I might add before going into the Chris Carter interview that there was a screening of Maniac, a new psycho thriller on May 11 also in the Chinese 6 on Hollywood and Higland through the sponsor IFC. It wasn't part of Hero Complex, but Elijah Wood did show up for it. It played the same time as Pan's Labyrinth. Did I mention the Beverly Hills Film Festival was sharing the space with us too?
Chris Carter came out to a sold out audience who gave standing applause for the creator of the X-Files at it's 20th Anniversary event. He came out after the episode Jose Chung's From Outer Space, which was shown as part of a three episode block including the pilot and Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose at the finale for Hero Complex 2013.
Chris got into a light conversation about the series, actors and quite a bit about how it was filming in Vancouver, now a standard for TV shows, but uncommon back in the 90s. He would later be joined by the brothers Darin Morgan and Glen Morgan, writers on the show who are very much beloved by fans of the series.
Looking at the pilot again, Chris just saw all the mistakes he made and how hard it was to get it made. Darin and Glen chimed in about the fights with the network over them wanting Scully as sex kitten and there should be a sexual relationship between Scully and Mulder. Carter never wanted that, he wanted a professional relationship and noted that the pilot might be the closes Mulder and Scully got throughout the series not including dreams and delusions.
Chris went on how he doesn't see
connections with any other show and the X-Files not even Lost. Only that
it was serialized science fiction and that everything that was before previous shows inspired future writers.
Then it was Vancouver this and that. At that point in TV it wasn't used that much, but now too much is filmed out of LA, it hurts the local economy. Chris talked about the misty and moody weather perfect for some episodes and how other episodes would suffer if they needed sunshine. A found memory or memories of Carter's was David Duchovny's February calls on Fridays every season or so on how bad the weather was in Vancouver. He had a big smile when he talked about David's discomfort.
On his Mulder and Scully, he added how they grew into their roles. He watched two episodes back to back with the audience and noticed how well Gillian and David changed in their roles. The Morgans added Gillian was the master of the annoyed face.
Darin and Glen asked Chris if they could join him for the festival and he agreed, so later in the conversation they joined Chris on stage, mentioning some of their famous episodes like Home throughout the rest of the talk. One of the times the incest episode was mentioned, Chris told how the unit production director told him the show had gone too far.
He praised the Morgans for their research before the internet was up. Glen Morgan revealed traveling to the university libraries of LA for all the occult and murder knowledge.
Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose written by Darin had the joke about really being a story about the Morgans' Dad and what he said to them when they were young.
"Lightning Boy" started out as a 3x5 card on Carter's wall. He forgot what his idea was, but a writer came up with something just from the card alone. The Morgans' went on about crunches where some episodes had to be rewritten in a night, so not everything could be solved or be perfect, so is the fate of big serialized series.
The audience asked about a third film to which Chris just replied to keep up interest, but nothing is in the works right now.