Scully, Mulder and Carter head for X-it
By: Mike Roberts

The truth is outta here.

It's official: The X-Files is bailing on Vancouver, its host city of five years. The most popular television series ever shot in Canada is moving to Los Angeles.

In a heartfelt address to the cast and crew Friday night in North Vancouver, X-Files creator and executive producer Chris Carter announced that the top-rated TV series would be leaving the Lower Mainland for Hollywood next season.

He thanked the City of Vancouver and the hundreds of Canadians who have helped make the series a success.

The X-Files publicist, Stephen Melnik, confirmed the FBI spooker is leaving town but added that an official announcement will not be made until later in the week.

"We are allowing Chris to talk to each of his cast and crew members this weekend before we can confirm anything," he said.

There've been more rumours surrounding the show's possible departure than flashlight batteries in Mulder's glovebox.

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson -- despite the odd jab about the Wet Coast -- have expressed fondness for Vancouver. But five years is a long time to be away from home, hearth, and, in Duchovny's case, wife Tea Leoni, an L.A.-based actor.

Duchovny said he was leaving at the end of this season, regardless.

Would Carter write his principal actors out of the script and keep the show in Vancouver? Even the exchange on the U.S. dollar isn't that enticing. Without its stars, insiders agree, the show would soon fold.

"The last time it came up, three weeks ago, we were told (The X-Files) was staying and (Duchovny and Anderson) would be written out," said one series insider, who requested anonymity. "But that wouldn't make much sense. It's pretty shocking, it effects a lot of people."

Tom Adair, business representative with The X-Files production union, IATSE, says the show put Vancouver on the map.

"But shows are given birth, they live and they die, they die for different reasons," he said. "It's difficult to be away from your family for that long. That's the only reason that would make any sense -- not economic sense, it's emotional sense."

TV and film production brought the B.C. economy about $240 million last year. But Peter Mitchell, director of the B.C. Film Commission, said the departure of The X-Files will have more of an emotional effect than a financial one.

There are a dozen TV and movie productions under way in Greater Vancouver. Industry watchers believe there's enough work for the crews displaced by the show's departure. Principal filming for the series' last three episodes this season likely will continue until the end of April.

No word yet on whether or how the series' producers plan to duplicate, under the L.A. sun, the signature complexion Vancouver brought to The X-Files.

FROM CULT FAVE TO $85M BIG-SCREEN VERSION

• The X-Files pilot began filming in the Vancouver area on March 22, 1993. It aired on Friday, Sept. 10, that same year.

• The spooky FOX-TV series quickly found a niche market and became a a cult fave, then went on to become the most successful television series ever produced in Canada.

• David Duchovny (agent Fox Mulder) is a New York native with a graduate degree in English literature from Yale. Originally intent on becoming a teacher, he packed in his doctoral thesis and left Yale in 1987 to pursue acting full-time. Before The X-Files, he was best known as Dennis/Denise, a transvestite detective in David Lynch's Twin Peaks TV series.

• Gillian Anderson (agent Dana Scully) has been acting since high school. She studied with the National Theatre of Great Britain at Cornell University and later at the Goodman Theatre School at Chicago's DePaul University, where she earned her B.F.A. Look for the fiesty redhead in an upcoming film called Freak the Mighty.

• The X-Files movie, code-named Blackwood, wrapped production in Los Angeles last August at a cost of about $60 million US ($85 milllion CDN). The truth is coming to theatres at the end of May, and brings with it not only Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny in their roles as Scully and Mulder, but an awe-inspiring array of big-screen heavyweights. Among the guest stars are Oscar winner Martin Landau (Ed Wood), Blythe Danner (The Prince of Tides), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Shine), Glenne Headly (Mr. Holland's Opus) and Lucas Black (Sling Blade).

• Production of the TV series is based at Lion's Gate Studios in North Vancouver and employs about 300 crew members.

• The Province has written 627 stories on The X-Files. Ah, make that 628.