A few summers ago, my mom and I were having tea at Abbey Garden Tea Room, which is in Fairhaven--a cute little suburb of Bellingham, in Washington (I’m not going to say state. Us Washingtonians hate that. There’s Washington, and Washington D.C. Period.) If you ever go, have the Paris blend. Sooo good! And invite me. I'm always down for tea with a fellow Phile!

Some may say that having tea--complete with scones and devon cream (yum!)--is frilly or pretentious, but for me it’s very zen, so I was annoyed when the guy sitting at the table next to my mom and me had his cell phone go off, and then proceeded to carry on a very loud discussion.

That is, I was annoyed, until I heard him mention Chris Carter. All of a sudden my head popped up, and I tried to get my mom’s attention with sneaky hand gestures. Despite also watching the show, I knew that she couldn’t name one person who worked ‘behind the scenes’, and, sure enough, the name wasn’t ringing any bells with her. His conversation soon got her attention, though, when he mentioned The X-Files by name, and the two of us sat in shock as he said into the phone that Chris had contacted him to see if he was interested in having any part in producing a new X-Files movie that he was just starting to work out. Chris was also wondering if “Sheila” would be available. He wasn’t yet sure that there would be a need for her, but wanted to know whether he could write her in or not. He said, to whoever he was talking to, that he had talked to her, but hadn’t let Chris know yet that “Sheila didn’t want to go there, at this point." Just then, the waitress kindly, yet firmly, kicked him and his cell phone out.

My mom and I stared at each other in shock for another second, and then she asked me who I thought he was, and who this "Sheila" was. For a second, I sat there trying to fill in the blanks, and then I suddenly remembered reading an interview in Western Washington University’s magazine--WWU is the college I got my bachelor’s degree from, also in Bellingham--with Sheila Larken, who played Scully’s mother on The X-Files, talking about how she had never planned to be in that role, but that her husband, who was a producer on the show, suggested her for it, since they were having a hard time casting someone to play Scully’s mother, and he thought they looked somewhat similar. She said the expected things about how much fun she had acting on the show, and how nice everyone was, and (perhaps not as expectedly) how she wasn't so thrilled with the move to L.A., and then a little blurb after the interview mentioned that she and her husband were living on Chuckanut Drive--a beautiful road that runs along north Puget Sound, just south of Bellingham--and that she was enjoying her life as it was and, as such, had no plans for further acting roles.

My Mom, remembering that I had this website, even though I hadn’t updated it since the end of season 7, until…well, right about now…said that I should post the news that there was going to be a movie, but I said no. Despite how carelessly loud this guy, by that point a realized it was R.W. Goodwin, was screaming the news around, I knew for a fact that no one would appreciate the beans being spilled before Chris Carter even had a script worked out. So, we waited, and waited, and waited to hear someone else mention a new movie--had we imagined the whole thing? 4 years can do that to people. We began to lose hope, and then completely lost hope--maybe something went wrong--until…David Duchovny mentioned a new movie!

So, that’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to anything X-Files related. Despite living very near the border to Vancouver, I’ve never gone up during filming--the show or the movie. I still don’t know how you find out where filming is, other than to aimlessly drive around, and hope to stumble across them, and Vancouver is a BIG city.