probably once belonged to a shipping clerk, is depressingly bare. The only thing on the walls is a bulletin board with photos of actors being considered for parts and some curious newspaper clippings.

There is an obit from the New York Times: two biologists, one of them a botanist who was the world’s leading authority on rain forest plants, have died in an airplane crash off the coast of Ecuador. And there’s a tiny item from USA Today about how the Coast Guard in Alaska had traced the source of phony distress calls to misdirected signals from a fax.

“I don’t quite know how I’m going to use those yet,” Carter says. “But I’m intrigued about the idea that this guy who was the repository of this amazing amount of knowledge is suddenly gone. Why did his plane crash?”

So this is where Carter gets his ideas, flying back and forth from Vancouver to L.A., scanning scientific journals, magazines, as many newspapers as he and his staff can absorb. But he hasn’t said how he really feels about this stuff.

“I’m a natural skeptic,” he says when pressed. “I want to believe, though. I think everyone — including me — wants to be driving through the desert some night, bright stars out, and they see something in the sky that they can’t explain.

“Scientists, eminent professors, have said that if we were to find out that there was extraterrestrial life, it would be the biggest discovery ever made by man … And I like the idea of that.”

Nov-30-1993
The Toronto Star
The X-Files: Something Strange and Wonderful – And they’re here, right inside your television set
Mike Antonucci

Perhaps the most interesting new character on television is the enigmatic informant on The X-Files, a strange but marvellous program that intertwines imagination, suspense and sexual tension.

The informant, modelled after the “Deep Throat” who helped unravel Watergate, appears every few episodes to offer guidance to the Fox show’s hero, an FBI agent with a Lone Ranger complex.

The agent pursues unsolved cases that seem to prove the existence of UFOs and paranormal forces. The informant is cryptic, but apparently aware of government coverups. Each has credibility, but each also tests the willingness of viewers to accept concepts such as contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. David Duchovny plays the agent, Fox Mulder. Jerry Hardin, a veteran movie and TV character actor, has the role of the unnamed informant. And Gillian Anderson co-stars as Dana Scully, Mulder’s highly professional partner and potential romantic interest.

The informant is special because he epitomizes the show’s captivating ambiguity. Although he’s extraordinarily mysterious, he symbolizes proof that Mulder is on the right track.

On one level, The X-Files is simply science-fiction, even though creator and executive producer Chris Carter avoids that term. It wouldn’t be too far off to describe the show as an oddly successful cross between Star Trek and Hunter.

But there’s another level that ties the show to “real” examples of people’s fascination with UFOs and the supernatural. The plots are inspired by accounts of unexplained and fantastically described events, plus research that indicates many Americans believe in either aliens or psychic phenomena.

Indeed, Mulder’s obsessive behavior is attributed to a childhood experience that he describes as the abduction of his sister by aliens.

“We’re doing what (Jurassic Park author) Michael Crichton does,” says Carter. “We’re doing stories within the realm of extreme possibility.”

The informant draws in viewers by casting doubt on the trustworthiness of government – hardly a tough sell these days. Mulder constantly finds other agents and officials blocking his investigations while Scully – skeptical and rigorously scientific by training – tags along on one weird encounter after another. There are no definitive answers, not even from the informant.

“It’s very elliptical,” says Hardin, “and I think that’s wonderful. He (the informant) seldom comes directly to the point. He’s always around the corner.”

That description applies to the informant’s arrivals and departures, as well as to his conversation. He can show up out of nowhere and disappear in the blink of an eye. Some viewers have wondered if that’s a hint of alien powers, but Carter says that wasn’t his intent.

Carter is exceedingly coy about his plans for The X-Files, which has an order from Fox for at least 22 episodes this season. But he has already shown he can blend subtle, complicated elements with heart-pounding action. Somehow, he makes each instalment of the show satisfying, even though so many themes are open-ended.

The relationship between Mulder and Scully is particularly promising. So far, it’s a low-voltage attraction. If it gets stronger, it won’t be because that’s the standard TV formula.

“It’s a relationship I’m not seeing on television,” says Carter. “It’s based on mutual respect, not something overtly sexual.”

Nothing is obvious about The X-Files, in fact, except its quality. Thanks to the season-long commitment from Fox, it’s not going to disappear before you have plenty of chances to check it out.

Well, not unless something strange and unexplained happens.

[Original article here: http://www.textfiles.com/magazines/CV/cv1-6]

Copyright 1993, Cyberspace Vanguard Magazine

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    |           PO Box 25704, Garfield Hts., OH   44125 USA          |
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    |  TJ Goldstein, Editor           Sarah Alexander, Administrator |
    |    tlg4@po.cwru.edu                    aa746@po.cwru.edu       |
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     Volume 1                October 26, 1993                 Issue 6

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 --!2!--  Within the Realm of Extreme Possibility:  Creator CHRIS CARTER
                                                             on the X-FILES
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                                  by TJ Goldstein

     For a show that snuck up on everybody, X-FILES seems to be the sleeper
hit of the year.  Quietly, and with little promotion, it has staked out
its territory on Friday night and seems to be holding on, at least well enough
to convince Fox to pick the show up for a full season..  We spoke to the
creator and producer of the show by phone from Los Angeles shortly before
X-FILES debuted.
     Chris Carter isn't a stranger to producing.  He's done some shows for
Disney, including THE NANNY, a 1/2 hour show he created for the Disney
Channel.  Despite all that, the nervous excitement came through in his voice.
He sounds almost like a kid who has managed to pull the wool over the
exectives' eyes, sneak into the studio, and produce what HE thinks television
should be.
     It's easy to pin him down on what the show IS, but not what it's LIKE.
What it IS is an hour-long series that focuses on two Federal Bureau of
Investigation agents who investigate, as the name suggests, the "X-Files."
These are the files that the FBI has put aside because there simply is no
rational explanation, such as UFO abductions or other "unexplainable
phenomena."
     Fox "Spooky" Mulder is a Believer.  His sister was (he believes) the
victim of a UFO abduction when he was 12, and he has dedicated himself to
studying and hopefully solving the mysterious cases the Bureau doesn't want
to touch.  More than just a crank obsessed with UFO's, Mulder is trained in
psychology and science and merely insists on not discounting possibilities
simply because they don't fit in with preconceived notions of what is
possible and what is not.
     The Bureau, in order to keep an eye on him, sends in Agent Dana
Scully, a physician and devout skeptic.  She is more rational, but though
she rarely believes Mulder on the first try, she does at least have an open
mind -- most of the time.  She's more trusting of due process than Mulder,
and that can get them -- and the people they're trying to help -- into
trouble.  It's not to say that she's bumbling; not at all.  She is
intelligent and extremely competent.  She just doesn't always have as much
skepticism about the known reality as she does about the unknown.
     Naturally, since they are a man and a woman paired together, the first
thing people think is: romance.  Will they end up together on their own
time?  "No, it's a relationship that is much stronger and more passionate.
First of all I would call it a cerebral romance in that these characters
sort of delight in each other's approaches and it isn't the pat or standard
or expected television romance between them.  There is no physicality
between them.  I don't see it in the near future here.  They don't end up
in the sack together.  At least I don't see it happening yet.  I think it's
refreshing.  I mean I was raised on shows like THE AVENGERS which are smart
and the characters were very attractive for those aspects.  They didn't have
to end up in bed together."
     The very creation of the show, in fact, was heavily influenced by Mr.
Carter's childhood television habits.  "I felt there wasn't anything scary
on television.  I loved the show NIGHT STALKER as a kid so when I was signed
to an exclusive contract by 20th Century Fox TV they asked me what I would
like to do -- which is a nice position to be in -- I told them I'd like to do
something like NIGHT STALKER but I didn't want to do something that was
limited to vampires.
     So how did he decide on aliens as a substitute?  "I had the
coincidental experience of spending time with a friend who works as an Ivy
league researcher, and he had shown me the Dr. Mack -- the Harvard psychology
professor -- survey on what he called the alien abduction syndrome.  It
showed that 3% of the American public actually believes they have been
abducted by UFO's.  I thought that was fascinating.  A larger percentage
actually had experienced contact with extraterrestrials or something
otherworldly.
      "I found that amazing and I thought, well, aliens have become the new
vampires of sorts.  I thought there was a lot to explore.  I didn't want to
limit myself to just the bad world.  I wanted to explore all paranormal
phenomena and unsolved crimes that involved these or any phenomena."
     So how does the show treat these "phenomena," as the hallucinations of
unstable people, or as something much deeper?  "It makes a strong case for
the alien abduction syndrome.  Someone is suffering from something for
reasons that are logical and believable.  I'm a natural-born skeptic, but
the more research I've done and the more people I've come into contact with
by doing the show, the more they've chipped away at my skepticism.  I'm much
more open-minded and there are certain things I take for granted, if not as my
truth, then as their truth.
     "I should also say that if you throw a rock, you hit 3 people who
actually know more about this stuff than I do.  I'm a relative babe in the
woods compared to a lot of people who have quite an extensive knowledge
about these and other phenomena, but actually I think that serves me.  I
come at it with a very fresh perspective ... do you try and access these
people to try and get more information, or are you going at it from a partly
imaginative point of view?  Sometimes we use an amalgam of information to
create an idea but ... we are doing all this from imagination, so it's
fiction but it's fiction that takes place within the realm of extreme
possibility."
     When he got his first producing credit six and a half years ago on THE
NANNY, he "didn't know what producing entailed."  Certainly, that had
changed by the time X-FILES came along.  What DOES a producer do?
"Everything.  Producers function as quality control people.  You hire
people to do certain jobs, then you oversee those jobs.  You make creative
decisions, you make decisions of taste, tone and style.  You shape a movie
or TV show by the people you hire both as talent and as technical staff.
     "A person has to earn my trust, generally.  When you hire qualified
people, that is something that happens very soon, but I tend to have very
strong ideas about what it is I want and I try to keep an eye on all areas,
from an actress's makeup to the way a cameraman shoots a certain scene."
     First and foremost, however, Mr. Carter is a writer.  "Yes, I wrote
the pilot episode and now I've written 2 episodes past that, so a writer is
what I am first and foremost.  That's who I am.  I've become a producer by
circumstance but I love it.  Producing is very social, writing is very
lonely."
     And if he had to pick one?  "I'd have to say in TV I can't pick one
because to be a writer in television the only way to do it is also be a
producer.  It's a producer-driven medium.  It's a writer-driven medium
also, but you have to want to have your stuff done well.  You have to carry
it through to physical production.  Writing screenplays is not like writing
prose.  You're creating a blueprint with dialogue for a visual thing.  So
if you're in TV it serves you best to work in both writing and producing
mediums.
     "Being a producer in TV makes you a better writer in TV in that you
understand what can and can't be done.  Sometimes I'll read a writer's spec
script and I can tell when he has not produced TV because he will assume
that certan things can be done which can't be done.  That's one of the
things that helps you as a writer by being a producer."
     Being a producer can help the writing as well as the writer.  "As a
writer you've imagined something that's perfect in your mind, and so when
you see it actually take physical shape or electronic shape it can be very
depressing.  It looks to you like a series of compromises ... Your original
concept is degraded from the moment it goes into somebody else's hand.  There
is this whole process.  It's like a bucket brigade; it is handed to a
series of people who do their job.  If they do it well, they can make your
script better, and if they don't do it well it makes it worse.  It's amazing
to me when the process actually creates a magical moment."
     His descriptions evidence the ongoing nature of production, but "each
episode will function as a complete story.  We put information out there
and they learn things that are going to shape our characters.  They're not
going to go backwards once they see something.  They're not going to then
not believe in it later on, so there will be an accumulation of knowledge
and experience but each episode will function as its own open-and-shut
case."
     This is unlike mainstream television where, at the end of an episode,
the world essentially returns to precisely the state it was in before the
opening credits rolled.  I asked him if he's afraid of not being able to
top himself.  "That's a nice thing to do, I'm not afraid of that.  This is
such a wide open field that the fear of having to top yourself is self-
limiting.  If you fear that then you're not going to attempt to do so.  I
have to go sorta boldly into the future here and hope that I can top myself
each week that I can."
     Like Donald Bellisario, the creator of QUANTUM LEAP, Mr. Carter
doesn't feel that his show is "science fiction" per se.  "My buzz phrase
is that the show takes place within the realm of extreme possibility.  I
think it's the same area that Michael Crichton might work in.  The
ANDROMEDA STRAIN, THE TERMINAL MAN, or JURASSIC PARK were all taking those
possibilites into account.  We explore them as if our stories could
actually be happening."  For those of you who look for scientific accuracy,
while there is no science advisor credited, "it's really easy to pick up
the phone and call your brother and get him to give you very technical
advice."  His brother is a physicist.
     So, when you come right down to it, what exactly IS it?  It deals with
alien abduction, but it's not science fiction.  It's scary, but it's not
gory.  It's been compared to everything from NIGHT STALKER to early TWIN
PEAKS.  So how does Chris Carter describe it?  "You know, there's nothing
on TV like it.  I've been asked this question and I'm always at a loss to
compare it to anything because when you start to compare it to anything you
start to do yourself a disservice.  People say it's like that or oh it's
like that.  I just don't think there's anything like it on TV.  I call it a
cross between SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and UNSOLVED MYSTERIES."

1993-09-10
St Petersburg Times
X-Files’ goes to extreme
Jennifer L Stevenson

Grade: B+

Tonight at 9 on Fox, WFTS-Ch. 28

David Duchovny has just discovered something terrifying, more disgusting than the paranormal junk he finds every week on the X-Files.

“Have you ever heard of someone who eats just the top of the muffins then leaves the bottom half?” he asks during a phone interview from his set in Vancouver, Canada. “It’s gross.”

He bursts out laughing and his assistant – the evil muffin eater – yells in the background. “You do it, too!”

“I think it’s worse than finding two bodies hanging in the air,” Duchovny declares.

Which is what he has to do right now on the set of Fox’s new suspense series. He’s already discovered a Bigfoot monster, a serial killer who sleeps 30 years between each mass murder and aliens who kill teenagers. As FBI Agent Fox Mulder, Duchovny is always called upon to examine the darndest stuff.

“Pretty much everything is fair game,” Duchovny said Thursday. “It’s really anything extraordinary.”

As glib as Duchovny may be, his character believes in UFOs and paranormal activity His partner (played by Gillian Anderson) is a pragmatist who doesn’t believe in paranormal activities. Although it sounds absurd, the series is a clever, well-produced hour of escapist television every week which fits producer Chris Carter’s motto: “The show takes place in the realm of extreme possibilities.”

Carter refuses to say if he believes in the supernatural, but adds coyly “We can’t prove that it happened, but we can’t prove it didn’t.”

Mauled muffins on a set in Canada may also fall into the realm of extreme possibilities. “Gross!” Duchovny says before going off to discover the next body.

Sep-09-1993
The Buffalo News
Fox’s eerie ‘X-Files’ opens with a touch of Stephen King
Alan Pergament

Talk about strange sightings. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw “The X-Files,” the new Fox series (9 p.m. Friday, Channel 29). A quality, suspenseful, adult show on Fox that doesn’t have any sexual titillation? What a concept!

In it, FBI agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) investigates some unexplained cases called “X-Files,” which often involve paranormal phenomena. This true believer is teamed with skeptical agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), a medical doctor who the FBI expects will debunk his theories.

Friday’s fast-moving premiere has elements of “Twin Peaks” and a variety of Stephen King stories. It isn’t so much scary as eerie.

The two agents are sent to a small Oregon town to investigate a series of strange murders of young high school graduates.

The story opens, King-like, in the forest, with one of the victims being chased as the wind howls and a strong light brightens the landscape.

Soon, the female victim is found dead with some mysterious moles on her back, a sign of the strangeness going on.

The agents eventually dig up old graves, visit a mental hospital and pull over the side of the road when a light flashes and time stops for 10 seconds.

Time will fly watching “The X-Files.” You don’t have to believe in UFOs, but it will help.

Duchovny and Anderson have strong chemistry together and his character has a sarcastic sense of humor that gives the show an unexpected element of enjoyment.

When Scully notes that time can’t disappear because it’s a “universal invariance,” Mulder cracks: “Not in this ZIP code.”

Duchovny is used to being in strange ZIP codes. The Richard Gere look-alike was in “Twins Peaks” but you might not remember him. He played a transvestite. So he is used to playing strange.

Which rates higher on the bizarro-meter, this show or “Peaks”?

“Well, when you’re wearing a dress things tend to get pretty bizarre,” said Duchovny in an interview in Los Angeles. “I would say ‘Twin Peaks’ is an interesting show to bring up when talking about this one. Because it has a kind of an offbeat sense of humor, and it’s definitely dealing with bizarre, extraordinary things. Aside from being scared, you’re going to be entertained with this show as well. But you’re not going to see my legs.”

Series creator Chris Carter prefers a comparison to his favorite show as a child, “The Night Stalker.”

“It was this fantastic show and I was scared out of my pants,” said Carter. “And so I said there’s nothing scary on television anymore. Let’s do a scary show.”

Carter said the (idea) for “The X-Files” came from talking to a Yale psychology professor who made him aware of a study in which Americans were asked if they believed in UFOs.

“Believe it or not, they found that 3 percent of Americans believe they’d actually been abducted by UFOs. That means if there are 100 people in this room, there are three of you who have actually been abducted. Please raise your hands.”

Actually, out of 100 TV critics, 10 may have been abducted. But that’s another story.

Carter doesn’t plan to have Fox appear to be right every week.

“They’ll uncover hoaxes,” said Carter. “There will be more traditional FBI cases that involve what seems to be paranormal phenomenon and we’ll have evidence and MOs (methods of operation) that seem otherwordly. But they won’t always be alien abduction.”

He doesn’t want the show classified as science fiction because he feels that reduces the scare factor.

“I’m going a long way to try to make these scientific possibilities . . . that indeed something could happen genetically with someone. Or there could be some experiment gone wrong. Or there could be biologic anomalies that could cause these cases to be paranormal in that way.

“I think that’s much more interesting if it’s believable. I think it’s much more frightening. You could look at Michael Crichton’s ‘Terminal Man’ or his ‘Jurassic Park’ or his ‘Andromeda Strain’ and the most frightening part is that you actually believe that it could happen.”

Naturally, Duchovny was asked if he believed in paranormal phenomenon.

“Personally, I’m the kind of person who needs to be shown something before I believe it,” said Duchovny. “And I haven’t had any personal experience with UFOs. Paranormal activity seems to be all around me. I grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan so I’m used to that.

“It’s hard for me to believe that we’re the only sentient life in this universe. So I think there’s got to be something else out there. I just don’t know why they seem to choose people in North Dakota all the time. So I’m waiting. I’m waiting to be contacted. Now.”

He was kidding. I think.