Mar-??-2002
Cinescape
Interview with Chris Carter

The X-Files Creator Reflects On His Nine Years Tenure With Genre TV’s Most Ambitious Mythology-Driven Series

The studio may officially have the day off, but not Chris Carter. With his creation The X-Files coming down the home stretch of a successful nine-year run, the executive producer finds himself toiling away at the office during the Presidents’ Day holiday. The past few weeks have been above and beyond the normal level of hectic, seeing how Carter handled both the writing and directing chores for the forthcoming episode “Improbable.” Fresh off the episode’s second-unit filming, Carter shifts his attention to the teleplay for episode 17 – a story he’s co-writing with Frank Spotnitz and X-Files alumnus David Duchovny, who will also be directing as part of his deal to return for the series’ two-hour finale.

Understandably, Carter’s focus is on the immediate here and now, and the workload that lies ahead. The reality that this is the last season of his brainchild – a series no one, including the creator, anticipated would run for nine seasons – still seems far off. On the contrary, that foreknowledge is a small comfort considering the mammoth-sized task that still lies ahead.

“You’re asking me as I’m sitting here writing on the President’s Day holiday – no one’s at the studio but me,” he says. “I don’t feel relief at all. I feel burdened with the opportunity I see to do some really good work as we end the year.”

How, then, will it feel for the regular summer hiatus period to come and go – and, for the first time in eight years, not return to work on another new season?

“It will be strange not to take a couple of weeks off and come back and start working on X-Files again,” Carter says. “Is that a relief? I don’t know that [yet].”

The X-Files’ roots lie in telling chilling stories that conjure up fear. And while the series has experimented with other, more whimsical tales in recent years, this season follows in the footsteps of that which came before, continuing along the path back to creepy.

“It began as a show where we attempted to scare the pants off of people each week, and it’s always been that,” maintains Carter. “But as the show has evolved, there were seasons – for example, season 6, after the movie – where we decided to lighten it up, where we got away from being scary because it felt natural [to do so]. The show became almost comedic with the things we attempted with episodes like ‘Triangle.'”

Then came season 7, in which Carter and company felt a need to resolve certain mythology arcs such as the fate of Mulder’s sister.

“So all of a sudden, these are not necessarily scary things [we’re doing], but they are things that are important to the life of the show and to the characters in the show,” Carter says. “Season 8 was a new thing for us because ‘missing Mulder’ became a new kind of mythology season, although there were some good, scary stand-alones, too. Now, we’ve gotten back to solid ground again in season 9. And the thing that we do best is to go back to what we do best – which is to scare people.”

Finding fresh stories this season – which will cross the 200-episode mark before it’s finished – hasn’t been particularly difficult, Carter says, due in large part to the enthusiastic interest of executive producers Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan and John Shiban.

“As long as you’re interested, and the show keeps amusing you and amazing you, as it oftentimes does, I think that’s the sign and signal of a show’s vitality,” Carter says. “It’s never easy, but it’s not like we are straining to come up with new story ideas. The sad thing is that now there are many stories left to tell, and we’re not going to be telling them, except in the movie franchise.”

Strangely enough, Carter find himself almost busier this year than in seasons past, despite the fact that he has only one series in production as opposed to his usual two.

“It’s funny – for me, I’ve worked on two things since Christmas of the third season of The X-Files, when I was doing research on and the writing of the Millennium pilot,” he says. “I’ve always been working on two things. This is the first year that I haven’t been working on two things, and I thought it would be such a luxury. And I don’t know how or why, but this year has been one of the hardest ever. If you’re a hard-working person, your time always gets gobbled up by different things. Maybe it’s the fact that we’ve come to the decision to no go on this year – maybe that took a lot of our energy. But I feel that we’re as strapped for time as we ever were.”

In many ways, Carter was exploring his own interests when he originally pitched the idea for The X-Files to the Fox network a decade ago.

“I knew it would take us on a journey,” he says. “And I knew that these characters had a lot to explore, because they’re exploring all of the rich material that I’m interested in.”

But in many ways, he adds, the memory of his original vision got lost amid the cacophony of divergent needs that a fledging series has to service.

“You’re fighting for your life, always, at the beginning,” he says. “Just trying not to make too many mistakes, trying to make the right choices, trying to hire the right people, and trying to appease the god of Nielsen. Luckily, a lot of good people came on to the show, and they helped to show exactly what kind of stories the characters of Mulder and Scully could explore and tell.”

That formative first season counted among its producers the talented writing teams of Howard Gordon (Beauty and the Beast, Strange World, 24) and Alex Gansa (Dawson’s Creek, Wolf Lake), as well as Glen Morgan and James Wong (TV’s Millennium and The Others, the feature films Final Destination and The One).

Critical to the show’s early success, however, was the balance between FBI partners Fox Mulder – all too willing to believe – and Dana Scully – perennial skeptical whose scientific background demanded she seek hard evidence before accepting Mulder’s wild theories. For Carter, the decision to assign these arbitrary, structural roles to the characters was much like one of the intuitive leaps Mulder is famed for.

“That was just my gut instinct, to have Mulder as the believer,” says Carter. “He’s not a believer outright. The poster on his wall – ‘I Want to Believe’ – really sums up Mulder to me. He wants to believe. He constantly wants to find that thing that gives him the basis in which to believe. And Scully, as the skeptic, her point of view represents our point of view. We are all skeptics; we are all wary of claims, these claims that Mulder would bring to her. I always said the story was told best from Scully’s point of view.”

As much as The X-Files has centered on scary case files and a complex web of mythology, Mulder and Scully – and their unique relationship – have always been at the heart of the show. And that’s something that Carter is very aware of, in spite of the fact that the past two seasons have seen a new duo of characters, Doggett and Reyes, added in an attempt to extend its longevity.

“The series was always about Mulder and Scully and their unique partnership, if you will, from the very moment I thought of the idea for the show,” says Carter. “I wanted this to be the ideal friendship, partnership, romance, if you will – in the literary sense of the word.”

In the early years of the series, the relationship between Mulder and Scully was always presented as being a platonic one – nothing more. But, insists Carter, the duo was always on a path that would take them to where they ended last season. The turning point, he notes, was in The X-Files feature, which was released between seasons 5 and 6. “I think that any intense friendship leads naturally to where it was going to lead with that kiss [in the movie],” he says. “That is a part of the consummation of that kind of relationship, which I think they couldn’t deny was romantic in its intensity. I always knew it was going there. It was just [a case of] when to get there.”

The same can be said of the show’s mythology, which has been woven together piecemeal as the series crept along. But will the end result converge with what Carter originally envisioned at the outset of this voyage?

“I’m always asked this question,” he says. “To be truthful, I knew I had certain ideas, but I never knew that I would have to stretch them out quite so long. I had some big ideas, and I was always surprised at how they evolved. At one point – it was during the making and writing of ‘Redux’ and ‘Redux II’ – I said to Frank Spotnitz that these stories start to tell themselves. We’d laid such good groundwork that at the point there were these interesting things that happened as a result of choices that were made way back when. I think the best things is not plan too carefully, so that you can find your way to where you’re going rather than to say, ‘I’m going over there, and let’s see how I can best get there.'”

But nine years is a long time to be weaving threads through disparate episodes – and even Carter admits, “It’s not like it’s all perfectly in my mind. There’s just so much material that’s come before, 200 hours of material.” When writing the series’ final episodes, he adds, “It’s going to take some effort to condense and winnow out the important things as we had conceived of them along the way. That’s going to be the important things to key on.”

Up until now, Mulder’s journey – standard monster-of-the-week tales notwithstanding 0 had been two-fold: a passionate quest for the truth about his sister’s fate, as well as the truth behind a government conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrials.

“He’s been looking for a truth,” confirms Carter. “There are many truths that he’s been seeking, but the thing that he’s looking for is the thing that has now driven him into hiding. It’s going to be interesting to see when he comes back what it is he brought back, and at what consequence.”

Of course, any further detailed analysis is still classified information, unfortunately.

“I can’t [say], because I would be spoiling all the fun of when he comes back,” Carter says.

It’s a cryptic, evasive response, but we’ve come to expect that from The X-Files’ creator. After all, this is the series where questions are continually raised, but nothing ever seems to be conclusively answered. And like many things on The X-Files, the choice to keep the answers open-ended and ambiguous is a very purposeful one.

Explains Carter, with appropriate brevity, “It’s like life itself.”

Feb-16-2002
Cinescape
Underneath Too Painful To Air?
Daniel Wood

For those who have been following the upcoming episodes calendar closely, you will have noticed something curious about the forthcoming episode Underneath. It was originally slated to air in December (before 4-D, and then it was pushed back to air before Lord Of The Flies before being pulled altogether). It was rescheduled to January, then to February, then it was pulled from the calendar again and it is now set to air in the final week of March.

An anonymous source has seen a rough cut of the episode and has this to say of it:

“[Underneath] was pulled from the schedule because FOX had a lot of problems with it — quality problems. It was bad. I mean B-A-D, really bad, like Lord Of The Flies bad. This was a solo John Shiban script and word is that he was pretty much left to his own devices for it. He directed it too. But it was written at the time in between season nine preparations and Chris Carter’s re-arrival, so Carter wasn’t on the scene when it was written and even though he did a rough re-write it was pretty much left of the scrap heap. The first cut was reportedly incomprehensible. I think I saw the second or third cut, and it was a little better. Not really insulting or bad — just boring. It was like a season one Millennium episode, except for the fact that that show was comparatively Oscar material. Underneath is just plain silly. Parts of it reminded me of your basic run of the mill B-grade slasher horror flick. Like Valentine or Urban Legends, minus the mask. They try to give us some insight into Doggett’s past as a NYC cop but it just falls flat — there’s no real meat there. It’s all just facts and figures and no emotional involvement. The killer is boring, we’ve seen the “escaped killer goes after his captor” routine before. But aside from Shiban’s typically poor writing (he did have some good eps like SR 819 and yeah I liked Badlaa — but the bad far outweigh the good) his directing is shocking. I mean really bad. They had to order more re-shoot time than is usually allocated because there were a lot of shots and set-ups that Shiban just didn’t get. Like I said, the cut that I saw was hard to follow…you’d see poorly set-up shots of Doggett walking around a corner and then he’d walk around again…you know, really bad continuity between shots. The lighting was very good, though, except for the confrontation with the killer where it lost something. But I will tell you that it was so hard to follow and so badly directed that the network ordered for it to be re-worked into something a little different, more ‘basic’ and streamlined. We’ll see how it turns out. But that might give you some idea as to why there have been so many scheduling problems with it.”

You’ll have to judge for yourself when the episode airs on March 31.

Feb-??-2002
The X-Files Magazine [US]
Frank Discussion

The X-Files Magazine: Before we get into the specifics of how and why there’s a season nine, were you among those rooting for the show to return?

Frank Spotnitz: Yes, I was. I thought Robert Patrick was such a home run last year and I was excited about Annabeth Gish and what her character could be. I believed in the show and what the show could be this year.

The X-Files Magazine: What did you make of the prospect of doing the show without Chris?

Frank Spotnitz: For some time we didn’t actually know if we had Chris and we worked for, I don’t know, four to six weeks without him this year. It was actually Chris’ idea; he encouraged the rest of us to signup without knowing whether or not he was going to come back. I never would have done it unless he wanted us to do it and encouraged us to do it. I made it clear to him that I hoped he’d come back. So I guess I felt we could do it without Chris Carter and that we would do it, that we’d do as great a job as we could, but I was hoping all along that he would decide to come back.

The X-Files Magazine: Some people feel that the show itself is about Mulder’s quest for the truth. And those people argue that without Mulder there is no X-Files. How big a hurdle is that, in your mind, for the show to overcome?

Frank Spotnitz: The show has been Mulder’s quest for the truth. It was that for seven years and part of the eighth year. But I really think that with the introduction of John Doggett last year, the TV series started to take on e a new dimension. A baton was passed, almost literally. There was a scene in “Vienen” where Mulder literally handed over the X-Files office to Doggett. It’s always a question mark whether or not the audience will accept huge changes like this, because the characters are so important and so much of why you watch a TV series. But, having said that, I think The X-Files is a very strong idea for a series with an almost inexhaustible supply of stories. If you can find other characters that are strong and other actors who people like and want to watch. I think there’s potential for the show to go on indefinitely.

The X-Files Magazine: Were you pleased with David Duchovny’s final scene?

Frank Spotnitz: Yes, totally. That was one of my favorite scenes in the series. It moved me, so I was delighted with it.

The X-Files Magazine: Let’s talk first in broad strokes about Season Nine? To your thinking, what’s the big picture story wise?

Frank Spotnitz: It’s very interesting because Season Nine is sort of a three-lead show. It’s Scully and Doggett and Reyes. As you’ll see early on, it begins the way it left off last year, with Doggett and Ryes on the X-Files. Scully has a new role to play. She’s now a forensic investigator assigned to the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, Virginia. So you’ll have these three legged investigations all season. It’s a different way to tell the stories, which is exciting for us because it makes the show fresh and new again and not things we’ve done before. That became a challenge late in the Mulder-Scully era, how to keep ourselves really interested and excited when you’re up to the 175th episode, the 180th episode. When you’ve done that much, how do you keep Mulder and Scully’s investigations feeling new? That’s not a problem anymore for anyone. We’re on our toes every week because we’ve never done this before.

The X-Files Magazine: Let’s hit specifics. What will Scully’s role be? Will she be off at Quantico, communicating with Doggett and Reyes by cellphone and in separate scenes with baby William, or will we see her with Doggett and Reyes?

Frank Spotnitz: Well, there’s no standard format for it. Sometimes she’ll be primarily at Quantico and sometimes she’ll be out in the field. Sometimes it’s focused on her, and Doggett and Reyes are in the background. There will be different shapes to all of these different stories. It really is a three-lead show in that they’ll all have individual moments to shine as characters and actors. And there will be quite a few scenes of the three of them together. That’s really interesting to what, because not only do Gillian, David and Annabeth like each other personally, but they have great chemistry together. We’ve got different dynamics on the show that we’ve never had before. We’ve got scenes with two strong, independent, professional women together, which we’d never played like this. The other interesting thing is that all three characters are heroic, but in different ways, and they’ve all got different crosses to bear as characters.

The X-Files Magazine: Take us through the various character interactions in S9.

Frank Spotnitz: Doggett has kind of declared war on Deputy Director Kersh. He’s accused him of complicity in his alien conspiracy or super-soldier conspiracy as Knowle Rohrer claimed it was. So that’s really where we’ve picked up this season. It’s a very awkward thing to do when you’re an FBI agent–accuse your superior of corruption, essentially. Agent Reyes is by his side. Agent Scully has other issues to deal with, like what is her baby? We’ve said that Mulder and Scully consummated their relationship and that Mulder appeared to be the father of the baby. That’s what Mulder and Scully believe, but we haven’t answered the question, how a barren woman could become pregnant. We haven’t answered the question of why all these aliens, if that’s what they were, surrounded Scully at the Desert Hot Springs in Georgia and then left her untouched. So there are some deep, personal mysteries that Scully has to deal with and solve. As she said in the season finale last year, the X-Files has become personal and have become her life. It’s not a case. It’s not something she can walk away from. It’s her child.

The X-Files Magazine: And Skinner?

Frank Spotnitz: For many years Skinner was this kind of Hamlet-like figure. He was torn between his responsibilities as an Assistant Director and his sympathies for Mulder and Scully. What was fun for us last year, and I think for Mitch as well, was that the character finally took sides and went with Mulder and Scully all the way. That’s still pretty much the role he plays this season. He’s much more of a character of action than he’s ever been before. And one of the reasons he’s able to be such a partisan on behalf of The X-Files is that there are new antagonists that have developed within the FBI, like Deputy Director Kersh and Assistant Director Follmer, who ranks the same as Skinner.

The X-Files Magazine: David Duchovny is gone, but how long a shadow will Mulder cast on the proceeding? Will he be a ghost lurking around the X-Files office?

Frank Spotnitz: Yes and no. A lot of people on the Internet, at least the louder, more strident voices in chat rooms, kept saying, “Mulder is the absent center.” And the other people were saying, “He’s not the absent center. Look at all these episodes that went by without even a mention of Mulder.” I think that’s the fundamental misunderstanding of the X-Files TV series and has always been. If you look at any of the seasons leading up to last season, you had these mythology episodes that really bring us up to speed on the personal lives of the characters and on the alien conspiracy. Then you’ve got these stand-alone episodes that rarely touch on the personal lives of the characters and are really separate, discrete installments of life on the X-Files. You’ll see Mulder dealt with or mentioned in depth in certain episodes, like we did in the first two episodes this year and like we will in other mythology episodes later in the season. Then you’ll have cases that are cases, that investigate monsters and other paranormal phenomena. It’s very hard to shoehorn the search for Mulder or the disappearance of Mulder into stories like that, and we really don’t try. But having said that, I think the fact that Mulder defines the X-Files, Mulder turned the X-Files into a unit, is hard for anyone to forget. He does come up a lot. His name is mentioned because of the spirit with which he investigated these cases. I also think what’s appealing about Doggett and Reyes is how much respect they have for Mulder. They very much respect and honor what came before them.

The X-Files Magazine: Simply put, will there be an episode that explains why he’s not there anymore?

Frank Spotnitz: Yes. That’s the biggest question we faced, how to gracefully address that while being true to the character because, obviously, we just don’t have David Duchovny. We wanted to come up with a worthy explanation for why he’s not there anymore. It was a big question going into the new season and it was partially explained by the end of the second episode. It’s a question that will come up again and again in the mythology episodes this season.

The X-Files Magazine: David Duchovny has said he’s willing to do another movie. Chris Carter has said there will be another movie. Do you have to bear a potential movie in mind while doing the day-to-day work on the show? And if so, isn’t that a pain?

Frank Spotnitz: It was a pain in the ass, but we’ve figured all that out, I think. We know where we we’re going this year .We have a very clear idea about this season will end for Scully and Mulder’s characters. There’s an anticipation that this is Gillian’s last year whether or not it’s the last year of the series, so we have prepared ourselves for that and have a master plan.

The X-Files Magazine: Let’s switch to the Lone Gunmen series. What went right and what went wrong with the show?

Frank Spotnitz: I thought a long more went right than went wrong. I wished very much the network had brought back the show for another year. There was a mighty campaign internally to keep it on the air. There was a lot of support for the show among the studio executives and some of the network executives too. I think they just took a gamble that they could do better. But I think The Lone Gunmen was a really good show. I was really proud of it. I’m very proud of the work the guys did and that Zuleikha Robinson and Stephen Snedden did. I think that the biggest curveball we threw the audiences was how comedic, how blatantly comedic the show was. And I don’t think people we’re expecting that from the people behind The X-Files. If I had to do it over again I might have tried to make the transition more slowly. Having said that, I think if the show had come back for another year it would have had a chance to settle in and find its audience. It’s a great disappointment.

The X-Files Magazine: After all of your years with the show, how would you define your contribution to The X-Files?

Frank Spotnitz: That’s a really hard question to answer. I was a neophyte coming into this show. I started as a staff writer. It was my first job, not only on TV, but in Hollywood. So much of this show is the singular vision of Chris Carter. He’s got a very very clear vision and I think everybody who has worked here has come to appreciate and respect that vision. Once having understood his point of view about storytelling I think we’ve all tried to bring our best work to it. And so it’s been a very collaborative atmosphere. This is my eighth year on the show, my seventh year with John and Vince. That’s a long association, a long time for a group of people to work together. I look at all of these episodes-I flip and see them on FX or in syndication on weekends-and I have memories of pieces of me and pieces of them in virtually every show. We’ve all poured our hearts and souls into it. I don’t think people generally understand, nor do they need to, particularly, how hard you have to work on a show like this and how much of your life is devoted to it. I’m very proud of it.

The X-Files Magazine: You directed your first episode in S8. How did Alone come about?

Frank Spotnitz: Season Eight was one of my best years, if not the best year, I’ve had on The X-Files. I wrote a lot of stand-alone episodes. The whole Lone Gunmen experience, though it ended, was a joy. I loved the show and I loved watching dailies every day. The directing was something I was kind of dragged into, kicking and screaming. I didn’t really have a great desire to do it. But I was convinced by a number of people, including David Duchovny, to do it before the chance went away. It was a bad time for me to do it in a way, because there was so much work to do as a writer and producer. We were still trying to figure out the season finale. My show went prep and I had no idea how it was going to end because I hadn’t finished the script. So I was extremely stressed. I had all the issues outside of being a director, plus the pressure of directing for the first time and not being entirely sure how that would go. But nobody told me how much fun it is to direct. You’ve got all these people who are trying to help you succeed. The actors were so good. I was thrilled with Robert and David and Gillian and also Jolie Jenkins, the guest actress who played Leyla Harrison. I was very proud of the show.

The X-Files Magazine: Last question. If this would be the last year of The X-Files or your last year with the show, what would you do for an encore?

Frank Spotnitz: This is the first time in six years where I’m only doing The X-Files. I’ve always been doing The X-Files and Millennium or Harsh Realm or The Lone Gunmen or Fight the Future. That’s been a great. But now I’m waiting to see what comes next, to see if Chris develops another series. If this is the end of the X-Files for me, I may go do something else, develop another show or write a movie. I don’t know what I’ll do next. But it’s kind of an exciting time.

Feb-??-2002
The X-Files Magazine
Barbara Patrick

[typed by Megan]

The casting for “John Doe” took another step in instilling a sense of realism when the producers called on Robert Patrick’s real-life spouse to play his on-screen spouse. Actress Barbara Patrick made her debut as Doggett’s wife (albeit in flashback) for the first time on the show.

“I let them know that I was a real actress. I they ever wrote something about her down the line, I wanted them to know I could handle it,” Barbara explained.

But her X-Files debut wasn’t the first time she played opposite her husband. The couple actually met on the set of a movie, and they have played husband and wife on-screen in the past. “I’ve worked with him at least four times,” she says, alluding to such films as Out of these Rooms and Shogun Cop. “They usually think of casting me because they know I’m an actress, and you already have the built-in chemistry.”

Although her role is small, the crew treated her like a star. “I had one scene with my back to the camera, but the make-up and hair girls made me look so beautiful. I told them it wasn’t necessary, but they went out of their way,” Barbara says. “They treated me so well! It’s a good crew and good bunch of people.”

She has felt like part of The X-Files family since last season. “Everyone has been so great to us since Robert joined the show,” she says. “They work harder on The X-Files than anyone else on TV. Robert puts in 15-hour days, every day. Then he studies lines for an hour and goes to bed.”

Despite the grueling schedule, Barbara is please with her husband’s job. “I’m so happy to see him be successful and happy,” she says. “It’s so great for him to be doing that. He deserves to be the TV and movie star that he is.”

Barbara also has nothing but praise for the episode’s writer Vince Gilligan. “This was the first time I met Vince. He has a different voice in his writing, and I like his work a lot. I can see why the fans appreciate his episodes so much.”

It’s possible that Mrs. Doggett will return to The X-Files, but Barbara isn’t waiting by the phone. “I’ve heard it floated by me,” she laughs. “But I’ve been in this business too long, so I don’t believe anything until I get the call.”

Still, she enjoyed the job, taking its short-lived career in her stride. “I got paid to hang out with my husband all day,” she admits. “If I only did it this once, then that would be fine with me.”

Feb-??-2002
The X-Files Magazine [US]
Gish Fulfillment
Ian Spelling

[typed by MarieEve]

After an impressive debut as special Agent Monica Reyes in Season Eight, Annabeth Gish has continued to bring a fresh feel to The X-Files. The actress chats to Ian Spelling about her – and her character’s – progress.

From that deliriously odd decidedly personal X-Files called exception versus reality, Annabeth Gish observes the following so far as her character, Special Agent Monica Reyes, is concerned : “I thought that she might be more esoteric, more ethereal, based on the way that Chris Carter and frank Spotnitz presented her to me at the beginning, when we first talked about how Reyes would develop,” the friendly and soft-spoken actress says. “But I think, actually, that might have been my own misconception, because she’s also an FBI agent and she has to have a lot of practical, tactical and logistical skills that she can perform. I don’t know that any agent could perform all those skills and be too esoteric and ethereal. So the performance aspect that’s been the most challenging is being a detective, as opposed to being a spiritual, open-minded woman. The way she is now, she’s a bit of both. She’s an FBI agent who has a bit of the ethereal in her. Chris and Frank are cultivating that more and more, but she has to deliver when it comes down to wielding a gun and doing her job. That’s been interesting for me.”

Asked about her initial reaction to her character, Gish is full of enthusiasm. “I liked Reyes’ disposition right away,” she says. “She had a willingness to believe without knowing much. She was open-minded and had this attraction to the other realm without pure, direct experience of it. I don’t think Monica had seen alien spacecraft before, but it was in her nature to have a sensitive, mystical thirst for whatever is out there. We’ve touched on that and I hope it’s an aspect that they’ll really pursue. There’s also a lot about her past that I don’t know yet. I’ve sort of collaborated on our idea about how she came to be here. They’re giving me some roots to feed on, but as with any series the characters evolve as the stories evolve. So I think that Chris and Frank are discovering who Monica is, just as I am. It’s happening simultaneously and I like what I’m seeing. What else would like to know about her ? I’d like to know about her experience with her family, her mother and father. I think there’s some mystical aspect to her background, and I’d like to explore that or at least touch on that. I think that knowing what happened in the past will give you a better understanding of why she is now. I also want to know why she’s into the occult.”

Gish arrived on The X-Files scene late in the eighth season, appearing first in “This Is Not Happening” and then returning a few episodes later for “Empedocles”, “Essence” and “Existence”. The character was quickly partnered with Special John Doggett (Robert Patrick) and thrown into the mix as Doggett and Scully (Gillian Anderson) dealt with the return of Mulder (David Duchovny) and the impending birth of Scully’s baby. The realm of series television was pretty new to Gish, who’d acted in the short-lived show “Courthouse” and a bunch of made-for-TV movies, including “Scarlett”, “Don’t Look Back”, “God’s New Plan” and, most recently “The Way She Moves”. However, Gish is best known for her work in such features as “Desert Bloom”, “Mystic Pizza”, “Wyatt Earp”, “Nixon”, “Beautiful Girls”, “Steel”, the box office hit “Double Jeopardy”, and the soon-to-be-released independent features “Buying the Cow” and “Race to Space”, the latter of which co-stars James Woods, Jake Lloyd of “Star Wars : Episode I – The Phantom Menace” fame, and X-Files veteran John O’Hurley.

Gish quickly discovered that The X-Files production team spends more days shooting an episode than just about any show on TV and that those days can easily run 12 or 14 hours or even longer. And, just as the rigors of weekly television were new to Gish, so too was much of The X-Files universe. “I was a casual X-Files watcher, but you have to understand that I’ve never been a religious watcher of any television program,” she says. “I’d definitely watched the first few season while I was in college. That was a big Friday night thing, watch The X-Files before you go out. As for the entries mythology… man, I tried to download some of it on the computer before I started with the show and it was so extensive and so deep and profound that I was kind of intimidated and daunted. The good thing was that Monica Reyes doesn’t have to know everything. She, like I was, was walking into the mythology kind of blind.”

Bye the time Season Nine rolled around, Reyes was on hand as a fulltime presence, while Mulder vanished into the night, Scully spent much of the her time at her new job at Quantico, and Doggett tried to fill Mulder’s shoes, win Scully’s affections and trust, and solve cases – of both the standalone and mythology variety – with Reyes. Meanwhile, with each passing day and each passing case, Reyes seemed to grow fonder and fonder of Doggett. Where any of this is leading, Gish has no idea. “The frustrating thing about series work is that you don’t know the entire story and you have to wait to know it,” explains the actress, who was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and now lives in Los Angeles. “And even though you don’t know it you have to play it out every week, a little bit at a time. So there are pieces of the puzzle that don’t quite fit or don’t match up yet or that’s frustrating as an actress. I want to know what’s going on between Doggett and Reyes. There’s this unrequited love. They’ve set up that Scully loves Mulder, Doggett loves Scully, Reyes loves Doggett and Follmer, Cary Elwes’ Character, loves Reyes. So they’ve set that up and it’s all unrequited. I think there’s a lot of sexual tension going on. And I think they should explore that, dammit!”

The ongoing, teasing, will-they/won’t-they nature of the romantic situation between Reyes-Doggett forces Gish and Patrick to carefully calibrate their performances, both when the characters are together and when they’re apart. A longing glance here or there might suggest something to the audience that Carter and Spotnitz never intended to convey. No episode highlighted the point better than “4-D”, the parallel universe show. Early on, Doggett brings his partner a housewarming gift of Polish sausage with mustard. The banter is sweet and when one character affectionately wipes some mustard off the face of the other, there’s no denying the sexual tension. Gish’s face registers comfort, warmth and familiarity, while Patrick’s betrays that plus a touch of conclusion : “Hmm, I think this is woman is into me”. Later, that scene gains relevance and impact when Doggett ends ward for Robert and me to film that [mustard-wiping sequence] because we haven’t gone there romantically as our characters”, Gish notes. “But that scene was so good. And the word is calibrate. That’s the perfect word. It’s frustrating, as I said, not to know where things are going, but it’s also great as an actress to always have an obstacle. My relationship with Doggett always has an obstacle in the way. Either he doesn’t want to love me or he’s in love with Scully. I don’t know if he even recognizes that Monica love him. It’ll be very interesting to see how they play it out, but Chris and Frank haven’t told me anything.”

While many of her scenes pair her with Patrick, Gish has found herself part of an ensemble cast. That’s been another new experience and one quite to her liking. “The amazing thing about Chris and Frank is that they have the ability to find actors who are interesting and as talented as hell,” Gish enthuses. “They really do attract great actors, from the main parts to the recurring parts to even the smallest roles. David, Gilliam and Robert, myself and Cary are completely different beings. I think we each have very different characteristics and qualities, and that’s good for the show. The one thing we all are, though, is dedicated and professional. It’s not like any of us are standing around, stomping our feet and saying, ‘Get the limo to take me home!’ We’re all about the work and we’re all dedicated to the work. I think Chris sort of demands that. He chooses actors who can execute that way, under these conditions.”

Gish has been called upon to do some strange things in a handful of her previous projects. She, along with Cameron Diaz, Courteney B. Vance and Ron Eldard, wined, dined, murdered and buried Jason Alexander, Ron Perlman and others in the black comedy “The Last Supper”. And, hell, she acted with Shaquille O’Neal in the comic book-based big-screen epic, “Steel”. The X-Files, however, regularly requires that Gish participate in a variety of crazy things, the kinds of things that prompt her to call her friends and family after a day’s work and, sometimes, right after she wraps a scene. “Doing some of the stuff in “Lord of the flies” was pretty darn weird,” she says, laughing. “Getting in that plastic sheath [which served as spider webbing] was pretty weird. I’ve had to look at hamburger meat that was used as the brain in a skull. Delivering the baby [in “Existence”] was pretty wild. One of the most exhilarating experiences was doing the episodes with the ship [“Nothing Important Happened Today, Part II”]. That explosion scene was one of the most extensive stunts I’d ever been a part of and it was totally exciting.”

Gish was obviously disappointed by the news of the series’ cancellation. She wanted the show to continue and she wants fans to give her and the show – which she acknowledges was starting to morph into something new – a fair shake. “I think people like what I’m doing,” she says, bringing the conversation to an end. “I’m sure there are those who are very loyal to Mulder and Scully and don’t want to have anything to do with Reyes and Doggett. As a whole, though, I think people are seeing good work and a good show.”

Feb-??-2002
The X-Files Magazine [US]
One of a Kind
Joe Nazzaro

[typed by MarieEve]

Long-time X-Files writer/executive producer Vince Gilligan chats to Joe Nazzaro about the future of the show, his personal favourite X-Files episodes, the cancellation of The Lone Gunmen, and much, much more.

For the better part of a decade now, writer/executive producer Vince Gilligan has been trying to push the envelope as far as what could be done with an X-Files episode. “Hungry” came from the idea of telling a story completely from the bad guy’s point of view; the groundbreaking “X-Cops” is a letter-perfect homage to the pseudo-reality show “Cops”, right down to the cheesy production values and bizarre camera angles; and “Bad Blood” managed to combine Rashomon-style flashbacks with a goofy vampire parody.

Gilligan began writing for The X-Files with “Soft Light” at the end of Season Two, eventually landing a staff position and working his way up the show’s production hierarchy. His episodes range from the terrifying (“Unruhe”, “Paper Hearts”) to the comedic (“Small Potatoes”, the aforementioned “Bad Blood”). More recently, his time has been divided between script rewrites on The X-Files and working on the short-lived spin-off series The Lone Gunmen, the unexpected cancellation of which still dismays and puzzles him to this day.

This season, Gilligan has written the psychological thriller “John Doe”, and is preparing to write and direct episode 18, the first time he’s directed for the series since Season Seven’s “Je Souhaite”. And finally, he’ll be teaming up with fellow staff writers frank Spotnitz and John Shiban to tie up some of the threads from The Lone Gunmen, which means the next several weeks are going to be rather busy. Just before sitting down to write episode 18 (a story he couldn’t reveal), Gilligan sat down to talk about his work on the series…

Do you find the current season easier to write because you’ve got new characters and situations to work with, or is it more difficult without the Mulder/Scully dynamic ?

In some ways it’s easier, and more difficult in others. It’s easier to come up with new ideas and new situations to put our two new characters in, by virtue of the fact that they’ve been in so few episodes compared to Mulder and Scully. And it’s challenging and exciting to come up with ideas for them because they’re such interesting and original characters as far as I’m concerned. I absolutely love the character of john Doggett, and the way Robert Patrick play him. The same goes for Annabeth Gish who plays Monica Reyes. They’re two very unique characters, and they have, in my mind, a lot of striking differences from Mulder and Scully, so it’s great fun to write for them. On the other hand, with every X-Files episode we write, that’s one less idea that we can no longer go to when it’s time to come up with another episode. So it gets trickier with every episode we write, to come up with something new plot-wise, but on the other hand, yes, it’s easier in a sense to write the new characters.

Do you think the X-Files concept is strong enough in Season Nine without Mulder and Scully ?

I believe so. I know for a fact that there are many fans who would disagree with that, but in my mind, the basic idea of The X-Files is more than sound enough with a different cast. Provided the two new characters are just as strong and interesting as the old ones were, that is. At the end of the day, I think the show can be just as interesting with a new set of characters.

Is it easier concentrating your energies as a writer on just one show right now ?

To my mind, the only goof thing about The Lone Gunmen being cancelled is that we have half the work to do this year. Last year was the roughest single year I’ve had working on this show, because we were doing double duty on every-thinking, ‘Boy, I don’t want to get cancelled, but how the heck are we going to do this again next season ?’ Fox solved that problem for us very abruptly by cancelling the series, and I can’t tell you how disappointed I was. I enjoyed the show and its characters, and truly loved writing for it. Having said all that, I don’t know how we would have got through another year, because if we’d been doing it this year, we would have had 20-22 episode order, and we barely got through 13.

Why do you think the Lone Gunmen show didn’t catch on ?

That’s the question I’ve asked myself every day, because I’d love to know the answer. Maybe this was a show that had a specific time it should have come out and we missed that window. I don’t know what that window would have been, but I’ve got to think there was enough interesting plots and humor, and the characters were likeable and noble enough. In my mind, and I’m the most biased person you can ask, my thing was always, what’s not to love ? Maybe there wasn’t enough sex or sexiness or something. Maybe three guys hanging out together in a basement, maybe people need more romance; I don’t know what it is.

Tell us little bit about tour latest episode, “John Doe”.

This episode went through a lot of permutations, and wound up being a story about memory loss and amnesia. It’s about a character who can suck people’s memories right out of their head. In the teaser, Agent Doggett wakes up in this abandoned warehouse, where a crack addict is trying to steal the sneakers right off this feet. Doggett chases this guy out in a very bright landscape that turns out to be a Mexican border town, where Doggett promptly gets arrested, and we realise that our hero has absolutely no memory of who he is or he got here.

The bulk of the episode is about Doggett trying to remember who he is and falling in with some characters who lead him to believe it’s probably in his best interests to lay low and not to go back to the US where he imagines he’s from. It’s a different sort of episode. At the heart of it, the one little glimmer of a memory that keeps coming back to Doggett is something to do with a little boy who comes and wakes him. He imagines this little boy is his son, and that’s the emotional part of the episode, because as fans of the show know, Doggett lost his several years before he joined the X-Files unit, so that’s the key to him getting his memory back.

So it’s more of a psychological piece ?

There’s a fair bit of action to it, but it’s definitely a psychological piece, and not your standard X-Files. It was interesting to write, because the teaser and the entire first act is just Doggett in Mexico. We’re wondering the world, but it takes until act two for us to catch up with our other heroes in Washington and see what’s going on there. I always like to try and construct a different kind of structure, and “John Doe” is a different kind of story.

What made you decide you wanted to direct again this season ?

I feel like I’ve been lucky my whole life in that I’ve always knows what I wanted to do, even since I was a third grader. I always wanted to make movies, and in my mind, I wanted to do everything – I wanted to write and direct them, I wanted to do the special effects and make the costumes, and all these years later, I’ve been very lucky to have seen that dream fulfilled. Writing is a wonderful career, and I feel very blessed to get to do it, but I wanted to try directing as well. The first time I directed (on “Je Souhaite”), my plate was already full, and I was really nervous. In the back of my head, I thought, ‘Maybe I should call this off, what if I screw this up terribly and waste 20thCentury Fox’s money ? What if everyone just thinks I’m a fool and completely screw me up ?’ But something kept me going, and I guess it was the self knowledge that if I didn’t take this golden opportunity when I had it, I would forever be looking back and kicking myself in the butt for not having at least tried and failed. Now that I’ve done it, I’ve still got so much to learn, and that’s one of the reason I want to do it again.

So you’ve taken some lessons on board from that experience, which you’ll be using when writing and directing ?

Yes, and hopefully I can come up with something good. I’ve got a bit of an idea, but I really need to nail it down, because the clock is ticking and I need to get going on that script. I’m hoping to get going on that on that one sooner that later so I have time to polish it and make it the way I want it. That’s always our concern, are we going to have enough time ? Somehow it always works out, although there’s a lot of nervousness and a lot of ulcer-causing stress related to this job, but I guess we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Are you looking forward to tying up the threads from The Lone Gunmen later this season ?

As I said, I was so disappointed when it was cancelled, and I want to do right by the fans and the characters, so I hope we do it justice. It’s so hard to wrap something up perfectly in just 42 minutes and 26 seconds, which is all the time we have in an episode, but I hope we do a good job. I really don’t want to disappoint anybody, including us, and I don’t want to disappoint Bruce or Dean or Tom, our three Lone Gunmen, because all three of them are great guys, as are Steven Snedden (Jimmy Bond) and Zuleikha Robinson (Yves Harlow). All five of them are wonderful actors, and wonderful people to work with, so I hope we don’t disappoint them either.

What do you look on as your strengths as a writer on The X-Files ?

Well, I can tell you where my strengths don’t lie. I definitely don’t have a facility for the mythology episodes. There was only one that I was actually involved in as a writer, and that was the quasi-mythology episode, “Memento Mori”. I’ll be honest, I love watching the mythology episode, but I watch them as a fan. I don’t have that much to do with them. They’re a different king of story-telling, and a very good kind, but one I don’t feel particularly equipped for. If I had strength on the show, it would be for the stand-alone episodes that don’t deal with the mythology or the over-arcing mythology of the series. That would be both my strength is the actual sitting down and writing of an episode. I say that because we as producers have a lot different hats to wear during the course of production on an episode. We have to come up with a story and beat it out brick by brick before anyone starts writing. And then we have to cast the episode and edit it and listen to the music, give input into the visual FX producers, and all of these things are part and parcel of our job. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about those aspects, but I guess my strength lies in actually taking a finished ‘board’ – which is the hashed-out beat by beat plot of the story – and turning it into a finished script. If I have a strength, that’s where it lies.

Looking back over the many episodes you’ve written for the series, are there any particular favourites that come to mind ?

That’s a good question. The truth is, I don’t really have a favourite. I’ve never been the kind of person who had a favourite food or soft drink or a favourite anything. I don’t know why, but I’ve never been able to pare anything down to one favourite, and that goes for the episodes I’ve written. As far as episodes I’ve written but just enjoyed as a viewer, I’d be hard-pressed to say which one is my favorite.

Do you have a shortlist ?

Of mine ? Well, “Bad Blood”, “Pusher”, “Paper Hearts”, “Hungry”, “Je Souhaite” just because it was so much fun, along with “X-Cops”. One that I was actually really proud of is “Folie à Deux”, which I don’t think was as enjoyed by the fans as I would have hoped, but to this day is still one of my favorites.

Any you’d like to forget ?

I feel very fortunate in that the episodes I’ve worked on or rewritten, there are some I’m not as proud of. But I can honestly say there’s not a single episode of this series that I would abscond with and bury in the middle of the woods. I’m just so proud to be a part of this series that was great before I got here, and to this day, nine years later, is still great. It was a show I was a fan of before I ever had anything to do with it, and I’d still be a fan of it today if I’d never joined the staff. I think it’s a strong show regardless of anything I ever did, but I’m also proud of what I’ve done while here as well. I’m very proud of this show, and I’m biased I’ll admit, but I hope it’s going to have a place in TV history.