8x19 Alone, Один Опции

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Сценарий: Фрэнк Спотниц
Режиссер: Фрэнк Спотниц
Первый показ в США: 6 мая 2001

Серия называется именно так из-за Доггетта, в конце он остается один на один с "Секретными материалами", чего он никогда не мог себе и представить.

Первоначально этот эпизод назывался "A Dream Whose Sleep" - это строчка из поэмы "The great advantage of being alive."
Режиссером этой серии был Фрэнк Спонтиц, он первый раз выступал в качестве режиссера в этом сериале.

"Когда я делал эту серию, мне поступало множество специальных пожеланий", вспоминает он. "Это была последняя серия монстр-недели для Малдера и Скалли. Дэвид покидал сериал, и я хотел, чтобы эта серия была особенной, именно поэтому появилась идея ухода Скалли из "Секретных материалов". Эта серия была возможностью оглянуться назад и вспомнить все самое дорогое для нас из эры Малдера/Скалли".

Именно поэтому Скалли, перебирая старые вещи, находит значок Аполло и медальон Квиквега. Спотниц специально выбирал такие вещи, которые обычным зрителям ничего не скажут, но вот для фанатов это будет значить очень многое.

Ну и когда Доггетт передал брелок Аполло девушке-агенту, метафорически он передал его всем фанатам сериала.
Слова, которые говорит Скалли Доггетту, когда прощается с ним в офисе, это фактически описание того, что значил Доггетт для создателей сериала. Он помог им пройти через 8 сезон. "Без тебя, меня бы здесь не было". Спотниц был благодарен этому персонажу и выразил эту благодарность через слова Скалли.

Сам монстр в этой серии имеет маленькое значение, его не особенно продумывали, эта серия в первую очередь о партнерстве, о "Секретных материалах", о Малдере и Скалли, покидающих СМ.
И о Доггетте, которому предстояло остаться с монстрами один на один.

Спотниц решился стать режиссером эпизода СМ благодаря Дэвиду, который его убеждал не упускать такой шанс.

Сцену, в которой Малдер и Скалли готовятся ехать на занятия по подготовке к родам, во многом придумал Дэвид.
"Было странно видеть Малдера и Скалли в подобной ситуации", вспоминает Спотниц. "К моменту съемок этого эпизода мы еще не раскрыли тайну отцовства ребенка Скалли, хотя сами Малдер и Скалли уж точно знали, были ли они в отношениях. Эта сцена задумывалась как дразнилка - были они вместе или нет? Малдер выступал в этой сцене просто как хороший друг, или же он был кем-то намного большим?"

"Позже", добавляет Спотниц, "мы узнали, что он был для Скалли намного большим, чем просто друг".
"Когда я смотрел этот эпизод несколько лет спустя после окончания сериала, я был поражен химическим притяжением между Дэвидом и Джиллиан. Вы можете отключить звук и просто наблюдать за их глазами... им не нужны слова".
Спотниц очень бы хотел, чтобы в этой серии у Малдера и Скалли было больше совместных сцен, но у любой серии есть лимит по времени.

"Дэвид - очень умный актер. В сцене аутопсии он не хотел играть сентиментальную роль, он был серьезен, и поэтому сцена получилась очень напряженной. Малдер не хотел, чтобы Скалли была на работе, он хотел, чтобы она поехала домой. И именно поэтому он согласился сам искать Доггетта".

Сцена с семечками также была включена по ностальгическим причинам.
И была одна сцена, которую потом пришлось вырезать, в которой Скалли звонит Дэнни, персонажу, которому и Малдер и Скалли звонили, чтобы узнать какую-нибудь информацию на протяжении всего сериала, но которого мы никогда не видели.

Персонаж девушки-детектива назван в честь Лейлы Харрисон, которая очень любила сериал и была известным автором фанфиков. Спотниц еще не решил, кто будет этот детектив, мужчина или женщина, когда ему рассказали историю Лейлы Харрисон, которая, к сожалению, проиграла свою борьбу с раком кожи. И Спотниц решил, что детективом будет женщина и назовут ее именно в честь этой поклонницы сериала.

Дэвид просил Спотница не делать Малдера слишком умным и идеальным, он не Джеймс Бонд.

Когда снимали сцену, в которой Малдер гонится за человеком-саламандрой, Дэвид все время шутил, что он легко сможет его догнать. И это действительно так, ибо Дэвид прекрасный атлет, поэтому бегать ему пришлось "с замедлением".
Сам человек-саламандра передвигался на скейтбордной доске.

Спотниц предоставил Дэвиду и Роберту право импровизировать в сцене в пещере, потому что посчитал, что так сцена получится более интенсивной, чем если бы они просто читали свои роли по сценарию.
Когда съемки серии уже начались, Спотниц еще не знал, каким образом он эту историю завершит, так что выступал одновременно и режиссером, и сценаристом. Он остался очень доволен сценой в пещере, и Малдер, и Доггетт в ней получились героями.

Сцена, в которой Малдер/Скалли и Доггетт разговаривают возле двери в палату Лейлы, была более длинной, но ее пришлось обрезать.

Сам разговор Малдера и Скалли в палате Лейлы также был импровизацией Джиллиан и Дэвида. Спотниц просто задал им направление в качестве вопроса "Каким образом Малдер вернулся из Антарктики?" Этот вопрос часто задавали фанаты сериала, и Спотниц решил, что будет забавно, если он вставит этот вопрос в серию.

У Джиллиан с Дэвидом чудесный талант комедийных актеров, и эту сцену сняли всего лишь с двух дублей.

Дэвид также поучаствовал в режиссуре этой сцены, он предложил, чтобы Лейла не смеялась, как было задумано сначала, а смотрела на Малдера и Скалли с недоумением, пытаясь понять, что происходит.

Некоторые люди считают эту сцену странной, в ней Малдер и Скалли выглядят старой женатой парой. Но Спотниц считает, что это именно так и есть, у них на тот момент был именно такой вид отношений, к тому же эта сцена также является прекрасной дразнилкой - вместе они или нет?

Перевод и материалы взяты с http://greentree.spybb.ru/viewtopic.php?id=442 и http://cleigh6.tripod.com/CTP/CTP-alone.html

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-- "It was very late to attempt directing for the first time," Spotnitz said, but he eventually warmed to the idea. "It's a very difficult show, because performance is really important to make something that's kind of unbelievable seem believable. There are also very specific visual requirements. And when you're trying to scare people or create suspense, if the camera's not in the right place by even a few degrees, it makes a huge difference. But when you've written the material yourself, it's already in your own head, and you understand all of the dramatic objective."

-- "When you decide to take your first shot as a director," said Frank Spotnitz, "there are two ways to go about it. One -- just stick your toe in the water and try to come up with something simple and then hope that you don't screw it up. Two -- just go all out no holds barred. Well, I just decided to go for number two."

"As you write you imagine all these great shots that are possible to bring your words to life," Spotnitz said. "But when you actually direct, you realize that there are a lot of limitations -- lighting, budget, time, etc. -- that don't always allow those great shots to happen. I really didn't know how to prepare, so I designed every shot in my head from my script and more or less I was able to follow the original plan I came up with. All the time I had spent in the editing room over the years really helped me to design the shots and know how I wanted the episode to flow and how I wanted to transition from one scene to another."

-- Lynne Willigham, a long-time editor on the show, edited the episode and the first piece she did was the teaser. "She knew I was anxious, so she called me down to take a look at the teaser after she had edited it," Spotnitz said. "And once I saw that, I felt like everything would be okay."

-- Interesting to contrast Scully's departure from the X-Files with Mulder's, which occurred in the previous episode ("Vienen"). Mulder, the man who was always obsessed by the work, left without a backwards glance, taking nothing with him, seemingly ready for a crack at a different life and fatherhood. Conversely, Scully, the woman who was constantly yearning to "get out of the car" finally got the chance she was hoping for and yet it was harder for her to leave the work behind than she thought it would be. I thought it was a great example of how these two had grown and changed over the years.

-- Spotnitz noted that Harrison was also a well-respected writer of X-Files fanfiction, and noted he felt flattered that fans wrote about the show's characters. "I think it's an incredible compliment," he said. "When people are writing fanfiction, it's a very sure sign that these characters have become dimensional enough to them that they justify that sort of time and thought."

-- "I knew that Jolie Jenkins was perfect for the part of Leyla as soon as our casting director Rick Millikan brought her in," Spotnitz said. "She was cute and energetic and she brought out the 'Clint Eastwood' in Doggett -- that he would eventually grow to like her and feel protective of her. She added to the charm and humor of the episode -- the lightness against the darkness -- and she made it easy to build empathy for the character because her heart was in the right place."

-- "Most of the directing decisions I made were based on what I'd seen the great directors on our show do over the years," said Spotnitz. "Kim Manners, Rob Bowman, David Nutter -- I tried to follow their example. I tried to keep it subtle, nothing too showy."

-- "The first cut of the episode was nine minutes too long," Spotnitz explained. "I cut out as much as I could, and that was okay, but then it was two minutes too long. Getting rid of those last two minutes was very hard, but finally I got it down to the right length. It was very painful, though."

-- Spotnitz set part of the episode in Ellicot, New York, which is a real town near Buffalo, because his former assistant, Michele Fazekas, grew up in Buffalo. (The character in "Detour," another episode that Spotnitz wrote, was named after her.) Spotnitz also patterned Agent Harrison's dialogue after the way Fazekas talked.

-- The exteriors in the wooded area outside the Sacks's house were shot in Topanga Canyon which is near Malibu. The home used as the Stites mansion was located in Encino, and the exteriors and some limited interiors were shot there. At the owner's insistence, cast and crew had to be extremely careful while filming inside the mansion (only the shot of Doggett entering through the door was shot inside). "We spent a lot of time -- too much time -- making sure that everything was protected and that we didn't scuff the hardwood floor," Spotnitz said.

-- Spotnitz noted that two shots in the episode were "stolen" from a couple of his favorite movies. The inspiration for the scene in the woods where Doggett heard something and viewers saw the Salamander Man's tail wriggling out of screen was a scene from Planet of the Apes where the astronauts were skinny dipping and their clothes started to disappear from the shore. And the inspiration for the shot of Stites stepping on Doggett's fingers while he was trying to escape from the cave was North by Northwest.

-- "David is great to work with because he is not only a great actor, and very funny and charming, but he really stimulates your thinking and challenges you to do better," said Spotnitz. "The scene between Mulder and Scully as they were preparing to go to Lamaze class was improved immeasurably by the ad libs that he came up with on the set."

-- The book Doggett found on Stites' desk was "The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Human Kind." Written by renowned paleoanthropologist and environmentalist Dr. Richard Leakey and science writer Roger Lewin in 1995, the book laid out the historical record of the Earth's five previous mass extinctions and argued that the sixth was currently underway. Of course, this subject was touched upon in the X-Files's seventh season premiere "The Sixth Extinction/The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati."

-- Jolie Jenkins had never handled a gun in any acting role, Spotnitz said, "so that actually worked well for her character's inexperience."

-- "I wish I'd had more for Mitch [Pileggi] to do in this episode," said Spotnitz. "I wrote in Skinner's character because I just wanted to work with Mitch, so I wrote in some things for him to do. I'm sure it wasn't too demanding for him as an actor, but I didn't want to miss the opportunity because I didn't know if I'd be directing again."

-- The scene of Scully talking to Skinner on the phone about Doggett was the first scene of the episode Spotnitz shot.

-- Most of the scenes that took place in the cave where shot by the second unit crew. Spotnitz noted that the show usually had two units working almost all the time. The main unit would shoot for the first eight days and the second unit would shoot the final three days and did most of the insert shots (close-ups of objects that don't involve the principal actors). "We had lost our regular second unit crew at this point in the season," Spotnitz recalled. "Most of them had gone off to do a movie. I inherited a replacement crew, but they all did a great job."

-- The Salamander Man's ability to crawl along walls and ceilings was created using an effect similar to that created by Fred Astaire in the film Royal Wedding. The sets were built and anchored inside a rotating "barrel" which turned simultaneously with the camera, creating the impressive special effect.

-- The character of Gary Sacks was named for Frank Spotnitz's oldest friend -- Gary Sacks from Phoenix, Arizona, whom Spotnitz has known since the second grade. "I thought it was a nice tribute to kill him in this episode," Spotnitz joked. Spotnitz didn't think it would be so nice to kill his friend's father, however, so he didn't use Gary's father's real name as the name of Gary's father in the episode.

-- "Mulder was always such a troublemaker," Spotnitz laughed. "I loved seeing him do that." Spotnitz revealed that David Duchovny didn't like it when Mulder was too smart or knew too much. "That was the discussion we had that day on the set [when filming the scene where Mulder first met Stites]," Spotnitz recalled. "How to make this interesting but not too easy for Mulder. You don't hear that too often from a leading man -- that they don't want their character to be too smart. That is a lot of what made Mulder so appealing and so lasting as a hero -- his humanity and his frailty and his imperfections in so many ways. He was not James Bond."

-- Robert Patrick and Jolie Jenkins wore specially-made contact lenses to make it appear there was something wrong with their eyes. "Neither Robert nor Jolie wore contact lenses in real life," Spotnitz said, "and these were quite uncomfortable -- especially after 18-hour days."

-- "We called them the tech explain scenes," Spotnitz said about scenes like the one in the episode where Scully and the Assistant discuss the science of the case. "They were stock-in-trade for the X-Files, but we always tried to make them interesting. And we always tried to have the real science behind the case, whatever it was. Everything was pretty much scientifically accurate."

-- David Duchovny kept calling the Salamander Man "Lawnzilla."

-- "The Salamander Man's morph into Stites was a visual effect we couldn't have done when the show started," Spotnitz said. "It just shows how far the art and technical capabilities have come in such a short time."

-- Spotnitz knew there was a risk that Agent Harrison would be considered a "lightweight" character so he wanted her to have the moment of realization and solve the case before anyone else. "The fact that she unraveled the mystery before anybody else was a validation of her character in a way," he said.

-- Spotnitz had Duchovny and Patrick ad-lib most of their dialogue in the scene where Doggett is trying to shoot the monster. "I thought that was the best way to make it exciting, with them shouting back and forth in an unscripted fashion."

-- "When I started to prep the episode, I didn't know how it was going to end," Spotnitz said. "I hadn't written Act 4. So as I was preparing as a director, I also had to finish writing. I was pleased with the climax in the cave, giving both Mulder and Doggett the opportunity to be heroic."

-- "The episode had a very elegiac feeling to me," said Spotnitz. "There was a baton being passed. We were leaving the Mulder/Scully era and going on to the Doggett/Question Mark era, and I tried to elude to that in the scene outside Leyla's hospital room. There was initially a lot more to that scene, but it had to be cut for time."

-- "I'm always amazed at how much better Mark Snow makes the show," Spotnitz said. "His score adds so much." A perfect example if the variation on the X-Files theme that plays softly underneath Mulder and Scully's banter in that last scene. It underscores perfectly the heart and soul of the X-Files. Sometime when you watch the episode, tune out the dialogue (even though it's wonderful) and listen to the score.

-- Spotnitz's gift to the crew who worked on the episode was a bottle of nice wine with a label that read "Stite's Private Reserve -- Harvest Red -- Liquified for Easy Digestion" and had a picture of a little salamander and the X-Files logo on it. "Collector's items now," Spotnitz joked, "on ebay."

-- Zach Grenier (Dr. Herman Stites) played Andy Cramed in Deadwood and has most recently been seen in The Nine as Sean McDermott.

Once & Future Retreads: Jolie Jenkins played Agent Leyla Harrison again in Season 9's "Scary Monsters." Jay Caputo (The Salamander Man) also played the The Bat Thing in "Patience" (Caputo is primarily a stuntman).

-- "I didn't expect to enjoy directing as much as I did," said Spotnitz, "but I did enjoy it, and I hope the fans like the episode. Directing is enormously satisfying. And when you've written your own material, you've already done an enormous amount of the prep work for yourself as a director. Directing "Alone" made me want to have a crack at doing something completely different, and so the episode I directed in Season 9 definitely was ("Daemonicus"). Also, in Season 9 I realized that if I were going to do it again, I'd better do it early, rather than late [in the season], because doing 'Alone' at the end of the year almost killed me."

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Анонсы серии: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CySK4m-XI9c

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[Fenix]

[Fenix]

Cтилл лучшего разрешения, чем был

[Белая Тигрица]

Ой, при всей моей неприязни к 8-9 сезонам, эту серию очень люблю. Она действительно получилась особенной.
И в который раз читая факты о создании сериала, поражаюсь, насколько СМ отличаются от современных сериалов. Сейчас всё поставлено на конвейер, а в СМ продумывались такие мелочи, что диву даёшься. И сколько было всего для фанатов. Каждый раз как в первый раз обожаю их всех за эту необъятную Вселенную СМ.