News Hour is disturbed to note that the new X-Files movie stars Billy Connolly, apparently in the role John Hurt played in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull – only with added eye bleeding. Did they not see The Man Who Sued God? Or do Americans hold fond memories of the Big Yin’s foray into sitcoms in the 1990s? At the very least, this is a wildly surprising piece of casting, and may distract great swathes of the British audience so much that they fail to notice that this sequel is supposed to be a ‘love story’.
A quick check of the casting’s staff’s previous form would seem appropriate.
Heike Brandstatter is an Emmy-winning casting director who works across film and TV – she worked on Juno (excellent casting, especially Jason Bateman and Allison Janney) on the original Battlestar Galactica mini-series remake (Edward James Olmos, brilliant) and 2001’s Snow Queen (Miranda Richardson, a no-brainer for the queen but great choice all the
same). She also has an X-Files background, and on its short-lived spin-off, The Lone Gunmen. All in all, perfectly sound and tending toward brilliant – although of course one can never pin down who made exactly what choice without speaking to these people.
Next, the Emmy-nominated Mindy Marin, whose CV is slightly less salubrious – the Alfie remake, Dirty Dancing 2, Snakes On A Plane and Revolver all stand out as stinkers, but it’s debatable to what extent this had anything to do with casting. One could argue this for Jude Law in Alfie but, equally, it could be said that the story was simply out of its time.
Bulletproof Monk is also technically awful; and while the casting of the leads, Seann William Scott and Chow Yun Fat, is it’s main strong point, Victoria Smurfit is – at the very least – bizarre as the Nazi villain (if admittedly easy on the eye).
Third, and finally: double Emmy-winner Coreen Mayrs, who has a similar background to Brandstatter (both have X-Files history, both are on the new Galactica prequel, Caprica).
Having lead the reader through these three blind alleys, News Hour can only apologise for not having any concrete answers. It seems plausible that Marin is the candidate behind Connolly’s casting, but we can offer nothing solid.
Still, there’s a terrible sense of foreboding about this project, at least partly because, whatever truth is ultimately out there, won’t it be one we’ve seen before? Let’s hope not. The subtitle echoes the wishes of those who still remember the TV series fondly: ‘I Want To Believe’. Given the focus on the ‘love story’ one can only imagine that they are planning to give the audience what they wanted in the 1990s (again, if memory serves)and wished for in fan fiction; all signs point to green, with David Duchovny promising ‘skin’ in the movie.
At least it was an emotional experience for him and Gillian Anderson – which is what matters, surely. Bring on the wine, fine chocolates and ‘skin’.
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 