The Carter Conundrum
The Man, The Files, and an attempt to find The Real Truth.
      by pisher

We have all heard the official story, so I doubt I need to recapitulate it much. Raised in working class California suburb. Strained relationship with sewer worker dad, who thinks he doesn't know the value of a day's work. Father once made him eat dinner on a manhole cover. (Typically, Carter first told this story in public in the context of comparing himself to Alfred Hitchcock, who had somewhat stricter parents.) Issues of trust with mother's being able to keep secrets (which didn't stop him from asking her to spy on a girlfriend for him). Younger brother who became successful research scientist. Chris became a professional surfing scribe, pulling down $18,000 a year -- but doing what he loved most, and getting to travel the world. And writing deathless prose, such as:

"She sits up and modestly adjusts the strap on her bathing suit. Her hair is the color of Kansas wheat fields and it falls lank around her face and shoulders. Her skin is almost unnatural in its flawlessness -- a golden brown that she attributes to the Filipino blood from her mother's side. She isn't wearing any makeup, and even without the benefit of soft focus lenses, airbrush touchup or photographic tricks, she looks like the girl that dreams are made of. Almost perfect in every way."

So we know that X-Files or no X-Files, Carter could have easily gone on to a staff position at Maxim.

Only by the grace of God -- err, Randy Stone -- did we end up with Gillian Anderson as Scully.

But beneath the golden dharma bum exterior, there were ambitions that this idyllic lifestyle could not satisfy. Carter claimed to despise ambition in one interview, saying that he'd rather be known as creative -- but as a perceptive interviewer for German mag Der Spiegel once pointed out, it was clear that he was unhappy with being thought a lightweight compared to his brainy brother. He could not possibly win the approval of his father as a profiler of beach babes. And anybody who has watched The X-Files very much knows that this would mean a great deal to him. Fathers loom large in his fictional world, and not usually in good ways.

And then fate presented him with an opportunity to better himself, in the form of Mark Ruble, a staff writer at Surfing Magazine. Ruble had connections in the entertainment biz. He was also the cousin of established screenwriter Dori Pierson, a bright and attractive woman about eight years Carter's senior. A woman with a mind and agenda of her own, which obviously appealed to Carter, but one who would also actively support his agendas, which was also appealing, I would guess. The two began to date. If Carter knew how to do anything back then, it was to make connections, to get people in his corner. These new people in his life began to tell him he should write screenplays. And then he (reportedly) saw Raiders of the Lost Ark six times in one day, and realized this is what he wanted to do. If Spielberg could start out in TV, so could he. He could do great TV like Duel and work his way up in the entertainment world, and be someone big. Well, he could do TV anyhow. I mean, lots of people do. It's on 24 hours a day, you know.

Carter with wife Dori Pierson and helpless canine companion Sophie.

He learned the fundamentals of his new trade from Pierson, who would go on to co-write Big Business with Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin. And whose metier seems to be light comedy -- which is basically all Carter wrote for quite a long time. His scripts got shown to influential people. He got a job at Disney for 40 grand a year. He knew the youth culture through surfing, and he cultivated the surfer image indefatigably, so he got the rep of being a guy who knew what the young hot hip people liked. He was personable, though not terribly charismatic. He learned how to impress the people who hold the power in the TV biz, to do a good meeting, to give people notes, to rewrite other people's scripts quickly and well. He learned very very fast. He worked on other people's shows, all of them horrible comedies, none of which are currently available for viewing, for which both we and he can be devoutly grateful. He produced pilots, none of which aired, and none of which (judging by available descriptions) gave the slightest hint of his later preoccupations -- or talent. He eventually married Pierson, and they are married today, though there is some ambiguity over their current domestic arrangements. Which is none of my beeswax. I care about his personal life only to the extent that it casts light on his work -- the work we actually do care about.

For example: During the early stages of his relationship with Pierson, she penned the script for the 1994 TV movie, The Impostor, starring Anthony Geary (yes, Luke from General Hospital) as a charming conman, who connives to get in good with his ex by becoming principle of the school she teaches in -- a job he does not have the slightest idea how to do, but fakes his way through so masterfully that he begins to take it seriously and make a difference in it. And win the girl, needless to say. Life imitating art, art improving on life, both, neither, your call. Pierson is clearly nobody's fool. In an early People profile of Carter, she refers obliquely to his "ostentation of modesty", which I believe is an oxymoron. And being a good writer, Pierson presumably knows that too.

Pierson's TV movie reminds me a little bit of The Music Man -- the salesman who has no real talent of his own, and is little more than a B.S. artist, but somehow charms the best out of other people -- who then bring out the best in him. Wouldn't it be nice if life were always like that? And guys like that were always played by Robert Preston?

I will be very grateful to anybody who can find one press interview with Carter previous to 1993. I've looked really hard, believe me. As far as the press is concerned, he was born fully grown on a surfboard in the late summer of 1993. But for our purposes, he was reborn a little earlier than that. When he gained the confidence of network honcho Peter Roth, who saw potential in Carter's knack for dialogue, and took him to Fox with him. Roth is another person Carter doesn't mention much. But Roth doesn't mind. Because he's a real executive type. He doesn't care if the public knows who he is, as long as the people who sign the checks do. And they certainly do.

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