82517

The following interview with Chris Carter (creator of The X-Files) was included on the 82517 videotape (UK release) and was transcribed by myself, Richard Preece.

First and foremost what I wanted to was scare people’s pants off. I said I wanted to do something as scary as a show that was on when I was a kid which was "Kolchak: The Night Stalker", it was a series that I loved. I could have watched it every night of the week, and so I came up with "The X-Files" - Mulder, Scully and the FBI as a way to explore paranormal phenomena.
I never wanted to make the FBI the bad guy. I always saw the characters at the FBI as being not the ultimate bad guys, but the middlemen. The people above them represented by the Cigarette Smoking Man, were the people who were pulling the strings - the puppeteers if you will.
And the government is kind of an all purpose bad guy in "The X-Files" but I think one only has to pick up his newspaper to see that this isn’t far from the truth. They will do something wrong, they will do something to unwitting citizens and then make it right by apologising about it afterwards. It seems to be the standard operational procedure and I think that this is a very pervasive attitude and idea that the government may indeed not be working in your best interest.

"Gender Types."

The Mulder/Scully idea was always in my mind and I wanted to flip the gender types, the stereotypes that we have. I wanted Mulder, the male, to be the believer the intiuiter, and I wanted Scully to be the sceptic - the one which is usually the traditional male role.

"Personal Magnetism."

David Duchovny was an early favourite and he was a pretty easy person to cast. He fit the character that I had written very well and played it with a real, well he underplayed it is what he did and I think that was what won him the part. Also he has a tremendous amount of personal magnetism and sex appeal.

"Obvious Qualities."

Gillian Anderson was a little more difficult, actually a lot more difficult. She didn’t have the obvious qualities that Network Executives have come to associate with hit shows. But she was a terrific actress and she came in and read the part with a seriousness and an intensity that I knew the Scully character had to have, and I knew as soon as she read it that she was the right person for the part

"Cigarette Smoking Man."

He’s an acting teacher in Vancouver, William Davis is an acting teacher and he came in and he just fit the role perfectly, he’s lean and he’s got a penetrating stare. He represented that quiet menace and I thought he was just perfect for the part of the Cigarette Smoking Man. He’s become something of a popular actor for the writers on the show because he’s a very fun character to write for, because his delivery is so forbidding, is so treacherous, is so two-faced and he is a complete self interest. He is the person who we trust least on "The X-Files". He is the devil if you will and some people ask if he’ll ever die on the show and my answer is always you can’t kill the devil.

"Deep Throat."

The character Deep Throat of course came from the famous or infamous Watergate figure, who may or may not have existed. And so I felt that we needed a connection, somebody who would come from this mysterious, shadowy government, works at some layer or level of government that we have no idea exists and would come to Mulder and Scully and lead them carefully, selectively, without giving them too much. Make them work for the answers but help them when they had reached a dead end or help them when they had made a wrong turn. And we cast Jerry Hardin in the role and I think that he’s just brought that character to life in way that helps gives the show a believability which is so important if you are to do these wild conspiracy ideas.

"X."

I gave this character the name X because obviously it was X standing for the unknown, it was kind of fitting and it just seemed like the right title for him. I have to be honest that the original X was a Mrs X, we had cast a woman in the role and even though she was very good, something didn’t feel right. It didn’t have the level of danger that the character that Steven Williams has come to portray, does. And his relationship with Mulder, I think, reflects a lack of commitment and conviction that his predecessor had, and it is a more interesting relationship in a way because something could always happen when X comes around. He’s a man who’ll pull a gun, he’s a man who will throw a punch and it adds, I think, a level of danger to the show.

"Wonderful images."

We’ve always pushed the limits on this show and if you look at the wonderful images we’ve created, they have always come to us with much difficulty. Anytime you want to do a special visual effect on a television budget or schedule you are pushing the limits of what you are capable of for all of the various restrictions. It’s been a beautiful show in terms of its effects because they’ve been believable, they’ve been minimal, they haven’t been overblown. And supervised and co-ordinated by the illustrious Mat Beck who has been our Special Effects Producer from the beginning. He comes in and he’s got a very, very strong personality but he knows how to make something good. He’s got very good taste. So he is, I think, a secret weapon on the show, as is Graeme Murray, the Production Designer, who has done the lion’s share of the work on the show. These people really help to give it the cinematic look that I think it has and I think that makes it different than anything else on television.

"Hiding Things In Shadow."

The man who shot the pilot for the show Tom Del Ruth moved on, he established a nice look which I think has been really refined and changed and made very beautiful by John Bartley, who has been on the show since episode one, past the pilot, and has given us a nice, dark, subtle look. He makes Scully look beautiful without making her look too glamorous which I never wanted, I wanted the show to look very real. He really helps us to scare you by hiding things in shadow, half-lighting things, he’s given the show just a wonderful look. He’s been honoured for it too, he was just nominated for an ASC award, he’s been nominated for ASC awards in the past on this show.

"After Much Searching."

Mark Snow came after much searching through Composers, interviewing, listening to tapes, and he was recommended to me by Bob Goodwin who is the Co-Executive Producer on the show, a person who he worked with before they were actually personal friends. Mark happens to live very close to me which helps because I’m very hands on with the music. I like to listen to the music before it ever goes onto the picture and make little notes and see how the music is going to augment or supplement or make better the story we are trying to tell. And Mark has, he’s got such a natural hand at this, a natural facility for it, that I spend so little time now actually trying to guide him or direct him. I go over there just to listen to the beautiful music he puts in the show.

"M.U.F.O.N."

M.U.F.O.N. actually is a real organisation and they have Chapters around the United States and even in Canada, I’ve actually gone to some of their meetings in Canada. They are a UFO group operating, I believe, internationally and have some influence over the literature and the organisation of the search for the truth - the need to find what the government knows and may be keeping from us. It actually is an organisation interested in doing just that.

"Significant Numbers."

"The X-Files" is filled with all sorts of inside details, all sorts of things. One of them has become quite well known now, which is the clock reading 11:21 which is my wife’s birthday - November 21st. So you’ll see those numbers and they are meaningful, the train car numbers are significant, the numbers 82517 are the numbers, but 517 represent the birth date of the writer’s wife - Frank Spotnitz’s wife. And 825 actually are the numbers that are significant of my directorial debut on the second season of "The X-Files".

"82517."

These episodes represent a real big part of the mythology and it began back with ‘Duane Barry’ and with Scully’s abduction in that episode. It led us up to these two episodes, which is where we had taken everything that Mulder and Scully had learned about the truth, about the conspiracy, needed to be understood to get to these two episodes. But I think that they stand on their own as well as really great suspense thrillers. So they are important to the mythology. They are indeed an answering of questions for the ‘Duane Barry’ beginnings and we learn a lot about what happened to Scully: Where she may have gone, who may have taken her. That’s something that is answered but not quite clearly, so it continues the mythology, it actually, I think, sparks new questions, it provides us with more questions than answers in the end.

"Altered Humans."

Scully arrived at the Hansen’s disease camp and saw those deformed people, and was led to believe by the government official or shadowy Syndicate official that this was a government conspiracy. A cover-up of the work of so many doctors in the government trying to play God, trying to play with the genetics and trying to alter humans. So these episodes were really to give Scully some credibility give some credence to the idea that this whole alien conspiracy was in fact trumped up, was created by the government as a dodge for what was really going on, which was genetic experiments on actual human beings.

"Two Man Stand-Off."

The scene that I love the most is the train episode and then with the stand-off, the two man stand-off between David Duchovny and Stephen McHattie. Getting that sequence was something, it was a phenomenon in itself, Rob Bowman, the Director of the episode, went to great lengths to get those great aerial shots. The whole sequence was something that they told me we could never do and then in the end Bob Goodwin, the Co-Executive Producer, J.P.Finn, the Production Manager, and Rob Bowman somehow found a will and a way and the money to make that into, I think, one of the great television sequences of all time.

"Great Difficulties."

There were great difficulties in making the episode, or the episodes, and most of them had to with the trains. The interior of that train that you see is actually on stage and also the interior of the passenger car is also on stage, those are all gimballed and created. But the trains themselves, I was warned, and I didn’t listen. I’m kind of glad I didn’t listen in the end, but Bob Goodwin, the Co-Executive Producer, had warned me that working with trains was very slow and time consuming. And time is everything in the making of a TV series, you are always racing the clock. To shoot a shot you have to roll the train into position and then if you want to shoot it again you better roll the train back and roll it back, you know, into position and it’s very slow. Trains move very slow and they’re very heavy and it takes a lot of time and effort and consideration.

"Action Star."

A stuntman actually jumped on the train, David did not jump on the train. But David, in fact, did get on top of that train, he was wired, harnessed, it was all done safely. He completely botched and dropped his cell phone as you see and then crawled down into the train. I think that he will make a great feature action star someday because he is very athletic, very physical and has very little fear about doing these things. He was really a trouper to do it.

"Reasonably Priced."

The train that you see at the end of the show that blows up is an actual train car, it was a train car that was wrecked and was sold to us for a very reasonable price by the Canadian Railroad. It is an actual train that blows up and there are actually eight cameras and I think we used every single angle on the end. it was something that was above and beyond what you would normally see on a TV show.

"The Complex Truth."

I try to give two sides to every fact, every answer, every truth in "The X-Files", because it actually allows for a more interesting mythology. The truth is a complex thing and we present it in a complex way. I like to leave it to the audience to try to figure out where we are, what the mythology of the show has told them, where we are going. I think that’s part of the appeal of "The X-Files", is that nothing is explained, everything in fact is unexplained. The audience was taken to a place of great uncertainty and hopefully they were begging for more.