The Point Radio: THE X-FILES – A Future Is Out There

The special “event series” of the X-FILES winds up in just a few days after giving Fox a huge ratings boost in 2016. So what happens now? We talk to creator Chris Carter and star David Duchovny about the possibility of a future for the series and just how they got it back on the air in the first place. Plus from a bunch of guys who clowned around all through high school to a TV show that just hit it’s 5th season. What is the real secret origin of the IMPRACTICAL JOKERS? They reveal how it all worked out.

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Transcript

The Point Radio. Hey, it's Mike Raub. So how did it all get started? Well, there were four guys in high school who had a little shtick of vicking on each other. And now they've transformed that into a top radio TV show headed into its fifth season.

It's the secret origin of the impractical jokers on the way, plus a visit with Chris Carter and David Dacovny as they wrap up this run of the X-Files. But could there be more? We'll find out. Let's get to The Point.

This is The Point. The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. One of the great treats of 2016 has been the return of X-Files with a six-episode run that's been burning up the ratings every week on Fox.

We talked to series creator Chris Carter about what it was like coming back to the set on that very first day. We all hit the ground running, and it was a big day and lots and lots of dialogue. But it was just a huge day of work, and you run like crazy just to get the work done. So I think that it wasn't like we all had a chance to sort of like smile and enjoy the moment. We were off and running.

So what motivated him to come back in the first place? When I got the call, I knew it was an opportunity to tell good stories. I had some in mind. You'll see episode four, something I'd been thinking about for a while. The mythology, how I wanted to come back and reinvestigate it.

So it was an opportunity to do some things I've been thinking about. How about actor David Duchovny? What had changed for him? It's some of it's harder and some of it's easier. The hours are harder. The acting is easier.

I think we're all better. We've done a lot of work since we started that show. A lot of that work was that show. When it got better, I could look at it. I don't. But I could look at the first season of The X-Files as opposed to the seventh or eighth, sixth, seventh, eighth.

And I see different actors. I'm talking about Jillian and I. So that just continued on afterwards. We both, I believe, have gotten better. So that's kind of fun to bring that to the same character.

Bring the ability to access maybe more than we could have back then. After playing him Fox Mulder for so long, is he still really invested in the character? I'm very protected by the character. I feel like I'm the caretaker of that guy. So there are times when we get a script and I'll talk to Chris or whoever wrote the script and I'll say,

this doesn't sound right, this doesn't feel right. You know, stuff like that. But at this point it's really instinctive and intuitive. But every actor is like that. Every actor is going to feel that way.

And then Jillian and I, kind of when we have it as soon together, we're both kind of caretaking of our points of view. And it can get a little tricky. So that's the fun part as well. How's the show affected in person?

It affected my life in that it started my career. It gave me many opportunities. It gave me a lot of money. It gave me great things. Most of all it gave me the opportunity to go to work every day and act for 14 hours a day for 8 years.

So I got to create my own acting school. Yeah, I'm always happy to work. I like working. Yes, I'm happy to do it. I enjoy the people that I work with.

I think the show's great. I couldn't be prouder of the entire show from the first season to what we've done now. So there's so much of it that I'm grateful for. But I don't think of it. It's such an interior thing for me.

It's like if you play a sport, at some point you stop thinking about hitting a tennis ball. You just hit the tennis ball. So I just do the X-Y's. I don't think about it.

You said that a lot of thought went into constructing this six-episode run. If you really look at the way we structured it, it would be like a quarter of a season. And so we put in as many mythology episodes as we put into a quarter season, as many standalone episodes and one comedy episode.

So it was really also a feature of who came back to do the show. So when Darren signed on, we knew what we'd get a comedy episode. Glenn signed on. We knew sort of what we'd get. He had a good idea.

And then James Wong, and that rounded up the bunch. One of the big changes was the removal of the heavy conspiracy backstory. I would say we kind of drop it, but the relationship has an arc. So while we drop the conspiracy per se, the relationship continues to follow a path.

Any other changes? Well, technology obviously. And also, you know, we're in a different time. When the show went off the air, we were putting all our faith in the government after 9-11.

And we're in a different time now. And if you're sort of paying attention to what's going on online and alternative media, there's a lot of talk about possible conspiracies. And so we wanted to be true to the kind of time that we're living in.

And of course, there are differences right now, the way we watch TV, so different from it was during the show's first run. That's really a feature of the time we live in when you can watch these episodes streaming on Netflix. It's a really a brand new time

and a place for television shows to live past their usual lifetime when I was a kid. Do you think the younger audiences might look something different than, for example, Eye Bound? I have no idea. You know, when you look at the show in 1993, it's a little dated. Hairstyles are dated. Wardrobe is a little dated.

So are they watching a show that's a historical artifact or are they watching it fresh? I don't know. So the big question beyond these six episodes, is there a future? I try not to hope. If the opportunity presents itself, and a lot of it depends on Chris,

if he thinks there's stories to tell, if we can sit down and figure out a way to go. It's my impression that the frame of the show is so very flexible that we could tell stories for a long, long time. So I'm probably being disingenuous when I say that I hope there's stories to tell. I'm sure there are. It's just a question of Chris wanting to, Jillian wanting to,

and me wanting to, of us all getting together in the same space to do it. It took us a long time to do that, so I hope, no, I don't want to hope. But it's possible that we could all find ourselves in the same city for three months again at some point. The event series of X-Files winds up in just a few days, but catch up or re-watch all the episodes right now on the Fox Now app.

The flight radio. We're going to go to Deadpool, that's the big story, and there's more too, as we look at what's going on in pop culture. Netflix has tacked on some more time to the sentence of Orange is a New Black. They've renewed it now for a fifth, sixth, and seventh season.

Season four is set to debut on the streaming service in June. We got a great start to the year for comic book sales in comic stores. Both comics and graphic novels were down a total of about 5% when compared to where we were in January of 2015. We'll run down that list and give you a couple of surprises too when we do. Coming up in a few minutes.

Make some big room on the racks. Marvel Treasuries are coming back with an all new Spider-Man Treasury Edition set to hit stores in June. If you remember, these were those oversight tabloids that were fairly popular back in the early 1970s, even into the 80s as well. This one features the first five episodes of Robbie Thompson and Nick Bradshaw's Adventures of the Teenage Peter Parker. And of course, the appearances from Doc Ock and The Sandman, The Lizard and The Vulture too as well.

Price has gone up naturally for 112 pages. The retail price for the Treasury will be about 16 bucks. Brian Fuller has been named showrunner of the new Star Trek series, headed to CBS online early in 2017. Of course, having experience with the franchise with shows like Voyager and Deep Space Nine. Fuller is also known for pushing daisies, heroes and of course, the upcoming American Gods pilot on the way in a few months.

Alex Kurtzman will still be the executive producer when the show debuts in January with a preview that'll be broadcast on CBS. And then the rest of the run will be exclusively on the CBS All Access app. For more on Brian, including our exclusive interview with him, check out our sister website, TarekTVNews.com. The reboot of Roots will debut on the History Channel on Monday, May 30th. That's Memorial Day and run for four consecutive nights on the channel as well, with A&E and Lifetime also broadcasting the eight hour event series.

It's been developed by the History Channel. The cast includes Anna Paquin, Forest Whitaker and Laurence Fishburne. AMC is entering the world of late night with a new talk show called Geeging Out hosted by Kevin Smith and Greg Grundberg. It'll be a half hour show that'll look at pop culture through the lens of a fanboy, says the press release, and feature talk clips, celebrity interviews and out of studio segments. It is so apparent that Snarky sells Deadpool over the weekend and broke all the records with a stunning $150 million in U.S. ticket sales.

That, of course, blew away all the records, making Deadpool the number one opening R-rated movie in box offices. A little bit of a slow start when you look at the sales of comic books in comic stores for the first month of the new year. When you compare that to where we were in January of 2015, comic sales were down almost 4%. And some interesting notes too, with Marvel still at about a 44% market share and exactly half of that DC with a 22% share of the market. The top 10 best-selling comics in comic stores in January. Keep in mind, here's an interesting note.

Dark Knight 3, not in the top 10 for this month. Uncanny X-Men number one came in at number 10. Darth Vader 15 at number 9. From DC, Batman number 48 at number 8. Number 7, Star Wars, Obi-Wan and Anakin number 1. At number 6, Old Man Logan number 1. Star Wars again takes the next two spots. Star Wars 15 at number 5 and Star Wars 14 at number 4.

Spider-Man Deadpool number 1 was the third best seller. Number 2, Secret Wars number 9 from Marvel. And the top seller for January in comic stores, Walking Dead number 150 from Image. The practical jokers are headed back for a new season on Drew TV. It's season 5 of the show that well it seems to just take over the network. And I think it all started with a bunch of guys just hanging out in high school.

Joe Gatto explains. Well, we all met in freshman year of high school. And we basically became friends and after high school joined our comedy troupe for Tenderloins. And throughout high school, we always pranked each other and hung around as boys do in an all-boy Catholic high school. You know, so we filled our days with just messing around with each other and

born from that was this embarrassment comedy that we did. So from outrageous friends picking on each other to a television show, how did that journey work out? Mer told me that well, it all just seemed pretty logical. Well, we always knew we wanted to go into TV and we had sold a couple of TV pilots before Jokers, but none of them had gone to series.

And I think what we were trying to do all along was find the right format for our comedy, you know. And when we came up with the idea for Jokers, I think what people like most about it is that we remind them of their friends. You know, we play ourselves in the show. We are exactly the same in real life as we are on the TV show. And it's really just kind of organic to what we've always done as best friends, which is kind of, you know, mess around with each other and just, you know,

embarrass the heck out of each other. And I think people kind of like that. We remind them of the people they know and they like seeing the camaraderie and us torture each other. In addition to the show, the guys have an improv group that tours all over the U.S. called the Tenderloins. I was curious who their comedy inspirations were.

Who makes them laugh? Basha Maunoscalco, Bill Burr are big guys now that I really enjoy watching. You know, we've been very fortunate to become friends with the Zucker brothers who created airplanes and they could gun their huge comedic influence. And well, Brooks, of course, back in the day. Bill Murray.

So of all the outrageous stunts over the past few seasons, is there anything they refuse to do? Well, we have this idea from the pilot that we wanted to do with a punishment where we would send one guy into a wedding. And then when the passer asks if anybody objects, that loser would have to stand up, object at the wedding, go into a long story of why he objects, realize he's at the wrong wedding, apologize and leave. But we just feel like it's across the line a little too much. And those punishments.

What about those? What's been the worst so far? Murray's definitely going to say that skydiving was the worst thing that's ever happened to him. I got thrown out of a plane. I did not skydive.

You've got forces. You forcibly skydove. Thank God they gave me a parachute. Yeah, that was pretty terrible. Coming up this season, we do something new.

We're doing a couple of destination punishes where we will travel thousands of miles just to punish the loser. That's a lot of fun. How's the live show with the tenderloins different from what we see on TV? Well, it's our version of like a stand up. It's a multimedia show where also to show clips that we've done exclusively for the live show, some hidden camera challenges that you can only see there.

And we tell stories from the road and interact with the audience. And for us, it's very rewarding because it's when we get to meet the fans and see the fans and interact with them in a different way because when we're filming the show, it's hidden camera. So if you know the show, it's not good for us. We have to get rid of you. And with the new season coming up, what's on the way?

It's definitely gotten a little bit bigger with what we're able to pull off. I mean, this season, we've had something we've been plotting for two or three seasons at this point that we're actually able to pull off now, which is a lot of fun for us because we've finally been able to punish people in a way we've been wanting to for years. You know, it's a fun one coming up. You're going to like we went to one of those all you can drink festivals where people pay 50 bucks and spend the whole day drinking. We made Shelby a bartender and he had to cut people off.

And people who paid 50 bucks to go were not happy. They weren't happy at all. But we were ecstatic. There are new episodes of A Practical Joker every Thursday on TruTV and plenty more to see too right now on TruTV.com. Good point.

That's a wrap for the podcast, but you know we're back in all the usual places in just a few days, including ComicMix.com, TrekTVNews.com and of course, PODCULTUREUpload.com as well. And you can follow us on the iTunes podcast directory and on Twitter too. We're easy to find there under PC upload and on Facebook under the Point Radio. Catch us back here in just a few days. GetThePointRadio.com