Where There's Smoke...: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir (27 page)

The third part of the trilogy, “Paper Clip,” was directed by Rob Bowman, now firmly established along with Kim Manners as a principal director in the series. Both men were instrumental in raising the standards of the show as it gradually began to attract a more mainstream viewership and correspondingly more attention to the principal actors.
X-Files
was becoming a hit.

At the same time the productions were becoming increasingly ambitious, with a corresponding strain on cast and crew. Some days shoots could be eighteen or twenty hours long. Because a twelve-hour turnaround was required for the U.S. actors — only ten for the Canadians, what can I say? — the week would begin with an early morning call on Monday, but each day would start later and later until by Friday the call might be in the early afternoon and the shoot would finish early Saturday morning. What kind of a weekend starts with finishing work at 9 a.m. on Saturday and starting again at 7 a.m. on Monday? We in the trenches often derided David and Gillian for complaining about their jobs. After all, weren’t they doing what every actor in the country dreamed of? But in fairness the strain on them was unusual even in the stressful world of television. For not only did the show work these very long hours, but unlike most series there were really only two leads and the bulk of the work fell to them. The rest of us had nice supporting roles, but we seldom worked a full day or even every day.

Did these working conditions contribute to the strained relations between David and Gillian? Probably. Or between each of them and the crew? Were their idiosyncratic personalities key to their success in their roles and at the same time destined to create friction? In truth, I didn’t see them together often, and most of what I know of their interaction with each other is from hearsay. But it is serious hearsay when a crew member doesn’t return to the show because he can’t handle the tension between David and Gillian. What I saw was an arrogance, a lack of professionalism, and an incivility quite foreign to my British theatre trained habits. I was used to actors who always arrived on time or early, who were always polite, though not necessarily friendly. David was notorious for being late for his call; eventually the ADs structured the calls to allow for his lateness. Gillian was famous for never being ready to come on set when she was called. As an actor I hated being in the makeup trailer at the same time as Gillian. She had to have her own music and it had to be so loud that any conversation in the trailer was impossible. How self-centred is that? Recently I had a small role in a film with Anne Hathaway. How do you get a name like that anyway? At any rate, she did not seem to be affected by having the same name as Shakespeare’s wife. But more to the point she is a really nice person with real people skills. I had been away from the set for a couple of weeks and when I returned she greeted me as a long lost friend, asking how I was and what I had been doing. In nine years with Gillian, she never once asked me how I was.

Gillian is certainly aloof, but it may be that she is more shy than arrogant, that she only seems arrogant. First AD Tom Braidwood says that she was “always a sweetheart.” I didn’t find that and I doubt that David did. But what is more interesting is how her personality informed her character. After all, can you really see Anne Hathaway, wonderful actress that she is, playing Scully? Did that combination of self-containment and occasional vulnerability give Scully the iron and the appeal that made the character such a success?

David’s social skills are not much better than Gillian’s. Or maybe in this case it was me that was shy. David is a bright guy and sometimes quite forthcoming and interesting. But, moved by his own drumbeat as he is, one never knows when he will be in what kind of mood. Once again, that very independence of tone, that aloofness, even that arrogance, were likely qualities that informed his portrayal of Mulder. So it may be that the very attributes that led to their success as Mulder and Scully were qualities likely to make working together a challenge.

John Bartley was a major casualty of the long hours. For the first three years he was the DOP (Director of Photography) and made a huge contribution to the look and feel of the show. A lovely New Zealander, he was as short as First AD Tom Braidwood. For the longest time I thought they were brothers. I sat with him on the set at the end of the third season. He just couldn’t do it anymore. The long hours had denied him a life. Executive Producer Bob Goodwin did everything he could to woo him, sent him flowers and gifts — anything to keep him — but to no avail. John left the show after the third season. But he had done his work on me. The fans saw me as a craggy-faced villain shrouded in smoke.

By the spring of 1995
X-Files
must have a become a genuine hit;
X-Files
conventions began. And would continue for several years. By this time
Star Trek
conventions were legendary, with troops of fans showing up in costume and makeup. Would
X-Files
become a similar phenomenon? I don’t know if
X-File
conventions were ever as weird and wonderful as
Star Trek
ones, but their popularity astonished me. I remember waiting to go on stage for my first appearance at one of these events. I have never been shy about speaking in public, not since I won prizes for public speaking when I was in high school — ironically I won my first prizes with a speech about flying saucers — but how is this audience going to react to me, a minor character on their favourite show and an evil one at that? Yet when I stepped on stage the large crowd erupted in cheers and applause. Oh my. This is different. What is this world I have entered? Is it possible? Am I now a ‘celebrity’?

The first conventions — or ‘cons’ as I have since learned to call them — were strictly
X-Files
conventions. Vast exhibition areas were set up with replicas from the show and merchandise to purchase. Our involvement was in two parts; we did a presentation on stage and later we sat together and signed autographed pictures. Who is we? Well, who it was not was David and Gillian. Gillian apparently attended one con that was hugely popular; I don’t think David ever did. No, it was we secondary characters who were the celebrity guests: Mitch, Nick, the Lone Gunmen, Steven Williams, and sometimes guest stars from a particular season. For the stage appearances I developed a popular theme: CSM is the hero of the show and Mulder is the villain. No seriously, I could make that case. One of the Lone Gunmen, Dean Haglund, was also a stand-up comic; when we were at the same con we had a routine that had them falling off their seats. But the most surprising of the stage appearances to me was Steven Williams, the buff black actor who played X. He would come on stage, talk for a few moments, and then say, “Let’s get comfortable.” At that he would peel off his outer layer of clothing to screams of delight from the female attendees. I never stayed to see what happened next.

The autograph line was fast and furious and it was good to meet fans personally. But if you want to get through in time for dinner don’t do an autograph line with Nick Lea. He would write a book on each picture; it took forever to get through the line. But the most embarrassing incident for me was when a fan in Texas gave me his name for his autograph.

“Beo,” he said.

“Beo?” I asked in puzzlement.

“Yes. Beo.”

“How do you spell that?” I asked.

“B-I-L-L.”

After
X-Files
conventions died out I didn’t do any cons for awhile, but recently was encouraged to try some science fiction conventions. Unlike the
X-Files
cons they don’t pay a fee, you make your money selling your signed pictures. I was a little unsure about stepping into this world; are we celebrities or peddlers? Would I make any money? Tom Braidwood — Frohike — told me of one convention he went to where the women seemed to be competing for how few clothes they could wear. Well, this couldn’t be all bad. I remember sitting behind the table at the first one of these I went to, wondering why anyone would pay good money for a picture of me with my signature on it. I was shocked when the first person who came up to me took out a huge roll of bills and happily forked over the cash. Well, the recession has slowed things down a little, but it’s still a way to help the bank account from time to time. And if I’m honest I have to admit I have a good time when I go.

Being a celebrity and being an actor are two quite different things. I sometimes wonder how A-list actors ever have time to act, or work on their craft; they seem to be continuously busy appearing on talk shows, doing interviews, and dealing with scandals in the tabloids. Or doing the things that prompted the scandals in the first place. The actors I worked with in England many years earlier, while at the top of their profession, were not celebrities in the modern sense. Joan Plowright was quoted as saying her husband could go to work on the tube and not be recognized. Her husband was Laurence Olivier. Mind you she might have been wrong about that. At the height of our success I was recognized almost everywhere, except in London. Only later did I realize the British were too polite to let on that they recognized you. Unlike some North Americans who would stare at me as if I had just escaped from the zoo. But now we have young people whose declared ambition is to be a celebrity. They don’t want to do anything to earn that recognition; they just want to be famous.

I’m often asked what it was like to be famous. Did people bother you? Did they intrude on your private life? Well, being minor famous is actually a lot of fun. I met a lot of interesting people, went to a lot of great places, received some great gifts — and some stupid ones — and generally had a good time. Being really famous would be something else. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for David and Gillian, not able to move without attracting attention, people shooting a video of you eating in a restaurant. That one really pissed David off. But I understand the frustration. And yet there is a paradox. If you trade on being a celebrity you expose yourself to the good and the bad. If Tiger Woods had stuck to being the best golfer in the world and had refused to do appearances and endorsements, who would have cared about his private sex life? Actors don’t have to enter the glass house and some don’t. I remember an interesting comparison of two actors from a publicist in Montreal. My good friend Donald Sutherland was doing a role and refused to do any interviews while the film was being shot — I imagine so that his full attention could be on the work. Some time later Henry Fonda came to do a film in Montreal. Fonda asked the publicist if they could restrict interviews to just two or three — a day. Paris Hilton is a celebrity. Is Judi Dench?

Being a celebrity on a science fiction show has its own challenges — oh yes, it’s not a science fiction show; it’s a “science probability” show, according to its creator, Chris Carter. Hmm. Really. Fans often assumed I chose to be in the show because I believed in the paranormal issues underlying the episodes. Two mistakes there. I didn’t “choose” to be in the show; I got the part. So I got the work. And no, I didn’t, don’t, believe in the underlying paranormal concepts. Fans would often be astonished that no, I didn’t believe in UFOs, in aliens among us, in alien abduction, ghosts, telepathy, or other psychic phenomena. Why not, they would demand. Well, it’s not up to me to explain my disbelief — I can’t prove they don’t exist anymore than I can prove fairies and Santa Claus don’t exist — it’s up to you to demonstrate that they do. Well, we can, they would say. We have. I didn’t really have an answer for that as I didn’t know what their proofs were. If I were going to continue this conversation I would need to find out.

By coincidence I was listening to CBC Radio one day — this was back in the last century before they dumbed it down and the government took away most of their funding — and heard an interview with the late Barry Beyerstein. Interviews could be quite extensive in the last century; I think this one was at least an hour. Barry Beyerstein turned out to be a psychology professor at SFU (Simon Fraser University) near Vancouver, but more importantly for my purposes he was a member of CSICOP and an experienced paranormal debunker. CSICOP stands, or stood — they have since changed their name — for Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Some of the world’s top scientists serve on their advisory panel. They do exactly what I wanted to find out about; they look at paranormal claims and the evidence presented for them and subject them to scientific analysis. Sometimes in cases where something predictive is promoted, like fortune telling, dowsing for water, or telepathy, they will set up experiments in concert with the practitioner and test the results. The practitioner would agree that, yes, in these circumstances I can predict whatever it is. Of course, they always failed. Where experiments were not appropriate they would review the evidence with scientific detachment. One of their most famous reveals was to expose the myth of an alien landing in Roswell in 1947 — one of the key underlying “probables” of
The
X-Files
.

Clearly Barry was someone I needed to talk to. I tracked him down through the radio station and he graciously invited me to lunch at SFU. One of the nicest people one could hope to meet, Barry was a soft-spoken, tall man, with slumped shoulders and light thinning hair, and a willingness to look at all sides of a question. Never an ideologue, but a true skeptic, he would gently challenge any idea and look for verifiable evidence. He and I became friends. He gave me valuable literature on some of the issues in question and pointed me to sources with good information. I joined CSICOP, subscribed to their magazine, the
Skeptical Inquirer
, and in short order I became a celebrity skeptic, speaking to college and skeptic groups promoting science and challenging pseudoscience. I was even asked to host skeptical programs on the Discovery Channel.

Perhaps the most unlikely appearance during this whole period was when I was asked to moderate a debate between John Mack, the most visible advocate of the concept of alien abduction, and another man who took the position while there may be aliens among us, they are not actually abducting humans. These were considered intellectual positions worthy of serious consideration. I was invited to moderate, not because of my known views on the subject, but simply because I was an actor on a television show that dealt with these issues. In that strange way viewers have of actors, the organizers of the debate assumed I would not only have an interest in the subject, but be curious to learn from ‘experts’ in the field.

John Mack was on the faculty of Harvard University and a Pulitzer Prize winner for an earlier work on perception. But for the last ten years he had been a passionate advocate of alien abduction and a spokesperson for the many abductees he had interviewed. “Pioneers on a hero’s journey” was how he described them in his book
Abduction
. How does such a brilliant man come to believe such utter nonsense? Although, to be fair, he seemed equally surprised that I could be such a materialist. Mack’s conviction hinged on two things, one since discredited and the other easily explained by an actor. His principal tool for accessing information from an ‘abductee’ was hypnotic regression. Not only has this technique been seriously questioned, but in Mack’s case the conditions for the procedure were hardly objective. He presented himself to a professed abductee as a collaborator, not an investigator, and clearly gave approval to all references to abduction. But he was equally impressed by the emotional truth presented by the participants; their experiences must be real since their emotions are so true. Well, actors would be seriously challenged if they could only evoke true emotions if they were in real situations. Can the actor playing Macbeth only feel guilt if he actually kills a king? What actors do is live truthfully in imagined situations. In fully imagined circumstances, true emotions emerge. And so, since the abductees fully imagined the circumstances of their abduction, naturally the resulting emotions would be true.

Mind you, not all actors believe that imagining the circumstances is sufficient; one only has to recall the famous story of Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier in
Marathon Man
. Apparently Hoffman had to appear in a shot out of breath from running, so for every take he would run around the studio and arrive literally out of breath. After a few takes Olivier turned to him and said, “Dear boy, why don’t you try acting?”

What puzzled me most about Mack though was his apparent lack of awareness or concern about inconsistencies in the abductees’ accounts. Mack seemed to have confidence that every detail the abductees reported of aliens and their treatment by their captors was real. And yet he casually mentioned in conversation that the abductees often reported seeing him on the spaceships. Knowing he had never been on a spaceship, he knew they were wrong about that detail. In fact that was the only detail that could be verified one way or another. Shouldn’t that have cast doubt on other details?

While it was somewhat embarrassing to moderate a debate between two positions with which I disagreed, the atmosphere on that occasion was positive and the discussion constructive. My celebrity status was to cause me much greater embarrassment more recently. A group in Vancouver calling themselves Necessary Voices had arranged a talk in the Vancouver Public Library with Paul William Roberts, who had written a book about the Iraq war that I much admired — the book, not the war. Outed at the event as the actor from
The X-Files
, the organizers asked me if I would host their next event, dealing with the terrorist attacks of September 11. Since, judging by that night’s discussions, their views and mine seemed to cohere, and expecting the next event would be similar, I agreed enthusiastically. As it happens the next event would be in a local church instead of the library and the speaker would be Barrie Zwicker, author of a book called
Towers of Deception
. When I arrived for the event I was astonished to discover that, unlike their previous event with thirty odd people in the library, there were hundreds of people clamouring to fill this large church, not a basement hall, but the church itself. Gosh, am I this famous? Alas, while my name may have helped with publicity, these people, clearly from the left, were devoted to a cause of which I was blissfully unaware. It turned out that Zwicker, while a reputable social critic in several areas, is an advocate of the theory that the U.S. government itself was responsible for the attacks on the twin towers. Do your research, Bill. Here I was committed to introducing the prime advocate of such an unlikely notion and by my very presence appearing to be supportive. There are so many legitimate targets, why expend so much energy tilting at this windmill? What could I do? Feign interest, be polite and gracious, express my interest in reading his book, and suppress that queasy feeling in my stomach that was telling me that ‘to mine ownself I was being untrue.’ Even had I the courage to challenge the prevailing view in the hall I didn’t have the information; the theory was too new for me.