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They told me you were gonna ask me some questions.
I don't know. Are you gonna ask me any questions?
I don't know if you heard that, but her first question was 'do I smoke',
the second question was 'could that character exist nowadays',
with all these regulations about smoking.
To answer the 2d question first: absolutely.
Because this character didn't care a hoot about
what regulations there might be about smoking.
He smoked in the Emergency Room Hospitals for god's sake.
He smoked everywhere, near oxygen coming out of tanks that could blow up,
and he still lit a cigarette...
So I think nothing was gonna stop him from smoking.
But personally, I did stop smoking. I smoked until I was about forty.
And then with great effort, I quit smoking.
And then, somehow, seventeen years later...
I was offered the part of a character called The Cigarette Smoking Man.
And I thought 'can I do this?'
And I thought, 'well, it's seventeen years since I quit, I'm good.'
So they asked me, when I did the first episode, they said,
'We've got these herbal cigarettes or you
could use real cigarettes, what would you like?'
And I said 'well, I'm an actor, give me a real cigarette, I'll be fine.'
So I smoked real cigarettes for the pilot.
And the next episode I did, I smoked real cigarettes.
And then I caught myself sitting at home, thinking..
'Gosh, I wish they'd call me again for that X-Files show..'
And then I realized, 'no, no, I can't risk this',
and I smoked herbal cigarettes after that.
They're awful, but they're not addictive.
First of all, it's an honor to meet you. I met my wife in an X-Files chatroom.
My question is: if you were offered a part in a future X-Files movie,
would you accept? We all know, Chris Carter said, you can't kill the devil.
Well, if I were offered a role in the future X-Files Movie,
of course I would accept it.
And then it'd be a lot more successful than the last X-Files movie..
No, I'm just kidding.. You didn't hear me say that. I didn't say that.
But of course it is a bit of a problem, because I was pretty much killed
at the end of the series.
That was my third death. This one was pretty climactic.
So I don't know, it'd have to be a dream, or I'd have to go back in time,..
I'm not sure how they would resurrect me..
Since Mulder and Scully are no longer a team as
well.. But I'm sure we could work something out.
Yeah, how did I end up playing on the X-Files.. It's uhm..
That's a kind of interesting story.
People say 'oh gosh, why did you choose to be on that show',
or people have all sorts of expectations of why I played that part.
But the fact is..
They cast the pilot in Vancouver where I was
an acting teacher and sometime working actor,
and I auditioned for a role called 'the senior FBI agent',
and this character had two lines.
And I didn't get it.
An actor called Ken Camroux got that part.
And I got this part with no lines.
Well, what the heck, it's a gig, you know, I'll do it.
Sure, so I did the part with no lines, and
Ken did the part with the three lines, and
we've laughed about it together ever since.
Only, I've laughed more than he did.
What was the most fun or interesting part
about acting or what happened on the set?
This is a question I'm always asked, and I...
I always tell myself afterwards, 'you gotta think of a good answer to this',
What was the most interesting thing or the
funniest thing that happened when I was on the set?
I never have an answer to that.
I know the answer to that from some of the actors on the show,
they have tons of funny stories to tell.
And I'm sure I do as well, they just never seem quite at the top of my head.
But since you asked me a question, I'll tell you an answer to something else.
It has to do with conventions.
I don't recognize all of you, you haven't
all been over to my autograph/picture yet,
but I assume I'll see you all in few minutes afterwards.
This one person.. I was in Texas.
And they have an accent in Texas.
And so I asked this person, 'what's your name', to put on the picture..
And he said 'Biall'.
And I said 'what?' He said, 'Biall'.
'BiALL?' I said.
How do you spell that?
And then he said 'B-I-L-L'.
Which is my name.
But in Texan I couldn't recognize it.
I was wondering, if the X-Files was made in the nineties..
today the whole landscaping of the series has changed a lot,
because now, Fox, and HBO series,
they all have high production values, more even so than movies.
Do you think the X-Files, if made today, would be different?
That's such an interesting question.
I forgot to mention this, I've written my memoirs.
It's a book called 'Where there's smoke... Musings of a cigarette smoking man'.
And it will be published in October.
In case you'd just happen to be in a bookshop, you'd know the title.
But for my research for the book, I looked
back at a lot of the early episodes of X-Files,
and it's surprising how,
I don't want to say 'low', the production values were, but,
they're not very.. it's a pretty simple show.
And it didn't have a big following in its first year.
It took a whole kind of cultivated audience of internet geeks
to kind of catch it.
So no, I think X-Files would've been pulled after the third episode,
if it was launched now.
And it was on Fox, which was the 4th (?) network.
It was broadcast at showtime to build and audience,
And as you all know, it built a huge audience.
So, it does say something about how television production is done now,
compared to how it was done then. Great question.