All language subtitles for The LONE Gunmen - S00 E01 - Defenders of Justice (576p - DVDRip)

The idea of doing a Lone Gunmen
spin-off had been suggested very early on.

I always thought it
was perfectly cast.

They all had that kind of great
visual take on who they were.

We tell the stories
others refuse to tell.

- I'm Bruce Harwood. I play Byers.
- I'm Dean Haglund. I play Langly.

- I'm Tom Braidwood. I play Frohike.
- (all) And we're the lone gunmen.

The lone gunmen were introduced
to The X-Files in the first season,

in an episode written by Glen
Morgan and James Wong called "EBE".

We're talking about
a dark network.

A government within a government
controlling our every move.

I went in. I auditioned once. I
got the part. I didn't think much of it.

And they kept calling
me back for one day

here, one day there,
playing these characters.

All right. What do you know
about Gulf War syndrome?

- Agent Orange of the '90s.
- Shells coated with depleted uranium.

Jim Wong and Glen Morgan,
who created the characters,

had a little difficulty casting
the character of Frohike.

They had already cast
Bruce Harwood as Byers

and they had cast
Dean Haglund as Langly,

but that third character
was kind of elusive.

- Hey, Frohike, can I borrow those?
- If I can have Scully's phone number.

Glen Morgan and James Wong
had written them to become

the even more paranoid
group than Agent Mulder.

In fact, that's the way they
were billed, as the paranoids.

These are unlikely heroes,

not only in their characters,
but in the actors we cast,

and that's, for
us, the fun of it.

They were funny. They became, for the
writers subsequent to that, a comic relief.

We'd go to the lone gunmen when we wanted
strange and weird facts, information.

That is a Eurasian cluster fly.

They infest vegetation
like apples or cherries,

and inflict a great deal
of damage to crops.

Each episode that we got as the
gunmen in those little early years

were feeding the next one, so the
information that we got from the first one

would inform the character
choices for each following episode.

(Frank) The lone gunmen
were popular among the writers.

We always looked for
ways to bring them back.

Ironically, they almost
were no more in season four,

because Glen and Jim, who'd returned
for a number of episodes in season four,

wrote an episode called "Musings
of a Cigarette Smoking Man".

The end of that episode
originally had Frohike

being killed by the
Cigarette-Smoking Man.

We were very upset. All of us
who were going to stay on the show,

we didn't want these characters to
go, and so we made our case to Chris.

If you watch that episode, the music
ramps up to when Frohike's about to die,

then it's almost like it
goes back in reverse,

like that moment was supposed
to happen, but didn't happen.

But not today.

We were glad they got a
reprieve and lived another day.

So at the beginning of season five, we were
without David and Gillian for a few weeks

because they were still
filming The X-Files feature film.

So we had to find
ways to start the series

so we could debut in time in the
fall, but not have their characters.

Vince Gilligan, my colleague, came up with
the idea of doing a lone-gunmen episode.

- You wanna cha-cha?
- Aw time, aw place.

- Both of you, relax.
- Shut up, you narc.

It's your fault we're here.

(Vince) The lone gunmen first appeared as
cameo characters, and I wanted to see more.

We got our opportunity with
the episode "Unusual Suspects".

That was an episode that our three
guys carried, and carried it admirably.

Welcome to the dark side.

(Frank) Due to the success
of that, we did another one,

a comedic episode with the lone gunmen
called "Three of a Kind", set in Las Vegas.

I think that episode
was such a success

and a pleasure
to write and watch,

that it really was the spark for the
idea of doing a lone-gunmen TV series.

Frank Spotnitz, Vince
Gilligan and John Shiban said:

"We'd like to do a
spin-off of The X-Files

starring the lone
gunmen." It seemed perfect.

You wanna know why
Joey Ramone's my hero?

Cos people like you never
managed to grind him down.

They never stole his spirit. He never
gave in, never gave up, and never sold out.

Right till his last breath.

I'm not sure they got it until we pitched
it. When we sat with the Fox executives

and pitched broad strokes of the
pilot episode, and the mystery of it.

Because the three leading
men aren't classical leading men,

aren't the types of guys
who drive a television series,

and we all had a hard time
kind of picturing what it would be.

When we finally did
this episode "Three of a

Kind" at the end of
season six of The X-Files,

it became clear what this show could
be - Mission: Impossible with three geeks.

We knew from the pilot that we needed
someone else for them to play off against,

and someone who would help
redefine the world of The Lone Gunmen,

as opposed to the
world of The X-Files,

and that became the character Zuleikha
Robinson played, Yves Adele Harlow,

which is an anagram
for Lee Harvey Oswald,

and we always looked at
her as sort of a competitor.

You would not know whether she was
good or bad, what side she was fighting on.

All you knew is she thwarted
their attempts to get their stories.

(Tom) The first day that Zuleikha
and I met was the day that...

We were doing the episode
when I was on the wires

and I end up upside down and she's
dressed up as a guy and she kisses me,

and she was so bashful about it.

She felt so badly that we
didn't know one another

and she had to kiss me while
I was hanging upside down.

I was the ugliest man I think
I've ever seen in my entire life.

They put the wig on. I said, "I
don't look so bad with short hair."

Then they put the moustache on
and I'm just like, "Oh, I'm so ugly",

and I went outside and was asking
the women if they'd go out with me,

and they're all just standing there
going... cos I was just so weird-looking.

You sure that man
was Yves Adele Harlow?

Trust me. No guy
kisses like that.

The shot where Frohike was dangling was
kind of fun just because it was so comic.

It was simple and difficult.

(man) Wirework
is an alt in itself.

You can't stick actors
in them and say:

"Fly around like you
know what you're doing."

There are artists who
do that, and double actors.

The fact that he was able to stay in
character, survive a day in the harness,

which makes your
mid-area really sore,

and then perform acrobatics that
are actually fun and entertaining...

He dove in to that role as
though he was made for it.

(Byers) Frohike? Hang on tight.

What?

We did have a stunt
double, but poor Tom had

to be hanging in
that thing an awful lot.

I don't remember if he got out of it and
threw up or not, but we were all being...

from the look on his face, we were
being careful not to stand under him

after two or three takes.

- Shut it down!
- Hang on!

- Shut it down!
- Shut it down!

ABC Recycling was an
actual car-reclamation thing,

and it was filthy, it
was wet, it was cold.

The mud was about this deep,

and it was toxic mud, because it was full
of rust and gasoline and who knows what.

- Come on, shut it down.
- Stop, stop!

It was fun. The director really wanted
me to do it. They had a stunt double.

I said I would do it, but
I would only do it once.

If it didn't work, I
wouldn't do it twice.

There was concerns
cos there was metal,

so what we had to do is we scraped out a
square area about six to eight feet square,

and nine inches deep,
and cleared it and put a

base in there so that
it couldn't be polluted,

and then we filled it with a
combination of peat moss

and a special clay and mixed
it all up. So it was all very clean.

I just went for it, you know. I
sort of figured out the timing on it,

and we went back and did it in the first
take, and I did the face plant in the mud.

I guess they were happy with it cos
that's what ended up in the picture.

This old friend, you know,
run and fall down face first,

dig his face into the mud
to make sure it's on good,

and then come up and
then play as if it's not there,

I can say that I had to cover
my mouth laughing at the monitor,

and applaud his commitment to
doing it, and fearlessness, also.

Byers, your flight's gonna
make an unscheduled stop.

Corner of Liberty and
Washington. Lower Manhattan.

World Trade Centre. They're gonna crash
the plane into the World Trade Centre.

We were trying to imagine, you
know, crimes that weren't paranormal,

that would involve serving terrorism - in
this case, government-sponsored terrorism.

And so we had the
idea of running an airliner

into the World Trade
Centre in Manhattan.

As a writer, particularly on The
X-Files, that's how you spend your day.

You imagine the unimaginable
and the unthinkable.

We want to set them up as heroes who will,
unbeknownst to all of us, save the world.

What would be a terrible,
horrible thing that could happen?

Unfortunately, it was
the World Trade Centre.

I have to say, at the time, if it
ever occurred to me, I imagined:

"Of course the government
has thought about

this. Of course there
are systems in place..."

"If we can imagine it, we're
just Hollywood writers."

"There are people in the Defense Department
charged with defending our country

who think about these
things and that there

are things in place to
defend us against it."

I remember that Mat Beck, who did
our visual effects, flew to New York,

and buzzed around the World
Trade Centre in a helicopter

to get all the shots that were used
as plates to cut in with the CGI plane.

In retrospect, it's
a little bit painful to

talk about, but I went
there and, you know,

we did a lot of flying
around and I kept

doing pass after pass
flying at the building.

We flew over it
and quite close to it,

and we got footage that,
you know, was beautiful

and, in retrospect,
really poignant.

We got special permits at the
time to go into New York City,

to have a helicopter shoot at
night heading towards the towers.

It was... The difficulty
in just mounting

that and getting the
authorisation to do it,

and hear, you
know, months later...

The morning of 9/11, I was
directing an X-Files episode,

and I woke up to see that on television,
and my first thought was The Lone Gunmen.

And, you know, of course, my
first thought was, "God, I hope..."

Cos I didn't know yet
what had happened or why,

but, "I hope this has nothing
to do with what we did on TV."

"I hope we aren't somehow
guilty of inspiring this or..."

It became clear within hours
that we had nothing to do with it,

but it was a terrible...
obviously a very terrible feeling.

When you live and work in a
world that has so much imagination,

and then when reality just comes and
sort of slaps you in the face, it's scary.

I couldn't bring myself to
even look at that episode again

until I sat down and prepared
for this interview today.

Oh, no. No way.

- Jimmy?
- I wanna help.

After looking at the pilot,
which we were pleased with,

we realised we needed one other
character, because the lone gunmen,

even though we had
separate positions for

them, they all basically
know the same thing.

They work for the same newspaper,
have the same beliefs about conspiracies

and the same knowledge
about computers,

and they needed somebody
they could explain this stuff to,

because the audience
doesn't know all these things.

And so we came up with a character
who would not only serve that function...

- Stupid, stupid, 5111954-
- (ball beeps in beat)

(Frank) ..but also
stand in relief to them,

because he would be a really
classically good-looking guy,

and could potentially serve as a
love interest for Yves Adele Harlow,

which was unlikely
for the lone gunmen.

These boys are
out here because it's

difficult, because people
say it can't be done.

They have courage...

Jimmy Bond had the heart.

He wasn't really smart, but he
always saw the love and the heart

and the emotional
side that people had.

I knew that I was gonna
be in the other episodes.

A lot of the crew just
thought I was a guest star.

People were coming up and they
were saying, "Bye. What a great job."

"It's a funny character too."
"lt'd be nice to see you again."

Then I came back.

Monday Night Football better
watch their butts. (Grunts)

Love this game.

I didn't know what
people's reactions would

be to this character
that I'd been working on,

cos it is a little
absurd and I thought:

"Well, OK, let's film this
and hope everybody likes it."

(speaks German)

(commentator) "I will never
tell you. You'll never find her."

I love the teaser for
"Eine Kleine Frohike",

harking back to the old
Fox Movietone News.

And I love the way our
special-effects team, led by Mat Beck,

mixed old Movietone footage with
this really hi-tech computer animation,

maps and stuff of Europe during
the war, that segueways beautifully.

The child's father was this man.

You think Frohike could
pass himself off as the son?

And bring the poisoner
of Alsace to justice.

Those of us who wrote for the show
were geeks in the best sense of the word,

in that...

A geek is someone who's very passionate
about a very small area, or minutiae,

whether it's computers or cars,

and I was always a
film geek in a lot of ways,

and this was an opportunity for me to bring
a lot of influences and play with them.

No, thanks, Ma. I'm not hungry.

You have not eaten a
thing since you got here.

This is made
special. Just for you.

(John) I'd always been a big fan of the
Eating comedies of the late '40s and '50s -

British comedies
- Alec Guinness.

Once we started doing The Lone Gunmen,
it was something that I kept saying:

"I want to do The Ladykillers."

- Have you got a girl in there?
- Pardon me?

(John) For a lot of reasons.
It's an undercover story.

It's an undercover mission, and
there's so much tension in that,

and from that, so much
comic possibilities, in my mind.

Just the character
Frohike is such a...

He's driven, he's a
little bit of a curmudgeon,

and the idea to put
him in a situation

where he has to be
a fish out of water and

maintain another
identity, I knew it'd be fun.

But it was so much fun to do,

and playing with Ruth Manning from
New York, who played the old German Frau,

she was just a delight.

She was an absolutely
fantastic person to work with.

Is that too hot for you?

It's fine. Could I get
a lime privacy here?

The idea was
outrageous and foolish,

and the whole idea of making
me up to look like her son.

The makeup girls and
the costume people had a

lot of fun doing all
the different costumes.

It was a fun, fun
show. It was great.

Another one of the ideas we had
from the get-go about The Lone Gunmen

was that we could be
a lot looser in the tone

of the show than The
X-Files ever could be.

And so that meant using
a lot more source music.

There was a music supervisor who found this
most eclectic, bizarre, wonderful stuff.

We used a music supervisor
named Barklie Griggs,

who would come up
with dozens of possibilities

of songs to use
for these pieces,

and so we had a great
time inserting this music.

And it was sort of an inspiration to
me, cos when I heard these pieces,

it made me think, "Boy",

and I knew that Chris Carter and
company was going for this stuff.

I knew I could really
step out a bit, you know,

out on a limb, and
try all kinds of things.

Chris is enormously interested
in music, and listens to everything

and is always listening to new music,
so he welcomed the chance to do a show

where you could use a lot
more contemporary music.

In the episode that he wrote by himself
- "Three Men and a Smoking Diaper" -

he specified what all
the tracks would be.

He knew exactly what he
wanted and wrote for those tracks.

Sometimes Daddy feels
ill-equipped to bond with baby.

And that's why we're here today.

Gentlemen, keep those
nipples high and proud!

Chris created The X-Files, and he
created that feeling of gloom and despair

that we love so much
from The X-Files.

The thing to know about
Chris - he's really a funny guy,

and that episode is that other side
to him that you don't see that much.

A lot of bodily-function jokes.
That's the other side to Chris Carter.

- Melvin, you should be ashamed.
- (baby starts crying)

How are we supposed to get any
work done? How do we publish our paper

and root out graft,
corruption and greed for

our readers if we 're
changing poop y diapers?

What if this is some kind of
government-bred, superintelligent chimp?

I'd heard whispers
of this for years.

The military warns a
perfect undercover operative.

Imagine what spies they'd be.
Total access. No one would suspect.

I had the idea for
intelligent animals

created by the CIA or the Department
of Defense a long time before this,

and I was thinking
of a straight thriller.

No one would even know
it was murder. It's brilliant.

Except for one small detail.

You can create an intelligent animal,
but you can't be assured of its politics.

I always say you can tell
chimps are smarter than actors.

The monkey would get it right on
the first take, then he'd be bored,

and he couldn't understand
why he had to do it again.

So you'd see that. You know, you'd
say, "Do this" and he'd do it once,

but we'd have to take it again
and he'd think of other things to do.

His trainers would have to
work really hard to get him back

to do what he was
supposed to be doing.

When they were
supposed to be typing,

they would use their strong fingers
to pick off the keys and eat them,

so they basically just ate
our really great laptops.

Working with
chimpanzees is not easy,

so we had a very hard
time executing that show.

I remember there was one shot
where they wanted to film all the chimps.

They were all sitting
together drawing.

So I said, "Let me sit
down with the chimps."

And it kind of reflects my character,
you know, very similar to the chimps.

And I was drawing with crayons,

and this chimpanzee reached over
and he'd take the crayon from me.

So I'd pick another
one. He was like a kid.

Every colour that I drew with, he
wanted. He would take it away from me.

Chimpanzees don't work well in cold
weather. They're not cold-weather animals.

I mean, that episode focused mainly
and was driven by these chimpanzees.

I had a call saying, "The chimpanzees
won't work. They won't come out."

(Vince) There's a scene
toward the end, on the

bridge, when they're
gonna make the switch,

the chimp was gonna go
back to his Air Force doctor,

but it was, I hear, bitterly cold,
and chimps do not like the cold.

There were special
accommodations made for the chimps.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Let's get ready to get married.

Hold it. One minute. Hey,
hey. Hold it. One minute.

I object.

"Madam, I'm Adam" is one of
the craziest hours of TV ever,

and I'm so glad we got to
somehow get it past the censors.

(man) At the opening scene there's
a shot of Stephen sitting on the toilet,

so you know you're in for
quality television when...

You turn on your television
and there's a man on the toilet,

it doesn't get any
better than this.

The humour in that episode is so evil
and nasty and just deliciously bad taste.

I pitched this idea about a man being
reprogrammed, who's... he's a bad guy.

He's troubled, and is it right
for society to change a person

to make society safer, or
do you let the misfits run wild?

It was a takeoff on Clockwork Orange, sort
of, somebody who was being reprogrammed.

It became this thing about him arriving
at this house, where he thinks he lives,

and the original owner coming in behind
him, and it becomes a very funny situation.

What are you doing
with your hand?

(screaming)

Tom Schnauz, who has a
deliciously perverse sense of humour.

If we worried about Frohike's
reaction to "Eine Kleine Frohike",

in which he wore lederhosen
and was bathed by an old woman,

we especially worried about his
reaction to "Madam, I'm Adam",

where Stephen
Tobolowsky, who is hilarious,

keeps flashing to a midget
wrestler whenever he sees Frohike.

Tom Braidwood is
truly a class actor.

He's a guy who put up with a
lot of indignities, to say the least,

during the making of the
series, and God bless him for it.

Cos some of those moments are absolutely
the funniest moments in the series.

(police sirens)

We shot quite a long
sequence of a wrestling

match, that they
had to have for video,

and I brought in a stunt guy
we have, who was an ex-jockey.

He's the right size for
this, and he's pretty tough,

and he went in there with this guy who's
actually done some professional wrestling,

and the guy didn't
know how to pull a punch

and he was just hammering the
living heck out of this poor stunt guy.

We would do a shot, and
then we'd talk about it a bit.

Our stunt guy'd come back and
he'd go, "This guy's really killing me."

I'd talk to the wrestler again, they'd go
back and he'd hammer the heck out of him.

He's just whaling on him and
kicking him and jumping on him.

You couldn't get him to back away. It was
the toughest day that stunt guy ever had.

My whole life is gone.

There's strangers living in my house. Lois,
my wife, I don't know where she is now.

Neighbours, they don't
know who I am any more.

He's just a fantastic, funny actor, and
he was just the best casting for the role.

I mean, I couldn't
imagine a better choice.

Proof of alien contact.

Take a look at this.

I found this in every crevice of
my body all over, everywhere.

I got a local hairstyling company
who made us 2,000 gallons of blue gel.

It had nothing else in it. It was
just a blue gel, a clear, blue gel.

We had to pump it into tanks.
We pumped it on the weekend,

and the director, Bryan Spicer, came
over on Saturday morning and said:

"I can't see anything.
You gotta change it."

We worked all weekend,
and we got this big

truck, we had to suck
it out, except one tank,

and filled it with blue water,
so he could see the people in it.

What we didn't know was
when you'd got 200 gallons of it,

you couldn't see anything,
so we just changed it.

The only time we
used the actual gel

was when we saw him
climbing in and going

into the bottom, but
the rest of it was water.

I guess this looks bad.

We found a house, that they were gonna tear
down, that we could cut the front off of.

So that house was about to be demolished
and the locations guy found it perfectly,

so that we could just shear off
the whole front and it comes down.

We only had one take to do that,
of course, as you can well imagine.

Did you let him see your face?

Here he comes.

Whoa. What's he doing?

"Diagnosis, Jimmy",
as in Diagnosis: Murder.

It didn't hurt that it was
gonna save us some money.

It had some very clear James-Bondian
elements in the ski chase.

We were looking to
give Steve Snedden more

of a showcase episode,
to really feature him.

He didn't see me. There
must be something else.

I'll find out what.

We got to go up in
Vancouver, up on the mountain,

filmed two days in the
snow, which was a challenge.

I'd never shot in the
snow before. It was fun.

(man) Action.

Did that work?

(Vince) They shot the skiing scenes
up in Whistler, up north of Vancouver.

I think it was one of those situations
where we wrote Jimmy and Yves skiing

before we ever
asked the two actors,

Zuleikha or Stephen Snedden,
whether or not they could ski.

The scene where
I ski into the tree...

Of course, I just kind of ski a couple feet
and then they put in someone and he skis,

and there's a rope
that yanks him back.

I was blown away.
I kept thinking,

if he just leaned forward too
far he'd hit himself on the nose.

Jimmy had a ski accident
and ended up in the hospital.

- You going to be all right?
- Yeah, sure.

(John) It's a challenge
when a character's immobile,

and I kept, again, going
back to what inspires me.

I kept watching Rear Window, and
thinking, "How do you solve this problem?"

A lot of it is what he sees and reacts to,
even though he can't move, and hears.

And so we tried to build set
pieces around what he sees on TV,

his suspicions of the doctor, what he
hears from the next bed with the old man,

who may or may not
be the victim, etcetera.

The toughest part was actually
that they put me in a real cast.

So I would have to
show up, put a cast on,

and then they would saw the cast
off and do the same thing the next day.

Say something.
Testing, one, two, three.

(Skinner's voice)
Testing, one, two, three.

This is Walter freakin' Skinner of the
FBI, and I am going to prison, big time.

"The Lying Game" was a fun one
because we worked with Mitch Pileggi,

and it was so much fun
to have him in that episode.

Mr Skinner, would you
explain what is going on?

You are interfering with an FBI
sting operation. That's what's going on.

You put an undercover
operative in danger.

At Ten Thirteen we'd always
been against crossovers.

We resisted them
throughout Millennium.

They'd been suggested
and we never did one.

Only after Millennium ended did we
bring over Lance Henriksen to The X-Files.

With Lone Gunmen
we felt differently.

We thought crossovers would be fun, because
it's comedy, it's a different genre.

So.

What's on for
tonight? Who do we...

What evil deeds are afoot?

It was so good to
see Mitch get to be

funny, because Mitch
in person is hilarious.

He's absolutely not
Assistant Director Skinner.

Ara, buddy. Come on, will you...
Ow! Ow, ow, ow. OK, that hurt.

He's playing me playing him.

The funny thing was
Mitch is such a nice guy,

and he watched tapes of
me and my performances.

- Can I get anybody anything?
- Yeah, what the hey. I'll have a...

A Cuba libre.

Uh... Pretty cool, huh?

We had Mitch, who's a trouper,
a really great guy to work with.

We lined him up and we shot
him with and without a terrible mask,

and then in order to
make the sequence work,

we actually had to take
footage of him performing

and track it onto a
computer-generated face,

so that we had control
over the surfaces,

and that allowed him
to actually deliver a line,

and then have his mouth
pull off and deliver a line again.

Frohike, the radar composite
is in the CD. Get that CD.

I had this idea about them going
undercover and something to do with dance,

and I seem to remember
pitching it being in a disco,

and luckily Frank
Spotnitz said, "Tango".

(Frank) The tango episode
is one of my favourites,

because it gave Zuleikha Robinson so
much to do - I know she loved doing it-

and because it got to
deepen the romance

between her and Jimmy Bond
- Steve Snedden's character.

The tango is such
a beautiful dance,

and, you know, for Yves's character
to actually do something normal...

I think, for me, that was the
best part about the whole show.

The guy they cast to play
opposite me was a fantastic dancer.

He was a salsa dancer.
He was John Vargas.

It was very challenging because we really
didn't have much time to learn this dance.

Had to learn how to do an
Elvis impersonation pretty quick.

Then I had to learn how to
tango dance - two or three lessons.

I had a great partner, great people
teaching, and out of necessity, you learn.

But that frightened
me, cos I'm not much of

a dancer, especially,
I'd never tango danced.

We had to spend
hours learning to tango,

for what was a 30-second
opening bit, or something like that.

I'm a terrible dancer, and I
hated learning how to tango.

The woman I danced with in the teaser was
the one who taught me. She was really good.

It was nice, because all I had to do was
the basic moves and she'd dance around me.

This crash course on
learning how to dance.

Once the guys learned that really in
the tango the woman does all the work

and you just stand there
like an idiot and look good.

Depending on how good she
dances, that's how good you look.

I don't want to brag, but
that was me doing the splits.

Arghg!

I have a bit of dance
training in my background.

Not that you can tell from that shot,
but I did four years of modern dance

and three years of ballet, as a
double major with my theatre degree.

So when they said, "Oh, just make
up any sort of dancing you want",

that is the result of
thousands of dollars of tuition.

(in Spanish)

One of the funny
ideas of that script was

that Frohike was this
incredible tango dancer,

and that he had this very hot
Latin lover that he'd abandoned

and he had to go back and
pick up the mantle again,

which was just hilarious.

The idea that Frohike had had this
deep, platonic relationship with this woman

was kinda fun to work on,
you know, it was enjoyable.

(in Spanish)

It just thematically was the
perfect choice for an episode,

because it's all about
loneliness and isolation,

and these characters - Yves and the gunmen
themselves - they're lonely characters.

That's why the episode
is so sad in the end.

Yves and Santavos - two lonely
characters - make a connection,

but Yves is doing it
to get to another end,

but she ultimately has
romantic feelings for Santavos.

So that's what makes
it really sad in the end,

when he takes a knife
in the back for her.

(Vince) Bryan Spicer, our
linchpin producer/director,

who directed most of the
Lone Gunmen episodes,

every time we'd do
one, he'd outdo himself.

But that one in particular, the
tango-contest sequence at the end,

I think he had half
a day to shoot it.

We only have seven days of
prep and eight days to shoot,

and the script was changing as we
were going, and it was challenging.

But we learned a lot
about tango and dancing,

and we were able to utilise the camera
movement and make it sexy and make it flow

and make it a really neat piece.

I got choked up every time I watched the
final dance with her and Steve Snedden.

I actually lost an argument about
that, because originally it was scripted

that he gets to dance
with her at the end,

and she's heartbroken
about what's happened.

And they dance, and it's a nice moment,
and then he stumbles - ever the klutz.

And I was insistent
that we had to preserve

that stumble, and they
didn't want to shoot it.

They really wanted to preserve the niceness
of that moment, but they shot it for me,

and I saw both of them and I
realised that they were right.

With Jimmy Bond,
there was a lot of jealousy

about Yves falling
for someone else.

Then the tragedy at the end.

But it was a great episode and I felt like
we were really getting into our groove.

We were really figuring
out what we wanted to do

and how we wanted to continue
the show and approach things.

(Vince) Our strongest
episode is "Al| About Yves" -

the one that should
have ended the series.

See that it gets
to Agent Mulder.

"Al| About Yves" was kind of the
beginning about "Al| About Yves",

and we never really
got into it that much.

We find out that she has a father
and he's this kind of ominous presence.

What about Romeo 61?

Someone who's been looking
for me for quite some time now.

Which means if we can't track
down Byers, Frohike and Langly...

They'll kill them.

It took a while for the
character to find itself.

At first, she was simply just a
nemesis, a very pretty nemesis,

which was counterpoint to
us rough-and-tumble guys,

but then she grew and
became an interesting character.

But, hey, you know,
I'm not the hardware guy.

Tell us everything.

(yells)

(screams)

They made these little appliances, and
it's basically just thin rubber around here

with little nodes to attach
the fishing-line stuff with.

We're betting that you need us.

Oh? And why's that?

Romeo 61.

(Byers) You're
soared of it, aren't you?

(Il/lichael) The lone gunmen
were growing when it was cancelled.

They were becoming
more and more defined.

We felt like we found our groove
and that the show was really working.

The ratings were acceptable and good
and as good as X-Files in the early days.

(Frank) We wanted to give
The Lone Gunmen a big finish,

and we knew that we'd
sort of let down our fans

by ending the Lone Gunmen
series with a "to be continued".

And there was a tremendous
battle royal with the studio

about bringing The
Lone Gunmen back at all.

(Frank) And then what
we attempted to do

was blend them into the fabric of The
X-Files at that point, which was not easy.

(Bruce) It was the
ninth season of X-Files,

they wanted to finish everything off
and they wanted close that loophole,

so they did an episode
called "Jump the Shark",

where they kind of tied up the loose
threads of the Lone Gunmen series

in an X-Files sort of way.

They brought back Morris
Fletcher to kind of tie it all in,

and Zuleikha and Stephen, and
sort of wrote an end to the series.

The decision to kill them off was made
because we didn't want to dishonour them

with sort of a tepid ending.

It was their last
appearance in the series.

We didn't know if there'd be any life
for The X-Files beyond that season,

so we wanted to give
them a proper heroes'

exit, and that's why
we decided to kill them.

I felt like it would be the ultimate
tribute to these unsung heroes,

in that, if these guys really are
the guys who are saving the world,

and they're willing to sacrifice
themselves, there's nothing more heroic.

Guys?

(alarm bell)

I was actually quite thankful that
we got an awesome death scene,

cos, you know, if we
didn't it would just be:

"Oh, the gunmen walk off into the
sunset with a stick and a hobo bag."

That would have been a lame sendoff, so
it was something heroic and phenomenal,

but as you know, in science
fiction no one is ever dead.

I mean, level-five quarantine coffins
are supposed to be fitted to the person.

All the coffins
are the same size.

One of the gunmen is
shorter than the others. Huh?

Maybe our bodies
aren't in those things.

With purest intentions, we wanted
them to go out on a high note,

we wanted them to be
recognised as heroes,

and that ending with
them being buried in

Arlington, you know,
heroes, national heroes,

was a high point, but
very bittersweet as well.

I think it was the right
thing to do. We tied

up some loose ends in
the final X-Files episode.

Why risk your lives?

- Because I need to know the truth.
- You already know the truth.

We have been very blessed, both
with The X-Files and with Lone Gunmen

to have very loyal,
smart, supportive fans.

And the fans of Lone Gunmen have
been particularly vocal and active,

and loved these characters and
supported the show when it was on.

We're right there with them.

We would have loved
to have brought it back,

and still would, if
there was a way to do it.

- When we started it was a day player.
- We were day players.

And what did we get?
Nine years and a spin-off.

- We're the luckiest day players around.
- Ready for that next day-player role.

- We are a bit of a fairy tale come true.
- Yeah.

- Including the frog prince and everything.
- Yeah.

- It has been fun.
- Yeah, fun. That's the word.

- Well, that's it.
- Thank you.

English SDH