Special Report

The X-Files Movie

   Steam billowed around the familiar, expressionless visage of FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder
as he clawed his way ouy of a crevice in Antarctica, then rescued his wet and injured partner, 
Agent Dana Scully. The threats of aliens, government conspirators and spaceships were looming 
somewhere out of sight. 
   "Cut!" yelled Rob Bowman, director of the new movie, The X-Files, which is to open in June.
He chatted with the actors-David Duchovny as Mulder and Gillian Anderson, who had just won an
Emmy, as Scully-and they returned to their places to repeat the sequence on man-made snow, 
again and again and again.
   Making movies can be boring but fatigue and ennui were more apparent than usual on this late
summer day. Indeed, as the series enters its fifth season, people admit that fatigue is 
becoming more prevalent on the show that has made the paranormal an integral part of television
drama.
   The show's season will end next spring with a cliffhanger. The US$60 million movie, The 
X-Files, which finished filming last week at the 20th Century lot, will pick up where the series
left off.
   "This is not TV made bigger," promised Bowman, who has directed several episodes of The 
X-Files for television. "The heart is the same, but more events will be shown than we can do in
the show, and the size of the sets and the size of the sequences will of course be much bigger.
   In making a movie, there is always a risk that the show's unusual aura will be tarnished. But
Chris Carter, the series' creater and executive producer, said it is a gamble he is prepared to 
take to recapture a sense of excitement for himself and the restless cast.
   "It's way too long," said David Duchovny, 37, of his tenure on The X-Files. "There's a point 
at which it's not challenging anymore. Honestly, I wish they could introduce a new character-not 
more popular than me, of course, but interesting-to change the focus a little. "It's not like I 
want to destroy the show, but I need room to think of other things."    
   Anderson, 29, also said that while she was loyal to Carter and the show, she was frustrated 
and eager to make movies built around the inner world of characters rather than action and the 
occult. "We're different species," she said of her character, Agent Scully, an earnest physician 
who is brainy and a skeptic. "I need to be goofier than her." 
   Secrecy surrounding the movie's plot is tight. The production notes say only that Mulder and 
Scully are "drawn into a web of intrigue" after "the mysterious bombing of a Dallas office 
building". 
   Visiting the set, there are other clues. One storyboard was labelled "interior spaceship", 
another "shoot with creature unit". A publicity agent said the producers were deliberately 
circulating misinformation over the Internet to throw X-Files sleuths off the scent. 
   Carter said cryptically: "The movie will answer many questions but it will also pose some new 
ones of its own." The emotional well of The X-Files is distrust and that will not change. Carter
described himself as a writer motivated largely by moral concerns and shaped by the political 
turmoil of his youth. 
   "I'm 40. My moral universe was being shaped when Watergate happened. It blew my world out of 
the water. It infused my whole thinking, " he said. Which, no doubt, explains the essentially 
pessimistic view of the world in stories such as The X-Files and Millenium, another of his 
series' creation - NYT

This article was extracted from NYT.

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