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"Gillian was unknown and when she came in she was disheveled," Carter said. "She wasn't a very good salesperson for herself. But she had an intensity and an intelligence -- and she cleaned up well. I couldn't get the executives to see what I saw, no matter how much I tried, and it really came down to the idea of how she would look in a bathing suit. And I kept saying to them, she's not going to be in a bathing suit. She wasn't the bombshell they envisioned. They thought it was going to be a show much more like 'Hunter.'"

The only thing more difficult than dealing with the suits was dealing with the FBI. "Early on, I was calling the FBI for some research. And they were very kind. They talked to me about procedure and protocol, and then one day they just cut us off. They wouldn't accept our calls and then about two weeks before the first show aired, a call came in from the FBI and they said, 'Who are you and what are you doing?' And I swear to God, it was like J. Edgar Hoover reaching up from the grave. I was that nervous about it, as you can imagine."

The FBI's tune changed, though, when the show became a hit that glorified its work. "All of a sudden we started getting calls from agents, individual agents, saying that they loved the show," Carter said. "And by the end of the first year they took us on what they call the 'Jodie Foster tour' of the FBI. They rolled out the red carpet as they had done for her in 'The Silence of the Lambs.'"

Of course, the show hit just about the same time as the Internet started to take off, which added a whole new dimension to fandom, and to Carter's job as producer of the first television show to ever attract such a huge online following. "The Internet and 'The X-Files' grew up together and it was great," Carter said. "The show originally aired at 9 o'clock on Friday night and at 10 o'clock, I could get on the Internet and see what people thought of it. It was great in the beginning."

But even that got weird. "It became overwhelming; it was too much," Carter said. "I used to see every single piece of Internet mail. And now I see the reams of stuff after every episode and I ask them not to put it on my desk. It's not because I don't care anymore -- it's because I think there are lots of voices out there trying to be heard, and a lot of it ends up being shouting. A lot of people do it just to get attention."

The intense fan passion for the show meant his personal appearances could also take on an element of otherworldliness. "The autograph sessions at events like this are always really odd," Carter said. "People try to slide you things, tapes of their abduction. My wife and I have gone to bed at night listening to tapes of people's abductions. It's better than counting sheep."

The obsessive-fan phenomenon played itself out in living color in Santa Barbara. The event opened with Carter showing clips from the series. Then questions came from Penley and another film studies professor, Lisa Parks. Then the night was turned over to audience questions.

That's when things began to get weird.

Carter was asked if he had ever been dropped on his head as a child. He was asked about his surfing. He was asked about specific episode elements too arcane for anyone but the most hardcore fan to understand. He answered every question, no matter how bizarre, with the same low key sense of humor, as if he knew better than anyone how absurd it all was.

Had he ever been abducted?

"I have never had an experience with an alien, and I think they owe me a visit because I've been their best P.R. man ever."

"What are you horrified by?"

"I would say an IRS audit."

"What about Mulder's fascination with pornography?"

"He's a lonely man."

"Explain the apparent homoeroticism between Mulder and Skinner."

"We're saving that for the cable series. The 'Triple X-Files.'"

In the end, Carter left the impression that he doesn't take the fandom and his own place in it especially seriously, but that he does take his role as a popular storyteller with the deepest sense of personal gravity and responsibility. "The X-Files" gets raves in part because it addresses so many of the central themes of life in the United States at the turn of the millennium -- a wariness about technology, a wondering about the deeper questions of life and a distrust of big government.

It is his ability to bring these issues forth in story form that makes Carter want to continue, despite the weirdness, and makes him so valuable to a culture that needs an intelligent mirror of itself. And he revealed in Santa Barbara that what all the wondering and yearning really come down to is not paranoia, but society's increased need for a spiritual touchstone.

In his last statement of the night he talked about Scully's personality traits. "The most difficult thing to reconcile is science and religion," he said. "And so we created a dilemma for her character that plays right into Mulder's hands. So that cross she wears, which was there from the pilot episode, is all-important for a character who is torn between her rational character and her spiritual side. That is, I think, a very smart thing to do. The show is basically a religious show. It's about the search for God. You know, 'The truth is out there.' That's what it's about."

Then he sat down to sign autographs, and listen to people's abduction stories.

That's when things began to get weird.
salon.com | April 28, 2000

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