The Joy of X / Chris Carter interview
transcript by Klair, visit her great Official UK/IRE Roxette Fanclub site!

X-FILES UK Special BBC Sunday 12th November 2000

CC: The secret to the shows success internationally is that we're all basically afraid of the same things. We're all basically afraid of violent death, we're afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what we can't see, afraid of what we don't understand. 

(Title Music + Clips) 

CC: The X-Files success is so off the chart that you can't actually ever hope to create a show this successful again because it may be one in a lifetime. You can't manufacture that kind of success, its chemistry that needs to happen like magic. 

VO: This once in a lifetime success, syndicated worldwide, and now in its 8th season, comes straight from the imagination of one man: Chris Carter. But instead of warp drive, galaxies and final frontiers, the X-Files is rooted in a different type of science fiction featuring EBE's, alien abductions, and good old fashioned horror stories. Taking us through almost 200 episodes is one of televisions great screen partnerships: FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. 

(Clip: Squeeze) 

The series extracts its drama from an endless war to turn skeptics into believers, taking us beyond the limits of conventional science, and pitching the viewer against government conspiracy and cover up. But the brains behind this paranormal hit grew up in a place that could not have been more normal. 

CC: I grew up in a little town, a suburb of LA in Southern California, the town was called Bellflower... 
(Clip of town)  

Even though we were 25 mins maybe from LA it could have been the mid west because it had a very small town quality to it. High school football games were still very important. Sports were still extremely important, there was a community that came out to support all these things. It really felt like very typical American town, a mid western town, and that's where I really gained all my values. I learned social skills, I formed long time friendships and I don't think that life has ever been the same since I moved away from Bellflower. 

I often wonder where this need to scare people comes from and I remember when you see movies or you see TV shows, the burglars, the bad guys always break into your house and the first thing they steal is the silverware, and I don't know why they stole the silverware as a kid, but I was sure that every night when I was babysitting my brother, that I could hear the silverware rattling around in the drawers, and we had pot metal utensils: forks, knives – there's nothing to steal!! But I was sure that's what I heard downstairs. I had a vivid imagination, and I think that and a love of shows like Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents-all those things were swirling around in my head. I wasn't all that interested in futuristic science fiction. I was interested in more sort of escapist fair I'd say. I think real early on, I first got turned on to reading by my mom who had read all the Nancy Drew books as a kid and while it may seem strange that a boy would be reading Nancy Drew when he's supposed to be reading Hardy Boys-I had the biggest crush on Nancy Drew. 

(Clip of book illustrations heavily featuring red-headed chick) 

I was in love with her and I read all of those books over and over. I think it's actually where I developed the love of mystery. She's smart, and beautiful and you actually see a little bit of where Dana Scully comes from, if you ever read Nancy Drew. 

(Clip of S calling M) 

VO: Carter's growing appetite for urban horror was fed by one particularly ghoulish 70's TV movie.. (Clip of Night Stalker) 

CC: When I was bout 14 years old there was a movie on called Kolchak The Night Stalker and it was the best thing I had ever seen on TV. There was this character Kolchak who's a newspaper reporter, hunts down vampires in this movie, and he comes back and he tells his boss-the head of the newspaper- what he's found, and his boss won't believe him. 

(Another Clip of Kol) 

He is an outsider, as you feel as a kid, no-one will believe you. You are a, um, its you against the adults. Carl Kolchak (sp) was a kindred spirit. Anyway, the movie most importantly was as scary as I'd ever seen at that point. 

(Another clip) 

Twenty something years later when I'm working in television myself, I'd earned the privilege of being asked what kind of TV show I wanted to do. I said I wanted to do something as scary as I remember the Night Stalker. 

(Clip Squeeze) 

CC: Bellflower High was a school where I would say a very small percentage of kids went to college, and expectations were very low. But I put myself through college holding odd job as one which I would hold for a good many years afterwards. I became a master potter. I sat at a potters wheel for hours on end and made the same thing over and over, repetitively I made dinner wear. 

Being a person from a small town where you needed a skill in order to make a living, at least that's what I was taught. The first thing I did when I went to school knowing that I wanted to be a writer was I went into the journalism program and I learned how to make money writing. In fact, that's what I did when I got out of college. I took a job at a surfing magazine-for me that was more of a decision not to grow up, not to join the adult world, but actually it was a wonderful experience. I spent 5 years working for Surfing Magazine. I made no money, I traveled the world, I lived in a tent, I slept on people's floors, it was a great time of my life.

(Surfing Clips) 

I learned a lot about discipline, writing anywhere and everywhere. I had a great physical life-I was in Australia, in the Caribbean wherever, surfing and writing and just having a great time: If I had to describe myself I'd describe myself as a surfer first and everything else after. 

The moment I knew I really wanted to make movies is when I saw the first Indiana Jones movie. It just blew me away. I could not believe what I was seeing on the screen, and I probably saw it every night for the next week. It was like my world changed. It was like I realized that I could take my talent and my tremendous work ethic and apply it to something that would be both visual and a great way to tell stories, which is what I was most interested in. 

VO: By this time Carter had married a Hollywood scriptwriter and had the contacts and confidence to pursue his new bigger ambitions. 

CC: I came to Hollywood very quickly and my entry was a little unexpected. I had written a script and that script was seen by a few people. I got some meetings around town, an agent signed me and in the course of, it felt like about a month, I'd been hired for a 3 picture deal with Disney, and here's this kid plucked out of the surf and put into his office in Hollywood and told to create. Because I'd come from a surfing magazine, because I had the voice of contemporary youth in my head & I could write that kind of story I was kinda pigeon-holed. I first went to work for Disney and I wrote Disney Sunday movies and I wrote about kids and I wrote about kid relationships and teen relationships, then I went to work on a TV show called Rags to Riches (clips) which was about 5 dancing girls, kind of like Annie times five, which was also a kids show and I could do those shows and actually enjoyed part of it, but I knew it wasn't what I was best at. 

VO: But he couldn't bury his love of the macabre forever. Defying the early 90's trend for reality TV shows like America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries, Carter was hired by the Fox Network to develop ideas and presented them with a script for a detective story with an unearthly twist. 

CC: What I pitched was really what the XF is. They'd never seen anything like it, they never heard anything like it & at the time reality TV programming was very big and this was the kind of dramatic storytelling that was I guess for them a bit of a mystery what it is I wanted to do and so they sent me packing and said no thank you. But Peter Roth who was the person I had come in from the Fox Studio with, we'd actually walked one floor up from the 2nd to the 3rd floor to pitch the idea was determined cuz he believed in the idea, was determined to sell it, so he made another meeting. I brought in some visual aids, I did a more complete pitch and brought in something called The Roper Survey (sp) that polled Americans and determined that 3% of the American population actually believed they had been abducted by aliens. And so what I wanted to show people was that in fact there is a scientific approach to this stuff, it wasn't all just cookie people pointing to the skies. That I actually had a way to mount these stories & while they would mostly be about extra terrestrials they would also be about the paranormal. Once again, because there was nothing like it on TV, they had a hard time wrapping their heads around it. But on the second pitch I still think it was because they just wanted to get me out of the room they agreed to buy the pilot idea which I proceeded to write and filmed about 3-4 months later. 

(Clip Pilot) 

Silence of the Lambs had just come out so I pitched them a kind of Jodie Foster like character, a woman who came to the FBI who met up with a man who had been kind of banished to the basement and he had uncovered a series of files called X Files which had been put away on a shelf and left to gather dust. He had in the finding of these files and ultimately the investigation of them come to believe that his sister had been abducted by aliens-because his sister had disappeared when he was 12 and she was 8 

(Clip Pilot) 

She would be the person who would be sent to debunk his work. Little did she know that she by doing that would be a member of a conspiracy to shut down Mulder's investigations because in fact, the truth is that there are extra terrestrials and the world & the FBI & the government know good and well there are. 

(Clip Pilot) 

DD came in to read for the part of Fox Mulder along with a lot of other people and I used to think I was a pretty good judge of character. He came in and he read for the part and he was terrific, but he had a kind of slow delivery and I thought this person seems good-he's a good actor, and I'd seen his reel and the casting director was very high on him. But I thought because he spoke slowly I thought that this is a person who may not be too bright and I remember saying something to him like: OK, we'd like to bring you into read but can you please sort of imagine yourself as an FBI agent for the next week before you read and it was kind of a…talking down to this person who ultimately I'd found out would be whip smart and one of the most well read people I know. 

(Clip Pilot) 

There were very few people who saw GA as DS or at least the character they were reading on the page. I don't know quite what they were imagining but I think a lot of people always fall back on the tried and true and successful on television and they wanna cast the bombshell, they wanna cast the girl that everyone wants to sleep with is really how it works in Hollywood. So they were looking for a sex kitten, they were looking for someone who you might find on Charlies Angels. So here I bring in this terrifically serious good actress GA who is very young and she reads for the part and actually she read with David and was very good and no-one saw it because no-one knew who GA was. And she came in a little dishevelled and she didn't look anything like the woman you now see on screen. But I really had to put my foot down and say this is the person I want to do this show with I don't wanna do it with anyone else, and it was a very lonely vote, but I remember walking out of the office the day she got the part because I demanded she get the part. Feeling very much like my career was on the line. 

(Clip Pilot) 

The approach to M&S has always been from me the platonic relationship, that they shared something which was a mutual respect. That the sexual tension there was brought to us by the audience not by the characters. This was something that I had a hard time explaining to the people at Fox when I was developing the series because they wanted the typical end cheap and easy sexual tension with the characters and every day I was on the phone with the people at Fox they were wondering what we were doing, they wanted sexual tension. There were notes and notes and notes and it was a very tedious and intense and somewhat nerve wracking pilot shoot. 

(Clip Pilot) 

The ending of the Pilot which actually was shot differently than it appears but you would never know it. In the pilot episode of the XF they being the studio and the network were determined for Scully to have a boyfriend. For someone to create a romantic tension between Scully have to choose between two men, and so she has a boyfriend who she sees before she goes off on her caper with Mulder... 

(Clip with S & Ethan) 

...and who she ultimately comes home to and the end scene with S where she is bed and she gets a phone call from Mulder you don't know it but next to her is her boyfriend Ethan and you just can't see him because the room is dark and he is framed out of the shot. 

(Clip end scene phone call) 

VO: Carters instinct that this unconsummated relationship between M&S would in the long run be more powerful proved to be correct. Here is the shot that therefore never made the final version. (Clip end scene phone call with Ethan) 

CC: We cut the film and two hours before they actually watched the pilot we turned in the project. I was told subsequent to that screening that there was spontaneous applause after the piece and that Rupert Murdoch turned around and told everyone that he loved it. So there was a wonderful and spontaneous reaction to the pilot, but like a lot of TV shows with good pilots they turn into bad series. No-one knew where the series would go and no-one really knew what kind of hit we had on our hands. 

VO: Slowly but surely audiences started to build. Drawn to this potent mix of weird science and paranoia as well as to movie style production values and one of the most haunting theme tunes ever heard on television. 

CC: There are two types of XF episodes really. There are the stand-alone episodes which are the cases that M&S pursue, ghosts, human flukeworms, various and sundry elements of weird science. 

(Clips of weird stuff on XF) 

But the mythology has been the back bone, the spine of the show and it is the government involvement in a conspiracy and a certain secret involvement in the conspiracy with the aliens that has really given the XF its body. 

(Clip of CSM in Pentagon Facility) 

One of my favourite movies is All the Presidents Men. It was for me and still is, I know every frame of that movie and it is a wonderful movie in that it tells a story that you already know. You already know the outcome of the event and yet it is as tense and well told a story as I think has ever been on screen, and it was terrific performances and directing and terrific writing and storytelling. 

(Clip from film) 

For me it is still a touchstone (wa-hey! -Ed) when I think of the conspiracy of the XF when I think of the mythology of XF All the Presidents Men is always coming up, its always popping into my head. 

(Clip M&X meet in car park) 

I've always had these kind of hard and fast rules on XF about what we can and can't do, what you can see, what you can't see, what the camera can do how the camera tells a story. What I've found is that ultimately my rules are best followed until they're broken. 

(Clip) I have a rule about panning the camera. We can't pan the camera like a character we can't pan from something to something else unless there is a reason to move that camera because I don't wanna be watching the story I wanna be telling the story. So using the camera is a very particular approach on the XF because you have to scare people, you got to create tension and suspense you've gotta be telling someone's story you have to be in someone's head. 

(Clip-Wetwired woman washing dishes) 

My rules were about point of view and this is a very fundamental part of storytelling. Unless you understand who's story you're telling at any one point in the scene you are probably putting the camera in the wrong place. So really it was bout camera placement, about point of view, it was about putting the camera in the right place at the right time which is ultimately what a director has to do anyway. 

(Clip-Wetwired continued) 

One of the secrets of the XF is how little you see and that's both a matter of good scary storytelling, you're actually more scared of what you don't see, and its also a function of budget because we don't have a lot of money to show you what we'd like to show you. 

(Clip-Paperclip) 

But I was determined when I created XF to never let there be a moment where the audience wasn't being propelled through the movie, where the characters weren't being propelled through the movie where there wasn't something happening. I called it event storytelling I actually tried to develop a term for it because I wanted there to be never a dull moment. 

(Clip-action clips) 

VO: At the heart of the series has been a shift in our view of M&S. Gradually S scepticism has melted leaving the viewer more and more convinced that M's truth really is out there. 

CC: There are scenes where M presents to S the case and S basically gives him the scientists perfect analytical debunking of his theory and that is what the XF begins on that very important and kind of combative scene between these two people. The show has ended up playing that scene out now for 8 years. 

(Clip-Pusher) 

Because we are all basically skeptics at heart even those of us who want to believe really take S side which is prove it to me, show it to me I don't believe it until you can give me scientific proof. That's really our point of view. 

(Clip-whammy!) 

M is always taking a leap he's always 3 steps ahead, she's always chasing him, going with him and then pulling him back. That is the way the stories were best told. That was as good as it lasted and then the show began to take on M 's point of view in a way because M is always right, and it is really the exchange of those points of view as storytellers for the writers and directors and the actors that have created such wonderful variety in the show. 

(Clip-born again?) 

The characters of M&S just sort of came out of equal parts of me, my skeptical nature and my passionately faithful nature I really have a yearning to have a religious experience So I think that certainly their personal philosophies are come from me. M's sense of humour I think to the extent that I wrote him in the pilot comes from me. DD has added so much more to the character. GA sceptical nature, her analytic and her scientific approach really comes from me too. 

VO: Surrounding M&S is a shadowy world of deceit and denial. People via a cast of equally shadowy characters. The most important amongst them, their long suffering boss: Walter S Skinner. (Clip-Small Potatoes) 

CC: There are several important characters on the XF MP who plays AD skinner is a very important character, a pivotal character in that he divides his loyalties between the characters of M&S. He is a person who is a friend to both of these characters, yet his professionalism keeps one foot in the FBI camp. 

(Clip-Triangle elevator) 

That's something that has been very fun to play with because he'll jump from one side of the line to the other. He's been a very strong important presence in the show and has provided a real connection to a beauracracy in a system that give M&S the ability to go out and investigate these capers each week. 

(Clip-"I'm saying this as a friend..") 

The character of Deep Throat was all important in the early seasons of the show. He was the government man involved with the conspiracy who became M's confidant. He was killed off in the 1st season. 

(Clip Deep Throat) 

But he was replaced by a character named X...

(Clip X) 

And there is of course the ultimate villain in the XF CSM, sometimes known as Cancerman. He is such a surprise he appears in the Pilot episode as a non speaking character and it took him about a year to actually speak his first word. Not until the 2nd year did he actually have complete sentences. 

(Clip CSM) 

So, he has become the devil who will not die, and M&S arch enemy. 

VO: With one major success now to his credit, Carter was soon looking for new scary places to point his cameras. This time visiting the inner world of the serial killer. 

CC: It was a completely different approach from the XF and I think people weren't quite prepared for what it was I was trying to do. I wanted to tell a story about the very human monsters. I wanted to tell a story about these serial killers and the psychotics and the people who are standing next to you in line at the supermarket. These were the kind of stories we couldn't really tell on the XF because we were sort of hemmed in by our paranormal approach. 

(Clip Millennium) 

You get such a variety of tales with the XF, millennium seemed to keep a very narrow focused point of view and I think ultimately that's what made it not the hit the XF would become. 

(Clip Harsh Realm) 

VO: But the cutting edge is a hard place for a producer to repeat success. Harsh Realm, a series with an even more complex blend of intrigue and virtual reality, proved too obscure for its nervous backers. 

CC: With Harsh Realm we were taking something that had not only never been done, a franchise that had never been used, but we were adding a virtual reality element to it which was a little bit of a difficult sell. You had to understand the concept in order to understand the series. So it was a very complex idea and I think ultimately because the series was only 9 episodes the network lost faith in it. 

(Clip Harsh Realm) 

You have to be able to have a batting average. You can't expect to go out and hit a home run every time but of course you always set out with that as your goal but I realised too that what I do in doing a kind of non franchised show, doing a different kind of TV series I'm going to either succeed in a big way or fail in a big way and I've got to be prepared to do that. Now I feel like in my three times out in last going on 10 years now I think that I've had a wonderful success, a moderate success, and I think I've had a good lesson in what is maybe pushing the envelope a little too much. 

(Clip of DD interviewing TLG) 

DD: Now do you see any possibility of the Lone Gunmen spinning off into their own series? 
TB: I can see them spinning off
TLG: <laughs>
DH: A series of spin-offs on their own I think..! 

(Clip Lone Gunmen Series) 

VO: But this is no longer a joke. The computer nerds finally get their place in the spotlight and star in Carters new series. 

CC: The XF has now spawned a new series, we have a spin-off series we're working on, actually begins filming today. Its called The Lone Gunmen and it stars the three computer geeks: Frohike, Byers & Langley who have been on the show since the beginning. They actually debut in an episode called EBE. 

(Clip EBE) 

CC: Anyway, they've got their own series now and its really a wonderful departure from the XF. Its light, its kind of a send-up of Mission Impossible, and it a chance for us as writers and producers to spread our wings a little bit 

(Clip TLG) 

VO: Back on the main set there are big changes ahead. 

CC: At some point during the 7th season of the XF, DD came to me and he said that if he was going to go on he had to go on in a reduced way. He had things he wanted to do in his life. I appreciated that, and so DD will be in fewer episodes this season than he normally would be. Really what it's a chance to do is a chance to add someone new to the series which I think is a good thing to do at this point anyway. Everyone knows the new character we've added as the Terminator Guy. He was the liquid metal man and his name is Robert Patrick and he is an excellent actor with tremendous range who has come in and played the character we've created to a tee. I'm already in the middle of season 8 I can tell you now that this is a relationship that is working in big ways. 

(Clip Within) 

VO: Never one to be underemployed, Carter is currently planning a feature film with a new twist on the paranormal. 

CC: About a year ago a book was brought to my attention and actually it is kind of in the same vein as XF but it's a real story about a man named Ted Serious (SP) who was really possibly the missing link, or a link to the proof of paranormal phenomena and it's a story about a man who was a bellhop who had the ability to photograph his thoughts onto photographic film. But its really a story about a relationship between a psychologist and a this man and I think it's a wonderful, will be a wonderful movie, and we're trying to get that written and filmed in the next short while here. 

VO: Although his name is now forever branded with an X, Carter keeps praying that there is a life for him elsewhere. 

CC: When you had a certain kind of success you start thinking about how it is you're going to be remembered and you start wondering if this is all your life has added up to, so I guess I would like to be remembered as the creator of the XF but would like to think I have a lot of good ideas left, a lot of good energy left which I do, and I have some range in me that will allow me to tell many other different kinds of stories.

Source: BBC, thanks the amazing klair for this transcript! (also partly modified by me)