(via the Atlantic)
Anyone else remember why British humorist Alan Coren published a collection titled Golfing for Cats with a swastika on the cover?
NYMag‘s Vulture blog has an anniversary interview with Chris Carter:
On September 10, 1993, a strange series called The X-Files infiltrated Friday nights on Fox, with brooding story lines involving government conspiracies, sewer-dwelling man-monsters, and little green men. No one knew quite what to make of it at first — including the Fox executives who took a gamble on the project. But series creator and first-time showrunner Chris Carter, a former editor of Surfing magazine, continued to carry out his obsessive vision of recapturing the hair-raising urgency and weirdness of Kolchak: The Night Stalker and other quirky programs he’d watched growing up. His efforts paid off, to say the least, and twenty years down the line, it’s hard to overestimate the show’s cultural reach: Besides notching Fox a first-ever Emmy nomination for Most Outstanding Drama in 1995, and making television safe for the countless shows with a skeptic-believer framework and scare-your-pants-off quality that followed, The X-Files also acted as a proving ground for an impressive number of writing phenoms — most notably Breaking Bad‘s Vince Gilligan, and Homeland‘s Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon — who are churning out some of the best stuff on TV today.
After 202 episodes and a pair of feature films, The X-Files’ deeply suspicious worldview feels as relevant as ever. Now, following a much-deserved break and plenty of television binge-watching, Carter’s ginning up a return to the genre with a sci-fi drama for Amazon Studios and a paranoia-fueled AMC project that can only be classified as Top Secret; he’s also helping to plot a tenth season of The X-Files (simmer down, it’s in comic book form). In order to celebrate the show’s big two-oh, Carter dialed in — from a blocked number, of course — to comment on the possibility of a third film, Mulder and Scully’s most virtuous traits, the pressures of following up such a massive success, and how The X-Files’ very, very long tail is even shaking up NBC’s fall schedule…
Also on Vulture, “Every One of This Summer’s Star Wars: Episode VII Rumors and Reports“:
June 11: Schmoes Know leaks a plot description that says the story line for Episode VII will revolve around two 17-year-old twins, one male and one female, who are “trained by their uncle Luke to be the greatest Jedis in the galaxy. Problems arise when the male twin turns to the dark side.”
June 19: Bleeding Cool leaks a casting breakdown for Episode VII that includes descriptions of seven lead characters, including two “late-teen” females and five males ranging from a “young twenty-something” to a “seventy-something male with strong opinions.”
June 26: The Sun reports that Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher “will be supplied with a top nutritionist and fitness trainer” to get into shape for Episode VII…
July 24: Latino Review reports that Leonardo DiCaprio passed on a role in Episode VII in favor of Tobey Maguire’s Robotech movie. Also, it states that Disney is considering Zac Efron for an unknown role and Ryan Gosling for Luke Skywalker’s son…