THE X-FILES has been a huge international hit since it launched in the US three years ago, and it has just won three Golden Globe awards. Now its creator, Chris Carter, has taken an even bigger risk with his new series, Millennium. In Britain, Alan Yentob, director of programmes at BBC-TV, asks Carter about the United States’s millennial fears of chaos and violence as reflected in this new series.
Alan Yentob: Chris, you started off first as a surfer, then as editor of a surfing magazine. I’ve allied this to one of your quotes: “I’m a non-religious person looking for a religious experience” – is that what surfing and The X-Files have in common: looking for a religious experience?
Chris Carter: I think The X-Files is looking for meaning and looking for what is, for me, tantamount to a religious experience – a paranormal experience. I was raised a Baptist – I’m a lapsed religious person, though I’d like to find something that tested my beliefs, tested my faith.
How did you get from editing a surf magazine to The X-Files?
It is a very illogical and sort of a kookie career. I worked for the surfing magazine because I love to surf and it was a way to postpone entering adulthood. I also learned to sit my butt on a chair and put my fingers on a keyboard and write a lot of words. But I got to be where I am because I met the woman who is now my wife, who has been a screenwriter for probably twice as long as I have. I told her a story – and she encouraged me to write it. Nothing ever happened with it, but it got me a lot of attention.
And then you went to work for Disney?
Yes, and that got me into the business. I wrote what everyone wanted me to. I learned my craft and I finally got a chance with The X-Files to do something that I’d been wanting to do.
Was it accepted at the first pitch?
No, they didn’t know what it was and it was turned down at first. But I was so certain that it was a good idea, as was the man who’s now the president of 20th Century Television. They wanted to be in business with me; they bought the idea.
Were there any antecedents?
I grew up on shows like The Twilight Zone. The Avengers was a love of mine and I see its influence in the Mulder- Scully relationship. The show that was most inspirational and The X-Files is homage to it, is The Night Stalker, where a newspaper reporter would find these strange things – vampires, ghosties, ghouls, beasties and goblins and come back and try to tell people about them, and they wouldn’t believe him. It lasted only 18 episodes.
Mulder and Scully are essentially opposites: one is sceptical, the other is a believer. I get the impression that you see yourself as a sceptic but wanting the best of both worlds. You say – but I want to believe. And you see the desire in other people to believe the truth.
It’s in all of us. Even the hardened atheist. There’s some degree of hope in all of us that our faith can be tested, that we’ll see something that shakes us and moves us and lets us believe there’s something beyond the temporal and the mundane and the facts that we’re going to live and die.
The poster reads: “I want to believe”. You do too, but then you remember the rule – trust no one. There is that sense of distrust with institutions, with governments. Was that fundamental, that Mulder and Scully would be subversives, although they were in government employ? Mulder is the believer. Do you think that’s part of a tradition – like the errant cop – or is this new?
It’s a very personal feeling of mine and if it is particular to the moment, maybe I’m feeling what a lot of people are feeling. If there is a subversive quality, it comes out of my distrust of authority. So that feeling, and phrases like “trust no one”, “deny everything” and “apology is policy” – that is the way governments act. I think those are the political messages sneaking in there. It’s fun.
The TV people here have seen the pilot edition of Millennium. In terms of what you believe television is there to do – to entertain – this is altogether a darker, blacker piece of television than anything you’ve done. What made you feel you wanted to do it, and that there would be an appetite for a show like Millennium?
There are movies that I liked very much, like Silence of the Lambs and Seven, that I thought captured a mood and a colour that appealed to me and my sense of story- telling. So I was not trying to do anything that hadn’t been done before, with subject matter that hadn’t been approached before. I thought what movies that had taken on this subject matter lacked is this bright centre, this reason to go out and do something heroic, which is uncommon, at least in America.
Violence here is a big issue for me. I think America has become a dangerous place, particularly for women. So I wanted to create a very bright hero and I could only create him by setting him against a very dark background.
But is it then a moral tale, about good and evil in a way that The X-Files isn’t?
Yes, I think it is. I’ve created an idealised family situation; a husband and a wife who both live with the knowledge that the world is a dark place. She is clinical social worker – so she’ll be dealing with problems. He isn’t a psychic: but he’s developed an ability to think like the killer thinks. He’s able to imagine what a killer might be thinking. I think of them as working at the same types of problems and people. She is able to affect people before they become the kind of person he would hunt down to prevent killing again.
The series is called Millennium – there is a sense that we are moving into the third millennium, a sense of conspiracy theories, something rather sinister and evil. Is that thread, not yet a political thread but a social thread – going to weave its way through the series?
Definitely. It’s what this series is all about: the collapse of things, the chaos, the randomness, the uncertainty. These are all big, big ideas that we live with every day and we live in denial of them. I am going to put it in people’s faces. The idea is there may be some truth or connection to prophecy – biblical or other – motivating criminals to behave the way they do. The connections are loose, but we are on a downhill slide rather than an uphill one.
It’s very strong meat – it’s not the kind of material that easily finds its way on to the networks. You have to convince the networks and the regulators – the standards and practices. Do you feel any constraints about what you can or can’t do on network television today?
I am constrained, although I don’t feel the constraints are a problem. I’m not interested in pushing the limits of graphic violence. On The X-Files, we’ve done a good job of showing the results of violence, but not the violence itself, or the impending doom. I think that we’re all used to seeing gory movies, it’s had a dulling effect. Good storytellers are figuring out a way not to show these things. What I am concerned about is content, because I think that the climate of American television right now is very anti-reality – people want much lighter and more palatable fare.
So it’s a big ambition, one that you think can be accommodated both by the watchdogs in America and by the networks who want ratings. Have you tested this show?
Yes. It tested very well, there was a very high percentage of people who said they would love to see it again or see the series. And I believe that it is because of the heroic quality of it: they weren’t looking to be titillated or just scared. The series – we’re shooting the fourth episode currently – seems to be on track too.
We’re telling good, scary stories about the breakdown of things, the lack of justice in America – people taking justice into their own hands – and a lot of the forces out there that are causing people to go on crime sprees, random acts of violence. As we head towards 2000, I think that it is just natural – that the world we live in and this date that is looming give the series a shape and certainty a destination that I hope will be interesting to explore.
I gather that you got five years more of the The X-Files. So you’re not worried about crossing Millennium with that one?
We’ll see. I’m dedicated to it, I want to do five great years of The X-Files – anything beyond that will be gravy … With the new series it’s very hard. I took it on, not because I need to see if I can do it again, but as the countdown was ticking to 2000, I thought I could do this series now or never.You get a chance once every 1 000 years, I figured I’d better take it or someone else would.