Interview [Written]: Chris Carter

A Mental Floss interview with TV writer-producer and screenwriter Chris Carter, whose biggest claim to fame is “The X-Files”.

Created by Chris Carter, The X-Files debuted in September 1993 and quickly became a touchstone for an entire generation of skeptics, sci-fi enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists, and audiences in search of something that was unlike anything else on television. The series went on to set the record for a sci-fi series with nine seasons of adventures featuring FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), and their successors investigating all manner of extraterrestrial and supernatural phenomena.

Some excerpts:

MENTAL FLOSS: It’s great to chat with you, Chris. What do you think it was about the ’90s and that period of time that helped make The X-Files the hit that it was?

CHRIS CARTER: It’s funny. I always liken myself to a child of Watergate, and that’s where I developed my kind of distrust of the government. I was a journalism major, so I was a big fan of Woodward and Bernstein and investigative journalists, so there was a personal thing for me, too — but we were a long way away from that. It was 1974 when Nixon resigned, but I still think there was a residual distrust of authority, and The X-Files capitalized on that. When the show ended in the early 2000s, it was really coincidental with the 9/11 attack and a time when we had placed absolute trust in the government, and I don’t think the show would have worked a decade later.

Really? Do you think the show only works in the ‘90s?

I think it would work today, because I think our distrust has not only been reconstituted but amplified by current events. But I think in the ’00s, though, it would not have worked.

Along with being inspired itself by past television series, The X-Files also inspired quite a few subsequent shows that became popular in recent years. Do you look at some of the television shows that are on today and see that evolution from The X-Files?

You know, people always ask me about shows that they think are a direct result or product of The X-Files, and I simply think that what we did was tell interesting stories with interesting characters, and we were mining genres that had already proven itself in my childhood to be popular, which were horror and science-fiction. We were capitalizing on it in a new way and in a new era, and I think that if I can take any credit for anything, it’s that we were, I think, effective storytellers that had a relentless pursuit of excellence. We never wanted to do a bad episode. That’s not to say we didn’t do some that were not as good as others, but I think the thing The X-Files did was show that you could tell really scary and suspenseful stories cinematically on network television.

Here is a documentary on “The X-Files”:

For the rest of the interview, go here.

Comment Archive