New (Cult)u're Magazine X-Files Article

The new issue of (Cult)u're Magazine is out. Check it out here: http://www.culturemagazine.ca/

This issue's theme is "Circles", and the cinema section includes an article of mine called "The X-Files 2: All Things Come Full Circle".

This is a taste of what the article has to offer:

The X-Files continued to draw viewers as Seasons Two and Three progressed, and managed to tap into the cultural zeitgeist in a significant way, positioning itself at the center of a cultural, artistic, political and intellectual nexus. A growing interest in feminism and mid-90s ‘girl power,’ the rise of the ‘metrosexual’ male, a renewed fascination in the possibility of extraterrestrial life, the spread of new age spiritualism, a growing cynicism towards government representatives, the popular birth of cell phones and internet communication technology, along with the massive spread of on-line culture, all influenced and were likewise influenced by the series.

You can read the full article here: http://www.culturemagazine.ca/content/view/147/54/

If you like what you see, be sure to subscribe to the magazine!

How to Solve "The Truth" Status Quo Problems

Okay, X-Files News Dot Com has the latest batch of set photos and, in the pictures, Mulder has a beard. Why does Mulder have a beard? Well, let's ruminate, shall we?

I've been thinking a lot about the strange situation "The Truth" left Mulder and Scully in and how it will be reflected in the movie. Chris Carter is faced with three major status quo problems going into this movie:

1) Mulder and Scully are a couple.
2) Mulder and Scully have a child.
3) Mulder and Scully are on the run from the government.

All these of these situations will need to be fixed. Carter isn't going to want ANY of those plot points to exist in the movie. He going to want a non-romantically linked Mulder and Scully working for the government investigating cases, without having to mention the babysitter watching little William back home.

So this is what I think is going to have happened between "The Truth" and "Done One".
Baby William will have died, perhaps because of the difficulties of life underground and on the run. The death of their child is too much for the couple, and Mulder and Scully break-up. (There's two of the three problems fixed right there.)

Following the break-up, Scully returns to the mainstream government work, only to discover that there has been a change in regimes and she and Mulder are no longer wanted criminals. Scully spends years working as part of the system, while Mulder refuses to trust the system and remains underground.

They don't speak for years. Scully works to make a name for herself and a respectable sicentist and distances herself from her past on the X-Files.

Then, Scully gets involved in a case that can only be described as 'paranormal'. She's in over her head and needs help. She is forced to seek out her old lover, her old partner, her old friend Fox Mulder.

Mulder's been living as a bearded, crazy underground paranormal researcher, but without the resources of the FBI too aid him and without the scientific knowledge of his old partner, he hasn't accomplished much.

Scully finds him and convinces him to return to the fold. He shaves his beard, puts on the old suit and they head out to investigate this X-File together for the first time in five years.

All of our problems are solved. We have a non-romantically linked and babyless non-wanted Mulder and Scully working for the government and investigating the paranormal together, without all of the baggage of the last two seasons.

I'd been thinking about this for a while and seeing Mulder in that beard only convinced me further that this is the approach they are going to take.

Money, Happiness, and the X-Files 2 Set Visit Auction

Does money buy happiness? I (like most poor people) would tend to argue in the affirmative. Here's an example: over at GAWS, it has been announced that they are going to auction off two passes to spend a day on the set of the X-Files 2, watching shooting take place and meeting the cast and crew.

It is times like this that I really, really wish I wasn't in poverty. I mean sure, I want a nice house and a cool car. I'd like to be able to know for sure that I am going to have enough money for food and rent at the end of the month. I'd like to have my student loans and credit card debt paid off. Those creature comforts would all be wonderful, but what I would really like is the ability to drop a few thousands dollars, or whatever it is going to cost, to win this auction and get onto the set of the X-Files 2.

I couldn't even imagine what that experience would be like... to finally get to meet people like Chris Carter and Gillian Anderson, people who have brought such joy and pleasure to my life. These people affected my personal development on a deep level. They played a huge part in my becoming the person I am today and an even bigger part in the person I was throughout high school. They have had a monumental influence on my life, and I have had no influence what-so-ever on theirs. The opportunity to say, "Thanks," would be amazing.

And that, my friends, is how money can buy happiness. Money affords you the ability to walk onto the set of the new X-Files movie, shake hands with Chris Carter, look him in the eyes and say, "Thank you. Your art made my life better." These are the moments that poverty steals away from you. It's not just that you can't have nice things, it's that you can't do the things you want to do, the things that would bring you real joy and create memories that would last you a life time.

I had the opportunity to meet Chris Owens, the actor who played Jeffery Spender, at a comic book convention in Toronto a few years ago. And William B David, the cigarrette smoking man himself, was kind enough to send me an email a few months back. In that sense, I'm lucky. I have interacted with some of the people who brought The X-Files to life.

In fact, I'm very lucky. When I say "poverty" I mean only that I have to worry about how I'm going to pay my rent sometimes, and that it will be a few decades before my wife and I pay off our student loans. I don't mean that I am on the streets, starving and alone, like hundreds of thousands of Canadians out there. I've rarely gone hungry in my life and I have a shelf that holds nine seasons worth of X-Files DVDs, most of which sold for more than $100 each back in the day.

But that only serves to prove my point. One of the reasons I was able to experience the bliss of watching The X-Files was the fact that I had the money to afford cable television, a DVD player and the box sets of the seasons. The X-Files brought me bountiful joy, but only because I had the money to purchase access to that joy.

My wife and I currently pay $700 a month in student loans. Lets say the set passes end up selling for $5000, and lets say that I won. That would mean it would take me an extra seven months to pay off our student loan debt. Throw on the interest and it would probably be more like eight or nine months. Plus, we'd have to add the cost of plane tickets to Vancouver, lodging once we are there, and transportation to the set. That's probably a couple more months worth of money there.

So, in the end of the day, I have to ask myself, is one day on the set of The X-Files 2 worth one year of my life? Sadly, the answer is, "probably not."

I really hope that whoever wins the auction appreciates how truly lucky they are.

The First Day of Shooting

Here it is, the day we have all been waiting for! As I type this, the first scenes from the new X-Files film are being shot in Vancouver, B.C.

On this very special and exciting day I want to send out all my best wishes and good vibes to Gillian, David and Chris.

Here's hoping you folks knock this one out of the park!

The Final Weekend Before Shooting

So here we are. The last weekend before Gillian Anderson, David Duchovney and Chris Carter begin shooting a new X-Files movie in Vancouver.

It's still hard to believe how quickly it all happened. I mean, we all knew Carter needed to finish up his lawsuit with Fox before a new film would go ahead, but did anyone expect it would happen this fast? I doubt it! Just a few months ago, it was all still rumours. Now, we're three days away from shooting.

It's strange. My life has changed so much since the final episode of the X-Files aired so long ago. In the years following the airing of "The Truth" I finished my undergrad, and then grad school, split from my long time girlfriend, started a career, got married… I am a completely different person than who I was back then. Will Mulder and Scully have changed too? Have they spent five years on the run from the government? If so, is William with them? He would be, what, six years old now? Are Mulder and Scully even still a couple? So many questions. I suppose foremost among them (and really the only one that matters) is will the movie be good?

It's strange… this whole thing feels like some sort of flashback to the 1990's, a period of time which has started to look better and better given the hindsight of the post 911 era. I think Mulder represented a mode of heroic idealism that has been washed away by the complexities of life in the 21st century. We just don't have dreamers like Mulder anymore. Everything is now cynical and ironic, with an underlining sense of utter futility.

I wonder if Carter's 90's politics were a really a response to Clinton's administration, or if they were actually a reflection back on the era of Nixon's conservative and corrupt reign which would have taken place during his formative years; a reflection that was, in fact, afforded by the freedom offered by Clinton's Democrats. I would definitely lean towards the latter, which truly makes me wonder how Carter's new film will reflect life under Bush Jr. I just hope he hasn't lost his sense of unbridled optimism and belief in goodness, even in the face of ever amassing evil.

.

It has become a very different world since Mulder and Scully last graced our screens. I'm looking forward to finding out who they have become.

Ultimate X-Files Page

Wow... just stumbled across X-Files Ultimate. This is an AMAZING site, with tonnes of X-Files 2 info. I highly recommend it!

In fact, I will likely be linking to them often, as they seem to have lots of gossip, spoilers and news! My hat goes off to the creators and contributors to the site.

Two Great X-Files Articles

Man... you can definitely feel it in the air. People are stoked about this film! Lapsed X-Philes are being born again! Rejoice!

People are starting to talk and think about the X-Files in a way that they haven't in years, and there has been a small handful of great analytical articles that have recently been written about the show.



For example, http://www.popmatters.com/ recently posted a fantastic piece called, "Not Just a Fluke: How Darin Morgan Saved the X-Files" by Jonathan Kirby. You can check it out here.



Then, over at http://www.culturemagazine.ca/, you can check out an article written by yours truly, titled, "The X-Files: A Delicate Modernism". You'll find it here. This is the image that accompanied the article:





Hopefully we will continue to have a nice stream of articles like these to keep us busy until the film is released next summer!