The GENRE ONLINE.NET Interview – Writer & Producer Frank Spotnitz
By Mark A. Rivera
Writer and Producer Frank Spotnitz was a newspaper and magazine writer before becoming a writer and producer for genre shows like “The X-Files” as well as the feature film “The X-Files: Fight The Future.” He has written and co-written collectively more than 40 produced episodes of “The X-Files,” including the Emmy-nominated “Memento-Mori (with Chris Carter, Vince Gilligan and John Shiban) in 1997. He has also been honored for his work with three Golden Globes for “Best Dramatic Series” as well as a Peabody Award and three Emmy nominations. His other credits include being the c-executive producer of “Millennium” (1997-1999) and executive producer of “Harsh Realm” (2000) and “The Lone Gunmen” (2001), which he also co-created.
Outside of programs related to the X-Files universe as it were, Spotnitz served as an executive producer alongside director Michael Mann on “Robbery Homicide Division” and through his own production company Big Light Productions, produced the re-imagining of “Night Stalker” for Touchstone Television and ABC. Currently Frank Spotnitz is co-writing with “X-Files” creator Chris Carter, a feature film adaptation of Philip Kerr’s A Philosophical Investigation for producer Mace Neufeld and Paramount Pictures and he is also producing a remake of “The Star Chamber” for Twentieth Century Fox.
With the two-disc DVD set release of “Night Stalker: The Complete Series” due to debut at retailers on and offline on Tuesday, May 30, 2006, I was offered the opportunity to speak with Mr. Spotnitz about “Night Stalker” as well as his other work. One of the things that caught my attention right away about Mr. Spotnitz was his well spoken, but relaxed style of speaking. It has been a while since I have listened to an “X-Files” related audio commentary while reviewing a DVD set so I might be wrong, however to me he sounded a bit like Chris Carter and he certainly is well read and articulate. During the recording of the interview I had a slight malfunction on my cassette-corder so unfortunately part of Mr. Spotnitz answer to my first question was lost. I have however recovered what I could from that first answer so if the reply to my first question is short; it is because that is where my recording of the interview begins.
Also please note – There are spoilers discussed in this interview so if you want to watch the discs first without knowing anything, then watch everything and come back and read the discussion.
Mark A. Rivera) In your commentary for the pilot episode you mentioned the text in the sky as we hear Stewart Townsend’s voice over was meant to emphasize what was being said and in a sense keep the viewer’s attention. Was this a technique you garnered from all your years working on Chris Carter shows like “The X-Files”?
Frank Spotnitz) I wanted people to really listen to what was being said and so I hit upon the idea of pulling certain words out of the voice over as they drift across the screen so it would be an indication or a reminder to really listen to what’s being said.
Rivera) Why won’t you reveal your intended ending to the series if you know what it would have been and the series is long since cancelled?
Spotnitz) Before the network ordered the series, believe it or not, they made me write a five-page document answering every question about the mythology that was proposed in the pilot and how the series would end. So I wrote exactly what would happen in the last episode, but what I wanted to do in the DVD commentaries was answer what I could like, what was going on in the series? Where was the mythology heading? Let people know what the mark meant on Kolchak’s wrist. Whether he was the guy standing outside of the house in the pilot? Who was he talking to on the phone in the two-parter? I wanted to give them a lot of answers, but I’m not going to say how the series actually would end because you just never know. I don’t expect the show to come back in some way, shape or form, but anything could happen. I wouldn’t want to spoil it in case it ever happens.
Rivera) Mentioning the edits of dialogue and so forth done for the series to air on ABC, I would like to know why the original cuts were not put back on the DVD and why not all of the unaltered sequences mentioned for the pilot are not included at least among the deleted scenes?
Spotnitz) I would have loved to include a lot more deleted scenes and bloopers because we had plenty of those, but we amazingly fit ten episodes onto only two discs and so I really did express to them to load every bit of material they could onto those two discs, but there was no more room.
Rivera) Well the quality is certainly better than I remember the original television broadcasts had appeared. I was also surprised to learn you used HD cameras instead of film. I know shooting in HD is much more common than it was, but as far as I know you probably shot “The X-Files” on film and edited on video.
Spotnitz) Yes.
Rivera) Would you say shooting in HD was a lot easier in general?
Spotnitz) Well to me it was really exciting because the cameras see so much, especially in low light situations and when you’re doing a show called “Night Stalker” you need to be able to shoot at night in and around LA. So I wrote the pilot and all the subsequent episodes specifically for HD cameras and then we were fortunate enough to be in production just as Panavision was coming out with their new state of the art Genesis camera, which is the most sophisticated one yet. So it’s really quite beautiful to see the detail. To that end we not only used HD cameras, but we were also shooting on location virtually everyday, which is really unheard of in series television. Out of eight days of shooting an episode, we were on location seven days and even our standing set in the newsroom was within a real building. I thought it not only made the show look visually exciting, but it also made the show look more real, which is a good thing when you are trying to scare people.
Rivera) If the mythology of the series was to be a sort of ageless battle between the forces of good and evil, were you intending to create an apocalypse in the finale and was this re-imagining of a 70s’ cult classic also somewhat inspired by the battle between good and evil as depicted in “Millennium,” which you a co-executive producer on?
Spotnitz) I never thought about that. Maybe I was on some sort of subconscious level influenced by “Millennium.” With “Millennium” in the beginning, the supernatural was a very small part of the show. Over the course of the first season we started to introduce more supernatural elements, but the original idea was that the evil men do is more terrifying than the idea of supernatural people. I was building to the idea that there was a rising tide of evil in the world of “Night Stalker” and that all the things you saw in the episodes were in fact connected to this rising tide and that Kolchak was to play a role in this rising tide of evil on behalf of the Devil and whether he could thwart his own destiny and at what cost was going to be the focus of the final episode of the series whenever that happened.
Rivera) Would you have ever shown the Devil as a human being so to speak as he has been depicted in feature films?
Spotnitz) Well I was not going to have a single character be the Devil. My idea was supernatural manifestations of evil, which you saw in the pilot with the hellhounds, which I would have loved to bring back, and those bikers are sort of the four horseman of the apocalypse. Mostly what I wanted to do was show that good and evil flow through men and what we do. It’s up to us who we are going to serve and you need to be conscious of what goodness is and what evil is if you hope not to be used by evil. That’s what interest me about the characters was how they were going to respond. You can think you’re doing good and in fact you’re serving evil.
Rivera) How much research went into the making of the story like the pyramid secret society you alluded to in one commentary track and things of that nature?
Spotnitz) I do a lot of research and in the case of “Night Stalker” it was less scientific research, which I did a lot of on “The X-Files” because Scully was a scientist so we needed that to ground the stories. I had been listening to a college course on Dante’s Divine Comedy and a lot of the ideas from the Divine Comedy found their way into the mythology of “Night Stalker.” We only sort of hinted at it with the episodes that were produced, but the rings of Hell and the different levels of evil were really interesting to me and that’s where those hellhounds came from. They were guarding the gates of Hell.
Rivera) Going back to the genre shows you have been a creative part of, was it always an intention to kill off “The Lone Gunman” characters on “The X-Files” even after you had developed a spin-off for them?
Spotnitz) We loved those characters. We had done the spin-off, which Fox did not renew so when Chris made the decision in January of 2002 to end the series, we wanted to bring them back. We wanted to bid farewell to those characters. Honestly the studio was not eager to do it. They didn’t want to spend the money. The series was going to be done in May. We were like, no the show has been on the air nine years and has made you millions of dollars. We owe it to the fans to say farewell to these characters and it was a long battle just getting them to agree to bring those characters back and we sort of hit upon the idea that rather than go through tepid goodbyes, we wanted them to exit as heroes and that sort of evolved into the idea that they were going to die. The only regret I have about the episode is it ended with a smile instead of a tear, but that was who those characters were. I think all those guys who played the lone gunman appreciated where we were coming from in having them die the deaths of heroes rather than just go out with a whimper.
Rivera) If you could go back and change anything on “Lone Gunman” or “Harsh Realm” what would you do?
Spotnitz) I did everything I could do at the time and with “Harsh Realm” we came up with that and shot the pilot. We didn’t even know about “The Matrix” and then when we finished the pilot and we heard about “The Matrix” coming out we had already edited the show and were done with it. So it was sort of like a done deal. I think that was another show where the network did not have a lot of belief in it.
Rivera) Is there going to be a new “X-Files” feature film or is that franchise at least for now in hibernation?
Spotnitz) I hope so. My deal has been done for a long time and I believe David, Gillian and Chris all have their deals done. Legal issues between Christ Carter and the studio regarding the television series I think sort of stopped everything. I’m hoping they can resolve those issues and we can still do it.
Rivera) How did you make the transition from being a journalist to being a television writer/screenwriter/producer?
Spotnitz) Well I was very lucky. I had been a reporter for seven years before I came to the conclusion that it was not how I wanted to spend the rest of my career so I came back to LA and went to film school and my first job was “The X-Files,” which was a real lucky break.
Rivera) If you look back at shows from the 1990s like “The X-Files”, “Babylon 5”, the various incarnations of “Star Trek” and so forth one can see a very different tone and style of programming if you compare them to shows like the new “Battlestar Galactica”, “LOST”, and “Night Stalker.” How do you think sci-fi drama has changed in the last ten years and where do you think it is going?
Spotnitz) Well I don’t you can talk about one question without talking about the question of where network television is going and where television is going in general. I tend to look at in terms of network television and cable television. Cable television can support a wide variety of genre shows like “Battlestar Galactica” and any number of shows. They can narrow cast to an audience that is willing and eager to embrace that kind of storytelling where as I think it is much tougher to get the audience to sign on to genre storytelling on network television. I still think “The X-Files” is sort of an anachronism. It found a large audience. It was one of the top twenty shows even though it had supernatural themes. I think that that is still the trick. I think “LOST” has done it by really being a character drama with supernatural elements. “The X-Files” was really a police procedural where the criminals just happen to be monsters. You’ve got to sneak it in.
Rivera) How could the four horseman of the apocalypse hit everyone but consistently miss three journalists?
Spotnitz) In shows like “The X-Files” and “Night Stalker,” every episode you are coming up with a new supernatural phenomenon that has to make internal sense. There’s got to be a logic to it that works in that episode. My idea was that these guys were biker criminals and when they died their bodies got taken over by the Devil so they are the living dead and they continue to drive the bikes and wear the clothes and use the weapons that they used when they were alive. They are operating sort of under the rules of their existence before they were possessed. So that’s how I justified that and then I thought the way the scene was staged in that scene in the motel, it was believable that our guys would narrowly escape. What ultimately forgave the whole scene where they survive is that Kolchak didn’t get away in that scene in the woods where they got him. So he was not smarter than those guys. He could not get away from them and then surprise, surprise…
Rivera) What’s next for you?
Spotnitz) I have a pilot that I wrote with Vince Gilligan from “The X-Files” days that is called “Amped” for Spike TV that we are supposed to make this summer and that is very much a genre show and I’m doing a remake of “The Star Chamber” for Twentieth Century Fox and I’d love to do the next “X-Files” movie. I love working within the genre because these stories are very idea driven and it’s really important to me. I want it to feel like there is a reason for telling these stories. Something to think about after you have seen them. Sometimes it is harder to find that when your stories are not in the supernatural genre, but having said that, I love all kinds of other genres too. I tend to gravitate to more “X-Files” like shows, but even there it was not all just supernatural stories. We did thrillers, suspense stories, murder mysteries, and comedy too. I think any of those areas are things I would like to pursue. I have signed a deal with Touchstone to develop series for the next two years. So that’s my next thing that I’m working on with new ideas for them. It’s tough doing genre television on network television. I won’t rule out doing things that are not considered genre programs, but I’m sure I’ll always return to it.
Rivera) With regard to “Night Stalker,” Darren McGavin and Dan Curtis recently passed away fairly close to each other and while I realize Universal has the rights to the original TV series, were you able to show any part of the show to either Darren McGavin or Dan Curtis?
Spotnitz) I was fortunate enough to get to know Darren McGavin during the days of “The X-Files” because I wrote him into the series and made him part of the mythology, but then he got very ill so he did not go out in public and I was not able to talk to him. I did get to talk to his older son York who came by the cutting room for the pilot and he gave us the blessing to use his father’s image as we did and then we had a screening of the pilot and the first episode on the Disney lot some months later and all of Darren McGavin’s kids came, which was really nice and they were very supportive. You know the closer you are to the “Night Stalker” series, the more you realize why it didn’t work and if any new version of it was going to work, it would have to be changed significantly so I think a lot of people assumed there would be hostility to it and that just was not the case. They were really wonderful in supporting the show and Dan Curtis actually served as consulting producer for the show. So that was one of the great thrills for me, was actually getting to meet him and work with him. I had been warned he’s this really crusty guy and he’s going to let you know what he thinks, but he was also very kind and very smart and he gave excellent notes and insights into the show. He read all the scripts and all the outlines and reviewed all the cuts of the show and I feel very lucky to have worked with him before he past away.
Thank you for your time Mr. Spotnitz and big thanks to Mac McLean at Buena Vista Home Entertainment for making this interview possible.
© Copyright 2006 By Mark A. Rivera
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