Case studies
two writers who are leaving the show and I Instantly he wanted you to try your hand at I had a very clear, intuitive sense of how
need some new writers, so how would you being a producer as well as a writer. I loved film cuts together. When you’re writing
like to come on staff?” That was a Thursday, it and really thrived on it, and was given a you’re sort of directing it in your head
and I joined The X-Files the following lot more responsibility in a very short anyway, and when you’ve edited a lot you
Monday. That’s how I got started. It was a period of time than my job title would have a pretty clear sense of how to piece
very tough, demanding environment. He was suggest. His thinking was: first of all, if you those scenes together, so it felt pretty
a very demanding boss and I was completely could do it well, then why not, and secondly, natural by the time I got around to it.
new to everything. It was my first job in the better producer you are in television
Hollywood. I made many mistakes, and the the better writer you’ll be. The more you Quite a few directors don’t do any editing so
only reason I hung on is because I had this understand about every part of the process, they don’t always shoot enough coverage.
immediate connection to the show and the better you can tailor your scripts to be Right. I don’t know how you can be a
what it was about, and I grew and figured produced. So I really benefited from that successful director unless you understand
out what I was doing as the show went on. openness. editing. You’ve got to know how that film
is going to piece together, and there are so
Did your background as a reporter help you So did you get to direct as well? many nuances to the editing process: how
with ideas for the show? I did, but it was very late in the run of the long to hold on certain shots, and what
It did enormously and actually Chris and I series. What happened was, as the show shots you need to get in and out of the scene.
talk about this all the time because he also went on I became valued for my story sense There are a number of great directors who
had a background as a reporter. He wasn’t a and my primary job became breaking the started out as editors, and that’s always
news reporter, he was a reporter for a surfing stories, as they call it. Figuring out what made sense to me. That’s half the battle
magazine, but you still have to gather each episode would be, and how the story really, knowing what pieces of film you need.
information quickly, synthesise it, order it, would unfold and all those types of things.
and write concisely—those are really useful You are constantly working on at least five What about story ideas for The X-Files? Did
skills, especially in television writing stories all the time and it was impossible you go onto hundreds of conspiracy websites
where the deadlines are always present. for me to get away to direct, because when looking for inspiration?
you direct, you are basically unavailable for It’s funny because we really grew up with
So how did you move from being a writer to anything else for a period of three weeks. the Internet. In the early days of the show
being one of the producers? When David Duchovny was leaving the we did zero research on the Internet, and I
I went from being a staff writer to being an show he said to me, “You’ve got to direct. remember my second episode, which was
executive producer in three years, which is If you don’t direct you are going to regret called Our Town, about cannibalism in a
extremely unusual, but I think it was forever that you didn’t do it.” It was almost chicken processing plant in the Deep South.
because firstly the feeling for the show that at the very end of the year. We didn’t have I actually went to the UCLA research library
“It was interesting
because story ideas
didn’t usually come to
us through sources
you’d expect and I think
that was the genius of
Chris’s concept for the
show—that X-Files
could make anything
Billy Connolly in The X-Files: I Want to Believe
frightening.”
I just mentioned. Secondly, because Chris that many more stories to write, and I looking for books, and all the books on
didn’t really recognise job titles, so you directed one of the last episodes of season cannibalism had been stolen, but that’s
could come in as a new staff writer and not eight, and I directed again at the beginning how we had to do research back then. By
only be present at the story meetings for all of season nine. I loved it and I had a fantastic season nine it was unbelievable how much
the episodes, which I was from day one, time doing it. What I didn’t appreciate research you could get at your fingertips just
but be asked to go into editorial, or go to until I did it, was that I had spent so much by being on the Internet. It was interesting
casting, or look at visual effects, or supervise time in the editing room by that point; I’d because story ideas didn’t usually come to us
a sound mix, or go to the music playback. literally edited hundreds of hours of film so through sources you’d expect and I think
www.moviescopemag.com 47
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