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The X-Files’ 30th anniversary was already ten months ago! The PhileFest convention marked that event, and for those who didn’t attend (most of us!) the recordings of most of the panels are available online, courtesy of XFilesNews. In the coming days, I’ll be posting my long-delayed notes on watching these very entertaining panels.

We kick off with “The Wongs” family panal: James Wong (JW), Glen Morgan (GM), Kristen Cloke-Morgan (KCM), Darin Morgan (DM). Plenty of Millennium stuff too!

• DM: In series now, every episode is the same episode; TXF had more variety, everybody has something different they like about the show.
• GM: in the early days Dan Sackheim did a lot to guide CC; GM & JW were forced on CC by Peter Roth. CC wanted to, but the network said it can’t be UFO of the week. GM & JW liked Universal monsters, they did that. Alex Gansa didn’t get what the show was about, he needed something more grounded, he did weird science.
• JW: there was no writers room per se, they had an idea, they pitched it to each other, then went off to write it. They had a Board with episode ideas, to make sure the episodes didn’t repeat.
• GM: GA getting pregnant created the mythology, it was a mount of accidents that had consequences.
• JW: is this a UFO show? CC: yes; then a few weeks later, no.
• GM & KCM: MM: Lara Means going crazy: the whole sequence was improvised with director Tom Wright and the crew; Tom had storyboarded the whole act; camera operator Mike Wrench said the camera is an actor, he was crawling on the floor with “squishycam”, Mike laughing while KCM was crawling, crying, drowning.
• GM: how I wrote TXF, with ‘Ice’: subscription to Science News, 6 pages long, record of deepest ice core in Greenland. JW would ask his eye doctor weird things with eyes. GM put in things he didn’t like (worms, snakes). Both fans of Hawkes & Carpenter, tried to isolate the characters, do a small show for the budget. Moved around the board cards, present progress to CC & Alex. Once a week go to UCLA Medical Library, look into journals. Howard & Alex had a National Geographic subscription. They had an idea of a snake that opens its mouth and eats a deer, they noted down ‘snake eats a guy, end of act 3’, then they had to figure out how.
• DM: thought experiment: cutting episodes, DM eps were always 5 min too long, GM’s too (One Breath 16 min), CC’s were shorter, had to be exactly 43:12, big difference between network and cable shows, sometimes cable shows don’t need to be as long. When you watch your favourite ep, imagine you have to cut 2 min: which ones? A bad scene can be important for the plot. Start cutting lines, trimming shots here and there, you might realize you’re improving the episode’s flow! But then you start crying, cutting lines you love. ‘Coprophages’: had to cut out DD’s mother, in the crowd scene at the end, she had been on set the whole week, DD called him to ask why.
• JW: counter-example, if in 21 Jump Street they cut out all the shit, they’d be 20 min short.
• GM: ‘The Field Where I Died’: act 3 had to be 8-9 min, DD’s regression scene was 11 min, KCM’s was 8 min, magnificent performances but had to cut. Editor Heather MacDougall was tough on everyone. Editor Michael Stern had left SeaQuest, he was cutting ‘Home’, Standards & Practices came when they were cutting the sheriff’s death, later S&P had to defend it to the network because things were actually not shown, a lesson on how the audience fills in. In the revival, they had editor Eleanor Infante; a good editor will find things that even the director didn’t know were there.
• DM: Stephen Mark cut ‘Clyde Bruckman’; most people didn’t know what autoerotic asphyxiation was and many think DM made it up; there was a reaction shot of Scully making her eyes big, he cut it because after ‘Humbug’ he didn’t want to push too much on comedy, now he thinks he should have kept it.
• GM: JW directed ‘Musings’; in Memphis there was a magnificent B&W crane shot, he had to cut half of that shot.
• KCM: we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Avi [Quijada], Julie [Ng], both are now friends, many fans now influence their own lives.
• GM: in ‘This’, the handcuff line was totally pandering to you perverts [shippers].
• GM: Doug Hutchinson’s audition was insane; JW’s ep ‘Musings’ was a favourite; when directing the action in ‘This’, the cinematographer saw chaos, GM thoguht sometimes being out of control is good; he found Eleanor’s cut of ‘This’ was great.
• JW: remembers casting ‘Beyond the Sea’, Brad Dourif was great but didn’t audition well; ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ was one of his favourites; the dailies were amazing; sometimes you have to trust people. GM: Brad was an Oscar winner, was expensive, GM & JW offered their writers’ fee to hire him, CC called Peter Roth at Thanksgiving to push it.
• DM: ‘Forehead Sweat’: loved the alien makeup & costume, saw the actor using his scooter and decided he had to use it going down the escalator, Craig & DM were laughing so hard. GM: that was Kurt Russell’s cape from ‘3000 Miles to Graceland’.
• GM took props; he regrets not taking the Voyager record from ‘Forehead Sweat’; GM worked with s10/11 props master Tyler Smith in Twilight Zone and he had that record, Tyler gave it to GM and GM gave it to DM for Christmas; DM has the book with all the answers; CC gave DM the ‘Humbug’ monster twin, he still uses it for Halloween.
• KCM: production designer Mark Freeborn made fun of the ‘Rm9’ teaser description at the script read-through; location scouting found an abandoned mini-mall, the set was beyond her imagination. ‘Field’: even when she was not on camera she was there for DD & GA’s close-up shots, just for the acting experience.
• GM: ‘Musings’: Bills not winning Superbowl was a joke, then last year a sports writer from Buffalo asked why he did that. ‘Jose Chung’s Doomsday Defense’ was about cults, and GM & JW had to go through in life what the ep was about; DM wrote that one for their friend Rich [Richard ‘Mr Smooth’ Steinmetz?].
• GM: early on, the network was like “when do they help people?”, then they saw ‘Shadows’ with the ghost and the secretary, the network said “go back to what you whatever you were doing”
• DM: ‘Jose Chung’s From Outer Space’: during pre-prod many people like Bob Goodwin said they had no idea what it’s about, DM said I don’t understand it either, but Bob said he could tell it’s going to be great by how excited DM was. DM was lucky with exec producers’ trust, for that episode everything came together. He wanted Johnny Cash but he was unavailable; Jeff Vlaming & DM were throwing out names, landed on Alex Trebek; before he agreed for the commitment withh a day to travel back & forth, he wanted more than one line; the problem was his voice was so recognizable it would mess up the reveal it was him, so he said OK. That was when DM knew he was a producer.
• KCM: ‘Rm9’: DD & GA were very happy they had no lines; DD’s line “why is your house better than mine” was DD’s improv, they kept it in.
• JW: ‘Die Hand Die Verletzt’: the last shot makes him cry, saying goodbye to the crew.