Oct-08-1999
Chris Carter on the Kevin & Bean Show

KROQ 106.7FM Los Angeles

[Transcribed by Keyg]

K: Kevin

B: Bean ([1]recently moved to Seattle and co-hosts from his home)

L: Lisa (third co-host/traffic reporter)

K: This is the world-famous KROQ, 106.7 K-R-O-Q. Kevin and Bean Show at 8:12.

B: I don’t know if this is true or not, maybe I’m just assuming, but I like to think that we’re a good luck charm for Chris Carter. That’s why he comes in to see us every time he has a new project.

K(laughing): I’m sure that’s it.

B: With each new launch.

K: …I’m sure that’s it. Chris, welcome.

C: Thank you very much.

K: Always glad to have you on KROQ.

B: Chris, I’m glad I’m in Seattle[1] now cause I don’t have to go down and do that thing in your car like you always make me do. (laughing)

B: Ya know what I mean?

Lisa(laughing): …tgeez, Bean, hehheheheh…

B: …it’s nice. How, uh, how you been? What cha been up to?

C: Uh, you know, I’m working hard, I’m doing X-Files and this new show, Harsh Realm. So, uh, plenty of work, that’s for sure.

B: …plenty of work. That’s the thing about you. You never seem to take a vacation for very long.

C(laughing): No, I don’t.

K: Wh– H-How– Why?

C: Uh, you know, it’s–

K: Take the business when it’s good or–

C: –Contracts and you– You ride the wave till it crashes.

K: Yeah. And when it crashes, are you gonna go, “Wooo. That was a hell of a ride.”

C(laughing): …probably so…

B: Maybe you ought to just start making crappier shows. (laughing)

B: I mean, that would get you out of the contracts faster.

C(laughing): That’s the Hollywood way.

B: Yeah. You could just relax. You could go, “All right, I tanked that one, now if I could tank one more, then I’m free.”

K: Now, let’s start, let’s start with The X-Files. Cause there’s a lot of X-Files, uh, talk about Duchovny not being around, blahblahblah… You still have two more years of The X-Files. Is that right?

C: Uh, we don’t know. Uh, this could be the last year of The X-Files. There’s– There’s lots of stuff that, uh, needs to be decided before we can really, uh, make that decision.

K: And what is some of that stuff?

C: You know, there’s– There’s contracts. I don’t have a contract. David doesn’t have a contract. Gillian has one more year left in her contract. Uh, but, uh, you know, there’s this, uh, this lawsuit hanging out there. So things need to be resolved right now.

B: Now, the lawsuit is, uh, is Mr. Duchovny has actually sued you.

C(laughing): whoops,uh (laughing)

C: No, he’s not– I’m– I’m actually not–

B: You’re not named.

C: No. no.

B: It’s the suits.

K: He sued… What’s the story? He sued Fox for selling it?

C: It’s a contractual dispute. So it’s, uh, you know, it’s– business. Heheh.

K: That you can’t talk about.

C(laughing): yeah

K: All right. I understand.

B: But here’s the thing though. If the show is going off the air after this coming season — I would imagine you’re already several episodes in to the new season, right?

C: Yeah. Uh, yes.

B: So you’re going to have to start wrapping up some loose ends over the next ten episodes that you write or whatever it is.

C: Yeah. We have to kind of decide sooner or later, probably, you know, round middle of, uh… first of the year, uh, you know, what we want to do, uh, if this is going to be the last season and to wrap up the Mulder, you know, mythology, uh, to do with the sister and stuff.

K: I know you’re gonna– That’s the plan, if this is the last year, you’re going to wrap up all–

C: Well, no. Heheheh.

K: Cause if you tease, to wait for a movie, I’m going to have to beat you up.

L(laughing): And yet I sense that’s exactly where he’s going. Yeah.

K: That’s the thing, right? You’re still planning on doing movies.

C: Yeah. Well, that’s the big, you know, uh, hope is that we can turn this TV series into a movie series.

B: Like they did with the Star Trek

K: Next Generation.

C: Yeah, sort of like that.

B: What do you hope happens, Chris? How would you like to see it play out?

C: I don’t know right now because, uh, (laughing) it’s, uh, what is it, October, and we’re already, you know, just scraping the Christmas to get two weeks there and to scrape to April to finish the work, so right now, all I’m trying to do is to make this season good. Um… You know–

K: You tired of it?

C: No, I’m not tired of it. Actually, what’s the great thing about X-Files and, I hope, about Harsh Realm is that they are really good vehicles for telling stories, and so you never get tired of that cause if something works, it makes it fun, it makes it fun to write for the…

K: But don’t you just sit there sometimes and go, “All right, let’s see, I used bees in the movie…”

K: “…and I got the alien with this and that, and there’s people who can tell the future, and… I come out.”

B: I think Chris has twelve hundred post-it notes on his refrigerator.

B: That’s what I think. And that’s how he keeps all the plotlines straight.

K: You ever come to a point where you think, “I can’t think of another interesting idea.”

C: You don’t because, uh, what you realize is when you really start to think about it, it’s kind of limitless, you really could go on forever, but it does get harder– Your mind– Sort of easy subjects and genre, uh, but, uh, I think, actually, the stories get better as you go because it’s stuff nobody’s ever thought of.

K: And do you feel that you’re getting stronger as a writer working this hard at it for so long?

C: You– You develop by the instincts, and you start to trust them more.

B: It also does help when you get to a point where the, uh, the characters are so well established that you can do a lot of things with them that the audience will understand.

C: Right. Uh, so, there’s a lot of shorthand, and you– Actually, the thing about a show like The X-Files is that it’s very elastic, you know, it can parody itself, it can make fun of itself, in a way that, uh, only a show that feels confident of itself can do.

K: I’ll tell you what’s cool is that you are good at writing those moments that blow people away. And one of those moments is one of my favorite movie moments from the X-Files movie when the guy sits down in front of the Coke machine and just sits there till it explodes.

C: Yeah.

K: I mean, that kind of thing is just great.

C: Yeah. yeah.

K: Is that part of the fun of writing a series like this or…

C: It is. Of course, you can’t do that on TV, so you know, you have to wait until the movies to do, you know, the real, uh, good stuff.

K: Do you have an idea of what the next movie is uh…

C: Yeah, we have an idea. We want to do a stand-alone, just really good scary movie not something that’s tied into the mythology of the show.

K: oh really

C: Yeah.

B: Can Gillian Anderson be a Catholic school girl who smells her armpits?

K: That’s already taken care of. That’s “Superstar.”

B: Oh yeah, that’s right. That’s the Saturday Night Live movie. I’m sorry.

K: What does that look like?

B: …bad thing…

K: Let me ask you two more casting things about The X-Files then we’re going to move on to the new show. One is we heard Lance, our friend, Lance Henriksen from–

C: yeah

K: –late of “Millennium”–

C: yes

K: –is going to be on The X-Files in some capacity. Is that true?

C: He’s going to play Frank Black on an episode of The X-Files that actually, uh, is our millennium (laughing) episode. So we actually get to sort of wrap up that character and, uh, something very significant is going to happen on New Year’s, as you might imagine, between Mulder and Scully.

K: oh, interesting…

B: That really, uh– It occurs to me, although we haven’t seen you officially since “Millennium” was pulled off the schedule by Fox, but that really sucked that they didn’t give you another six months to actually carry it through to May of 2000 which was such a central point for the program.

C: Yeah, uh… The show went three years and it wasn’t really a big ratings getter, so I was happy to have it on for that long. But, you know, uh, it would have been a tough year to do that show because the climate, right now, is very sensitive, uh, to, uh, that kind of drama.

K: yeah

B: Yeah, I was going to ask you what you thought about that because– We haven’t even talked about this on the show– but you probably know that NBC has this movie that is going to portray a whole host of end-of-the-world problems–

C: right

B: — with the electricity going out, the ATM machines not working, and people looting. And they have just been lambasted by people who say how irresponsible it would be to put that on the air prior to the millennium and kind of get everybody worked into a frenzy. Do you run into situations often where you kind of can’t tell a story because of what the audience will do?

C(laughing): No. That’s exactly what I want to do, uh, is I want to, you know, create hysteria.

K: That’s why you’re our kind of guy.

B: You’re going to whip everybody into a needless frenzy as much as possible. And Terry O’Quinn, who is also from “Millennium”, he’s going to be on The X-Files this year, too, right?

C: Yeah. Terry O’Quinn, uh, actually, yeah, right, he was on the X-Files Season Two, I believe, and, uh, then had a reoccurring part on “Millennium”, and was actually in the X-Files movie too, so he’s now a big part of our show.

B: He is one of the most underrated actors on television. That guy should be a huge star. He is great.

C: He is great. My– My wife has a big thing for him.

K: Oh, is that right.

B: Mine– Mine too.

K: …doesn’t everyone. All right, Chris Carter is in the studio. We do need to take a quick break. But when we come back, you have a brand new series that debuts tonight.

C: yeah

K: It’s called “Harsh Realm”. And we’ll find out all about it when we come back on KROQ.

K: This is the world-famous KROQ, 106.7 K-R-O-Q. It is the Kevin and Bean Show at 8:27.

B: play the music now [music]

B: There it is. That’s the theme song for a show that you’ll see for the first time on the FOX network tonight, 9 o’clock. It’s called “Harsh Realm”. Our friend, Chris Carter, is in the studio. He created the show. And, uh, we talked to D.B. Sweeney, one of the stars, a couple of days ago, and, let me tell you, the way that he described it, sounds pretty ‘f’ed up.

K: I’m gonna describe it from what I remember. There’s video games and the guy gets sucked in and somehow his subconscious fights the battle and he’s in a coma…

L(laughing): Kevin, that’s pretty bad.

K: What the hell’s going on with that show, Chris?

B: It’s an alternative universe, right, Chris?

C: …another dimension.

L: …virtual reality.

K: Explain it to us.

C: Well, it’s a, uh, it’s like a virtual reality game where you plug your mind in to it, and, uh, then you are virtually in it, and, uh, everything’s real, uh, and the consequences to every action is real. So it’s a duplicate, or parallel, of this world.

K: And you’re– I think he explained it, you’re in a coma–

C: right

K: –when you’re in the game–

C: right

K: –cause your mind is not here.

C: Yes, you’re laying on a slab.

K: Dude, that’s pretty cool.

C: Yeah.

B: Here’s what we were trying to figure out — and I think we asked D.B. this, but I’m not sure what he said — are there any kind of– If you do something in the real world, does it affect the alternate universe and vice versa?

C: Uh, yeah, there’s consequences for action on both sides. We’ll learn as, uh, as the show progresses, we’ll learn that, actually, Harsh Realm may be all that exists in the end.

K: All right, let’s say that they take my mind, and they put me in to Harsh Realm and I get, uh, my left arm cut off.

C: yes

K: Then what happens in real life? Is my left arm gone?

C: No, your left arm is not gone.

K: oh

C: But uh–

L: But it hurts like hell?

C: It hurts like hell.

K: Where did this idea come from? Is this a comic book?

C: Yeah, there’s a comic book called “Harsh Realm”, but we just kind of took the title, and then, uh, went from there, really.

K: And where did the idea come from? Have you always wanted to do something with the virtual reality?

C: I’m interested in the virtual reality, and the funny thing is, we were making the show, and we kept seeing trailers for this really cool thing called “The Matrix”.

K: Yeah.

L: Yeah.

C: So, obviously, other people are interested in it too. But it’s a good way to tell stories, and it’s not a new way of telling stories, it’s telling stories about another dimension, a parallel dimension, which is equivalent to ours where you have a double, and, uh, these are sort of staples of science fiction.

K: So we all have doubles.

C: Yeah. Kevin and Bean are in Harsh Realm.

K: Are they funny in that realm?

C: Yeah. They’re– They’re really funny.

L(laughing): …as it turns out…hehehaha…

B: So it’s an opposite universe.

B: They’re also immensely popular.

B: Uh, you– I know that you’re a guy who seems to be comfortable with science, and you don’t mind doing the research. Uh, where do you see this headed for us other than 1999? I mean, they are developing virtual realities all round the world.

C: right

B: What do you envision in the future we’re going actually be able to do?

C: heheh

B: I mean, already, there are suits that you can put on where you can simulate sex with somebody on the other side of the computer, you know–

C: right

B: But, I mean, now are we going to get to a point where it’ll seem like we’re walking around in our house or going on a– driving a car or whatever.

C: Yeah. I think that will all happen, I think, in the not-too-distant future. Actually, I was just listening to something last night about artificial intelligence, and they said that machines will actually be voting pretty soon, and I bet you they’ll do a lot better job than us.

K: heheh. Well, that’s a little scary.

C(laughing): …it is scary.

K: Um, so– But the plotline in this is that there’s some kind of a killer… that he’s going after– Do you want to or not go into–

C: Yeah, I’ll tell you the whole thing. The whole thing is that there’s a guy named Santiago who’s gone into the game, and he’s a decorated combat veteran. He’s taken over Harsh Realm, and he’s going to become the sort of King of Harsh Realm. And they send Hobbes in to take him out, like a game, but what we realize is that Santiago actually wants to control– not just control Harsh Realm for his own purposes, uh, to control it, but because he wants to destroy the real world. If you will.

K: How different does the alternate universe look than the real universe on the TV show?

C: It looks exactly like it, except that– Imagine all the rules are taken away, and it’s survival of the fittest, uh, you know, the strongest survive.

K: What do you mean by all the rules are taken away? Like, they can… fly?

C: Well, there’s no, uh, government in place that– It’s really just, uh–

K: Chaos.

C: It’s chaos, and, uh, this guy Santiago though, has created this emerald city. He actually has created a utopia, but you have to play by his rules. So he’s kind of a fuehrer, if you will.

K: That sounds great.

B: Will Kevin understand it at all?

L: heheheh

C: It’s actually– it’s really easy. I think that some people think it’s difficult because it’s science fiction, and, uh, you know, once you get in to it, the rules are real simple.

K: If I don’t, can I call you and…

C: yeaheheh

B: heheheh

C: …hotline…

B: Chris Carter Cliff Notes?

K: heheheh

B: Now what is– What’s the deal they’re doing? They got it on tonight, but then they also have it on Sunday night–

C: Yeah. They–

B: What is– What is your real time slot going to be?

C: Friday nights at nine, which is actually where the last three shows I’ve done have premiered, so, uh–

K: Isn’t that a tough time slot?

C: It’s a tough time slot because, uh, a lot of people go out on that night.

K: yeah

C: So you have to really– You can’t steal an audience, you really got to build an audience.

K: Why do they keep giving you Friday night at nine?

C: Well, you know, I–

K: Is it a curse?

C(laughing): It’s a blessing and a curse.

B: It seems like you’ve earned the time slot that you want.

C: Yeah. But it’s– It’s not a bad time slot. It really is, uh– We did well with The X-Files, and when we went to Sundays, we became this giant hit.

K: right

C: Uh, but, uh…

K: So you should say this time, “Hey, I want to be on Sunday.”

C: Well, you know, I’m– I’m happy to be here, and hopefully, we can do the same thing as X-Files.

B: Let me ask you about one more show because one of your friends is behind this “Roswell”.

C: Yeah.

B: One of the guys who worked on The X-Files.

C: David Nutter.

B: When I saw that show this week– It was so X-Files-like. I don’t know if you’ve had the opportunity to watch it or not, but, man, it seems like a show that you should have been doing.

C: heheh

K: heheh

C: Uh… heheh. M-Maybe.

B: Did you like it? Did you see it?

C: You know, I saw the beginning of it. Uh, and I read the script, so, um, I knew what the subject matter–

B: The kid walks in. He’s an alien and heals someone by putting his hand on her, on her wound, and I thought, well, doesn’t that look familiar.

K: Hey, I saw that on The X-Files.

C: Season Three.

K: heheheh

B: Have we seen that before?

K: heheheh

C: hmm…

B: It’s weird. And I don’t know if it has anything to do with what you were talking about a little bit ago about the pre-millennium tension that seems to be in the air, but people seem to really be in to sci-fi right now.

C: yeah

B: I mean, it seems like a great time for the genre because you could have gone a lot of years on television schedules in this country, and there wouldn’t have been any shows about science fiction.

K: That’s true.

B: And now it seems like, thanks to the success of The X-Files, that there are a bunch of shows that are out there that are doing it for who like this sort of thing, so “Harsh Realm” is coming at a good time, I guess.

C: Uh, I hope so. I mean, it’s more science fiction than I’ve ever done, so, uh, it’s– It’s something new for me.

K: Does it feel weird to you to be named Time Magazine’s, like, one of the Most– What was it? One of the Most– 25 Most Influential People?

C: Yes. Heheh.

K: Is that just like–

C: Yeah. I–heh–

L: …cause he’s out surfing in the morning.

K(laughing): Yeah, you know, what the hell.

C: It’s weird.

K: Do you pick– You know, do you pick up chicks and stuff with that?

K: Time! Time Magazine! I need a table! Time Magazine!

B: How many copies of that do you have in your truck right now that you need to pass out, know what I mean?

K: Front of the line! Disneyland, front of the line! Time Magazine!

B: Chris, by the way, is going to be doing a live chat for folks who have their own questions for him. Certainly, you can do a better interview than we can. Uh, that’s going to be next Friday at 7 o’clock on www.fox.com. That’s next Friday. And your birthday is next week too, Chris.

C: yes

B: What are you going to be doing for that?

C: Uh… (laughing)Nothing.

B: Just working, aren’t you–

K: –working.

C: Work, like every year.

K: …man, oh man… Well, you know what fans we are of you, and we don’t just say that cause you’re sitting in the room. We always support your shows. We always talk about them cause they’re really quality television. We’re going to be tuning in tonight, 9 o’clock, for “Harsh Realm”. And, as usual, we thank you for coming into the studio today.

C: Thanks.

GA: Hi, this is Gillian Anderson from ‘The X-Files’ with a warning from the government. If you listen to the Kevin and Bean show, you will die. Good luck.

Oct-07-1999
New York Daily News
A Peek Into Fox’ New ‘Realm’
David Bianculli

When Chris Carter unveiled “The X-Files” in 1993, it premiered with little fanfare and no expectations. Tomorrow, when Carter’s newest series, “Harsh Realm,” debuts on Fox, things will be a little different – but, Carter insists, they will also be quite similar.

“The trick,” Carter said earlier this week, “is going to be to get people to come to the show and hook into it.

“Because it has, like ‘The X-Files,’ a mythology that is important to it, but it will also have good stand-alone stories to tell as well. I’ve always said [that] on Friday nights [the original home of “The X-Files”] you had to build an audience rather than steal one. And I think that’s going to be the case here again.”

Last time, critics and viewers were on their own as the “X-Files” – involving vaccination conspiracies, extraterrestrial hybrids, killer bees and black oil – slowly and puzzlingly unfolded.

This time, Carter and co-executive producer Frank Spotnitz took the unusual step of trying to explain their show before the fact.

The premise has a good-guy Army lieutenant named Thomas Hobbes (Scott Bairstow) sent to a virtual-reality version of Earth to find and capture a messianic renegade named Santiago (Terry O’Quinn), whose ultimate goal is to rule the real world. In the alternate reality, Hobbes links up with a reluctant hero named Mike Pinocchio, played by D.B. Sweeney.

Hobbes and Pinocchio. Think Scully and Mulder.

“It’s Scully and Mulder who really make people want to watch ‘The X-Files,’ as fantastic as the cases are they investigate,” Spotnitz said. “And I think the same is going to be true of ‘Harsh Realm.’ If it’s a success, it’s going to be because people come to love and care about Hobbes and Pinocchio.”

So what is the mythology, and what are the rules?

“Because it is a digital world and it is the construct of programmers, or one programmer,” Carter said, “you get a chance to have an almost sort of Greek mythology, with the gods above and the subjects below. And they will be able to walk into any kind of world the programmers decide to throw at them.”

Early episodes will explore the city and outlying area controlled by Santiago, but soon the characters will venture to other cities and effects – digital facial makeovers and a lake whose reflection can clone people are only two. Unlike a video game, though, the rule is when you die in this digital world, you’re dead. No replays. No extra lives.

Carter also offered a more concise outline of “Harsh Realm” than he ever provided about “The X-Files.”

“Harsh Realm [the computerized alternate reality] is exactly like our world, circa 1995,” he said. “Everything was scanned in. Every building, every person. All of us are there in Harsh Realm in a digital form.

“Except that in Harsh Realm, a nuclear bomb went off in 1995 in New York City, leading to the chaos that Santiago has now capitalized upon to build his dictatorship.”

Hope that helps. “Harsh Realm” premieres tomorrow night at 9 on Fox. In this reality, anyway.

COAST W/ART BELL
Interview date: October 6, 1999

Highlights

-Midnight Express
-Carter’s bio
-Harsh Realm

-6th Extinction
-Millennium
-Where Chris gets his ideas from
-Gov. agencies

-Lance Hendrickson
-Keeping Gov. conspiracies secret
-How X-Files was conceived

-Future of X-Files
-Y2K, an event?
-New ideas

Oct-??-1999
The X-Files Magazine [US, #11, Fall 1999]: Going Hungry
Gina McIntyre

[typed by Gayle]

In season seven’s first stand-alone, Vince Gilligan tells the tale of a monster’s tragic eating disorder. Vince Gilligan has everyone fooled. The X-Files writer/co-executive producer best known for quirky episodes like Seasons Four’s “Small Potatoes” and Season Five’s “Bad Blood” projects an unmistakable Southern charm; in person, he is amiable, easy-going, good-natured. But lurking somewhere deep within his psyche is a villainous imp. There must be. There’s simply no other explanation for how someone so unassuming could send property master Tom Day on a mission as revolting as hunting down real brains for the inaugural stand-alone episode of the series ‘ seventh year, the all-too-appropriately named “Hungry.”

The story of a monster in disguise who uses his part-time job slinging burgers to sate his unstoppable and quite literal appetite for the cerebral. “Hungry” is a throwback tot he show’s classic take on horror, with touches of Gilligan’s irrepressible wit thrown in for good measure. Although the episode will air third in the season line-up, scheduling demands mandated that it was the first to be filmed. As stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were both completing work on features they shot over the hiatus, a Mulder/Scully-light story was needed to begin the roster. Gilligan’s unusual and intriguing stand-alone offered the perfect solution.

“Originally, I wanted to do a story about a monster from the monster’s point of view,” the writer offers. “sort of like an episode of Columbo where you were following the bad guy throughout the show and then Columbo, or in this case Mulder, keeps coming in and asking questions that make it clear that he suspects our main guy. It seemed like a fun idea. What I really wanted to do, if it really worked correctly [was] to have it by the end of the show [that] you’re rooting for the monster. You’re sort of not happy every time Mulder and Scully show up because you don’t want the poor guy to get caught. I don’t know if it will work like that when you watch it but that was the intention.”

X-Philes displeased at the intrusion of their favorite agents? The unlikely prospect made Gilligan’s task that much more formidable. To capture the pair’s signature chemistry without using them as the center of the narrative, the writer employed inventive storytelling devices.

“It was a very interesting experiment.” Gilligan admits. “By the time I got through it I was realizing that this is why we don’t tell stories this way, because Mulder and Scully get so little screen time in comparison. I don’t know how much the fans are going to like this one. I hope the do and they see [that] at least we tried something different. I’m real proud of it. The fans so like Mulder and Scully, so enjoy watching then on screen together, and this episode by virtue of the fact that it had a different structure to it, they’re on screen much less. I mean they still have that Mulder/Scully dynamic and yet I had to be very scrupulous about only showing it from this guy’s point of view.”

While Gilligan’s script offers yet another approach to the classic X-Files formula, it also helped ease the crew back into the routine of shooting television’s most cinematic series. Nearly everyone working on the L.A. set praises the episode not only for its ingenuity, but for the fact that it allowed them the rare opportunity to gradually work back into the show’s frenetic pace. Rather than exhausted seniors battling final exam week with too little sleep and too much caffeine, the principals seem more like classmates reunited on the playground after a relaxing, homework-free summer.

Not that there’s a dearth of activity on Stages Five and Six on the Twentieth Century Fox lot, The X-Files’ home when not shooting on location. On this, the sixth of eight days of first unit photography on “Hungry,” the construction team has been toiling since 5 a.m. to strike the various sets no longer needed for the episode, make changes to existing pieces and begin planning for what the next script will bring. Music from an unseen radio blares from across the stage; sawdust litters the air, seen only in the rays of sun streaming in from the open doors at either side of the building. Voices call to one another, sharing jokes and plans for lunch.

In the midst of this bustle, Day enters the safe confines of his office, which is nestled along the side of Stage Six, camouflaged in part by Mulder’ s apartment and various props and pieces of set dressing. After enjoying a pleasant summer hiatus, Day admits he was ready to get back into the swing of things, but was quite astonished to learn what Gilligan had in store for him.

“Fried brains, that was one of the highlights,” Day says, shaking his head. “At one point, we need to simulate human brains. We actually had a brain test day where we went out to the different meat-packing places and brought in a bunch of your different varmints’ brains, cow and pig and sheep, to see which one would look the best and which one would sit on the set properly.”

Given that Day has been working in the industry for years, one might think that brain detail would be less grisly that it sounds. Not so, he says. It was possibly the most grotesque assignment to ever come his way. “It’s right up there,” he says, “It took some getting used to. It took a leap of faith to jump in and say this will all work just fine. I talked to the medical technician on Chicago Hope because they use all kinds of animal parts, stuff you could even go to the market and buy. Obviously when you’re simulating surgery you have to have something. I talked to them about what’ s best to sue for rain. We found steer brain worked best. They could have had [special effects make-up coordinator] John Vulich whip out some brains, but I don’t know in all honesty if it would have looked the same. It looked great for what we were doing with it. It was perfect.”

For his part, Gilligan felt no remorse at sending Day on his stomach-turning errand. “They love this stuff.!” He says with a smirk, “I think they said they used steer brains. I would have thought they’d be too big, but I guess not. I mean they’re not super-smart animals, but their heads are so big you ‘d think their brains would be bigger than ours. That was pretty funny. Then they have to cook them once they’re out there. They have to put them on a hot grill. I don’t know what brains do when you grill them. People eat calves’ brains. I’ve never had them. I don’t know what they taste like.”

If there’s brain on the grill, you might guess which of the X-Files stable of directors would be behind the lens. Infamous for his affection for the gruesome, the tireless Kim Manners found in “Hungry” material he could really sink his teeth into, aside from its horrific menu. As odd as it might sound, the script is actually a subtle character study about one man’s seemingly futile struggle to conquer insurmountable odds.

“I think they tailor made it for me,” the director says. “It’s one of mine. I’m having a good time with it. I had a good time off and I’m feeling really fresh. Normally when I do my first show of a season, you come in with butterflies and you’re always a little frightened. It’s been two or three months without directing, talking to actors, pointing the camera, but I feel like my brain’s on Viagra. I’m very, very excited. I’m getting great film and great performances, and that’s what it’s about.”

According to Manners, guest star Chad E. Donella, who portrays peculiar anti-hero Rob Roberts, is responsible for one of those “great performances.” The actor, whose previous television appearances include stints on such impressive series as ER and the Practice, recently completed work on Flight 180, the feature debut of X-Files vets Glen Morgan and James Wong, perhaps accounting for his ability to key into the show’s dark spirit. “Chad is an outstanding actor.” Manners raves. “He’s really carrying this episode, [Because] the episode is from Rob Roberts’ point of view, the ball is really in Chad’s court. He’s doing tremendous job.”

Of course, man cannot become monster alone. To truly assume the aspect of an otherworldly creature, one needs special effects – and lots of ’em. Supervising Donella’s transformation from mild-mannered fast-food employee to intimidating and ravenous fiend are FX make-up artist Greg Funk and visual effects maven Bill Millar. Prosthetically, the monster is comprised of three separate pieces-a forehead appliance, a bald cap and a nose piece. To completely transform the actor into his hideous alter-ego took nearly three hours, Funk says, adding that the metamorphosis was complicated because certain scenes required Donella to remove portions of the make-up himself.

“He has a disguise on and he takes all the pieces off,” Funk explains. “It can’t just be a make-up job-boom, he’s the monster. We’ve got to make it so a human disguise comes off revealing this monster, almost kind of Mission Impossible-like without pulling a whole mask right off. He pulls off little ears, takes [his] wig off. Kim was very specific. He said, ‘It’s gotta be good.'”

One of the creature’s most distinguishing attributes is its rows of deadly teeth, which it uses to extract sustenance from its victims. The lethal incisors had to be fashioned digitally by Millar. “The monster has shark-like teeth, several rows of them, which are seen to slide in and out of his jaw as he opens his mouth,” he says. “He covers that with an artificial set of dentures which makes it look as though he had normal teeth. He removes those teeth and we see nothing but gums and then these razor-sharp rows of teeth slide out of the gums. To build that prosthetically would have been difficult and also would have extended the gum to the end of the actor’s [real] teeth, which would have looked somewhat strange. We’re doing all that digitally and enhancing the mouth and shortening the practical teeth digitally and then introducing the shark teeth. They’ll be a digital composite generated with CGI teeth and tracked into the mouth.”

Finding a place for all this monster business to occur fell to locations manager Ilt Jones. After scouring Southern California for a restaurant that would employ a brain-eating monstrosity, he stumbled onto a Mom and Pop-owned hamburger stand named Lucky Boy in a working class Los Angeles neighborhood called Southgate.

“There’s a Greek family who owned it for 38 years,” Jones says. “It’s actually one of the first burger joints in L.A. It was right around the time of the first McDonald’s, 1948, [that] they built it. It’s actually something of a landmark in the neighborhood. It’s much nicer than your average generic Burger King or something like that. It’s got a huge neon sign, lots of fun lights. It’s got a great look. I’m happy to have found that. I combed L.A. looking for burger joints because none of the big boys wanted to touch us. Curiously enough, McDonald’s didn’t want to be associated with somebody who ate brains.”

After Jones discovered the kitschy locale, the rustic restaurant was given a slight overhaul by construction coordinator Duke Tomasick and his crew. “We had a lot of work to do at the restaurant,” Tomasick says. “We had to make it what it needed [to be] for the script. We were down there for five working days. We took an average-looking restaurant, and we made it nice. We repainted everything, brought in a lot of greens, made some new signs. The owner of the place is probably happy.”

Except for the fact that there was a monster working behind the grill luring unsuspecting customers to their deaths, the owners were undoubtedly pleased. (At least the monster was kind enough to vacate the premises when filming wrapped.) For the scene in which the creature claims its first victim, the restaurant’s drive-thru was used as a clever snare for an unsuspecting unnamed “Hungry Guy.” As the man drives to the open take-out window, the equally hungry monster snatches him from his car for a quick bite.

The sequence, which serves as the episode’s teaser, was shot in the wee hours of a mid-August Saturday morning, explains stunt coordinator Danny Weselis. For the scene, Weselis used a double in the place of the actor cast as Hungry Guy, the stuntman wore a vest-like harness that was rigged with a cable underneath the costume. “From the camera you couldn’t see the cable,” Weselis says. “You see his whole body leaning out of the car. We had three effects men on the other end. We had fall pads inside [the restaurant] so when he got pulled through the window, he actually slid across the countertop and landed on the top of the fall pads. On the count of three, they pulled, he was out of the car, through the window.”

At that point, the script called for the drivers car to creep forward. Obviously, a real runaway car is far too much of a danger on a television set, so Weselis climbed on the floor and took control of the wheel. The only catch was he couldn’t see where he was going. Fortunately, the stunt went off without a hitch.

“As he goes through the window I was lying in the car blind-driving it,” he explains. “I took the driver’s seat out of the car, lay on the floor, covered myself in black so you couldn’t see me. I could just barely look out of the top of the windshield. When [my stuntman] got yanked out of the car, I just sort of crept forward, went out the driveway and made a slight left turn and he headed across the street. Traffic was blocked, obviously. I just ran into the curb.”

In addition to driving an out-of-control vehicle, “Hungry” required the enterprising Weselis to dispose of a corpse-in broad daylight with witnesses, no less. As he devises a way to tackle this latest obstacle, a group of onlookers gathers across the street from the apartment building in the trendy L.A. neighborhood of Los Feliz where the production has moved for the day.

Watching from beneath a black tarp, Manners, sporting a white X-Files T-shirt and his new short haircut, sits surrounded by a barrage of camera equipment, artificial tree limbs and an assortment of black and white trash bags stuffed with paper. Soon, he and the stunt coordinator discuss Weselis ‘ carefully choreographed designs for tossing the body of stuntwoman Annie Ellis out with the garbage. Unrecognized beneath the remarkable work of Emmy-award winning make-up team Cheri Montesanto-Medcalf and Kevin Westmore, the normally sun-tanned and svelte Ellis has assumed the identity of the unfortunate Sylvia Jassy, a nosy neighbor who falls prey to the monster’s malignant hunger. Dressed in a flowered house dress and covered with layers of padding, Ellis undergoes final touch-ups, which include being doused in even more fake blood, before climbing into a trashcan.

“We put her inside one of those big trashcans, like the ones outside residential areas, and the trash truck’s going to pick her up,” Weselis says. “Inside the trash truck, we’ve got fall pads and boxes with padding in there. We’re going to slowly dump her in. She’s got a big, nice area to fall into. It’s a brand new truck, actually. It’s not one of those old ones. I already tested it out myself a couple of weeks ago, got the arc of the trashcan and put a pad in there. It’s over pretty quick, and you’ve got a big landing area. There’s no problem with that.”

He’s right. Despite having to repeat the action four times, Ellis escapes unharmed and manages to stage her landing perfectly for the camera. Manners repeatedly praises her, and pleased, the crew breaks for an early lunch – promptly at 3:30 p.m. Over his meal, Manners discusses the myriad components that comprise his first Season Seven outing, the out-and-out horror, the black humor, the poignant tragedy of Rob Roberts’ dual nature. It’s a potent mix and one that the director seems quite confident will find a place in the hearts of X-Philes.

“I think the fans are going to love the show because it’s scary,” he states. “We’re having a chance to shoot scary, [with] tight eyes, a guy waiting, points of view, a lot of tension. I think that’s what the fans like. I know it’s what I like as an audience member. I want to do more shows like ‘Home’-shows that when the audience turns them off they go, ‘Wow,'” Manners says, adding, “I think that’s what I’m going to try to do this year.”

Oct-??-1999
The X-Files Magazine [US, #11, Fall 1999]
The Next Files

X-Files Magazine: How does it feel to begin work on the much rumored final season?

Spotnitz: Every story feels like it’s got a lot of weight attached to it because they may be the last 22. We’re being careful about what stories we choose to tell. One of the very first things we did was sit down and talk about all of our major characters and where they’re going to go and how they’re going to end. Where’s Skinner going to end up? Where’s Krycek going to end up? What’s the last image you’ll see of CSM? It’s a little sad actually to be thinking about those things, but it’s kind of exciting too.

X-Files Magazine: What can you reveal about the initial episodes?

Spotnitz: We’re going to begin with kind of a two-parter. The season finale from last year will not be resolved right away. There’ll be two episodes. There’ll be a major new character introduced there. We’re going to do some storylines that David Duchovny actually suggested in those first two. Then we go in to stand-alones. Vince Gilligan’s working on a story that’s told from the point of view of the monster, which is going to be a lot of fun. Jeff Bell has a story about luck and what it means to have good luck or bad luck. David Amann is doing a story about troubled teenagers and a secret they all share in this one town. That’s our starting line-up.

X-Files Magazine: Will the upcoming season include as much comedy as we saw in Season Six?

Spotnitz: It’s kind of odd because you don’t really know if you’re going to go into a run of comedic episodes or not until you do it. It wasn’t that premeditated. Last year, we just felt like it because we’d done the movie and it was a relief to all of us to have more junny ones. I don’t expect there’ll be as many comedic ones this year.

X-Files Magazine: Is Chris Carter planning another blockbuster episode along the lines of “Triangle” or “Post-Modern Prometheus”?

Spotnitz: I would be amazed if he has the time to direct anything this year. I think we will try to make as many of these episodes as we can this year spectacular and precedent-breaking, but between “Harsh Realm” and “The X-Files” I expect we’ll be too busy writing to have him get behind the camera.

X-Files Magazine: You mentioned last year that Mulder and Scully are moving toward a new plateau in their relationship. What changes are in store this year?

Spotnitz: Big changes! In the movie, they didn’t kiss but clearly the desire was there. Then we really, I thought, teased the audience in episodes like “Triangle” and “The Rain King.” I think you will see that attraction addressed again more squarely at some point during the yearnd then certainly in the finale I would expect a direct conclusion to seven years of unrequited sexual tension.

Oct-??-1999
Fate Magazine
Chris Carter speaks in a virtual tongue
Rex Sorgatz

Chris Carter speaks in a virtual tongue. His language is an amalgam of almosts and maybes, what ifs and if…thens. His freshest foray into the televisionary, Harsh Realm, (premiering October 8 on FOX), is his most explicitly virtual creation — a world of games, thought experiments, and hypotheticals.

“Harsh Realm suggests a possible future scenario, but it is the worst-case scenario,” Carter explains from Los Angeles before leaving for Vancouver, British Columbia, to begin production on the new series. “It is about a man realizing that the world we live in can’t be made safe anymore.”

Adapted from James D. Hudnall’s six-issue 1991 comic book series, Harsh Realm opens with war hero Lt. Thomas Hobbes (Scott Bairstow) returning from Sarajevo. Just as he becomes reacquainted with his idyllic suburban home — resplendent with glimmering Chevy truck and comely fiancee — the military requests one final mission of him. A top secret virtual program, “Harsh Realm,” which was used to simulate various training scenarios, has been hijacked by the ominous Omar Santiago (Terry O’Quinn). Hobbes’ mission is to enter the dystopian program — a simulated pixel-world exactly like our own, yet not — and kill Santiago. “It’s just a game,” says a familiar disembodied voice (Gillian Anderson) as he enters the program.

Just a Game

Among the epithets that often aggregate around Chris Carter — producer, director, author, conspiracist, philosopher — one frequently gets overlooked: journalist. From 1979 to 1982, Carter was an editor at Surfing magazine. In addition to helping cultivate an appreciation of fringe culture, this position nurtured his trademark reading of media events. After six seasons of The X-Files and three of Millennium, Carter, who once called Watergate “the Big Bang of my moral universe,” has perfected his eye for capturing our national tragedies (in The X-Files, events like the Oklahoma City bombing and the Waco stand-off; in Harsh Realm, televised war). In lesser hands this could end up tabloidish and exploitative, but Carter grapples with the subject like a scientist fascinated in his area of study.

“Using a current event has sharp power because I think we have less faith in our media outlets to give us the real story,” he says in an elongated and calculated SoCal drawl. “It gives writers of fiction a greater opportunity to play with possible realities.”

Although he tends to eschew the title of “philosopher,” probably because it sounds too didactic, Carter obviously has one foot in the philosopher’s grave: the hero of Harsh Realm does, after all, bear the name of the great seventeenth-century master of the reality complex.

In an essay on Carter, William Gibson once wrote, “This is the Age of Deregulation, and in The X-Files, as in our daily lives, the very nature of reality is deregulated.” Reality-fixated Hobbes — a Spielbergian good ol’ boy trapped in a game — is the next step in deregulation. Whereas “The truth is out there” was the motto of The X-Files, “It’s just a game” becomes the mantra of Harsh Realm — “an ironic mantra, of course,” Carter is quick to add, “just as ‘The truth is out there’ is ironic.”

With the success of films like The Matrix and eXistenZ, virtual reality is currently a vogue device. Carter admits the comparisons make him squeamish, but says he didn’t see The Matrix until Harsh Realm was done. “I thought, ‘Wow, I hope people don’t compare our couple-million-dollar pilot to that $75 million movie.’ The virtual reality ideas command both, and I was a little worried about people making comparisons. But they certainly didn’t invent the messiah figure that is an element of so many stories.” In Harsh Realm, Hobbes becomes the potential savior for the people trapped in the virtual world. “The messiah embodies our hope for salvation,” suggests Carter. “It’s an archetypal story that works well in a virtual world because it has its own philosophy, or lack thereof. Harsh Realm is a godless world with no morality, codes, or standards. As humans, we have a need to hold onto something, and that’s what the character of the savior does for us.”

Heart of Darkness

Game is war is life is television — that’s the vigilante world of Harsh Realm. Although it is a virtual world, it is also quite “real”: an imposed pseudo-utopia with militarized gated communities and characters who rotely walk through life playing their parts. In Carter’s hands, virtual reality becomes a versatile tool that, depending on the context, is used to invoke various concepts: war, television, Hollywood, video games, film, art, life, or Canada.

Canada? “I feel a strong affinity to Canada because it feels like the world I grew up in,” he says, explaining his penchant for filming in Vancouver. “There’s a civility, a sensibility, and an interpersonal respect that I see missing in my world. Canada harkens back to another time. Canada is virtual in a sense, but in the best sense.”

As December 31, 1999, closes in, many people will be retreating to non-harsh realms. Where will the creator of Millennium be at the turning of the millennium?

“It is my wedding anniversary, so I know to some extent what I’ll be doing: I’ll be with my wife, probably in the safety of our own home. We won’t be in the air, and we won’t be in an urban area, so I feel safe and satisfied that we are not going to succumb or fall victim to what I know is going to be a completely unexpected January 1.”

With Chris Carter guiding us there, the millennium arrives a little easier.