Frank Spotnitz
| Name: | Frank Spotnitz |
| Also Known As: | FP, Uncle Frank |
| Occupation: | writer, producer, director |
| Medium: | films, television, comics |
| Works: | The X-Files, MillenniuM, The Lone Gunmen, Night Stalker, Man in the High Castle, Strike Back, Crossing Lines, Hunted |
| Official Website(s): | @Frank Spotnitz - official Twitter account |
| Fan Website(s): | |
| On Fanlore: | Related pages |
Frank Spotnitz (born November 17, 1960 in Camp Zama, Zama, Japan) is an US-American screenwriter, television producer and director, who also worked on tv series like The X-Files, MillenniuM and the first season of The Man in the High Castle.
Spotnitz has worked for many years as a journalist for United Press International, the Associated Press and Entertainment Weekly. In 1994 he was a relatively inexperienced screenwriter (he only had one credit for the film Sunset After Dark) when he started working on The X-Files . His first collaboration was the two-parter Colony/End Game of the second season. Over time he became the writing partner of X-Files creator Chris Carter, especially writing mytharc episodes.
After The X-Files, Spotnitz wrote some episodes of the series Robbery Homicide Division and was 2005 the creator of the short-lived series Night Stalker. In 2008 he wrote the story for three comic adventures of Mulder and Scully, which were published at IDW. In 2011 he acted as an executive producer and screenwriter for the second season of the series Strike Back.
He also developed the spy series Hunted around 2011 in which Gillian Anderson was originally to take the lead role and who was also heavily involved in the development of the main character Sam. The series premiered in October 2012 on BBC One.
In 2013, he founded his production company Big Light Productions, worked on a spin-off of Hunted, and on the first season of The Man In The High Castle, the series adaptation of Philip K. Dick's dystopian novel of the same name that is produced by Amazon Studios.
For the third season of the European co-produced series Crossing Lines he acted as a showrunner. Since 2016 he has worked as executive producer of the series Medici: Masters of Florence and Ransom.
Fannish Engagement
As a Shipper
In the X-Files fandom, Spotnitz is perceived as a shipper and a big supporter of MSR.
“I got the pretty clear sense that John Doggett was in love with Dana Scully. And of course Dana Scully was in love with Fox Mulder.”Frank Spotnitz in the audio commentary for the X-Files episode DeadAlive
"You can't get the truth. You can't. There's a larger truth, though: that you can't harness the forces of the cosmos, but you may find somebody else. You may find another human being. That may be kind of corny and all of that, but that's really it: Love is the only truth we can hope to know, as human beings. That's what Mulder and Scully found after nine years. And that's a lot."
Contact With Fans
Sponitz' website at biglight.com was first created back in 2007 as a NING network where Spotnitz answered fan questions about The X-Files, MillenniuM and The Lone Gunmen in a section called mailbag.[2] His current website still includes as fan section.[3] He also release a large number of official high resolution production stills and promotional photos from The X-Files and both movies. He huge engagement earned him the nick name Uncle Frank in the fandom.
Together with Chris Carter, he attended several X-Files Conventions, official and fan-run events. He also send a surprise video message to the fan-run X-CON in 2009.
He was also involved in a fan-run charity action called the 2009 Frankenbear Worldwide Tour,[4] where a stuffed teddy bear named after Spotnitz was sent from all over the world from one X-Phile to the another to raise money for the UCLA-Santa Monica Rape Treatment Center'. Frankenbear's last stop was in November 2009, where the bear was given to Spotnitz together with a scrap book.[5] The action originated by XFilesNews and the fan group SkypePhiles.
In 2002, Spotnitz gave an extensive interview to fan, Deslea. See Blondie's Ratcave Interview with Frank Spotnitz. The topic was the mytharc and the characters Krycek and Marita.
In an interview for the website thejunction.de he said the following
How important is the relationship to the fans for you?I think The X-Files was the first series to have a deep relationship with its fans via the Internet. While we were writing the show, I’d frequently check out the newsgroups, and then the message boards, to see how fans were responding to the stories. Especially with the mythology episodes, it was incredibly useful to see what ideas were landing and which weren’t. In one instance, a fan’s question about the aftermath ofMelissa Scully’s death inspired a two-part episode (Piper Maru & Apocrypha). The interesting thing is that the fan base evolves. I suspect of the people who are talking about and following The X-Files online now weren’t online when the show was first broadcast.
Tribute to Fanfiction Writer Leyla Harrison
When a popular X-Files fanfiction writer Leyla Harrison was battling a recurrence of melanoma, an online friend sent a letter to co-executive producer Frank Spotnitz, asking him to write to her. Spotnitz did. When he learned this year that she had died, he was preparing to write an episode about a young FBI agent who knows and loves everything about the X-Files and Agents Mulder and Scully. "I hadn't decided if it was a man or a woman yet. But when she passed away, it felt like too perfect a way to pay tribute to her," he said of his decision to name the character Special Agent Leyla Harrison, after the woman.from a 2001 article in The Washington Post called The E-Files
Further reading
- The E-Files
- The X-Files Lexicon Interview with Sarah Stegall
- Written on the Body: Real Life and the Character of Dana Scully
- How Horny X-Files Lovers Created a New Type of Online Fandom
- Blondie's Ratcave Interview with Frank Spotnitz
Links
Official
- http://www.biglight.com/ Big Light Productions official website
- https://www.facebook.com/FrankSpotnitz/ official Facebook page
- https://twitter.com/FrankSpotnitz official Twitter account
References
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0819487/bio?ref_=nm_dyk_qt_sm#quotes Frank Spotntiz on the end of the TV series The X-Files
- ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20161025102018/http://aviquijada.com/author/admin/page/126/
- ^ http://www.biglight.com/network
- ^ Fan CULTure: Essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century edited by Kristin M. Barton, Jonathan Malcolm Lampley, page 100 ff
- ^ Frankenbear Facebook profile