Jun-19-1995
People Magazine
His X-Cellent Adventure

[Original article]

Somehow it’s only fitting that Chris Carter, the 38-year-old creator and executive producer of Fox’s The “X-Files”, should be, well, slightly X-centric. Emerging from the sci-fi show’s Vancouver, B.C., office after another 18-hour day, the blond, 5,11″ Carter looks dazed in his wrinkled cotton shirt and faded jeans. The seven-day-a-week production grind, he says, is “hellish and grueling… like being chased by wild coyotes.”

Or perhaps by werewolves, vampires, pyro-kinetic arsonists and shape-shifting aliens – the usual suspects investigated each week by the series’ protagonists, FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). On this spring morning an exhausted Carter – trying to work his way through writer’s block – takes a boat ride to a nearby island, where he wanders into a pottery shop.

“Do you mind if I sit at your wheel for a while?” he asks the shop’s owner, handing him a $10 bill. Carter, who began working part-time as a potter at 19 while majoring in journalism at California State University at Long Beach, spends the next hour musing about plots while molding pots.

Finally he stops to admire his handiwork – before smashing it to bits. “It’s a Zen thing,” he later says cryptically. The owner offers him a job anyway. Carter politely declines. “I used to do this for a living,” he explains. “But I do something else now.”

And very successfully too. At the end of its second season, “X-Files”, Fox’s critically acclaimed series, has the same passionate following as cult hits like “The Twilight Zone” and “Star Trek”. Among the show’s big-name admirers are Bruce Springsteen, Luke Perry and Whoopi Goldberg. “X-Files” is also a hot topic on the Internet, with viewers discoursing on subjects ranging from Scully’s figure to philosophical implications of plot lines. At the first “X-Files” convention in San Diego on June 11, fans will be poring over key chains, T-shirts and reports of an “X-Files” movie being discussed for next year.

All this adulation bemuses Carter. “The main misperception of me is that I’m some kind of sci-fi maven,” he says. “People would be surprised to learn that I’m really the guy next door, not a paranoid, kook or crank… I have no reason to believe in paranormal phenomena.”

Before “X-Files”, Carter’s life was an exercise in very normal phenomena. He and his younger brother, Craig, 34, grew up in Bellflower, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb. Their father, William, is a construction worker; their mother, Catherine, now deceased, was a housewife. Carter says he was a typical kid, even pitching in Little League. He did have a dark side though. When the sci-fi classic “Mysterious Island” was rerun on a local TV station, 8-year-old Chris watched every showing – three times a day, for a full week. And one of his fondest childhood memories was of a haunted house that neighbors set up at Halloween. “People would jump out and tie you up and squirt you with stuff,” he says.

In search of other amusements, Carter discovered surfing when he was 12. “He was really passionate about it,” says Craig, now a research scientist at the National Institute for Standards and Technology. After graduating from college in 1979, Carter started writing for “Surfing” magazine. “It was a way to postpone entering the adult world,” he says.

But the adult world caught up with him in 1983, when he began dating screenwriter Dori Pierson (Big Business), who encouraged him to finish his first movie script. It was his second that attracted Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dori’s boss at Disney, who signed Carter to a three-picture deal. But after one screenplay, Carter decided to write for TV instead. Among the pilots he cranked out was “Brand New Life”, a “Brady Bunch” clone that ran for six episodes. “I was about as far from “The X-Files” as you could get,” says Carter.

But when Fox hired him in 1992 to develop a new prime-time series, Carter immediately pitched a scary show inspired by an old favorite: “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, in which an investigative reporter (played by Darren McGavin) tracked down vampires and werewolves. Even Dori, his wife since 1987, was surprised. “I didn’t know those stories existed in his head,” she says.

Carter gave “The X-Files” Mulder his mother’s maiden name; Scully was named for Los Angeles Dodgers announcer Vin Scully. “I’m equal parts of both characters,” says their creator. “I’m a skeptic like Scully, but I’m also ready to be enraptured, like Mulder.”

On the set he is friendly with his stars. “He was very moved by the experience I went through of having a child,” says Anderson, whose 9-month-old daughter, Piper, is Carter’s godchild. Duchovny, who shares a “story by” credit with Carter on two “X-Files” plots, plays squash with him during breaks.

Back in the three-bedroom, Pacific Palisades, Calif., home he shares with Dori, Carter is ever on the prowl for story ideas. “I’m a scavenger of magazines, essays, movies,” he says. “I don’t use much unsolicited stuff from friends and fans.” A National Public Radio piece about three unrelated military suicides in Haiti inspired an episode about a voodoo cult on a U.S. base. And then there’s the news clip about an Arizona woman who swears bats invaded her house while a UFO hovered outside. “So now,” says Carter, looking X-ceedingly pleased, “I have an interesting bat episode I’ll be doing.”

MICHAEL A. LIPTON

CRAIG TOMASHOFF in Pacific Palisades

Jun-19-1995
People
His X-Cellent Adventure
Michael A. Lipton; Craig Tomashoff in Pacific Palisades

X-Files Creator Chris Carter Revels In The Bizarre, From A(Liens) To Z(Ombies)

June 19, 1995 — Somehow it’s only fitting that Chris Carter, the 38-year-old creator and executive producer of Fox’s The X-Files, should be, well, slightly X-centric. Emerging from the sci-fi show’s Vancouver, B.C., office after another 18-hour day, the blond, 511″ Carter looks dazed in his wrinkled cotton shirt and faded jeans. The seven-day-a-week production grind, he says, is “hellish and grueling . . . like being chased by wild coyotes.”

Or perhaps by werewolves, vampires, pyro-kinetic arsonists and shape-shifting aliens — the usual suspects investigated each week by the series’ protagonists, FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). On this spring morning an exhausted Carter — trying to work his way through writer’s block — takes a boat ride to a nearby island, where he wanders into a pottery shop.

“Do you mind if I sit at your wheel for a while?” he asks the shop’s owner, handing him a $10 bill. Carter, who began working part-time as a potter at 19 while majoring in journalism at California State University at Long Beach, spends the next hour musing about plots while molding pots.

Finally he stops to admire his handiwork — before smashing it to bits. “It’s a Zen thing,” he later says cryptically.

The owner offers him a job anyway. Carter politely declines. “I used to do this for a living,” he explains. “But I do something else now.”

And very successfully too. At the end of its second season, X-Files, Fox’s critically acclaimed series, has the same passionate following as cult hits like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek. Among the show’s big-name admirers are Bruce Springsteen, Luke Perry and Whoopi Goldberg. X-Files is also a hot topic on the Internet, with viewers discoursing on subjects ranging from Scully’s figure to philosophical implications of plot lines. At the first X-Files convention in San Diego on June 11, fans will be poring over key chains, T-shirts and reports of an X-Files movie being discussed for next year.

All this adulation bemuses Carter. “The main misperception of me is that I’m some kind of sci-fi maven,” he says. “People would be surprised to learn that I’m really the guy next door, not a paranoid, kook or crank . . . I have no reason to believe in paranormal phenomena.”

Before X-Files, Carter’s life was an exercise in very normal phenomena. He and his younger brother, Craig, 34, grew up in Bellflower, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb. Their father, William, is a construction worker; their mother, Catherine, now deceased, was a housewife. Carter says he was a typical kid, even pitching in Little League. He did have a dark side though. When the sci-fi classic Mysterious Island was rerun on a local TV station, 8-year-old Chris watched every showing — three times a day, for a full week. And one of his fondest childhood memories was of a haunted house that neighbors set up at Halloween. “People would jump out and tie you up and squirt you with stuff,” he says.

In search of other amusements, Carter discovered surfing when he was 12. “He was really passionate about it,” says Craig, now a research scientist at the National Institute for Standards and Technology. After graduating from college in 1979, Carter started writing for Surfing magazine. “It was a way to postpone entering the adult world,” he says.

But the adult world caught up with him in 1983, when he began dating screenwriter Dori Pierson (Big Business), who encouraged him to finish his first movie script. It was his second that attracted Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dori’s boss at Disney, who signed Carter to a three-picture deal. But after one screenplay, Carter decided to write for TV instead. Among the pilots he cranked out was Brand New Life, a Brady Bunch clone that ran for six episodes. “I was about as far from The X-Files as you could get,” says Carter.

But when Fox hired him in 1992 to develop a new prime-time series, Carter immediately pitched a scary show inspired by an old favorite: Kolchak: The Night Stalker, in which an investigative reporter (played by Darren McGavin) tracked down vampires and werewolves. Even Dori, his wife since 1987, was surprised. “I didn’t know those stories existed in his head,” she says.

Carter gave The X-Files’ Mulder his mother’s maiden name; Scully was named for Los Angeles Dodgers announcer Vin Scully. “I’m equal parts of both characters,” says their creator. “I’m a skeptic like Scully, but I’m also ready to be enraptured, like Mulder.”

On the set he is friendly with his stars. “He was very moved by the experience I went through of having a child,” says Anderson, whose 9-month-old daughter, Piper, is Carter’s godchild. Duchovny, who shares a “story by” credit with Carter on two X-Files plots, plays squash with him during breaks.

Back in the three-bedroom, Pacific Palisades, Calif., home he shares with Dori, Carter is ever on the prowl for story ideas. “I’m a scavenger of magazines, essays, movies,” he says. “I don’t use much unsolicited stuff from friends and fans.” A National Public Radio piece about three unrelated military suicides in Haiti inspired an episode about a voodoo cult on a U.S. base. And then there’s the news clip about an Arizona woman who swears bats invaded her house while a UFO hovered outside. “So now,” says Carter, looking X-ceedingly pleased, “I have an interesting bat episode I’ll be doing.”

May-??-1995
The Gabereau Show
Interview with Chris Carter

[transcribed by CarterPhile]

This is a transcript from Chris’ first appearance on The Gabereau Show (a Vancouver morning talk-show) in May of 1995.

VICKI GABEREAU: Don’t you love it? The X-Files. It’s shot in Vancouver, and watched by a fanatically devoted audience. Chris Carter invented it, and he is the executive producer, he writes it, he edits it, and he often directs it, the list goes on. Your life must have changed dramatically since this show went ballistic…

CHRIS CARTER: Personally or professionally?

VG: Yes.

CC: Either/or?

VG They answer your phone calls all day?

CC: More readily. It’s hard to say how it’s changed, I’ve become so focused on what I do that my life has only become more narrow as a result of this success. I do the same thing every day, I eat lunch at my desk every day, I have not succumbed to the perceived glamours of Hollywood. So, it’s really hard to say. Professionally, certainly I’m more considered now as a person who has put a successful TV show on the air, in Hollywoodland. Personally, I have much less time to go surfing.

VG: You surf?

CC: Yeah, longtime surfer.

VG: Really? But this idea of living the great life when one is a successful director/writer/creator/producer, it’s sort of the in-between bits when the series goes into reruns is when you’ll be able to swan around in expensive suits.

CC: The day I swan around in expensive suits is the day I hope someone puts a bullet in my head. I don’t see it happening, the show is going to have a good long run, I’m dedicated to it, I feel responsibility to the show, which I love — it’s a labour of love, certainly — and to the actors, who I have promised them — not point blank, but there is a promise that is understood — that I will stay with the show as long as they give me their all, and they’ve been great. It’s really wonderful working with them. Most things fail, it’s a business of failure, most TV series fail, so when you get something that hits and clicks and people seems to like it — I’m blessed with so many things that I am going to stick with it.

VG: “Like” is a modest word to use. “Obsessed with” you might say, and this happened very quickly. Even if you look at the hugely successful original Star Trek and so on, it took a lot longer to bang in, and even Twilight Zone, which I gather both of us watched at the same time, and there was a certain level of interest in that show, but it didn’t take off like — this is just nuts!

CC: Yeah. You can imagine what it’s like for me to have been sitting there one day, playing ball with my dog and barefoot in surf trunks and coming up with the show, and all of a sudden, it’s become as popular as it has, and this whole Internet connection — nothing prepares you for it. It’s still confusing to a lot of people that there are X-Files conventions coming up, and licensing and merchandising. For me, it’s been an almost three-year dream, and I hope no one pinches me because I’m riding it.

VG: From the time that you came up with it: did you come up with it alone?

CC: Yes.

VG: Your own demented little mind.

CC: My own sick, twisted little mind.

VG: And your dog.

CC: And my dog.

VG: From the time you came up with it: you’ve been in the business for a long time, so you had a clue about how to build a show, after all. So, what was your first inkling, and is that first idea precisely the same as how the show has unfolded now?

CC: What I had imagined is really what the show is now. Actually, I think it’s gotten better in many ways. We’ve done 49 episodes now, so I couldn’t have imagined some of shows we would have done, but as far the characters and the tone of the show and the show’s basic DNA is intact.

VG: It has a conscience, this show.

CC: A social conscience?

VG: Yeah, a social conscience.

CC: I think it does. I think when people are pursuing the truth, the conscience is built-in. There’s no political message being delivered, no social message being delivered, but I think there is sort of a universal, scientific, religious message that can be extrapolated. I think that’s not a conscious decision to do that. People who see the show oftentimes they feel the show is actually a very religious show, which is funny because when I’ve thought about this, I think of myself as a non-religious person looking for religious experience, so I think that’s what the characters are sort of doing too.

VG: The aliens, the alien forces, the idea of the unknown paranormal, if you want to say that — why are all aliens wicked? It is, dare I say, human nature, and even more specifically, American, to be afraid of an alien. An alien from Mexico, and alien from Hungary, an alien from outer space, an alien from anywhere, and we’re still afraid of these damn aliens. And why can’t aliens every come down and do something benevolent?

CC: Well, there are all sorts of different aliens. If you read the literature, and you believe these sorts of things, they are up to certain things that may actually benefit mankind, if you believe these things again. In fact, the show has reflected that as well. Some of the stories we’ve told have been of benevolent, rather than malevolent, forces at work. There was a show we did about the abduction of animal fetuses of endangered species, that the aliens may be trying to create their own kind of Noah’s Ark. I thought that was sort of a noble exercise.

VG: Yes. I do find Friday night at 9 o’clock a bit of an awkward time, frankly, isn’t that when it’s on here?

CC: Yeah it’s on Fridays at 9, but actually, I love that timeslot.

VG: But I’m a social butterfly.

CC: That’s why they made VCRs, and one day they’ll make them so that you can actually program them.

VG: It’s a questioning show, it’s a show that is maybe even suspicious, and watching out for conspiracy.

CC: It’s wonderful when you can project, or promulgate your personal philosophy to millions of viewers each week, which my personal philosophy, of course, is “trust no one”.

VG: Your crew must be crazy about you.

CC: And so that’s an idea that informs the show.

VG: You went to the FBI, huh?

CC: Yes, we went to the FBI, we were invited there.

VG: What did you do? Did they phone you up and say “do you want to come over for tea or something?”

CC: Yeah, it was funny because when I was first researching the show, they were very reluctant to give me any information. They gave me a certain amount of information, and then they cut me off, they didn’t know who I was, or what I wanted, or what I was doing, and they really wouldn’t cooperate with us at all. So, beyond a little protocol, or procedure that they described to me, I didn’t know this institution. I was sort of writing about it blindly, only with what I read, and the little that they had told me. And a year goes by, and all of a sudden, the phone calls start coming from FBI agents who are secret fans, and we developed a few relationships with these people, and finally at the end of the year, one of them became such a big fan — or a couple of them — that they were able to coordinate an X-Files [visit] … Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny and I were invited to the FBI, and TV Guide was allowed to come in and document the whole thing.

VG: So when you got there, what did they show you? I mean, it’s a big office, right?

CC: Well there are two different facilities. There’s the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., and then there’s the national training facility at Quantico, VA. So, that’s the Silence of the Lambs building. There’s this place called Hogan’s Alley, where they conduct all these exercises, about how to, you know, how to spring a hostage or catch bankrobbers, so that was really interesting.

VG: Did you sit in on some of this stuff?

CC: No, we didn’t. We had some guys come down and describe some of it to us. We went through some of the buildings, we didn’t get to do some of the good stuff, which is like going through that thing where you get to shoot paint pellets and all sorts of good stuff…

VG: You can set that up yourself, can’t you? Couldn’t you make a scene in the TV show, so you could do it?

CC: We probably could, but there’s nothing dramatic about it. It’s preparation for drama.

VG: Oh, oh well. I was just trying to help you out there. So, anyways, you get to go through all of this stuff — did you make notes while you were there?

CC: I made some notes. Mostly it was a chance to see what I had been writing blindly about firsthand, or up close. I have developed contacts since then, so if I need to know something about ballistics, or DNA testing, or fingerprinting, I’ve been able to call and get good expert advice or information from these people.

VG: So they’re in your pocket, so to speak.

CC: No no, they’re not at all. Officially, they can’t say that they endorse the show or that they are in any way connected to the show.

VG: They’re so tense!

CC: You know, you go there, and you realize that these people are involved in some of the most … these people did ABSCAM, they’re involved in this latest assault on this building in Oklahoma City. They are the protectors of the world, and they are involved in some very big things, so I don’t think you want to question what that institution does.

VG: No, and yet you were determined to have them central to your characters. I mean, you could have had some sort of obscure Bureau of Investigation…

CC: But then it wouldn’t have seemed real, and the show’s only scary as it is real, and I think that goes for the world that the FBI agents work in and live in.

VG: Is this show sold around the world now?

CC: Yes, actually, it’s frighteningly playing in something like 60 countries.

VG: This happened so fast, didn’t it? [CC mumbles assent] Are people in Australia as afraid of the FBI as you are, do you think?

CC: I don’t know how that aspect of the show plays for the people of Australia, but it’s very popular down there, so I think that the universal on the this show is that we’re all afraid of the same things, essentially, and…

VG: Something that will come in the night and suck your brains out.

CC: It’s true, but actually I’ve found the interesting thing for me is that what’s really scary is what you don’t see, it’s what you imagine. Because we have to do the show on a budget, we don’t show you a lot, and so it’s sort of worked to our advantage.

VG: And yet, you spend a lot of time, i.e., money, on lighting. Really and truly, the lighting is fabulous, you have to agree.

CC: Well, not just the lighting, but the production design, we just have some very talented people here in Vancouver who we’ve been lucky to have now for — well, we’re going into our third season, and they’ve hung in there, which is rare. Everyone’s stock rises in success, and so what happens is people want to take their stock and trade it, trade up, and everybody wants to do something different or better, or a feature. Everybody thinks that features are the big thing, that’s the place where people want to end up. But I think we’re doing feature quality on a TV show, week in and week out, and that’s the reason these people have stayed, it’s an opportunity to do just good work, and it shows. place the work above themselves. The work ethic up here is very high.

VG: There’s also the dollar factor. You can’t discount that.

CC: It was one of the reasons that Fox wanted to come up here, of course, because you get such a good return on your money, which appealed to me too, because I get to put more money up on screen. The better the money, the better the dollar exchange, the better the show is.

VG: When you shot that first pilot here, and you took it down to Fox, did they jump up and down?

CC: Ultimately they jumped up and down. I don’t think they knew what they had at first, so the response was that it was “very well-crafted,” I think the term was. You actually want to hear glowing praise. But they thought it was very well-done, but they saw it without music, they saw it with a few of the wires…

VG: But they’re trained to not see that, aren’t they?

CC: Yes, exactly. Actually, there’s a story I like to tell about that. I finished the pilot on it was I believe a Monday night, or early Tuesday morning at about 4 o’clock in the morning, and at 8 am that same morning, it was being shown to the Fox executives, including Rupert Murdoch, and the story is that they screened this — and this was a room where the lights go up, everyone if they’re a smart executive before responding at all will turn and look to see what Rupert Murdoch’s response was, but there was spontaneous applause in the room, which was tantamount to a standing ovation, and I knew then we were on our way.

VG: You weren’t there, though.

CC: I wasn’t there, but it was reported to me by 10 a.m. that morning.

VG: Were you cowering somewhere?

CC: I was sleeping somewhere. I had no idea what the response was going to be to it ultimately, and when they responded like that, I knew we were at least in contention to be a series, and in fact, in that same week, on Friday, they ordered thirteen episodes.

VG: Hallelujah.

CC: I know.

VG: Are you from California?

CC: Yes. Can’t you tell? California twang?

VG: No. Well, it’s sort of hard to tell, you Americans all sound the same to me. Where were you educated? What did you do? What’s the story of your life. You’ve got 30 seconds.

CC: That’s about all it’s worth, believe me. I have a very underwhelming story. Let me see, I went to a state college in California. I was a surfer, so I did my degree in journalism, and went to work for Surfing Magazine for five years. It was really a way to postpone my growing up, and those were five of the best years of my life. I ended up working for them for thirteen years, I was listed as senior editor at the ripe age of twenty-eight.

VG: Surfing Magazine?

CC: Surfing Magazine. It’s a big deal, an international magazine.

VG: I’m sure it is.

CC: You’re not impressed.

VG: I am impressed. I’m wildly impressed, you know?

CC: Anyway. So, I went around the world, surfing, and I got to write. I wrote constantly, I learned how to run a business, it was a wonderful, adventurous five years of my life. I did many other things too. I was a production potter during those times also.

VG: A production potter?

CC: Yes, I did all those California cliché things.

VG: Like make pots?

CC: Yes. I actually made hundreds of thousands of pieces of pottery at the potter’s wheel. I sat and made dinnerware.

VG: Really? Have you kept some of it to this day?

CC: A couple of things.

VG: What does it look like?

CC: It’s beautiful. [said with a proud catch in his throat]

VG: Is it?

CC: [laughing] No, I threw most of it away, because I got tired of looking at it. But I hope to do that again someday.

VG: Pot?

CC: Yeah, I know it sounds rather fatuous…

VG: It must be soothing to be able to do that.

CC: It was wonderful, repetitious. It has a certain Zen thing that goes on when you make a lot of things over and over.

VG: That’s right. And it’s a useful thing, at the end.

CC: Yeah.

VG: Every magazine and newspaper piece I’ve seen about you says that you have nightmares, so I think you should get back to the potting as soon as humanly possible. Is that true?

CC: I think my night horrors are waking nightmares.

VG: Why would newspapers say that all the time?

CC: I think that’s what they imagine. I try to imagine what other people’s nightmares are, that’s what I try to do.

VG: Nightmares involving deadlines.

CC: Believe me, that is a nightmare you cannot wake up from. This is a business of deadlines.

VG: So on the day before you ship, you’re always chewing your nails?

CC: Oh yeah, but I’m always working on five shows at once. I’m always writing a show, prepping a show to shoot, shooting a show, editing a show, and putting the music and sound in a show. So, every day, I’m working on five different stories, so keeping those things — juggling those things in my head — what am I doing here?

VG: I don’t know what you’re doing here, I’m exhausted even thinking about you. You’ve met, I take it, William Gibson since you’ve been here?

CC: Yeah. I don’t know if I’d call it a friendship, but I like him very much, we have a good time together, and I spoke to him on the phone yesterday, actually.

VG: How did you do that? How did you come to meet him?

CC: I heard he was a fan of The X-Files, and I contacted him. He said he’d like to try to do an X-Files script, and of course I was very interested in doing that, and we’re doing that right now. Or he’s doing it.

VG: You can’t have guests in the show, you can’t have Gibson walk through it.

CC: Oh sure.

VG: Or William Burroughs, or Tom Robbins.

CC: There’s a lot of people I’d like to put in the show, and I’m actually approaching a few of them…

VG: Camille Paglia.

CC: I’d love to put Camille Paglia in, I’d love to meet Camille Paglia.

VG: Yeah, so would I. But I guess you have to nail yourself down, because the minute she starts to talk…

CC: I’ve only seen her on TV.

VG: Isn’t she something?

CC: She’s amazing.

VG: Amazing. She’s like slingshotted into the world, that woman. Well, see ya.

CC: That’s it, that’s all you want to ask me?

VG: Well, what would you like to talk about?

CC: I don’t know, I thought we just started.

VG: Well, let me see, the actors.

CC: No, I’m…

VG: No no, okay, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

CC: Bye.

Apr-??-1994
Kevin and Bean
Interview with Chris Carter
KROQ

This is a transcript of the interview that Chris Carter did on the L.A. radio station KROQ. The morning show hosts are Kevin and Bean… It’s much more entertaining to listen to than to read, but anyway here it goes…

K: 8:27…Our favorite TV show,(x-files theme in the background) as you know is the X-files. It’s on tonight on FOX, uhhh…9 o’clock, channel 11?

B: Correct..

K: Our friend Chris Carter on the telephone now…producer, creator director…behind the scenes pulling the strings guy, writer…Chris, good morning.

CC: Good morning.

K: You know Chris, we were…Geez, what are you the voice of God?

B: ‘Good morning'(mocking Chris’ deep voice)

K: We ahhh, were much more impressed with you Chris, when ya’ know we met you up there, in ahhh…Canada.

CC: Uhn huh…

K: We were much more impressed with you until we were reading through your biography, and…It says here that you wrote “The Nanny.”

CC: It wasn’t _that_ ‘Nanny,’ it was uhh, it was a previous and less successful ‘Nanny.’

B: You mean, it wasn’t even the successful ‘Nanny?’

K: (laughing) What did you write, ahh the pilot or something for a show called “The Nanny?”

CC: Yeah, it was a long time ago…and somehow, it ended up on my uhhh (laughing) my biography.

K: Ohhh, see you gotta fire some people, Chris…Anyone who’s putting “The Nanny” on your…especially if it’s not even the one that they might like.

B: (laughing) It was the bad ‘Nanny.’

K: That’s embarrassing.

CC: (laughing) It was the paranormal ‘Nanny.’

B: Yeah, right.

K: Now, you wrote other pilots for other TV shows before the “X-files,” it’s not like this is your first foray into TV, right?

CC: Nah, I’ve been doing tv for about, uhh I guess 10 years.

K: How does a guy, uhh, and we may have asked you this before, but I’ve forgotten the answer if you gave it to us…When you have an idea like you did for the “X-files…”

CC: Yeah…

K: Do you take it to a network? Or who do you take it to and say, here’s my plan for a tv show…How does that work?

CC: It, it’s kinda like that, uhh…You have a reputation, so they, uhh… as a person who can possibly create a tv show, so a studio enlists you, and you come up with the idea…and then you pitch it to the network and they uhhh, they either buy or they don’t.

B: Now, did you pitch the “X-files” to other networks before FOX?

CC: No, FOX was the first choice, uhh…

B: Uhh, were they your first choice?

CC: Uhh, they were.

B: Hey, we heard the other day, and maybe you know if this is true or not, this is what one of our friends in the ‘biz’ told us… That FOX turned down the “Friends” pilot…That it was offered to FOX first, they turned it down.

CC: That happens all the time, NBC turned down “Roseanne.”

B: That’s amazing … And it’s so easy now to look back, and go ‘Wow, what a dumb move,’ but I guess at the time, you never know, there are so many shows pitched, you have no idea which one’s are gonna be hits.

CC: Exactly…

K: Now, when you walked into FOX, and you said ‘okay, here’s what I wanna do…I wanna have these two agents, and they look for UFO’s.’ They didn’t go, ‘okay Chris, thank you…next?’

CC: Actually, they did do that…

K: Oh, did they?

CC: They turned it down at first. They didn’t know what it was, and then I went back with uhh, a guy named Peter Roth and we went back and were able to sell it to them.

K: Wow, that’s cool, now the episode that’s on tonight is a brand new show, I think…Uhh, of course we’re in sweeps now, and so we get new “X-files,” what, for like the next three weeks I would imagine.

CC: Yeah, yep.

K: We were up in Vancouver when y’all were filming this, and I am telling you that you would expect…because the show, the “X-files,” and many of our listeners are watching it…because it’s, uhh.. It’s a dark, moody, smoke-filled show…You would expect that that’s what it’s like to be there, but you people just party up there…

CC: (laughing)

K: There’s…I mean, it’s just a terrific set…

B: Also, when we were in your office Chris, you were sitting there on your laptop computer, and you were writing the final episode…

CC: That’s right.

B: And if I remember correctly, I sat down in your chair and added a scene to the final episode…I trust that’s still in?

CC: It changed everything…

B: I trust it’s still in.

CC: It is, that…Now that cliffhanger…

B: …Involves nudity…Okay, very good.

K: (laughing)Which is not a uhh, not a bad thing. But, I mean your uhh, your director and your camera people are all fun people, and we were just so surprised…and I think we told ya about Dave and Gillian, the stars of the show…Now I know that they’re really good actors because they couldn’t be any more different than they are on the show…

CC: I know it.

K: They’re just goofy and silly…Ya’ know?…Hey, there’s one more thing I wanted to tell you about, and I know you’re probably now uh, with the popularity of the program, you’re probably keeping your eyes open for like copyright infringements and stuff like that?…

CC: (laughing) Yes…

K: Ya know, people selling like t-shirts outta the back of a station wagon down on Hollywood Boulevard? We talked to a guy yesterday who just wrapped a major porno movie called “The Triple X-files.”

CC: (laughing) Uhhh, yes we’ve already been uhh, celebrated with “The Breast Files,” so this is, uhh…

B: (laughing) Oh really?…(laughing)”The Breast Files” and “The Triple X-files,” I like it.

K: Well, you guys got something to watch at the cast party at the end of the season then (laughing). Now this is always funny…for the people who have not yet discovered the “X-files,” try and describe the plot for tonight’s show.

CC: Uhhh, it’s a tough one…It’s uhh, a possible contagion that uhh, affects the prison, or infects the prison…and uhh, two of the prisoners uhh, possibly are infected with it and escape…And, Mulder and Scully are uhm sort of put on a, sort of uhh, an abnormal assignment to track them down…And uhh, they are used as uhm, stalking horses, I think they call it, for the uhh, for the government.

K: I have bad news for ya, as I read my TV guide, that’s the same plot of Suzanne Sommers’ “Step By Step” for tonight…

CC: (laughing)

K: So, there’s gonna be some confusion.

CC: Yikes!

K: Chris by the way, you have the voice of God…I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet.

B: (Imitating Chris, again) ‘Yes, tonight on the “X-files,” they’re going to track them down…’

K: (laughing) Alright, so it’s three more new episodes and then uhh, what we’re.. you’re off for the summer? At least…

CC: Uhhh, yeah, let me see…Uhhh, I think actually there are four episodes, counting the one tonight…

K: Cool. Hey, did you see that you were number 6 in L.A. last week?

CC: Seriously?

K: Number 6 in L.A.

CC: That’s amazing, ’cause last week was rerun.

K: Yeah, no joke…It was just crazy, we couldn’t believe it…Alright Chris, terrific, we hope you’ll stay in touch with us.

CC: Thanks, you guys.

K: Give uhh, our best to the cast.

CC: Come back to Vancouver.

K: Ya know, we still wanna die on an episode of the “X-files.”…I mean, the next time you’ve got some sort of like mass slaughter thing happening…seriously, we want to be there for it.

CC: (laughing)You’re there.

B: We’ll fly up if you’ll let us do it…

CC: (laughing) Okay…

B: We want to be on the screen for like a half a second, then get hit by a truck.

CC: (laughing) Okay…

B: Alright, thanks a lot.

CC: Thanks, you guys.

??-??-1995
Unknown
Confessions of a Mad Surfer

[Date unknown – mentions “first season” so it must come from a date after the show was extended to season 2]

In which we creep into the head of Chris Carter, Creator and Executive Producer of The X-Files, and crawl behind the scenes.

Q. Did you always have in mind a two-person cast, male and female?

A. The Mulder-Scully idea was there from the start. And I wanted to flip the gender types, so that Mulder, the male, would be the believer, the intuitive one, and Scully the skeptic, which is the more traditional male role. It was also important that Scully be Mulder’s equal in rank, intelligence, and ability–because in real life the FBI is a boy’s club–and I didn’t want her to take a back seat. James Wolcott, writing in The New Yorker, says “Their partnership is achieves a rare parity between the sexes,” so I think we succeeded.

Q. Once you got approval to shoot the Pilot episode, what was the hardest part?

A. I think the invasion of Normandy must have been simpler. The first dilemma was creating the whirling vortex of leaves. We needed real leaves, whipping around in a whirlwind, that we had to merge with digital leaves, and then we needed a special light rig that ended up taking about eight hours to construct. Then there was the weather. It rains all the time in Vancouver. But during the shooting, it never, ever rained when we wanted it to–only when we didn’t need it. The graveyard scene was supposed to be shot in the pouring rain. So we turned on the rain birds, and the actors were having trouble with the lines because it was freezing. They were both so amazingly cold that they couldn’t even speak afterwards and we didn’t know if we’d captured the scene. That same night, we had these empty graves that we’d dug up, and in the pitch black several crew members fell in and had to be carted off to the hospital. So it was like a war of attrition trying to get the scene–which ended up one of the better ones in the pilot.

Q. Where did Deep Throat come from–the character I mean.

A. Watergate was like the ‘big bang’ of my moral universe, I was 15 or 16 when it spilled out on the American consciousness and conscience. So the idea of questioning authority, trusting no one, is part of the fiber of my being. Deep Throat, of course, came from the infamous Watergate figure who may or may not have existed–the guy who told Woodward and Bernstein to follow the money. Our Deep Throat emerges from some shadowy level of the government, and leads Mulder and Scully, carefully and selectively. He helps them when they reach a dead end or take a wrong turn, but never gives them too much and he is not 100% on their side.

Q. What about the space ship in the “Deep Throat” episode, is it a model or was it added in post production?

A. The ship was not really there. There was a concert lighting rig, firing off lights in different colors, and we put them together to create a triangle. So that when we shot these sequences, there was real light raining down on Mulder. But the spaceship itself was digitally illustrated, and I think the effect is at once impactful and subtle, which is a trademark of Mat Beck, our special effects producer.

Q. It’s hard to think of a show that pulls off the quantity and quality of special effects that are seen weekly on The X-Files. How did you get those worms in “Ice” to wriggle under the skin so convincingly?

A. Our special effects make-up person, Toby Lindala, was the genius behind the worm. He made body casts of the actors, incredibly realistic fake skins down to every fold, and strung beads on microfilaments so they could be pulled along and expand and contract beneath the fake skin. The dog was shot very close up–it’s actually a milk bottle tightly wrapped with fur. And there are also digital worms; the one that crawls into the dog’s ear is not real. Where I thought we might get into trouble was with the Standards and Practices folks, who function sort of like censors in telling you when you’re over the top on the sex or violence meter. We were sure that we’d gone too far with this worm, pushed the limits of good taste. And we’d let one scene involving the worm run a little long–about four seconds–thinking for sure they’d cut it down. In the end, they let it all stand. So it’s quite creepy, really.

Q. For me, one of the most chilling moments on The X-Files is that scene in “Conduit” when we’re looking down on the little boy’s scrawls of digits, and it suddenly turns into the image of his missing sister.

A. That was the brain child of the writers, Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon. We had the boy writing down information in binary code that he’s getting off the television, and Alex had this idea of having it add up to a giant puzzle. “Conduit” is interesting for another reason, because the ending was not part of the original story, in which Ruby did not return. In the final version she comes back, experiencing symptoms consistent with having experienced weightlessness, but we don’t force any more closure on it than that. Actually, the issue of closure has been an ongoing dialogue with the network, because we’ve always resisted wrapping up each episode with a neat little bow at the end. You can’t do that with The X-Files, because pretending to explain the unexplainable is ridiculous and our audience is too smart for that. “Conduit” helped us define that X-File stories would not have forced plot resolutions, but would conclude with some emotional resolution–in this case we find Mulder in the church at the end with all of the unresolved feelings about his sister’s abduction brought up to the surface. And Scully has her epiphany that her science may not contain all of the answers and she gains new insights into her partner. It’s a moving moment.

Q. One of my favorite characters from the first season is Max Fenig, the UFO enthusiast in “Fallen Angel.” Who is he?

A. We all know this type of guy. Is he a kook–or a Cassandra? It’s an important leap for Mulder and Scully to realize that he might not be crying “The Sky is Falling,” that he might be on to something. Another important element in “Fallen Angel,” was the invisible alien being. I’ve always believed that what you don’t see is scarier than what you do see. And we’ve always wanted to avoid the ‘monster of the week’ syndrome. The translucent force field in “Fallen Angel,” is much more malevolent than something that has a fangs or a fur coat or a waggly tail. This episode also contains an important narrative element. When Scully comes to Mulder and says “They’re going to shut us down,” the idea that the X-Files projects can be terminated from above at any time resonates from that moment forward, a critical part of the narrative tension.

Q. One episode that manages to terrify without special effects is “Eve,” the episode that focused on genetic experimentation by the government.

A. Actually, I think this is a very terrifying episode. And it alludes to what we all know, which is that the government has had the power to conduct bizarre experiments and mess with people’s lives and then spend years covering the whole thing up. From the first moment, the teaser where the little girl is hugging her teddy bear out in the street and the joggers come by and find her daddy slumped in the swing set, drained of blood, we’re on edge. It’s one of the episodes that has no particular special effects, but is a supremely creepy idea, rendered very creepily. And because the ending is somewhat ambiguous, I can imagine following up with a sequel episode in the fourth or fifth season. Since that episode, the girls who play the twins have won a certain notoriety–they even appear at conventions! And as you probably know, the names give to the evil twins–Cindy and Teena–are also names of the wives of Glen Morgan and James Wong, two of our writers and producers, which is typical of the way we like to imbed every episode with asides and sick inside jokes!

??-??-1995
Rolling Stone
Alien Sex Fiends

Rolling Stone (Australia) 1995 Rock and Roll Yearbook

An Interview with Chris Carter

AD: When the X-files was being developed, was it one of 30 ideas in your top drawer?

CC: It was my top idea actually, something I had wanted to do for a long time. It was inspired by a show that was on when I was a teenager called the Night Stalker. So I had almost 25 years to contemplate that or refresh those memories. I loved the show and wanted to do a show as scary as that one.

AD: Was it the scariness that you were trying to recreate or was it that lurking sense of paranoia?

CC: Both those things. I wanted to scare people first and foremost.

AD: It’s the first mass entertainment show I can think of that is really in this decade. It deals with the culture – like cyberspace, the Net, technology, the Gulf War and stealth bombers.

CC: Yeah, it’s funny, I don’t think we could actually tell these stories without cellular phones. Or without the Internet or the computer connection.

AD: How hard was it to sell the concept? How did you pitch it in the first place.

CC: Well, I was brought to Twentieth Century Fox under an exclusive contract by a man named Peter Roth. We had a nice lunch soon thereafter he said, “What do you want to do?”. I said, “I want to do something like the Night Stalker”. I came up with some ideas about two FBI agents. I had just seen Silence of the Lambs so I’m sure that inspired me. I came up with these things called the X-Files, X standing for the unknown. [Roth] loved it. We pitched it to FOX, and they turned us down.

AD: Really, Why?

CC: They didn’t really get it. Peter was so sure that we were onto a winner, that we arranged another meeting. We pitched our hearts out again, and whether it was because they liked it, or they wanted us off their backs, they bought the idea and I went to write a pilot script.

AD: How did you improve the second pitch?

CC: I think we just added enthusiasm and a little more detail. I had the good fortune to see a friend who was a research psychologist. He gave me a scientific survey on the occurrence of alien abduction and belief in extraterrestrials. It showed if you were to believe it, that three million people, or thereabouts, believe they’ve actually been abducted by aliens in the US.

AD: Wow!

CC: So I thought, well, this is interesting. I took it into them and said, “There are people out there taking this stuff seriously and I think that we can make that the foundation of the show”.

AD: When you first explained Scully and Mulder to FOX, was it a point of sale that this was going to be purely working relationship, no love interest.

CC: I wanted it to be that way from the get-go, although I did want there to be sort of an underlying tension between the two of them because my feeling is when you put two smart people, a man and a woman, in a room, I don’t care whether or not they’re passionate about their life and their work, you’re going to get sexual tension out of that naturally.

AD: Yeah, the sort of Harry-met-Sally-with-brains-scenario. You’ve said, “That’s incredible paranoia out there – that’s what test marketing taught us.” Did you actually go and test market paranoia?

CC: We actually test marketed the show and what I was really surprised to learn was that everyone in the test audience believed that the government was not working in their best interests.

AD: The whole concept of the X-Files strikes me as being a very clever ploy. You’ve got unsolved mysteries which in a way absolve you of the responsibility of actually solving them. That must be nice out sometimes.

CC: Well, it’s not an out. It’s kind of a necessity. We’re dealing with the unexplained and what we would have to do at the end of each episode with closure would be to explain things. And of course we have no explanation.

AD: Some of the scripts are written in less than 72 hours I believe – fairly insane writing sessions. What causes that situation?

CC: This is a grind, and what happens is that you’re always doing many things at once. You are conceiving a show, writing, prepping, shooting, editing, and then putting music and sound into the show. Every day you do those things. So sometimes it all catches up with you and you find yourself in a situation where a good script doesn’t come in. You’re forced to put together something to shoot in a very short time. Seventy-two hours – that’s more a rewrite than an actual concept-to-completion scenario.

AD: What are you knee-deep in at the moment? What’s occupying your mind – are we talking about abductions, horseripping?

CC: We’re shooting an episode, no11 for the third season, It involves Scully and Mulder and what in fact looked like a religious miracle. And it’s currently in its third day of shooting and I’m still sitting here at my computer doing some little tweaks on it as we go.

AD: I’m actually amazed by some of the subjects you get away with on mainstream American TV: voodoo, devil worship, necrophilia. Has the moral Majority got on to you yet?

CC: No, I think we handle these things rather smartly. I’ve got to answer every week to a censorship wing at the network. With the necrophilia episode, as you call it, the word necrophilia is never spoken. He’s called a death fetisher. In the Satanic Cult episode, the word Satan never actually appears.

AD: Even so you’ve got people ripping out human hearts and so on. I mean, there’s not much room for doubt there.

CC: Right. It’s all a lot of fun, of course.

AD: Of course. In fact, you won an award for children’s programming.

CC: Yes. We won an award from a parents association for the quality of our show.

AD: Were you a bit surprised by that?

CC: It’s a family show.

AD: Yeah, the Manson family.

CC: I think it’s smart and I think we scare people by heightening their fear, by making them use their imaginations. We don’t show a whole lot. It’s what we don’t show that is the scariest.

AD: The thing that attracted me to the X-files is how smart it is. You cover a really broad range of scientific and cultural references, from the philosophies of Indians in New Mexico to quantum physics. We don’t normally equate vast intelligence with television.

CC: That’s because people underestimate the audience. If you tell people a good, tight mystery tale, whether it’s highbrow or lowbrow, it’s a good mystery and this one happens to be very smart. It’s about science, so it has to be based on science fact in order for us to create our science fiction. Mulder and Scully are two intelligent characters behaving in an intelligent way – they don’t speak over your head.

AD: What do you define as the X-Files twist?

CC: It’s gotta take something that’s familiar and try to make it unfamiliar, of course. When you have anything that is classic horror or classic genre material, twist it and make it unfamiliar. The X-Files take on vampires was basically a very urban take on the idea: people who live off blood banks and who work in groups. So it’s our own peculiar ideas about the unexplained.

AD: It seems you owe something to Steven Spielberg. I really like the fact that the X-Files is set in very ordinary locations. It’s not glamorous, say New York, where all these things take place. It’s Lake Okobogee, or whatever it’s called. Is that deliberate to put it in the middle of ordinary lives?

CC: Most certainly. We don’t cast many stars on the show. The show’s only as scary as it is believable. I’ve had an opportunity to put big stars on the show and I haven’t because it would be a liability. I happened to grow up in a very Spielberg-like area of Southern California. I think that he’s an amazing film maker and I’d have to say that Raiders of the Lost Ark is the reason I’m even doing what I’m doing. It pretty much reflects my own sensibility and my roots.

AD: That’s interesting because Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is still one of my top ten, is classic comic book entertainment, brilliantly realized.

CC: I just loved it. When I saw that movie, I knew I had to do this.

AD: It’s interesting because the X-Files has evolved the other way. It’s now a comic book. Were Tales from the Crypt and the Twilight Zone an influence to you as a kid?

CC: Certainly, all that stuff. The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Night Gallery, The Night Stalker, anything that Jules Verne wrote, any movies they made from his books were fascinating to me.

AD: So you have always been fiddling on the edges of the dark zone? Have you always been dreaming up stories of what if, what if?

CC: Yeah, I think I’ve got a kind of perverse sensibility.

AD: I like the sound of that. So, for instance, when you find yourself at a dinner party, do you drift off and look at someone and think what if they were actually a werewolf?

CC: No. I usually think what they do look like naked.

AD: I’ve suddenly become very uncomfortable in this interview Chris. The darkness of the show is also very appealing, too – it’s that classic thing of Mulder and Scully walk into a room with just flashlights which nobody in their right mind would ever do. Is the darkness of the show a key element as well.

CC: Certainly. I owe most of that to John Bartley who’s our fantastic director of photography. He’s made the show so beautiful and dark. He knows the X-Files sensibility well. And also, the art director, Graeme Murray, who, each episode, will figure out how to make it a little bit better. And that’s a rarity in this business.

AD: Well, it is one of the things about the show that sets it apart; it’s quite cinemagraphic as opposed to normal TV.

CC: It looks more like a movie; the way it’s cut, the way it’s directed, the way it’s realized, is very theatrical and there’s not a lot of stuff on television like it.

AD: The understated acting style of David and Gillian – is that something they brought to you or was that something you wanted?

CC: Something I wanted. I wrote these characters who were very serious, who were very real. When David came in a few years ago, he was very deadpan, very minimalist in his approach to acting. And so it worked for the character of Fox Mulder. But David’s also one of the funniest people you’ll meet.