The X Files (1998) The Making Of The X Files Movie
The X-Files (also known as The X-Files: Fight the Future) is a 1998 American science fiction thriller film based on Chris Carter's television series of the same name, which revolves around fictional unsolved cases called the X-Files and the characters solving them. It was directed by Rob Bowman, written by Carter and Frank Spotnitz and featured five main characters from the television series: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Mitch Pileggi, John Neville, and William B. Davis reprise their respective roles as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner, Well-Manicured Man, and the Cigarette-Smoking Man. The film was promoted with the tagline Fight the Future.
The film takes place between seasons five (episode "The End") and six (episode "The Beginning") of the television series and is based upon the series' extraterrestrial mythology. The story follows agents Mulder and Scully, removed from their usual jobs on the X-Files, and investigating the bombing of a building and the destruction of criminal evidence. They uncover what appears to be a government conspiracy attempting to hide the truth about an alien colonization of Earth.
Carter decided to make a feature film to explore the show's mythology on a wider scale and appeal to non-fans. He wrote the story with Frank Spotnitz at the end of 1996 and, with a budget from 20th Century Fox, filming began in 1997, following the end of the show's fourth season. Carter assembled cast and crew from the show, as well as some other, well-known actors such as Blythe Danner and Martin Landau, to begin production on what they termed "Project Blackwood". The film was produced by Carter and Daniel Sackheim. Mark Snow continued his role as X-Files composer to create the film's score.
The film premiered on June 19, 1998, in the United States, and received mixed reviews from critics but was a box office success, earning $189 million worldwide against a budget of $66 million. A sequel, titled I Want to Believe, was released ten years later.
The film takes place between seasons five (episode "The End") and six (episode "The Beginning") of the television series and is based upon the series' extraterrestrial mythology. The story follows agents Mulder and Scully, removed from their usual jobs on the X-Files, and investigating the bombing of a building and the destruction of criminal evidence. They uncover what appears to be a government conspiracy attempting to hide the truth about an alien colonization of Earth.
Carter decided to make a feature film to explore the show's mythology on a wider scale and appeal to non-fans. He wrote the story with Frank Spotnitz at the end of 1996 and, with a budget from 20th Century Fox, filming began in 1997, following the end of the show's fourth season. Carter assembled cast and crew from the show, as well as some other, well-known actors such as Blythe Danner and Martin Landau, to begin production on what they termed "Project Blackwood". The film was produced by Carter and Daniel Sackheim. Mark Snow continued his role as X-Files composer to create the film's score.
The film premiered on June 19, 1998, in the United States, and received mixed reviews from critics but was a box office success, earning $189 million worldwide against a budget of $66 million. A sequel, titled I Want to Believe, was released ten years later.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00You were about to go behind the scenes to witness the X-Files transformation from a
00:11hit TV series into a major motion picture.
00:16I'm Mitch Pelleggi.
00:17Join me along with series creator Chris Carter, director Rob Bowman, and stars David Duchovny
00:22and Gillian Anderson for The Making of the X-Files Movie.
00:28Scully?
00:29Yeah?
00:31Run!
00:59I'd read a lot of reports of the supernatural and of alien abduction and UFO sightings,
01:06and I just imagined that there must be some branch of government law enforcement who deals
01:11with these things.
01:12I'm Fox Mulder.
01:13This is Dan Scully.
01:14We're with the FBI.
01:15We'd like to ask you a few questions.
01:17The premise of the X-Files is two FBI agents exploring the paranormal from two different
01:23biases, one a skeptic, one a believer.
01:27The reason you're here, Agent Scully, is we want you to assist Mulder on these X-Files.
01:31You will write field reports on your activities, making your reports exclusively to this group.
01:36I might understand that you want me to debunk the X-Files project, sir?
01:41Agent Scully, we trust you'll make the proper scientific analysis.
01:45X-Files is born of and has always been driven by Mulder's sense of wonder and his belief
01:51in the unbelievable.
01:53Mulder, for the last 10 or 15 years, has believed that his sister was abducted by aliens when
01:58he was 12 and she was 8.
02:00He's kind of a very odd guy who's made a really odd choice with his life, which was,
02:07you know, in most people's eyes, kind of a stupid endeavor to devote all his energy to
02:12chasing UFOs.
02:13So who did you take off to get stuck with this detail, Scully?
02:17Actually, I'm looking forward to working with you.
02:19I've heard a lot about you.
02:21Oh, really?
02:22I was under the impression that you were sent to spy on me.
02:26The banter between Mulder and Scully is usually built around Mulder's taking them on a wild
02:31goose chase while Scully is looking for some proof or science to back it up.
02:35Mulder, look out!
02:39The evolution has just been the experiences.
02:51Mulder!
02:53Where is she?
02:57The more time that they spend together, the more care they have for each other.
03:02Scully!
03:07I believe that what we're looking for is in the X-Files.
03:11I'm more certain than ever that the truth is in there.
03:21We had been going along, cruising along with the show.
03:26It had gotten more and more successful through the years.
03:29And we had always said that we were making a little movie each week.
03:33And that was really the spirit in which the show was done on an episodic basis.
03:40And so I think the natural sort of extension of that, the idea, sort of popped up that
03:44why don't we do a movie?
03:45And it had been something we tossed around.
03:47It had been something we tossed around, but we realized at the end of five years
03:51it would be a great time to do a big event.
03:53Something that would celebrate and reward the hardcore viewers who had been watching
03:59the show since the beginning.
04:02The trick was to do a movie that wasn't just for X-Files fans, but appealed to the
04:07casual viewer or the non-watcher of X-Files.
04:11You could walk into this film having never heard of the X-Files or never seen one
04:17and enjoy it, definitely.
04:18I mean, there's no special knowledge that you have to know.
04:21There's no secret password.
04:23We were determined that this movie would make sense and be entertaining to people
04:28who had never seen the X-Files before.
04:30And that was sort of the litmus test for every scene, every idea that we put in that movie
04:35that it had to make sense coming to it fresh.
04:38But at the same time, we wanted to reward the fans.
04:41We felt like they'd be expecting and deserved to see some answers to some of the
04:46mysteries that have been raised in the series over the last five years.
04:49We've explored this mythology in so many different ways that it's time to get to some answers.
04:54And we've proven and disproven theories and conspiracies and guilty parties so many times
05:02that eventually we've got to show who's up to what and why they're doing it.
05:08And give the viewers and the new fans a great mystery with some sensational images
05:15and a Chris Carter script and a Mark Snow score
05:19and do it all, you know, the best we've ever done it with five years of practice.
05:24And it seems to me that it's basically the coup de grace of all of our work today.
05:30Trust no one, Mr. Mulder.
05:36Four years after the start of the series, filming began on the X-Files movie.
05:41To ensure the story remained a surprise, a certain amount of secrecy was necessary.
05:49There were certain precautions taken.
05:51The script was printed on red paper so it couldn't be Xeroxed.
05:55There was disinformation leaked all year long.
05:57There was an ending that wasn't written until actually just a few weeks ago.
06:02The movie begins with Mulder having a hunch.
06:06Mulder, when a terrorist bomb threat is called in,
06:08the rational purpose of providing that information is to allow us to find the bomb.
06:14Scully and Mulder are potentially going to be blamed for the death of some people in the bombing.
06:21It begins with, why do we have these dead bodies and what killed them?
06:24I can't tell you what killed this man. I'm not sure anybody else could claim to either.
06:28It goes into what has been going on for the past 45, 50 years.
06:32It's a global conspiracy with key players and the highest levels of power.
06:37It reaches into the lives of every man, woman and child on this planet.
06:40And you have conclusive evidence of this?
06:43Yes.
06:44The secrets are information that is about a government cover-up.
06:48The truth is something you'll never guess.
06:50You can't quit now.
06:51I need you on this.
06:54I'm already way past the point of common sense here.
06:56They are on the biggest case of all time.
06:59Up against obstacles they've never been up against before.
07:07Mulder! There's no time!
07:14So much for little green man.
07:17Over the last couple seasons especially, I think Mulder and Scully have grown together even more.
07:23I think the more time that they spend together and the more times that they save each other's lives,
07:30the more respect they have, the more care they have for each other.
07:35And that's basically continued pretty strongly over the past couple seasons.
07:41And so that's really where we find them again,
07:45is in this very productive, very respectful working relationship.
07:54And within the film there are some opportunities for them to get a little closer in certain ways than they have.
08:05In the series.
08:07You kept me honest.
08:10You made me a whole person.
08:13I owe you everything.
08:16Scully, you owe me nothing.
08:18There's a couple events take place where that brings them closer
08:24because of the nature of the situations that they're in the midst of.
08:30So the audience will have an opportunity to see a hint more of just a different flavor of their relationship.
08:40The reason the pairing works is probably because they're two interesting characters in their own right.
08:44You have Dana Scully who is so strong and so intelligent and so independent,
08:50and Mulder, a man who is everybody's hero,
08:54that they are equals and that they can come together and work together hand in hand
09:00in a platonic relationship and have the love and the respect and the caring
09:04and be considered as equals by others.
09:07I think that the most important thing for me about Mulder was
09:10the fact that he didn't care about what anybody else thought about what he was doing.
09:15So he had a real strength of, you know, like a screw you strength.
09:20So how did the producers of The X-Files bring such well-established characters
09:24and conflicts to a much larger canvas?
09:30We only wanted to go to the big screen if we could somehow deliver something bigger
09:34and more dynamic than we could do on the little screen.
09:38And the movie allows you to tell bigger stories on a bigger canvas
09:43and to do some very exciting visual storytelling.
09:47Spectacle is what I was looking for and this provides scope.
09:51We wouldn't be able to go to some place like this in the television series
09:55and to do a sequence like we've got planned here.
09:57So it really is a matter of size and of panorama.
10:02Scully!
10:06The movie is made up by many elements.
10:09One of those is Chris's script and the vision that Chris set forth five years ago.
10:17Chris and the show have evolved and gotten much more sophisticated
10:22and much better as we've gone on.
10:25Being the creator of the series and of these characters and of this film,
10:29he knows how he wants everything to feel.
10:34The importance of every moment in the big scheme of things.
10:38I wanted to exploit the visual tapestry that I thought that Chris and I were capable of.
10:45And he wrote this script knowing that I was going to direct it.
10:48He wrote it right to my strengths.
10:50We had a chance to cast some movie stars in the movie
10:53and we wanted to put people in who really fit the characters that we had written.
10:58And it just so happens that the people that I wrote the parts for
11:02really became available to us kind of miraculously.
11:05We wanted to bring in people who we felt were part of the X-Files world.
11:10And it was a careful selection, painstaking,
11:14to find people who could play these roles,
11:18who we felt lived inside of the X-Files world.
11:22And so that we were not sort of selling out
11:25because we had a larger palette, a larger screen,
11:28no commercials, you know, the things that differ from the TV show.
11:34And I certainly was thrilled, jumped up and down I think,
11:38a high five to Chris Carter when I found out that Martin Landau had signed to do it.
11:41My name is Kurzweil.
11:43Dr. Alvin Kurzweil.
11:45Am I supposed to know that name?
11:46Old friend of your father's.
11:50Making his feature film directorial debut is Rob Bowman,
11:54veteran of over 25 X-Files episodes.
11:59As an actor, you know, it's very easy for me to relate to Rob
12:02because I've been doing it for almost four years now.
12:05I mean, we have a shorthand.
12:06He understands the way I work and I understand the way he works.
12:09OK, in this scene I want you to imagine you're in a movie trailer.
12:12All right, we're going to give you a moment.
12:14I need a moment.
12:15OK, you there?
12:17Think of the POV.
12:18OK, let's go.
12:19He knows exactly what a scene needs.
12:21He really knows how to work with actors.
12:23And he can get very specific about what needs to be shifted within a scene
12:28to help us get to where we need to be.
12:31Jillian, when the front wheels hit, that's a good time to brace
12:35because that's when it shakes the camera a lot and looks good.
12:37I can literally look at Jillian and the way I say her name,
12:40she'll say, got it, I know what you want.
12:42David will say, have you got it?
12:43And I said, you know, I need one more.
12:44And he'll know exactly why I need one more.
12:46That allowed us more takes.
12:47It allowed us to get a little bit more done every day.
12:50And allows, I thought, to explore the characters just a little bit further.
12:54The first time I saw Dave and Jillian on a movie screen,
12:56they came on screen and I was kind of startled.
12:59I had never seen them proportionally huge compared to what I'm used to seeing them.
13:04And there was a moment where I sort of had to shake myself.
13:09And then I looked at them and realized that they're going to be on the big screen
13:13and they're going to be movie stars.
13:15And they've filled those bigger shoes, if you will,
13:18every bit as one might have hoped that they would.
13:21This is weird, Mulver.
13:24Very weird.
13:26With this broader palette, the makers of the X-Files movie
13:29had the freedom to attempt more sophisticated action sequences and stunts.
13:34Many of which stars David Duchovny and Jillian Anderson perform themselves.
13:42Fans of the show will be familiar with the kind of obstacles that Mulver and Scully run into.
13:49What is called upon us is more heightened than you usually find in the series.
13:54Well, that's one of the things I like about the character,
13:57is that, yeah, he's very cerebral,
14:01but, you know, he can get out there and jump on a train
14:04and, you know, run around and get beat up and do things like that.
14:09So I'm used to doing those kind of things.
14:12And on this, there's been a lot of physical stuff.
14:15There's been a lot of, like, climbing and a lot of jumping
14:18and, you know, a lot of, you know,
14:21There's been a lot of, like, climbing and a lot of jumping and running.
14:24There hasn't been any fighting.
14:26And I don't believe that I pull my gun in this show.
14:29Which is good, because when I pull it, I lose it.
14:31Which is one of the jokes on the TV shows.
14:34Whenever I pull my gun, it's gone. Somebody takes it from me.
14:39Making the X-Files movie proved to be far tougher on the film stars than they had anticipated.
14:44There's a lot of lifting for David.
14:46There's a lot of falling for me.
14:50There's bruises and bangs and soreness and lack of sleep and all-nighters
14:53and the Mojave Desert and, you know, freezing sound stages.
14:57It's completely human unfriendly.
15:00Cut it!
15:02In the middle of June, you're in the sound stage. It's 29 degrees.
15:04You walk outside, it's 104 degrees.
15:06The crew is dropping like flies. They can't. They gotta be there every day.
15:09When it's on the big screen, it's on a big screen.
15:13You have to go in fearless.
15:15Cut! David, are you okay?
15:17I got blood blisters all over my hands. See that?
15:19I've never seen David or Jillian work harder, I can tell you that.
15:22That's all fun to do.
15:24It's like playing a game.
15:27As an actor, it's a good rest from the harder work of actually acting.
15:33It's fun to go out and jump off a building.
15:36That's actually the easy part.
15:40No!
15:49Oh!
15:52For the film's dangerous helicopter sequences,
15:55the producers enlisted the talents of ACE Hollywood aerial coordinator David Parris.
16:00We were chased by helicopters at an altitude that was a little too low for my liking.
16:06Or at least my hair's liking.
16:08Scully! Talk to me, Scully!
16:11Mulder and Scully are being chased by helicopters.
16:14They're running away from an area where they shouldn't have been.
16:17They're in cornfields, which are dark,
16:20and the helicopters have searchlights trying to find them.
16:25To create a believable action sequence,
16:28you have to tie the actors, the principles, into the action in some way.
16:32If you use stunt doubles, you can't quite do that.
16:36It brings the audience into the picture in a way that I've always felt is important on The X-Files.
16:41Luckily, I've got Dave and Jillian, who are both young and athletic,
16:44and also are a game.
16:46They really like to get in and do this stuff.
16:53You need not act in a scene like that.
16:55It's loud, and it's scary, and it's windy, and you're screaming.
17:00That's all you have to do is actually just exist in that moment.
17:04So it takes care of any other acting that you had to do.
17:08Basically, you're just trying to survive.
17:11One of the more complicated scenes to create
17:14features the blowing up of a 25-story building.
17:17I need this building evacuated and cleared out in 10 minutes!
17:23Actors, they shoot a little bit,
17:25but bombs and explosions, they shoot for days.
17:31The trick is to make sure you blow the heck out of everything you can,
17:35and that you photograph it, and you get every ounce of it.
17:39We're creating an explosion as if our bad guy
17:42has put in several hundred pounds or a thousand pounds
17:45of a high explosive in this building.
17:47What will happen is when we initiate it,
17:49these will all be covered in debris, desks or whatever.
17:53You can see some desks here that will be coming out the windows, etc.
17:58There'll be a gas ball coming out, a fireball coming out,
18:01approximately 40 or 50 feet.
18:03And then there'll be a dust cloud that comes out,
18:06and follows it out.
18:08And we do have a stunt car that'll come around the corner,
18:11and then when we hit the impact, we have the car rigged
18:14so it looks like they received the shockwave,
18:17and it'll actually raise up the back end of the car,
18:20and it'll blow out the back window.
18:22Because of the dangerous nature of the shot,
18:24stunt doubles for David and Jillian are used to coordinate
18:27the timing of the vehicle with the building explosion.
18:30So when I see fire, I hit the button,
18:32which gets our cannon shooting our car up in the air,
18:36and also detonates the charge and blows the windows.
18:39Ladies and gentlemen, we're getting very close now,
18:41and I just want to clarify what we're doing.
18:43In talking with Paul, he said there may be some small bits of debris
18:47that could radiate out,
18:49so there could be some small elements coming out this direction.
18:52In case of an emergency, only our medical personnel
18:55will enter the set and extract any victims.
18:59If you are physically not working the shot,
19:01or supporting this sequence,
19:03I need everybody on the other side of the bomb vehicle.
19:07The filmmakers had only one shot
19:09to capture this very expensive explosion on film.
19:12As a result, 14 cameras placed at different angles
19:15were utilized for the take.
19:17Action!
19:28And that's a cut. Nobody move.
19:31Everybody safe and secure, please.
19:33Fantastic.
19:35We used 14 cameras on that explosion.
19:37Some were for visual effects, composite shots,
19:40and others were just various angles of the explosion.
19:43What was exciting about it was the intensity of it, I think,
19:48and knowing that there are 3, 4, 5, 6 cameras rolling at one time
19:53getting different angles, different aspects of what's happening.
19:56Step one of the process is complete.
19:59Now David and Gillian are integrated into the scene.
20:03We're trying to create an interior shot of our heroes
20:07as the explosion occurs.
20:09So our test here is to create a fire cloud in the back
20:13as if it were the building blowing up,
20:15so that it ties into our shot.
20:17Fire test. Here we go.
20:193, 2, 1.
20:23You know, they're kind of like amusement park rides
20:26when you do scenes like that
20:29because they've got the car up on hydraulics.
20:31I always say, let's shoot the first take
20:33because they want you to get used to the movement.
20:36But I don't want to be used to the movement
20:38because if, God forbid, you're ever around a bomb that explodes,
20:41you don't get to say that.
20:43Can you just explode in my face so I can get used to what it's like?
20:46So you want that kind of first experience.
20:50And action!
20:55There are cars that are rigged with flames.
20:58There is the car that we're in, which is rigged to bounce.
21:01There is all of this extracurricular activity that's going on.
21:05After the full scale and principal photography are complete,
21:09the process continues with a miniature and the aid of computer technology.
21:14We've got a lot of miniature pieces
21:16that are designed to fall away from the camera and fall apart.
21:19And as they fall apart, debris comes behind them.
21:21You're going to get the impression that you're watching an entire building falling away
21:24because we choose the camera angle
21:26and we don't want the mayhem happening within the frame.
21:28Action!
21:32A lot of the things that we'll do further on in the process
21:37involves compositing of different elements.
21:40We're going to take the miniature that we see here,
21:43bring it into the computer,
21:45and get rid of all the blue that you see surrounding the miniature
21:49and combine it with research photography
21:53and actually take this building out of Los Angeles and place it in Texas.
21:59We're putting a lot of pieces together
22:01and they're coming from four or five different directions.
22:04But we're combining them to make it look like they all happened at the same moment
22:08and that it was a really spectacular explosion.
22:17The X-Files series has been known to unleash some pretty terrifying creatures on its two stars.
22:22But for the movie, the producers came up with one of their most dangerous gambits yet.
22:26The bee sequence, the challenge of that was that we were going to be working with 300,000
22:32live stinging bees.
22:34And how is it that you do that for days on end without getting everybody stung and mad
22:40and of course not wanting to hurt David and Jillian who can't wear protection.
22:44Well that wasn't one of my favorite experiences
22:46because I like it when humans control the set.
22:52Some of us initially chose to sort of stand up to our actors
22:56or stand up with them and not wear protective gearing.
22:58Well I think once Danny got stung that all came to a close
23:03and all the head nets came on and the gloves and the off spray came on in layers.
23:09Our clothes were glued to us
23:12at the wrists and along the collars
23:15and I hadn't really thought about it that much.
23:19I knew that it was going to take place and it was just going to be something.
23:22You know, that day everything was about bees.
23:25All the shots we did before we shot with bees were about bees
23:29and pretending that we were being attacked by bees.
23:31And so finally I was like, all right, I'm ready, bring out the bees.
23:34So David and I are standing on our marks
23:39and waiting for the guys to come out with these big tubs of bees
23:44and they start scooping, like with big rice scoops, the bees up into the air
23:51and just seeing it for the first time, the thousands and thousands of bees.
23:56David and I just look at each other and we both start going, oh my God.
24:02We had to run through them and the guy, the head bee guy,
24:06who seemed a little odd to me,
24:09he was telling me that they're not going to sting
24:13because of some pheromone or something.
24:16I took him at his word, I guess you have to,
24:19but I really didn't quite believe him.
24:21There was one moment, though, when I got a little nervous
24:24because you're not supposed to pat your clothes at all
24:28just in case there's one stuck in the folds
24:30and if you pat it then the bee is likely to sting you
24:33out of trying to protect itself.
24:36And there was one moment when the bee man, the bee doctor,
24:39was throwing, for a close-up when I'm running through the bees,
24:42he was throwing hundreds of bees on top of me as I'm running
24:47and I noticed at one point that there were a whole bunch of them around my wrist
24:52and seconds later David comes in to come back to get me, to grab me
24:56and he grabs me right on my wrist and I'm thinking, there's bees under there!
25:00Did you get stung?
25:01I don't think so.
25:03For the film's score, Chris Carter once again turned to the man
25:07responsible for all of the music on the TV series, Mark Snow.
25:10That's really a gas here because there's going to be an 85-piece orchestra
25:14playing the film score, so this is the first time when that theme
25:18has sort of grown and become musical.
25:22It was really interesting to see Mark finally, instead of sitting in the studio
25:26with his synthesizer, to be up in front of that 85-piece orchestra conducting them
25:31and it just blew me away.
25:34Chris Carter wanted a very minimal approach, not much melody whatsoever,
25:39just ambient, atmospheric sound design and he wanted a lot of it.
25:44And so we talked about how the music would not be melodic
25:47and how it would be atmospheric and discordant and minor key stuff.
25:54Some of what I call the cliché X-File electronic sounds mixed in with this big orchestra
26:00gives it this great sense of scope and grandeur and bigness
26:04that everyone is trying to achieve.
26:09It does sound like a great big movie and it's romantic and it's exciting
26:12and it's thrilling and it's epic and it's intimate and we did it.
26:16Appreciate it.
26:19The X-Files movie. Questions answered, new questions posed.
26:23And the chance to experience Chris Carter's creation multiplied by X.
26:28I'm Mitch Pelleggi. Thank you for joining us.