Rant Along with CathyB: Era of the Celebrity Guest Star
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| Title: | Rant Along with CathyB: Era of the Celebrity Guest Star |
| Creator: | CathyB |
| Date(s): | February 2000 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | The X-Files |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | OBSSE Newsletter: February 2000 News for the OBSSEsed, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Rant Along with CathyB: Era of the Celebrity Guest Star is a 2000 essay by CathyB.
The subject is rampant casting nepotism and The X-Files. It includes a very detailed run-down of examples.
The essay was part of a series of columns the author did for the X-files newsletter, News for the OBSSEsed, this one for issue #32.
NOTE: none of CathyB's columns had titles; the titles used here on Fanlore were created from a prominent, descriptive phrase in the essay.
Essays in the Same Series
- Rant along with CathyB: Closure
- Rant Along with CathyB: Era of the Celebrity Guest Star
- Rant Along with CathyB: John Doggett
- Rant Along with CathyB: much of my vexation could be spelled F-O-X
- Rant Along with CathyB: Season 8: Maybe No One Will Notice
Excerpts
My chief complaint this month stems, I confess, from what might very well have been a flippant, not-meant-to-be-taken-seriously remark by our dry-witted pal David Duchovny. I'm referring to his intimation that he planned to write parts for his wife, Tea Leoni, and his friend Garry Shandling in an upcoming episode of The X-Files.
Maybe he was kidding, maybe not. But whatever the case, it got me thinking about a growing, irritating trend on TXF. Yes, I'm speaking of the Era of the Celebrity Guest Star.
Way back when, when The X-Files was a cute little cult show made by some weirdos up in Canada, series creator Chris Carter stated that, though a number of well-known showbiz folks had expressed interest in appearing in guest roles, he didn't want to allow that for fear it would undermine the show's credibility and take people out of the moment. It was an admirable goal. Funny as it may sound for a program that deals straight-facedly with toilet monsters and invisible elephants, when I started watching it was the realism that first drew me. Mulder and Scully appealed to me, initially, not because they were pretty or cool, but because they were dumpy and unglamorous (the first episode I ever saw, Darkness Falls, impressed me with its willingness to get its stars good and schlubby).
Just as Maestro Carter had intended, a crucial element of the realism factor was the guest cast. They looked, God bless 'em, like actual people instead of made-up performers. They looked as if they'd just shown up on the set in the middle of their lives. There was nothing slick or polished about them. Older performers had wrinkles. Younger ones had bad hair. Of course there's always going to be some level of attractiveness when a person is cast in a television role, but these looked like the people you might see hanging around your town, instead of the ones you saw hanging around town in Beverly Hills or at Central Perk.
But if you think about the implications of getting carried away with this name-brand casting, you get some scary possibilities. If they were casting the show today, with all of Hollywood's glorious B-list at their disposal, would they pick craggy-faced Canuck William B. Davis for the menacing Cigarette-Smoking Man, for example? Would they be able to resist the temptation to cast some moderately well-known Hollywood denizen who would make the kids chuckle and say "Hey, lookit, it's -- " Would we be subjected to, say, George Hamilton as the face of pure evil? Tony Randall? Sherman Helmsley? And how about the rest of the cast -- Charlie Sheen as intense, brooding Mulder; Christina Applegate as bright-eyed youngster Scully; Mr. T as Skinner and Ethan and Uma as Krycek and Marita?
Maybe not. The good people in X-Files land have had the sense to cast some great people even with all the opportunities to go the cheese route that L.A. offers. I dug the weasely Spender look-alike in Dreamland. Dr. Ngebe in The Sixth Extinction kicked ass. I liked everybody in The Goldberg Variation so much that I can almost forgive David Cassidy and the New Jersey mother in Rush. All in all, though, it still feels as if they're going a little overboard with the celeb casting. And I venture to say that Tea Leoni and Garry Shandling, who are both household names AND close acquaintances of the Dukester, would be a tad much to take. The idea holds just about as much interest for me as watching Duchovny family vacation slides, so if it comes to pass, maybe I'll just skip it, stick in a Season 1 tape, and enjoy the bad hair, the cheap suits, and the glamour-free Canadian extras prancing merrily in the rain. Just the way I like it.