i've distilled your responses into a fine brew and i'll try to address the most prominent questions. seems you all want to know if it was hard playing mulder gain after 6+ years off from him. yes and no. there was a time in my life when i could fall out of bed and be mulder and i think i assumed that he would always be around like an old pair of boots (government issue). not so, i found. since i have gotten older, it made sense that mulder had to feel older too---otherwise i'd just be trying to squeeze him into this cartoony frozen in time, box. so it was really a process of feeling it out---the essential character of the man doesn't change, just as all our essential characters don't change, but different things come to light in a face over time, different emphases. if i sound a little mystical here, that's because it is. i think everything kicked into gear when i worked for the first time with gillian again, as mulder and scully. i think we acted kind of like pitch pipes for one another. i'm a little tone deaf so i don't really know what i'm talking about, but i think we were the keys for each other to slip back into those skins.

i don't think gillian will be on californication. i think we as a screen couple bring way too much history into a scene and would take any viewer out of the reality of what we were trying to do. alas, i think mulder and scully is probably the only acting that she and i will do together in this lifetime. i think if you think about it, you'll understand.

and as for the movie itself---there is no way we can satisfy all the people all the time. there are just too many fans with too many secret wishes, too many wanting too many things---and that's the good news. without all of you wanting this or that from the show, we wouldn't still have the pleasure of making it for you. but i can say this---i am pleased by the movie as is chris, frank, gillian and everybody who has seen it. it's smart, scary, has a lot of the old mulder scully thing and takes us back into a world that we missed. there won't be some of this and there won't be some of that---but there will be a lot of satisfaction. i really feel that in pleasing ourselves, we will have pleased you.

keep writing, i will keep evading and answering.
dd