Background

Chris Carter was born on October 13, 1956, in Bellflower, California, United States. He is a first-born in a family of William Carter, a construction worker, and Catherine Carter (maiden name Mulder), a homemaker. Chris’s younger brother, Craig, is a professor of the Materials Science and Engineering department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The two sons were raised in strict discipline. Once Carter was punished for coming home late by being forced to eat his dinner outside, on a manhole cover in the middle of the street.

Young Carter was interested in surfing and baseball.

Education

Chris Carter studied at the California State University. He graduated in 1979 and obtained a degree in journalism.

Career

The start of Chris Carter’s career can be counted from 1979 when he began writing for Surfing Magazine in San Clemente, California. By the age of twenty, he became an associate editor. During his thirteen years stint in Surfing, Carter also worked as a freelance writer and developed his skills of a screenwriter. His first script about three young men going off to Vietnam was never materialized into anything, and Carter wrote another script, a comedy. It had no success too but grabbed the attention of Jeffrey Katzenberg then the head of the production of Walt Disney Studios. Katzenberg hired Carter to write for television and produce several television movies.

His first works for the studio included comedy projects ‘The B.R.A.T. Patrol’ of 1986 and ‘Meet the Munceys’ of 1988, both oriented on youth. That is why he received a reputation of an author of contemporary youth comedy although he was more interested in serious drama.

Among the shows Carter wrote during his time at Disney were also the television pilots for ‘Cameo by Night’ for NBC and ‘The Nanny’ for the Disney Channel. Taking a break from Disney at the urging of softball Pal Brandon Tartikoff, Carter co-produced the second year of the NBC comedy ‘Rags to Riches’. Back to Disney in 1989, he became the creator and executive producer of ‘Brand New Life’, a comedy series rotated on Disney’s Sunday night lineup.

In 1992 Chris Carter moved again, this time to Twentieth Century-Fox Television, where he signed an exclusive deal to create and develop television projects for the network. The first show Carter pitched to his new network was a scary show like the ones he enjoyed watching as a child, including ‘Twilight Zone’, ‘Night Gallery’, ‘The Outer Limits’, and most importantly, ‘Kolchak: The Night Stalker’, which was the inspiration for ‘The X-Files’.

When the TV series was only an idea, Carter sketched out the details, which came from a variety of elements. First, he saw an FBI agent on the Larry King show whose primary assignment was to investigate satanic cults. Another FBI influence appeared in the form of the movie ‘Silence of the Lambs’. All of these elements converged into one idea – the show would feature two lead FBI agents who tracked biological and chemical oddities, twists in genetics, and alien sightings and abductions. In addition, Carter wanted to differentiate the series from other horror series by basing it in scientific fact. Focusing on his two lead characters, Chris Carter decided to shake up traditional gender stereotypes, making the female, Scully, (named for Los Angeles Dodgers announcer Vin Scully), the skeptical scientist, and the male, Mulder (featuring the maiden name of his mother), the intuitive believer.

Now that all the pieces were in place, Carter presented his concept to Fox, where it was not well received at first. With the help of an American television producer Peter Roth, Chris Carter had soon a second meeting with the network which this time accepted the screenwriter to issue the pilot of the series. Filming for ‘The X-Files’ finally began in March of 1993. What followed was something Carter never expected – both critical success and an almost maniacal following.

Then, the mind of ‘The X-Files’ creator produced an even darker and creepier concept for his second Fox series, ‘Millennium’, which premiered in 1996 with the highest debut Nielsen ratings for any show in Fox history.

The popularity of ‘The X-Files’ provided Carter with an opportunity to negotiate other contracts. The feature movie adaptation by the parent company's film studio was among these agreements. The adaptation was released on June 19, 1998, and the short-lived spin-off series, ‘The Lone Gunmen’, came three years later. The final season of the science-fiction series was issued in 2002.

Six years after, Chris Carter wrote and directed the second movie of the project, ‘The X-Files: I Want to Believe’. It was met badly by critics. However, the tenth season of ‘X-Files’ consisting of six-episode event series was aired by Fox in 2016. It was followed by eleventh season the next year with the old stars of the project. It received good reviews from critics, but while working on the series, Gillian Anderson said she will not play Scully again.

In addition to his work as a screenwriter and producer, Chris Carter has also played some cameo roles in his appearance in ‘The X-Files’. Thereafter, Chris Carter has worked on movies ‘Fence walker’ and a police thriller TV series ‘Unique’. The first one is as-yet-unreleased and the second was completely dropped. Another TV series created by Carter, ‘The After’ was broadcasted from February 6, 2014, to January 5, 2015.

Nowadays, Chris Carter is a principal of his own television production company Ten Thirteen Productions.

Achievements

• 

  Chris Carter is an outstanding screenwriter, producer and director whose ‘The X-Files’ won the praise of critics and attended some of the highest ratings on the Fox Broadcasting Company. This success was repeated by another dark, apocalyptic drama of 1996, ‘Millennium’, that boasted the highest-rated premiere of any show in Fox Broadcasting history.
  
  Chris Carter received many awards for his best-seller ‘X-Files’, including three Golden Globe Awards for the Best Television Dramatic Series, the Environmental Media Award for the episode ‘Darkness Falls’, the Saturn Award for Outstanding Television Series, the Universe Reader's Choice Award for the Best Direction of a Genre TV Series, Nova Award for the Most Promising Producer on Television, the International Monitor Award and the Parent’s Choice Award. He was also many times nominee of such prestigious awards as Emmy, the Television Critics Association Award, Viewers for Quality Television Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America, Directors’ Guild of America Award, Golden Laurel Award and others.
  
  Due to the high popularity of ‘The X-Files’ on television, it has been also adapted into original books, including the full-length adult novels ‘Goblins’ and ‘Whirlwind’, both by Charles Grant, ‘Ground Zero’ and ‘Ruins’, both by Kevin J. Anderson, books for juvenile readers by Lee Martin, comic book series by Topps Comics and interactive adventure CD-ROMs, created by HyperBole Studios. Two albums including music from the show and music inspired by the show have been released by Warner Brothers, ‘Songs in the Key of X: Music from and Inspired by The X-Files’ and ‘The Truth and the Light’.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • The X-Files: Fight the Future

    (screenplay by Chris Carter)

    1998
  • The X-Files: I Want To Believe

    (directed by Chris Carter)

    2008

  • Brand New Life

    1990

• TV series

  • The Lone Gunmen

    (In collaboration with Vince Gilligan, John Shiban and Fra...)

    2005
  • X-Files: The Event Series 2016

    (some episodes directed and written by Chris Carter)

    2016
  • Millennium - The Complete Third Season

    (screenplay by Chris Carter)

    2009
  • Harsh Realm: The Ultimate Mind Game 2004

Views

Quotations: "The day I swan around in expensive suits is the day I hope someone puts a bullet in my head."

"People thought the storyline and characters for X-files made it a 'dark' show, but I never saw it that way. I always thought Mulder and Scully were the light in dark places."

"It takes crazy attention to detail if you want something to be good."

"You long for writers like Neil Gaiman. His vision is so personal and idiosyncratic, and unexpected."

"I’ve never had a personal experience with the paranormal. I’ve never seen a UFO, I’ve never been contacted by anything or anyone. My personal opinion? Well, I should preface this by saying that I’m a natural skeptic. My tendency is to discount most of the stuff because my personal experience doesn’t include it."

"I can build things; I can make things. I know how to take a project and finish it, which is what producing is: seeing a problem, you know, and actually taking the materials and hammering the pieces together."

"But what was nice for me is that in the twenty years between Kolchak and The X-Files, a lot happened in science and technology. And those things – which, you know, became the foundation for The X-Files – they didn’t really have at the time... What I really wanted was to do a good Scary show."

"A dichotomy. They [Mulder and Scully] are the equal parts of my desire to believe in something and my inability to believe in something. My skepticism and my faith."

"I wrote this in my office in my surf trunks, playing with my dog. It never occurred to me that someday there’d be X-Files key chains."

"What I’ve attempted to do was scare you in a smart way that makes you think and question."

"The most difficult thing to reconcile is science and religion."

Personality

Chris Carter discovered surfing at the age of twelve and remains active in the sport today.

While at college, he developed a passion for pottery. The hobby contributed to his need for perfection and desire to master everything he attempts to accomplish.

Quotes from others about the person

• "To every generation, there is a televisionary. Today’s seer is Chris Carter, ... creator of The X-Files, a show that takes America’s obsession with the occult and coverups, with truths impossible to ignore but too terrible to be told, and transforms that paranoia into a compelling amalgam of hipness and horror¬proving it possible to be both cool and unnerved." Time magazine writer
  
  "Carter’s TV shows, like King’s novels and stories, rely on meticulous pulp-fiction craftsmanship to tap into an audience’s collective fear of dissolution, of encroaching chaos." Terence Rafferty, movie critic
  
  "He’s a controlling maniac, and he’s a genius. I can only describe him as the Phantom. He arrives if there is a problem. He disappears right after it’s solved. The only thing missing is the outfit." Lance Henriksen, American actor
  
  "Carter is a storyteller, but one with a unique, sometimes disturbing vision that has slowly seeped into the collective American consciousness. The articulate visual style of his work, coupled with taut, engaging writing, makes for provocative television." Warren Littlefield, American television executive

Interests

• pottery

• Sport & Clubs

  surfing

Connections

Chris Carter met his future spouse, a screenwriter Dori Pierson in 1983. They married five years later. According to Carter, it was she who supported his ambition to become a screenwriter. The couple has no children.

Carter’s god-daughter, Piper Maru, is a daughter of Gillian Anderson. The fifteenth episode of the third season of The X-Files was titled after Piper.

Father:

William Carter

Mother:

Catherine Carter

Spouse:

Dori Pierson

Brother:

W. Craig Carter

god-daughter:

Piper Maru

She is a daughter of Gillian Anderson.

colleague:

Jeffrey Katzenberg

colleague:

Brandon Tartikoff

He was the president of NBC from 1980 to 1991.

colleague:

Peter Roth

Nowadays, he is the chief executive of Warner Brothers Television.

Friend:

John E. Mack

colleague:

Glen Morgan

colleague:

James Wong

Friend:

Daniel Sackheim

References

• Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to The X-Files This complete critical companion about The X-Files is the definitive guide whether you’re a lifelong viewer or a new fan uncovering the conspiracy for the first time
  2018
• Opening The X-Files: A Critical History of the Original Series eBook: Darren Mooney: Kindle Store Covering the entire series from its debut through the second feature film, the book examines how Chris Carter and his team of writers turned a scrappy cult favorite on Fox into a global phenomenon
  2017
• Writing The X-Files The book combines in-depth interviews with five creators from The X-Files conducted by a journalist Jason Davis and presented in their entirety with new notes
  2016