8x21 Existence, Существование Опции

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Сценарий: Крис Картер
Режиссер: Ким Маннерс
Первый показ в США: 20 мая 2001

Комментарий Кима Маннерса о последней сцене (надо же, даже сняли эту сцену последней):

"Это было одновременно и горько, и сладко. Но мы сделали все так, чтобы Малдер захотел вернуться в конце 9-го сезона. Это была последняя совместная сцена Дэвида и Джиллиан вместе. И мы решили, что они должны слиться в поцелуе. Это был долгий поцелуй, долгий совместный кадр Дэвида и Джилл. И когда все уже было отснято, и мы все уже вышли с камерами из той комнаты, Дэвид и Джиллиан остались вместе стоять в той комнате одни и держали друг друга в объятиях добрых 5 минут... Они не разговаривали, они не двигались, они просто обнимали друг друга, и по их лицам катились слезы. Это был очень трогательный момент".

Duchovny also noted that he had very little warning that the eighth season would end with a kiss between Mulder and Scully. "They have this idea that stuff might get stolen and put on the Internet," he said. "It's frustrating to me because I'm an actor and I'd like to have the scene more than two hours before I play it. I think the scene was written that Scully gave Mulder a kiss on the forehead, but I didn't trust my own feelings about it at that point. I had so many personal feelings -- it was eight years of my life -- and I didn't know what would be an appropriate ending. Kim Manners and I were discussing it, and he said, 'We've done that a hundred times, the whole hand-holding and kiss on the forehead. We should do a real kiss.' And I thought, 'Yeah that feels right. At least it's something different at the end.'"

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-- When Doggett followed Rohrer into the FBI building to see who he was meeting with (Kersh) and then went to Skinner's office to call Mulder, Manners noted that "it appeared Doggett was in different hallways, but he wasn't. We use the same hallway set, but just change the set dressing around so the viewer thinks the actor is in a different place."

-- Manners was very glad to be able to work with Nicholas Lea one more time. "Nick was always great," he said, "and he and David worked so well together; they just had this amazing chemistry. I really loved the way they played their last scene together. This episode was David's swan song, and I thought it was a great way for him to go out."

-- "The music added so much to the series," Manners noted. "Mark Snow really understood the series and he really understood storytelling. The things he does with the music make the finished product 10 times better. The show would have been nothing without him -- and he did it all at his house, all of it done electronically."

-- "I think Krycek's last scene was one of the best scenes I've ever directed," Manners said, "and it's definitely one of my favorite scenes to watch." Manners noted that it was his idea to use the computer generated slow-motion bullet to kill Krycek. "We were taking out one of our most prominent, most important villains," he said. "And I thought for that reason it needed to be spectacular. So I convinced them to spend the extra money to do the CGI."

-- "I loved the way David played the scene after Skinner shot Krycek," Manners laughed. "He just walked away. Like 'okay, Krycek's dead, time to move along.'"

-- Manners said that he had joked "a lot" with Gillian Anderson during the entire pregnancy arc in Season 8, "and believe me, that really came in handy while we were shooting the scene where the baby was born."

-- The chase in the FBI building was originally written as a foot chase through the halls of the Hoover -- Rohrer and Crane pursuing Doggett and Skinner. But Kim Manners "thought it was too much like the Keystone Cops, so I suggested a car chase through the parking garage. I thought it would be a lot more exciting, especially against the scene of Scully giving birth. I think in the end I was right."

-- Oopsie! Doggett had his gun in his hand when he uttered his famous "I'm prepared to use force" line; but when he ran into and down the stairwell, the gun was no longer in his hand. When he exited the stairwell into the parking garage and found Skinner, his gun was back in his hand again.

-- In some of the shots of the car chase in the parking garage, it really was actor Kirk B. R. Woller (Agent Crane) and not a stuntman hanging onto the outside of Skinner and Doggett's SUV. "To get the shots of Crane fighting with Doggett through the window, we tied Kirk to the side of the SUV," Manners explained. "Of course, when Skinner scraped him off by hitting the concrete column," Manners chuckled, "well, that was a dummy."

-- "We shot in the parking garage for four days," Manners said, "and we were all getting a little punchy by the time we were done -- breathing all that carbon monoxide. But we got the last shot finished just as the sun was coming up on the last day. In fact, when Skinner's SUV peels out of the garage, you can see that the sky is lighter in the distance as the sun starts to rise. But I was really pleased with the end result. I think the car chase worked out wonderfully."

-- When Mulder arrived at Democrat Hot Springs via helicopter, you might have noticed that instead of landing, the helicopter hovered while Mulder exited. This was because the scene was shot at a State Park, "and you can't land a helicopter in a State Park," Manners explained. "I don't know why, but it's the law in California. So we just had the helicopter hover there so we didn't break the law."

-- Manners called the "two-shot" of Doggett and Reyes pausing in Kersh's office doorway at the end of their confrontation with Kersh "the birth of the new season, of the new series. I set up that shot at the end of that scene specifically to focus on them, to convey that this was the future."

-- Though we saw Scully enter Mulder's apartment with a key numerous times over the series' history, "Existence" was the first time we saw Mulder enter Scully's apartment with a key. (And he put it back in *his* pocket!)

-- In an interview just after he left the series, David Duchovny was asked if there was any part of Mulder that he never got to explore as an actor. "The issue of Mulder's disappearance was never dealt with on an emotional level," he said. "Here was a guy who was abducted, we think. At least that's what *I* think, and I'm playing the guy. And nobody seemed interested in that when he came back. It was, 'Oh boy, you look bad,' and then, 'Here's another case. Want to take a look at this?' What I would have enjoyed playing as an actor was working through the difficulties that being abducted might have created inside the character. I don't think that's an opportunity we would take in the movies, though. It would just be reworking something from the past that not everybody would be aware of."

-- As Kim Manners described it, "The last scene was the scene the fans had waited eight years for."

-- "Scully's baby was played by my son Jerry," said John Shiban. "It was really a special moment to have him brought on set, and have Mulder and Scully, the characters who I'd lived with for so long, to be holding this little baby in awe and for it to be my son. It was just amazing."

-- "Jerry was only a few days old when he played William. Only a few days old and Shiban already had him working," joked Manners. "I think he got his own trailer too."

-- Although Mulder's middle name was William, and Scully's father and brother were named William, she told Mulder that the baby was named after his father. In Old Irish naming patterns, the first son is traditionally named after the father's father.

-- On the DVD commentary, Kim Manners said, "Interestingly, we established Jerry as William MULDER in this scene, but when we came back for Season 9, Jerry was a monster so we couldn't use him anymore. We had to cast babies that looked like Jerry. They say that all babies look alike, but let me tell you, all babies do not look alike."

-- "We all knew [the kiss] had to happen," said John Shiban. "This was going to be it. This was the culmination of their relationship. We'd been playing all year. Is Mulder the father of the baby or is he not the father? And this was our way, without actually saying it. The love that we always hoped was there is there."

-- "Here we were giving everyone what they had longed for," added Chris Carter, "what they had been teased about, what they had been cheated of in the movie, what they had been given in a kind of bogus scene in Season Six. We gave them the real thing here, we gave them a passionate kiss. And I think David and Gillian were up for it. I mean, I saw them. They were kind of giddy and giggling before it happened, and it was hot."

-- Carter may have agreed that the kiss was the right decision after the fact, but the moment was written as another forehead kiss in the script. He was finally talked into using the passionate kiss by David Duchovny and Kim Manners.

-- And Manners and Duchovny were right. It was a perfect and fitting final image of this partnership, this relationship, this friendship, this "union of perfect opposites," with a baby who represented the future and the hope of mankind nestled between them.

-- And Manners and Duchovny were right. It was a perfect and fitting final image of this partnership, this relationship, this friendship, this "union of perfect opposites," with a baby who represented the future and the hope of mankind nestled between them.

-- "My last day was very emotional," recalled David Duchovny. "My very last day was running shots and little bits of action that we had to do for the last few episodes. I was with Mitch. Chris came down to the set. Chris and I spoke. We had to work together. All that other stuff [the lawsuit], in the end, really is business. What we do on The X-Files is business, and yet it's a creative process. If Chris and I aren't speaking, that's a big deficit, a big gap. We had to be adults. We're paid to do a job. And that means speaking to each other."

-- "But my second-to-last-day, when I shot my last scene with Gillian, was very emotional and very sad," Duchovny said. "I really *hadn't* pondered the weight of eight years coming to a close until I was in the middle of the scene and realized that this would be the last time I was going to do Mulder and Scully on the show. It was sad and very heavy, but not depressing. It was an acknowledgement of a lot of time, effort, and love."

-- Kim Manners' DVD commentary about the final scene goes exactly like this: "This was David and Gillian's last scene together and we shot it on the last day. As they come together to kiss, you will see the camera pull back out the door and that was the last shot of David and Gillian together. And we wrapped, and David and Gillian stood in that room together alone and held each other for a good five minutes. They didn't talk, they didn't move, they just held each other, with tears running down their faces. It was a very touching moment and one I will never forget. And I think we got the kiss in one take."

-- I always say that I would have preferred it if the show had ended after Season 7, but only if this had been that ending. (Ending the show with Mulder abducted and Scully knocked up wouldn't have been a satisfying conclusion to me.) But having the show end right where "Existence" did would have been perfect. (And as noted above, I would have been much more willing to give a new cast a try knowing that Mulder, Scully, and baby were together and fairly happy.)

-- I've also always said that having Mulder become a father was the perfect ending for that character, an important part of bringing his story to a close. Fox Mulder's quest was never about proving the existence of extraterrestrials or uncovering government conspiracies against the American people. It was never even really about finding his sister specifically. It was about restoring what was lost on that fateful night in 1973 -- his family. That dream was denied him, as he lost first his father, then his mother, and eventually learned that Samantha had died long before he even started searching for her. This final moment brought Mulder full circle -- the son became the father and had a chance to succeed where his father failed. I've always felt that the "truth" in this story was synonymous with "love" and Mulder finally found the "truth" that was out there, the "truth" that eluded him for so long. His quest was finished. And this was how it should have been left.

-- "At a certain point, you need to close chapters and open new ones," said Frank Spotnitz. "'Existence' was that point for us."

-- "We were heading forward into a David Duchovny-less, Mulder-less X-Files, and it was a funny place to be," added Chris Carter. "It was sweet and sad, but I think that everyone rallied and did a great job. And I think that the work that we did on 'Existence' made it possible for David to return, made him want to return, at the end of Season Nine."

-- Once & Future Retreads: Nicholas Lea returned in the recurring role of Alex Krycek. Adam Baldwin was Knowle Rohrer in this episode, "Per Manum," "Three Words," "Nothing Important Happened Today II," and "The Truth." Zachary Ansley played Billy Miles in this episode as well as in the "Pilot," "Requiem," "DeadAlive," and "Essence." Kirk B. R. Woller played Agent Crane in this episode and in "Within/Without," "Via Negativa," and "Essence."