"The X-Files" Invisible Ink

         The hardest thing is, the truth is out there -- but you don't know what it
         is and you have no control whatsoever." That's what 26-year-old Stacy
         O'Grady told a reporter during the six days that she and her family waited
         for news of her brother, Capt. Scott O'Grady, after his plane was shot
         down over Bosnia last June. Neither Stacy O'Grady nor the reporter
         stopped to discuss the likely source of her sentence. But for about 10
         million Americans, what she said was familiar, something that's become as
         close as we get nowadays to a proverb. These 10 million spend their Friday
         nights watching or taping The X-Files. Over spooky stills and spookier
         music, one tantalizing sentence flashes on the screen in white capital
         letters: THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE. The rest of the sentence is O'Grady's
         elaboration, but it accurately expresses the state of many characters on
         The X-Files -- and of many of us who watch it. Which may be the secret
         of the show's success. It needs a secret, because the hour-long X-Files
         goes against classic mass-entertainment formula. Its lead characters, FBI
         Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson),
         have laughed once, and that was in the pilot. They were standing in the
         rain in a graveyard and were laughing at Mulder's gruesome theory about
         the deaths of several young people. (The young fare badly on this show.
         They are always being murdered, or possessed, or abducted and/or
         experimented on by aliens and/or our own government.) It might be more
         accurate to say that only Scully laughed in that scene. Mulder chortled.
         Since then, they've smiled and smirked some, but there's been precious
         little chortling and no more laughter. With good reason. Agents Mulder and
         Scully never win.

         In two seasons, not one show has given us anything that a Hollywood
         executive would call a Happy Ending. Mulder and Scully manage to stay
         alive, and that's about as happy as it gets. The Bad Guys -- sinister,
         super-secret government cabals -- almost always get away. The facts are
         almost always inconclusive, and the evidence is almost always destroyed
         or stolen. When someone who knows anything is about to talk, he is
         instantly doomed. Brutal betrayals take place as a matter of course; for
         instance, our government (or a cabal, within a cabal, within our
         government) assassinates Mulder's father. The perpetrators -- whether
         earthly, ghostly, or alien -- are rarely caught; sometimes they're not even
         seen. They depart after doing as much harm as interests them. At best,
         they're neutralized only after they've done a great deal of damage. And
         since the nature of how they come and go is vague, there's never any
         assurance that the Bad Guys won't be back to do still more damage
         whenever they feel like it. In an episode called "The Calusari," a boy is
         dispossessed of his evil stillborn twin's spirit, but only after he's witnessed
         the grotesque deaths of his father, younger brother, and grandmother and
         has been cleansed in a ritual in which rooster blood is splashed upon him
         by some very chilling old men. We can only imagine what sort of shape this
         boy and his mother are going to be in for the rest of their lives. (Families in
         general have a hellish time on The X-Files, always threatened and often
         devastated by inner and outer forces beyond their control.) In a
         voice-over at the end of this episode, Mulder tells us that "neither
         innocence nor vigilance may be protection against the howling heart of
         evil." Needless to say, if neither innocence nor vigilance are going to do us
         any good, we don't have a chance. Even if the truth is out there.

         Compare these goings-on to NYPD Blue, ER, Homicide, Law & Order, the
         various Star Treks, or any halfway-serious successful show, past or
         present. In those stories, the authorities are sincere and can usually be
         depended on, and the forces of good hold their own, though with difficulty,
         against the forces of not-so-good. Even in Twin Peaks the authorities
         were the Good Guys, and the government could be trusted not to
         assassinate your father. In contrast, Mulder and Scully are in constant
         danger from elements in their own outfit. An oft-repeated X-Files axiom is
         "Trust No One." ("Trust No. 1 is Mulder's computer access code.) What
         could be the ap- peal of a program in which every attempt to bring order
         out of chaos seems doomed to produce only further chaos -- and in which
         life seems to be defined, at best, as a tentatively normal arrangement over
         which the abnormal reigns? Is this what many of us are really feeling? (You
         don't have to answer that.) Perhaps so, since the show -- which had its
         third season premiere Sept. 22 -- won this year's Golden Globe as TV's
         best dramatic series and was nominated for seven Emmys. The show's
         ratings have been climbing steadily, and its growth from the first season to
         the second in the key 18-to-49 category was, according to Fox, the
         greatest of any returning network show. The first two weeks ofthe Fall '95
         season earned the show's highest rating ever and the series continues to
         sweep its time period as the current season progresses. Its fans are
         devoted to the point of fanaticism, generating umpteen fanzines and
         computer bulletin boards in which every detail of every show -- and I mean
         every detail, such as the significance of the number on Mulder's apartment
         door -- is contemplated and discussed endlessly.

         I discovered the show last fall while channel-surfing on an otherwise
         featureless Friday night. I came in well after the beginning, and what held
         me, of all things, was the lighting. In contrast to the brutally bright
         living-room of sitcoms, and the rich primary colors of most TV and
         wide-screen dramas, on this X-Files (and most I've seen since) the screen
         was dark -- often almost black, but for a few gleams in which faces and
         furniture were barely visible. Even exterior daytime shots were mostly gray.
         Yet the texture of this darkness was rich, with subtle variations that were
         always in movement. This movement, in turn, was rarely predictable. The
         camera setups were unusual, and the editing more intricate than TV
         schedules allow for. Someone was paying considerable attention to getting
         the show's point across visually, using color to get the black-and-white
         effects of classic "film noir."

         Then there were the faces. On big and small screens, what we see these
         days are smooth and pretty visages devoid of the marks of experience --
         billboard faces mouthing the copycat vocabulary of behavior that
         telegraphs the intent of each scene with numbing regularity. Not on The
         X-Files. Its casting proves there are still faces out there -- young and old,
         rich in psychological depth, capable of tones of voice, flickers of
         expression and quirks of delivery -- that add the kind of resonance to
         dialogue that used to be a matter of course in old movies. Virtually every
         actor, in every part, projects an air of intelligence. Of course, one doesn't
         find such widespread smarts in "real life," but this carefully designed show
         wasn't pretending to be real life. Instead of trying to be all things to all
         people, these filmmakers were clearly interested in magnifying one
         spectrum of life and then viewing the world through that magnification.
         This used to be called style. The leads, Duchovny and Anderson, are
         minimalist actors with attractive but distinctive looks, who usually speak
         softly and can make small variations in expression count for a great deal.
         They give the impression that they're thinking much more than they're
         saying -- a touch that the old Hollywood stars knew how to make the
         most of, transforming many a silly script into a minor classic. The effect of
         the visuals and the acting that night was like listening to music where the
         words function as part of the sound and aren't all that important in
         themselves. I was, in short, hooked. Over the weeks, the craftsmanship
         that had first attracted me held up. The casting was nothing short of
         inspired. Whether the roles called for social workers or serial killers,
         abductees or vampires, necrophiliacs or small-town sheriffs, the actors
         looked right without looking like what you'd expect, and they played
         skillfully within the show's necessarily ambiguous style. As The X-Files
         explored its menacing territory -- that netherworld between "The Truth Is
         Out There" and "Trust No One" -- I came to have increasing respect for its
         interplay between actors and writers. Sooner or later, all the continuing
         characters are given speeches that reveal their hearts; yet you don't
         necessarily have to have seen any particular speech or know their
         backgrounds, because the acting contains subtleties that imply the
         content of the speeches. But the pitfall of episodic TV is that, no matter
         what dangers are in the script, everyone knows the stars will survive. The
         X-Files handles this unavoidable evasion cleverly, by making the danger to
         the stars psychological more than physical. The wear and tear shows over
         time. Duchovny's Mulder, who believes in extranormal possibilities, has
         become increasingly frayed and desperate; Anderson's Scully, a forensic
         doctor, becomes more and more at odds with her own certainties. Show by
         show, it seems that they are going slowly out of their minds -- which,
         considering what they have to deal with every week, may be inevitable.
         Their slowly changing characters help make up for the show's inevitable
         ticks. (It is television, after all.)

         For instance, if the FBI's X-Files -- records of unexplained and
         unexplainable cases -- are so dangerous to various all-powerful
         intergovernmental cabals, why not just destroy the files? Why leave them
         around for the likes of Mulder and Scully to investigate? Why would the
         government bury a boxcar of dead aliens in the New Mexico desert? Why
         not just burn them, if civilization as we know it would be transformed by
         the discovery? Why did it take 50 episodes for the cabals to realize that
         they're going to have to kill Mulder, especially when they don't mind killing
         anyone else? The flimsy excuse was that Mulder had friends in Congress.
         Can you imagine a congressperson standing in front of C-SPAN's cameras
         and telling America that an FBI agent was killed because he had proof of
         extraterrestrials? (OK, maybe Newt would do it.) The gloves finally came
         off in the second season's finale, when the cabal murders Mulder's father
         and tries to kill Mulder himself. If the FBI is such an untrustworthy
         organization, why do Mulder and Scully trust the security of their office
         computers? Since their homes, their offices and even their pens have been
         bugged, they should know that nothing is more easy to tap than a
         computer -- unless it's a cellular phone, and Mulder and Scully are
         constantly talking secrets on cellular phones. That kind of thing. Why must
         Mulder and Scully enter a pitch-black room with flashlights and guns drawn
         in virtually every episode? (It's such a signature gesture that it's even in
         the title sequence.) And don't Mulder and Scully ever get horny? If not for
         each other, then for someone. I mean, for a human being -- because
         Mulder did have a brief (and unconsummated) crush on a vampire who
         ended up immolating herself, while Scully (in one of Anderson's finest
         performances) was once possessed with the desire for an alien. True,
         we've all sometimes felt that our lovers are vampires or aliens. But, to put
         it in X-Files fashion, Sex Is Out There, along with the truth, and the
         reason these characters are getting so desperate may be that they've
         been forced to repress their drives for two years.

         Then there's the occasional unintentional hoot, my favorite being when
         Mulder corners the nameless but most powerful cabal operative, referred to
         as "Cancer Man" (because he always smokes). Cancer Man tells Mulder, "If
         people were to know of the things that I know, it would all fall apart."
         Hasn't anybody on the show noticed that it is all falling apart? That a show
         as fundamentally negative as The X-Files probably wouldn't have an
         audience unless it spoke to the suspicions of many that society is at least
         a little shaky? Actor Doug Hutchison, who starred in the popular Tooms
         episode, refers to creator and executive producer Chris Carter simply as
         "God" -- a fairly accurate description of how executive producers function
         on television. At 38, Carter is not quite middle-aged, even with his longish,
         prematurely gray hair. He wears faded blue jeans, he's charming, he smiles
         a lot, but just beneath that affability lurks the single-mindedness of a man
         at the height of his powers, a man who cares about nothing but his work,
         and whose time has come. Such a time comes once if it comes at all, and
         Carter radiates that excitement, albeit under tight control. In a bungalow
         at Twentieth Century Fox's studio in Los Angeles, Carter and some of his
         crew were gathered around an editing console, fine-tuning "The Calusari"
         episode. "The way it works here," he said, "the writers are also producers.
         So they do the editing." Writers having a say in how a scene plays on the
         screen? In most Hollywood shoots, once a script is approved (much less
         shot), writers are kept at a distance, and it can even be hard to get a
         phone call returned by anyone in production. So the show's greatest
         mystery, its consistent level of craftsmanship, was partly revealed: The
         people who cared most about the story were in on its depiction from
         beginning to end. Carter added: "We're all filmmakers. That's what it ends
         up being." In the room with Carter were the episode's writer, Sara Charno,
         editor Heather MacDougall, and two, sometimes three others. An
         orange-and-white cat had the run of the place as well. Carter's crew were
         of his general mold, casual on the surface but tense underneath,
         intelligent, and looking just a little out of place in the bastion of Hollywood
         -- as though they were still a bit surprised that the guards had let them
         through the studio gates. But none of them, Carter especially, looked in
         the least bit tortured. You'd think that people whose job description is
         immersion in paranoid horror, constant dwelling on what Carter calls
         "extreme possibility," and preoccupation with fear and betrayal, would at
         least be a little gaunt. Instead they were pleasant, affluent, healthy
         types, with no distinguishing ticks, who happened to be working up quite a
         bad dream: a woman realizing that one of her sons may have indeed killed
         the other as well as her husband and mother. "To show you how fast we
         work," Carter said, "this show airs a week from Friday." The editing wasn't
         yet finished, and technical matters such as voice-overs and color
         conversion hadn't even begun.

         There was a lot of discussion about the exact moment that the mother has
         her realization. Was it in this frame, or was it several frames later, and
         when should they cut? People spoke freely, disagreed and agreed easily.
         They seemed to share an unspoken understanding of the program's intent,
         and they spoke within that framework. Carter cautioned: "What you leave
         to the imagination is more frightening than what you show. Usually what's
         most frightening is what you don't see." What was most interesting during
         the conference was Carter's insistence on keeping a balance between
         clarity and ambiguity. "Plot is so important," he emphasizes, "but it
         shouldn't be so literal that it's laid out completely." In most feature films
         and television, the plots are so obvious, especially by the end, that there's
         no room for a viewer's imagination. Carter's flirtation with the intentionally
         vague is what sets The X-Files apart. This explains its audience's
         obsessive involvement with the program. Viewers fill in the vagueness with
         their own imaginations and thus become sort of co-writers of the show.
         Craft is not an accident. It allows no shortcuts and tolerates little
         insincerity. These people had found techniques to bypass many of
         television's most severe constrictions, but have they painted themselves
         into a corner? Like Agents Mulder and Scully, will they be overpowered by
         the logic of their quest and ultimately forced to reveal so much that the
         clarity itself becomes boring? Questions are usually juicier than answers in
         this realm. Their work can only become harder.

         In an episode called "One Breath," Mitch Pileggi, who plays Mulder and
         Scully's FBI boss, got to say the one speech that expresses why The
         X-Files is so welcomed by some of us. For we live in a country obsessed
         with safety, a country that seems to have forgotten that there's never
         enough police or money, never enough armaments and never enough
         insurance to make the flux of life predictable and secure. He says simply:
         "Every life... every day... is in danger. That's just life." That's our real fear,
         and why shouldn't it be? But scary as it is, it was refreshing, even
         exhilarating, to have that truth said plainly and forthrightly in a medium
         that usually lives on lies... then one morning I'm crossing the street, and I
         see a billboard on a bus. It's Scully and Mulder. "Working for the
         government is cool," it announces. "Cool like us." Nothing like a bracing
         dose of hypocrisy to start the day.

         --Michael Ventura

         Copyright Los Angeles Times Magazine 1995