Chris Carter Quotes
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There are things I'm doing with 'The After' that would've never flown on 'The X-Files' and on network television, so it's more permissive. That's not to say that you want to abuse that. I think that a show like 'The X-Files' actually worked better as a network show with the restraints put on it, the censorship that was applied.
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I think I've been asked a lot more than most TV producers to go on-camera. But I just do what I do and don't think about the package.
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Writing is a little athletic for me. I get worked up a little bit when I do it. So I guess I'm a little bit like that composer conducting. There are a lot of things that go into what I do, but I think athletics really sort of shaped my ethic.
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My brother is a scientist. He's a professor at MIT. He brought science fiction into my world.
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'The X-Files' was a hard sell because people didn't know what it was. The network didn't understand what it was that they were buying, and at the beginning, they wanted us to have closure. They wanted us to put the cuffs on the bad guy at the end of each episode.
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'The X-Files' from the beginning was a very visual show, and with Bob Mandel directing the pilot and Dan Sackheim being involved in the production of the pilot and directing the first episode, they brought a visual style to it that was elaborated on by so many good directors.
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I love jazz and funk, because it's hard. If it's not hard, it's not worth doing.
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It's funny - I was a big fan of 'The Sopranos.' It became kind of a threat to 'The X-Files' in a way because they could play with language, character, and story in ways that we never could because of the limitations of network television.
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When the surf is really good, it's hard for me to concentrate on work. So I really have to watch when and where I surf - I won't get anything done if I get the fever. Then it's like I come into work and I'm wet and waterlogged and ready for lunch.
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Really, some of the best 'X-Files' stories come right out of science. And you just apply that 'what-if' idea. Oh, what if this were true? And that's why so many times the show is scarier because it was not necessarily improbable.
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In Canada, I climbed some mountains with the Alpine Club of Canada, which taught me a lot about stamina.
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It's so interesting that when I finished 'The X-Files' in 2002, the - call it the political and cultural climate in America - was one of fear, and trust of government. Because we put ourselves in the hands of the authority who was going to protect us. And, you know, we gave up a lot of our liberties to Homeland Security, etc.
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You have these catch-phrases that you associate with 'The X-Files': 'Trust No One,' 'Deny Everything.' 'Believe the Lie' was one of them.
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So many things for me are unfortunate in the commercialization of something that is special. It's like when Led Zeppelin appears in Cadillac commercials. There's something that is taken away from your love of this thing and your connection to it.
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I grew up a child of Watergate. It gave me a good dose of skepticism about authority. One of my favorite movies is 'All the President's Men.' Woodward and Bernstein, those guys were my heroes. I have a degree in journalism.
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Producing a series is like being Lewis and Clark: You know where you're going, you just don't know how you're going to get there. When people say, 'You should create a bible for your show,' I say, 'You don't want a bible. It'll prevent you from making discoveries along the way.' And that's what happened on 'The X-Files.'
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The experience of seeing a surf movie in the 1970s, as a teenager, and the energy in those theatres, was amazing. It was the only way to see people surfing. These guys would go out and make these surf movies and bring them to four-wall theatres. It was an incredible experience that I'll never forget.
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Even if I see 300 'X-Files' fans together, I can't fathom - I cannot imagine - the audience itself. All I think about is the show and all I think about is why I like it and why I like to write it and why I like the characters and what I have to say through them.
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It's really hard to scare people on network television. You've got to be smart about it. You've got to parcel out the scares.
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I've got funny things. David Duchovny had to have a cast made of his face to do an old person's make-up, and I've got that cast of his face in my house. I've got something from the pilot, the original implant that was in Billy Miles' head. I've got a sign from 'The Erlenmeyer Flask.' But my house isn't a museum to 'The X-Files!'
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I think science is about the search for God; it just comes at it from a different angle than religion.
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The real challenge in doing a TV show is in what I would call the maintenance energy. You take that creative energy and you use it every week, of course. But you then need to maintain the quality of the stories, and it's harder to do.
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I've been asked to do surfing movies over the years and offered several opportunities. I just felt that if I were to do one, I'd have to do the perfect surfing movie. And I don't know if that exists because surfing is such a personal thing.
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If you look at 'The X-Files' generally, we did 202 episodes. About 80% of them are not 'mythology' episodes, which tend to be the epic episodes. They deal with the big conspiracies, the search for Mulder's sister. They deal with what I would call the 'saga' of 'The X-Files.'