INTERVIEW 2: Chris Carter

looks at their work, particularly Hopkins. In addition, I interviewed Carol Rainey, who is Bud hopkins ex wife and former research partner, about him and his research. That interview is a bonus episode from season one. So with that in mind, here's my chat with Chris Carter. Could you introduce yourself Chris Carter, best known as creator of The X Files. Let's talk a little bit about the origin of the X Files. How did you come up with that idea or who did you work with? I had an idea

way back in the nighties. There was a show on that I loved when I was a kid called Cold Check. The night Stalker. It was the scariest thing I've ever seen on TV. So I thought, there's nothing scary on TV. Why don't I try to do a show that is as scary as that one. I pitched the idea to Brandon Chartikoff when I was at NBC, and he passed on it. And then I was hired by twenty Century Fox to create TV shows, and I pitched the same idea to Peter Roth, and he said he had been

thinking about the same thing. So I sat down and came up with the characters of Moldern Scully FBI agents. I was inspired, especially you can see Scully's red hair by Silence of the Lambs. That was an early inspiration. So I came up with these two characters, and I kind of turned the tables on what would be the stereotypical believer in skeptic Maiden Molder the male, the believer in Scully the female the skeptic. I wanted to make her not only a doctor, but a scientist, so she

could refute Molders claims with her hard science. So you had this idea for a series that would be scary, and how did you know? How did UFOs come to be serve a central part of that. There were two

things I've been reading about UFOs and alien abductions. But also I was given, just by chance, a survey called the Roper Survey, which was done by Dr John Mack, who any UFO afficionado will know well, and it said that millions of Americans believed in the UFO phenomenon, some millions less believed they had actually seen a UFO, some millions less believed they had had contact, but that there

was interest in the phenomenon. And so I thought the first thing and I would like to do is play with that in a personal way, making molder Sister an abducte, which is what his entry was into the world of the paranormal. What what kind of source material you're looking at? And yet you were, as you were thinking about the particularly the UFO component of the X Files, I had kind of three go to guys was Dr John mac,

David Jacobs, and Bud Hopkins. Those were the three people that I read mostly and I had I really developed my uh sense of all things UFOs and and abductions through reading their books. Yeah, I would say that those are my go to guys. You know, I know that those three were really sort of involved in in the sort of abduction movement, I guess in the in the eighties and nineties. But it seems like there's also these other components two the X files UFO sort of mythos um,

one of which is, you know, the government conspiracy. The government knows more than they're letting on. They're doing a lot to try and cover it up. What were some of the source material or the inspiration or whatever for that, you know, that's part of the literature. But I've always been interested in conspiracies, I think because I was a child of the Watergate era. You know, I was a disbeliever in what our government was telling us and a

believer that they were keeping things from us. So they fit in perfect with the UFO literature, which is all about government, you know, black budget, secret operations and all the reasons there are for the government to keep the truth about extraterrestrial life from the American public, and those would you know, things that are you know, scientific, cultural, religious, It would upend a lot of the institutions, uh in society.

And when you were looking at I guess particularly the Jacobs Hopkins mac stuff, like what was your what was your assessment of what they were coming up with. Did this seem more like sort of ideas for fictional storylines, or did it at the time seem sort of compelling as a possible um description of of things that were

actually happening. And I asked partly because you know, I've talked to um people have made, you know, certainly less influential things about UFOs, and you know, for the large part, they seem to be really looking at sort of these fictional representations as a way of getting out something that they feel is at some level, you know, true or

at least like highly possibly true. And I was kind of interested because it does seem like other than other you know, there's other things like if you're doing a Western and you're in you're and you're doing research into what was it like in the in the Western the eteen eighties and nineties or or what have you, that there's certain sort of you know, kind of undisputable facts or things that are I think, are you quote unquote true to whereas most of the ting about UFOs really

seems in dispute. So it seems like that's a slightly different thing in figuring out what you want to use and how you want to use it. Am I Am I thinking too much about this? No? I mean I think even the believers, guys like David Jacobs and Bud Hopkins and John Matt they doubted certain accounts, and they doubted certain individuals, and they doubted themselves sometimes. But when three smart people do the kind of research that they did and come up with as a bottom line, I

believe in the phenomenon. It's powerful, smart people doing investigative science on the subject. That was for me that was very, very powerful. They were the ones to help paint the picture that became the backdrop for the X Files Alien Mythology. Could you talk a little bit about the development of the mythology as as a series progress, because um, it

sounds like you didn't have that altogether when the series started. No. I had what I would consider to be the kind of foundation of the mythology that was based in things that anybody could read about alien abductions and kind of classic scoopmark stars, the triangular shapes, it kind of shape that appeared on Scully's back and the pilot episode. So I had the ideas that I had taken from all of the accumulated science and background on alien abductions, and

I created a world with the episode. Actually, if you watch the first and second episode of The X Files and the season finale, which is called The erlen Meyer Flask, you will really get a foundational view of the X Files mythology. Now, there's this idea that the government has been keeping all this stuff quiet secret for their own purposes, and that one day somebody will get them to disclose,

or there will be reason to disclose the truth. I think that's where the X Files mythology took flight from the accepted Expiles mythology, and so we were imagining the world before disclosure and modern Scully as the people seeking to learn the truth. So you mentioned the Arlan Meyer Flask, which I watched recently with my daughter. You know that there's so many sort of iconic figures, I guess, and

things that happen. You know, the smoking Man, he serve an iconic figure now, and there's a there's a deep throat figure, and you know the erlan Meyer Flask. There's they go to a warehouse sort of out of the way, sort of rundown warehouse and find, you know, what appeared to be Men Underwater being developed, or what have you. What sort of assumptions were you making about people's understanding of these issues or thoughts about these issues that kind

of went in into creating the storyline. You know, I'm thinking also to U two episodes that morgana. Wong did. I'll preface that by saying, when we started out the show, I told this staff that I didn't want to I didn't want to see aliens for five years. I wanted to keep them in the shadows and the deep background.

That lasted all of about a year. Glenn Morgan and James Wong did two great episodes, one called e B and another one called Little Green Men, and we actually did see an alien and Little Green Men, which was the season opener for season two. So we took a lot of what people knew about aliens or believed about aliens and UFOs, extraterrestrials and the government conspiracy. And there was a certain fascination with Roswell with the area one and I would call them not tropes, but they were

part of the X file. I'm sorry, the extraterrestrial alien abduction UFO lore. You know, I think Bolder, Molder and Scully are I think of the iconic duos in uh in television history, at least in what I've watched. I think I think it's them in Kirk and Spock are sort of closest to my heart, and I think a

lot of people's hearts. You know, there's clearly this interesting play between you know, skepticism and belief, And how did you see the arc across the seasons as far their relationship and they're edging each other towards their own beliefs. How do you see that that playing out? Well? I can speak to the structure of the way we did the seasons. We did I think six mythology episodes typically per season, three two parters actually, and that kind of

became our formula. The way Molder and Scully approached the other, typically h sixteen to nineteen cases was by taking positions, by taking hard edged science versus a obdurate and determined belief in the paranormal on Molder side. And it became kind of competitive, and it became a really a long nine year flirtation between the two characters and a seduction of sorts. It's funny when you are selling your position, and this is something I always find interesting with Mulder

and Scully. When you are selling your beliefs in your position and your your side to your to the other side to the opposition, which would if Mueller is selling to Scully, there's something seductive about it. It just became kind of the nature of the show. So when it ends, do you feel like Mulder has been more brought towards skepticism or Scully has been brought more towards belief or

do you think they fight to a fight to a standstill? Well, you know, someone said, how can Scully go for nine years and still be a disbeliever with all she's seen? And so we played with that a little bit. We actually had her witness things and she came to the other side and Mulder went to skepticism. So we did play with that idea through the course of this show.

But it's a fair argument that Scully uh seeing so much that she could had no answers for because science does not have answers for these things, that she would come to mother's side more readily than Mud would go to her side. When we first started this show, there was something interesting that happened. Fox had bought my pitch. They had liked my outline. They had liked the pilot script. We had begun casting and we had filmed the pilot.

We had shown the pilot to the network. They were very happy with it, but they wanted me to put a disclaimer up before the show, saying that for the viewer, that these are all based on actual events. It was as if we were creating a kind of documentary in the network's mind. And I went along with it. But then it's like, for the pilot episode, I went along with it, but then it's like, I realized, that's not

what the show is. The show is fictionalized, scripted storytelling vehicle for these characters Molder and Scully looking for the truth. And I said to them, you know, they wanted to wrap up the episodes at the end, kind of in a neat bow, with an explanation for what Malder and Scully had seen. And I said, that's exactly what you don't want. You don't want to have the answers. You want to be left with wonder, you want to be left with ah, you want to be left with your

own opinions at the end. And it took me a real hard sales pitch to get them to understand that. Yeah, well that seems critical. Uh. You know, I think I feel like that's that's such a big part of the X Files, and I think part of what really captured

people's imagination, even people talking about it today. Is there something that you're trying to get across, Especially in the in the Mythos episodes, I was trying to create a sense of awe and the idea that science doesn't have all the answers, and that religion doesn't have all the answers, and that there are things beyond the pale. I liked all that, but I also have to say I come at this from more Scully side than Molder's side, with a science bias, and it's I really have a kind

of prove it to me philosophy. And so really it was me. The thesis was my own troubled perspective on what is true and what is not. I want to see an alien, I want to see a UFO. These are things that I want to believe in. But thus the poster on Molder's wall, I want to have my hopes confirmed. I want that experience, uh, and I'm longing for it as his Molder, But I'm also doubtful of it that I will ever have it, which is skilling.

And so you know, in the course of you know, the research for the X files, and I'm sure you must have had zillions and sillions of people getting in touch with you about their experiences, how did you find or did you find that your thoughts about UFOs changed?

You know, people ask me if I'm a believer or a skeptic, and I say, I'm a skeptic, but I have to say that with a asterisk because I've met so many people who tell so many believable stories, stories that they absolutely believe in that who am I to doubt them? So while I am skeptical because there isn't a lot of hard, hard evidence, There isn't a lot of come helling testimony that leads to the heart evidence.

Uh there is, there are, just there are a lot of personal accounts that one can take with a grain of salt. So you didn't find I mean, did you ever feel like you were led on to something that that most people or just about everybody wouldn't have known in the course of this stuff. It clearly wasn't something that would have changed your mind. I didn't find anything

that necessarily changed my mind. There was something interesting that I did that I had a chance to do, and and I had written about regression hypnosis, and this is the way Bud Hopkins worked and John mac worked, taking people back through their memories, maybe removing the screen memories that the aliens had implanted them with. And I actually got to sit in on a regression hypnosis went. I flew to Boston while the show was being produced and

sat in on one of these events. And it was powerful to be sitting next to someone who is going through the abduction experience. In this case, it was someone who was taken from a campground. So who am I to say that it's not true when it seemed so vivid and powerful in this in this person's mind. Can you talk a little bit about the dynamic of the of the writing of the X Files and and you know the other things that kind of went into create eating the storyline and sort of the look and feel.

They are very very strong. Yeah. I was really lucky to hire two teams of smart guys, and that would be people have mentioned already. Glenn Morgan and James Wong were a writing team, uh, and then a writing team of Howard Gordon and Alex Gonza, who were also too

smart guys who went on to create Homeland together. So I had these capable people, and the way we began to work was we would gather together and people would pitch their ideas for episodes, and if the ideas were good, and they almost always were, that person would go and create a plot, so basically go to the drawing board

and create the plot for the story. They would bring that plot, which was done on three buy five cards on a bulletin board, to the group and we would go through it and listen, and once again I got very lucky. People had very good ideas of how to develop the modern Scully storyline through horror, thriller, suspense, and paranormal episodes. So the X Files from the very beginning was not just going to be a UFO alien show.

It was going to be more than that. And uh, I had actually created a marketing package before any of these people came on, when I turned the pilot and originally into twenty Century Fox, spelling out what the show was. So it just happened that I was able to pair with the right people to bring the idea of making it a horror show, a suspense show, a thriller, what have you. That it became really three fifths of the time it was something other than alien and aliens and UFOs.

I'm really interested in this idea of working with other people on something that's essentially, you know, your brainchild. Was everybody sort of on the same page, particularly with Moulder and Scully and how they would react to certain things or was askedly that that was hashed out over the course of of meetings. You know, I have to say that the characters were they developed over time, that people added to them, that people created and created nuances for

the characters. But the idea that they were the believer in the skeptic and their personalities were really came from the pilot. And so while everyone added to the creation in the most amazing ways, and the show wouldn't be the same without those additions. Modern Scully, I think, or Modern Scully from the beginning, and they just uh their characters and their stories and their backgrounds and their attitudes changed with time because that's the nature of producing a

television show, right. Interesting, So what is it about UFOs that you think makes for good and compelling TV or movies? I think it's interesting because I think people look up into the sky at night and wonder if the truth is out there, if the if there are other civilizations.

So it has a kind of human component to it, and the idea that the aliens have in many cases humanoid qualities, and that they actually seem to have some steak and humanity and they have some either good or bad purposes for being year it's our fear of the other that is natural, and in this case, I think it's the fear of a another that has either a

good or evil intent. Have you been have you been following what's been going on recently, you know, in the last couple of years, the revelations that the Pentagon continued to have a quote unquote UFO program up until very recently. You know, you have Marco Rubio, Senator Marco Rubio asking the Department of Defense to give him unclassified report of what they've been doing and what they potentially know. Do you have thoughts? Yeah? I do. I mean Obama asked

the Defense Department for any files. Hillary Clinton, who with John Fodesta on her staff, we're avid believers, or I should say want to believers, and the phenomenon were had even said during our campaign that they were going to get to the bottom of it. So you know, this has been going on for quite a while. People want to know. I think Bill Clinton wanted to know, and so Marco Rubio is just the latest in a long line.

I think. I thought it was interesting that Harry Reid basically did have a secret alien project UFO project that he financed with taxpayer dollars, which was not I was not unsurprised. How do you how do you look at the legacy of the X Files. That's a big question, you know. I hope that it was nine years of quality entertainment. Two put a big stamp on the whole thing.

But I think that what as you say, modern skelling the iconic duo, I think this show was always While it was about a group of or I should say, a file cabinet full of spiles of the unknown, it really was a show about Molder and Scully in their relationship.

So I think the legacy is those two characters. It's funny the way Molder and Scully now kind of rolls off the tongue and you know exactly what you know that means the believer in the skeptic and that I would take you know, that name Molder, which isn't the most poetic, malifluous name, and parrot with Scully and somehow Mulder and Scully sounds as if the two characters have existed forever. Yeah. Absolutely, What if I missed? Is are

there other? Is there something else that people should know? Now? You know, it's funny when you when I think about the show, I think about you know, it was always surprising to me. I was mentioning the writers and what people would bring in was always interesting to me and things I hadn't imagined, takes on the show that I haven't imagined. But once those scripts were written, you are our first audience was always the crew, and you knew that if the crew liked an episode, it was a

good episode. They were our toughest critics and they really invested themselves in the show because they liked the show. But I think about taking a script and handing it over to the people like the production designers and seeing what they came up with, what their visions were, and it seems like every episode they always came up with something that none of us quite imagined, or a way to do something that none of us quite imagined. I think the pilot episode was done by Michael Namursky, and

then the five seasons. The next five seasons were Graham Murray, Uh these people, Uh she speak to a case in point, Dwayne Berry. What Graham Murray came up with for an examination table of this character? Dwayne Berry, surrounded by Gray Aliens was production design costume, said Deck. You know, all these people came together and created something that was better

than I ever imagined. Yeah, did you did you know at the time, well you're working at this on this that this would have like a very long life beyond its initial run. No, there are so many pitfalls that are you try to avoid through the process, and they are They could be one bad note from a studio executive could change the course of the show, much like

I was. You know, there was something that Jillian Anderson became pregnant during the first season of the show, and we scrambled because we didn't know what to do, how to uh if she was going to be pregnant for the whole first part of the second season, how we were going to do Molder and Scully. And we figured out a clever way to do that, a way that

actually played into the larger storyline. But I actually had a network executive say to me, you've got to get rid of her, and he was, you know, in no uncertain terms, And so you have to fight against that. You know, you can't establish these two characters and then just break them up because he uh doesn't want a pregnant woman working on the show. It worked out that we were able to film Scully and I think it was episode five of season two, and she is taken

away by it. I just mentioned Dwyane Berry. She is abducted by this character, Dwayne Berry, which leads to what is supposed by Mother as an alien abduction. You know, there's actually one other thing I'd like to say about Sure. They talked about its origins, and I talked about Silence Phil Lambs, and you know, it was loomed huge in my mind. I loved the movie, and it's really that I was inspired by that Jodie Foster character to a

large part. But I think that also and this actually plays out in an episode called Fire on the series UH in the first season, where Malder is paired with the British woman who refers to Sherlock Holmes. I read everything. I read all of Sherlock Holmes as a kid, and I loved that kind of storytelling. I loved Sherlock and and Watson's interplay, and I think that is a big for me, was a big part of the dynamic between

Mother and Scully as well. People are gonna be really excited to hear this as I was excited to hear it myself. Thanks Kobe, Okay, thanks so much, Chris. Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart three D Audio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. This episode was written and hosted by Toby Ball and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Say, with executive producers Alex Williams, Matt Frederick,

and Aaron Mankey. Learn more about Strange Rivals over at Grimm and Mild dot com, and find more podcasts from my Heart Radio by visiting the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.