Mar-??-2001
Kevin & Bean
Chat with Chris Carter

DJ’s: There is good news and there is bad news. The bad news…there are no new XFiles for a month. We were left hanging. We were left hanging with Mulder out in the middle of a field looking dead. That’s what we were left hanging with last Sunday night. But the good news, in its place the spin-off show from our friend Chris Carter, called, The Lone Gunmen. Chris, good morning, how are you?

Chris Carter: I’m great

DJ: Chris is the one that left us hanging, by the way, just so you know.

Other DJ: You bastard!

DJ: Tell us about The Lone Gunmen, Chris.

Chris Carter: It’s the 3 computer geeks from the XFiles, uh.. if you watch the show, it’s the three guys that Mulder and Scully go to when they can’t even get the answers.

DJ’s: Right

DJ’s: How did you come up with them originally? Because that’s a pretty funny idea to have computer geeks who have answers that somehow even the FBI can’t get.

Chris Carter: They were not my original idea. They were the creation of Glen Morgan and James Wong, who worked on the XFiles for a while. They were 3 guys even more paranoid than Mulder, and they were really comic relief for the first 5 years.

DJ’s: Yeah, right!

Chris Carter: All of a sudden we needed an episode without Mulder and Scully in it because we were doing the movie, and then uh… we did an episode about the Lone Gunmen. It was good, funny. And we realized we had, maybe a tv show there.

DJ’s: Yeah, you know, I was a little worried, to tell you the truth when I started thinking about this because they are comic relief. And a lot of times what makes them so effective is that they are two or three funny minutes in the middle of a show, and they do break the tension a little bit. So, I was worried that they wouldn’t be possible to spin them off. But like you said, you’ve already done that where you’ve spun them off for an hour, and they were able to carry it. So, they have a lot more depth maybe than what you’ve had time to use them for over the years on the X-Files.

Chris Carter: Exactly. We’ve surrounded them with other people, so like with Mulder and Scully, they now have other people to bounce off of.

DJ’s: And how? uh.. how do we start off Sunday night? What’s the episode about. Does it tell us how they came about?

Chris Carter: A little bit. You learn more about their background, particularly one of the characters, Byers, about his father, and uh…. his name is John Fitzgerald Byers, so you learn a little bit about that.

DJ’s: Interesting (laughing)

Chris Carter: Yeah. It’s a caper about people who are trying to actually fly a jet into the World Trade Center. It has great special effects. It’s ..uh.. really a funny story, it’s got tight plotting. It’s got all the things you’d expect from the XFiles except with three new guys.

DJ’s: Do you write it?

Chris Carter: Yeah. I am writing XFiles, and well, not as much Lone Gunmen this year because I’ve got three guys who I call my lone gunmen…

DJ’s: Right. Sure.

Chris Carter: They are co-creators on the show. They’re.. uh… it’s their baby.

DJ’s: Now, what do we know about these guys, any personal information? I sense that none of them have ever had a date. And it seems like they live in that laboratory down there.

Chris Carter: Yeah, they are all the 30 and over version.. of … uh

DJ’s: It seems like that… and any homo-erotic content between the three of them?

Chris Carter: Uh.. season 2.

DJ’s: Will the stories cross over at all with the XFiles?

Chris Carter: Yeah, there are some crossovers, and uh.. we hope to put to good use… you know XFiles as a good source of storytelling.

DJ’s: Let me ask you, I know you aren’t as involved in this show as you are the XFiles, but this paranoia that we sense in all these shows including Millennium and Harsh Realm, is this paranoia real in you? Do you sometimes sit around and think what is the government really really up to, or is it just fantasy to you?

Chris Carter: I think paranoia is a healthy thing to have. And I uh… pick up the paper every day, and read that they used radiation, all sorts of things being done. And I grew up in the era of Watergate, so…

DJ’s: Skeptical by nature.

Chris Carter: Yep.

DJ’s: That giant mistrust of the government

Chris Carter: (muffled under the DJs laughing) can’t blame me now (?)

DJ’s: So, lone Gunmen for the next few Sundays and then on the Chris Carter Fox timeslot, Friday nights at 9, right?

Chris Carter: Friday nights at 9, right.

DJ’s: Very cool. We’re excited about it. We just wanted to touch base with you to see what we can expect. It’s on this Sunday night, so we are looking forward to it. Thanks, Chris.

Chris Carter: Thank you.

DJ’s: Fantastic meeting you.

Chris Carter: Thank you.

DJ’s: That was the low key Chris Carter, unlike our other friend (plays a clip of another guy screaming).