'The X-Files' Movie Decoded

"He's either related to him or a big fan," guesses Duchovny.

"Very good," says Carter. "You got it." He also cops to planting a few other nonfiction names in the film. Martin Landau's flaky doctor character, Kurtzweil, is inspired by a real doctor who supposedly died under suspicious circumstances (Carter says he read about him in the conspiracy literature; this guy definitely needs to join a new book club). And Stevie, the boy who finds the ancient alien goo at the beginning of the film, is named after one of Carter's boyhood friends ("We used to dig holes a lot, just like in the movie").

WILL MULDER AND SCULLY EVER KISS? "I think so," says Duchovny, who almost smooches with his costar in the movie. "If you tease the audience too long they get frustrated." Good luck convincing Anderson. "It's not appropriate," she says. "The series isn't about our relationship. If it happens, we should wait until the very last episode."

! WHAT'S UP WITH SCULLY'S WARDROBE (II)? At the end of the movie, when Mulder finds Scully frozen inside that buried flying saucer in Antarctica, she's buck naked. Moments later, she's dashing through the snow in a cozy ski suit. Where'd she get it? And while we're on the subject, how do the two of them get home after the saucer takes off? The Sno-Cat Mulder arrived in is nowhere in sight.

Duchovny clears things up. "I was wearing three layers of clothes, so I gave her some of mine," he says. "That naked scene, by the way, wasn't in the original script. But my wife [that would be Tea Leoni] read it and said, 'You're missing a great opportunity—it's the one time Mulder gets to handle Scully naked.'" Not quite as naked as Mulder might have liked. Recalls Anderson: "He was supposed to pick me up naked and throw me over his shoulder, so that we'd be cheek to cheek. But we didn't film it that way. If you're not going to see David's bare butt, you certainly aren't going to see mine."

Oh, and according to Carter, Mulder's Sno-Cat was "parked behind a snowdrift," out of camera range, which is how they got home (never mind that it had run out of gas). Duchovny offers another scenario: "It was all downhill, so we just got on our asses in the snow and slid the whole way back to D.C."

SPEAKING OF DUCHOVNY'S BUTT—WHERE'S THE BEEF? What happened to Mulder's much-talked-about naked-butt shot? The David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade is demanding to know. "We shot it," says Duchovny. "It was me in a hospital gown. But the sight of my bare ass 40 feet high on the screen was just too frightening even for X-Files fans."

"David is being modest," says Spotnitz. "It wasn't so bad. We just needed to cut that hospital scene and the butt shot seemed gratuitous." Carter, though, sounds like he regrets the trim: "I'm looking at the shot right now," he says. "We blew it up and framed it for posterity. In fact, we're thinking of making the next movie all about David Duchovny's butt."

Fine. Just so long as it doesn't cross-pollinate with any corn.

(Additional reporting by Daniel Fierman)