4 ms·

There's a similar anecdote Gillian Anderson recently revealed during an interview on the X-Files, saying Chris Carter had an OCD-like habit to write dialog to c

by sho_hn 27d ago

There's a similar anecdote Gillian Anderson recently revealed during an interview on the X-Files, saying Chris Carter had an OCD-like habit to write dialog to conform to certain text layout preferences (no widows[1]) in the script, which made for the show's distinctive style of dialog cadence. 1 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans

xerox13ster 27d ago
I just realized I have nearly always avoided widows and orphans because it felt bad to write that way. I wonder if I was ever taught to write this way and forgot, but I feel like I just learned the terms for the first time.
consumer451 27d ago
Here is the interview where she mentions it, with the correct timestamp, backed-up just enough to give it context. https://youtu.be/d3bCel607lQ?t=1162 https://youtu.be/d3bCel607lQ?t=1162
- cpeterso 26d ago
  “Chris told me I mean that there was a particular way that we used to speak in the show that it that wasn't a normal rhythm and syntax. It was slightly backwards. which felt like it was almost part of the cryptic aspect of the series. “And it wasn't until we were working on this, I think, the second feature. I was sitting in a parked vehicle waiting to shoot and our showrunner and creator Chris Carter came up to me who was directing the feature and he said he looked at my sides where my lines were and he said, "Look, no widows." And I said, "What what are you talking about?" He said, "No, no widows on the paragraphs that each character has." the word went all the way to the end with the period. So, you didn't like end halfway through that line. So, it was a perfect So, it was a perfect rectangle. “So, the dialogue was designed visually. For nine years. [laughter] Wow. So, you're struggling. You're struggling with his OCD.
  - rectang 26d ago
    Forming every paragraph of dialog into perfect rectangles is way more extreme than just avoiding "widows". The usual term for this is "full justification" and typographically when it's done it's typically through word spacing and letter spacing. Full justification in monospace through word choice (which is what the Ares Luna article is about) is bonkers, but I can't see that happening for TV dialog. I've sometimes heard "orphan" used to represent a single word left alone on its own line at the end of a paragraph, but the terms are often confused and Carter could have used "widow" in that sense. I'm curious to see what the hard-copy scripts actually looked like. The soft copies I've seen aren't particularly idiosyncratic but maybe they've been normied: https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the-x-files_production.html https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the-x-files_production.h...
    - wombatpm 26d ago
      Widows are when the final line of a paragraph starts the next page. Orphans are when the first line of a paragraph ends a page.
      - Biganon 26d ago
        Funny because "fixing an orphan" is hard in real life (assuming they've lost both their parents, you have to find them a foster home) but easy in typesetting (just add an empty line before), whereas "fixing a widow" is easy in real life (just remarry) but hard in typesetting.
        1718627440 26d ago
        How is finding one person suitable to be a parent (to make them a foster parent) differently hard, than finding another person suitable to be a parent (to marry them)?
        dash2 26d ago
        Fewer people want to foster than to have their own kids?
- xnickb 26d ago
  A bit weird to observe how the facade cracks when they're talking about it. Maybe I'm wrong but the whole thing felt very weird to me. Can't put my finger on it.. I want to say immature, but it's probably just unempathetic. I think my brain reached out for "immature" because I saw a lot of it among the "popular" kids at school.
  - butlike 26d ago
    They're not singling out the nerd, they're talking about someone's idiosyncrasy. Tomorrow, proverbially, they could be talking about one of Gillian's idiosyncrasies. I don't think it's immature or callous. It's just a group of people reasoning about something.
diurnalist 27d ago
I also saw that interview, then out of curiosity I tried to find any evidence of this. There are some fan sites with ostensibly original X-Files scripts out there[1]. Looking through some written by Carter[2], I wonder if this is apocryphal, or if he was messing with her a bit. [1]: https://www.boggsfiles.com/x-files-scripts-by-season/season-3 https://www.boggsfiles.com/x-files-scripts-by-season/season-... [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQbfRmeq3FsajjYcEuqDHv0kf2BS62cQ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQbfRmeq3FsajjYcEuqDHv0kf2B...
- consumer451 26d ago
  Wow, thanks for doing this digging. In the interview Gillian recounts Chris Carter saying "Look, no widows." Maybe this was not the rule, but something that he had always strived for, so he felt the need to call it out as something cool?
- tobr 26d ago
  Hey, I looked into this too! And I came to the conclusion that it's completely true. The movie she mentioned in the anecdote was I Want To Believe. Here is the actual scanned screenplay, rather than re-typed: https://lvei.net/wp-content/uploads/script-de-prod/The-X-Files-I-Want-to-Believe-03.18.2008-Final-Shooting-Script.pdf https://lvei.net/wp-content/uploads/script-de-prod/The-X-Fil... Just scroll through and look. In almost every paragraph or dialogue block, the last line ends very close to the right margin. Pretty much the only places that doesn't happen is when there's a single short line of dialogue by itself, meaning it doesn't wrap to a second line. Looking through scripts on Boggsfiles, it's much more inconsistent, but it does happen, and perhaps more frequently in the later seasons. Here's one, from season 9; take a look at page 10 (page 13 in the PDF) for example, but it really happens throughout. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dlnc2prPVgPLN4CQSiMQMvD2VSlP1Fyj/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dlnc2prPVgPLN4CQSiMQMvD2VSl...
  - diurnalist 26d ago
    Hah! I was wondering if it was maybe something he started doing over time and should have looked more at the later seasons I guess. It's comforting that it's not just a fun story.
fasterik 26d ago
I'm also reminded of how David Milch supposedly wrote a lot of Deadwood in iambic pentameter. I only learned about this after seeing the show, but I did pick up the "Shakespearean" feel of some of the dialogue. Constraints often force creativity.
- delis-thumbs-7e 26d ago
  Interesting claim. ELLSWORTH (CONT'D) I tell you what -- I may have fucked ~~ life up flatter"n hammered shit, but I stand before you today beholden to no human cocksucker and working a paying fucking gold claim -- and not the U.S. Government saying I'm trespassing or the savage fucking Red Man himself or any of these other limber-dick cocksuckers passing themselves off as prospectors had better try to stop me. I can’t hear it, although it certainly has certain rhythm to it (like any good dialogue does). Iambic rhythm however is so typical to English that you can kinda force most dialogue into it? I also believe writers make these rules to brake them the first change they get. Or perhaps I couldn’t find it skimming the pilot script: https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/deadwood-101-deadwood-2004.pdf?v=1745342218 https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/deadwood-101-...
  - fasterik 26d ago
    The claim comes from Milch himself. I don't know how much he was exaggerating, or how much of it may be true but didn't make it into the final shooting script. E.B.'s soliloquy isn't in strict blank verse, but there is clearly some sort of metric structure. You have been tested, Al Swearengen. And your deepest purposes proved, there’s gold On the woman’s claim. You might as well have shouted It from the rooftops. That’s why I’m jumpin’ Through hoops to get it back. Thorough as I fleeced The fool she married, I will fleece his widow, too. Using loyal associates like Eustace Bailey Farnum as my go-betweens and dupes. To explain why I want her bought out I’ll make A pretext of my fear of the Pinkertons. I’ll throw Farnum a token thief. Why should I reward E.B. with some small fractional Participation in the claim? Or let him Even lay by a little security And source of continuing income, for His declining years. What’s he ever done for me? Except let me terrify him every Goddamned day of his life ’til the idea Of bowel regularity is a forlorn Fuckin’ hope. Not to mention orderin’ A man killed in one of E.B.’s rooms. So every fuckin’ free moment of his life E.B. has to spend scrubbin’ the bloodstains Off the goddamned floor! To keep from havin’ To lower his rates. Goddamned that motherfucker!
rectang 26d ago
"No widows" on its own isn't enough to create a distinctive dialog cadence. "Widows" (alone at the top) and "orphans" (alone at the bottom) are single lines cut off from the rest of a paragraph by a column/page break. The solution is generally just to fiddle with column/page breaks, which is purely typographical. I'm sure that there's a distinct identity to X-Files dialog; it's just not due to this quirk. I can totally see a fellow typography geek bragging about this to someone and them being horrified haha. ETA: I speculate that Carter was avoiding "widows" to be considerate to the actors by not splitting lines across page turns.
- frereubu 26d ago
  I had the same thought, but I think the idea is that it didn't so much create a specific cadence as the cadence was a bit odd because the language needed to fit the visual layout rather than feel natural when spoken.
  - raffael_de 26d ago
    the distinctive cadence is not a direct consequence from eliminating widows but from the mental process used to achieve this efficiently. language goes from natural fluidity to stacking Lego bricks.
thinkafter 26d ago
Meanwhile Xfiles has a montage on YouTube of all the times the boom mic crept into the shot. So I can’t super accept that these are geniuses - it was cheap TV. In hindsight sure, whole cult following etc. but doesn’t mean it is well designed or even thought out.
- bluefirebrand 26d ago
  What does the writing quality, genius or otherwise, have to do with the boom mic though?
  - defrost 26d ago
    Bugger all - particularly given the boom mic operator and other framing "gaffs" are (as I recall) all part of the "wide screen" 16:9 later release on BluRay etc that were somewhat rushed out the door. A number of shows of that era were filmed wide (16:9) and post processed / coloured / reframed and broadcast on TV in a box 4:3 aspect ratio No visible boom mic operators, etc - careful eyes in the initial post production for TV phase saw to that. Later wide screen releases were rushed with no real post production budget to address these and other issues - that's on the studios wanting a second grab at money, not the original creative teams. Similar complaints abound for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and (IIRC) The Wire (?) and their wide screen releases.
    - iaaan 26d ago
      There's a famous example of this in Malcolm in the Middle where the camera cuts to a different shot and a stand-in for Dewey is visible in the 16:9 release, but was not visible in the original 4:3 broadcast. So in one shot you have Dewey's normal actor, then in the next there is some random kid.
      - ZeroGravitas 26d ago
        A recent similar example was Mad Men rerelease in 4k where the VFX weren't redone properly after a rescan of the film and you can see the man operating the machine with the pipe that spews sick out of a characters mouth.
vanity0 25d ago
That's interesting, I didn't know that's what they were called. I definitely try to avoid widows and orphans in my own writing, and have definitely chosen words carefully to that same effect. I thought it was just my own OCD.

by sho_hn 27d ago

xerox13ster 27d ago

I just realized I have nearly always avoided widows and orphans because it felt bad to write that way. I wonder if I was ever taught to write this way and forgot, but I feel like I just learned the terms for the first time.

consumer451 27d ago

Here is the interview where she mentions it, with the correct timestamp, backed-up just enough to give it context. https://youtu.be/d3bCel607lQ?t=1162 https://youtu.be/d3bCel607lQ?t=1162

cpeterso 26d ago
“Chris told me I mean that there was a particular way that we used to speak in the show that it that wasn't a normal rhythm and syntax. It was slightly backwards. which felt like it was almost part of the cryptic aspect of the series. “And it wasn't until we were working on this, I think, the second feature. I was sitting in a parked vehicle waiting to shoot and our showrunner and creator Chris Carter came up to me who was directing the feature and he said he looked at my sides where my lines were and he said, "Look, no widows." And I said, "What what are you talking about?" He said, "No, no widows on the paragraphs that each character has." the word went all the way to the end with the period. So, you didn't like end halfway through that line. So, it was a perfect So, it was a perfect rectangle. “So, the dialogue was designed visually. For nine years. [laughter] Wow. So, you're struggling. You're struggling with his OCD.
- rectang 26d ago
  Forming every paragraph of dialog into perfect rectangles is way more extreme than just avoiding "widows". The usual term for this is "full justification" and typographically when it's done it's typically through word spacing and letter spacing. Full justification in monospace through word choice (which is what the Ares Luna article is about) is bonkers, but I can't see that happening for TV dialog. I've sometimes heard "orphan" used to represent a single word left alone on its own line at the end of a paragraph, but the terms are often confused and Carter could have used "widow" in that sense. I'm curious to see what the hard-copy scripts actually looked like. The soft copies I've seen aren't particularly idiosyncratic but maybe they've been normied: https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the-x-files_production.html https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the-x-files_production.h...
  - wombatpm 26d ago
    Widows are when the final line of a paragraph starts the next page. Orphans are when the first line of a paragraph ends a page.
    - Biganon 26d ago
      Funny because "fixing an orphan" is hard in real life (assuming they've lost both their parents, you have to find them a foster home) but easy in typesetting (just add an empty line before), whereas "fixing a widow" is easy in real life (just remarry) but hard in typesetting.
      - 1718627440 26d ago
        How is finding one person suitable to be a parent (to make them a foster parent) differently hard, than finding another person suitable to be a parent (to marry them)?
        dash2 26d ago
        Fewer people want to foster than to have their own kids?
xnickb 26d ago
A bit weird to observe how the facade cracks when they're talking about it. Maybe I'm wrong but the whole thing felt very weird to me. Can't put my finger on it.. I want to say immature, but it's probably just unempathetic. I think my brain reached out for "immature" because I saw a lot of it among the "popular" kids at school.
- butlike 26d ago
  They're not singling out the nerd, they're talking about someone's idiosyncrasy. Tomorrow, proverbially, they could be talking about one of Gillian's idiosyncrasies. I don't think it's immature or callous. It's just a group of people reasoning about something.

diurnalist 27d ago

I also saw that interview, then out of curiosity I tried to find any evidence of this. There are some fan sites with ostensibly original X-Files scripts out there[1]. Looking through some written by Carter[2], I wonder if this is apocryphal, or if he was messing with her a bit. [1]: https://www.boggsfiles.com/x-files-scripts-by-season/season-3 https://www.boggsfiles.com/x-files-scripts-by-season/season-... [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQbfRmeq3FsajjYcEuqDHv0kf2BS62cQ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQbfRmeq3FsajjYcEuqDHv0kf2B...

consumer451 26d ago
Wow, thanks for doing this digging. In the interview Gillian recounts Chris Carter saying "Look, no widows." Maybe this was not the rule, but something that he had always strived for, so he felt the need to call it out as something cool?
tobr 26d ago
Hey, I looked into this too! And I came to the conclusion that it's completely true. The movie she mentioned in the anecdote was I Want To Believe. Here is the actual scanned screenplay, rather than re-typed: https://lvei.net/wp-content/uploads/script-de-prod/The-X-Files-I-Want-to-Believe-03.18.2008-Final-Shooting-Script.pdf https://lvei.net/wp-content/uploads/script-de-prod/The-X-Fil... Just scroll through and look. In almost every paragraph or dialogue block, the last line ends very close to the right margin. Pretty much the only places that doesn't happen is when there's a single short line of dialogue by itself, meaning it doesn't wrap to a second line. Looking through scripts on Boggsfiles, it's much more inconsistent, but it does happen, and perhaps more frequently in the later seasons. Here's one, from season 9; take a look at page 10 (page 13 in the PDF) for example, but it really happens throughout. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dlnc2prPVgPLN4CQSiMQMvD2VSlP1Fyj/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dlnc2prPVgPLN4CQSiMQMvD2VSl...
- diurnalist 26d ago
  Hah! I was wondering if it was maybe something he started doing over time and should have looked more at the later seasons I guess. It's comforting that it's not just a fun story.

fasterik 26d ago

I'm also reminded of how David Milch supposedly wrote a lot of Deadwood in iambic pentameter. I only learned about this after seeing the show, but I did pick up the "Shakespearean" feel of some of the dialogue. Constraints often force creativity.

delis-thumbs-7e 26d ago
Interesting claim. ELLSWORTH (CONT'D) I tell you what -- I may have fucked ~~ life up flatter"n hammered shit, but I stand before you today beholden to no human cocksucker and working a paying fucking gold claim -- and not the U.S. Government saying I'm trespassing or the savage fucking Red Man himself or any of these other limber-dick cocksuckers passing themselves off as prospectors had better try to stop me. I can’t hear it, although it certainly has certain rhythm to it (like any good dialogue does). Iambic rhythm however is so typical to English that you can kinda force most dialogue into it? I also believe writers make these rules to brake them the first change they get. Or perhaps I couldn’t find it skimming the pilot script: https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/deadwood-101-deadwood-2004.pdf?v=1745342218 https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/deadwood-101-...
- fasterik 26d ago
  The claim comes from Milch himself. I don't know how much he was exaggerating, or how much of it may be true but didn't make it into the final shooting script. E.B.'s soliloquy isn't in strict blank verse, but there is clearly some sort of metric structure. You have been tested, Al Swearengen. And your deepest purposes proved, there’s gold On the woman’s claim. You might as well have shouted It from the rooftops. That’s why I’m jumpin’ Through hoops to get it back. Thorough as I fleeced The fool she married, I will fleece his widow, too. Using loyal associates like Eustace Bailey Farnum as my go-betweens and dupes. To explain why I want her bought out I’ll make A pretext of my fear of the Pinkertons. I’ll throw Farnum a token thief. Why should I reward E.B. with some small fractional Participation in the claim? Or let him Even lay by a little security And source of continuing income, for His declining years. What’s he ever done for me? Except let me terrify him every Goddamned day of his life ’til the idea Of bowel regularity is a forlorn Fuckin’ hope. Not to mention orderin’ A man killed in one of E.B.’s rooms. So every fuckin’ free moment of his life E.B. has to spend scrubbin’ the bloodstains Off the goddamned floor! To keep from havin’ To lower his rates. Goddamned that motherfucker!

rectang 26d ago

"No widows" on its own isn't enough to create a distinctive dialog cadence. "Widows" (alone at the top) and "orphans" (alone at the bottom) are single lines cut off from the rest of a paragraph by a column/page break. The solution is generally just to fiddle with column/page breaks, which is purely typographical. I'm sure that there's a distinct identity to X-Files dialog; it's just not due to this quirk. I can totally see a fellow typography geek bragging about this to someone and them being horrified haha. ETA: I speculate that Carter was avoiding "widows" to be considerate to the actors by not splitting lines across page turns.

frereubu 26d ago
I had the same thought, but I think the idea is that it didn't so much create a specific cadence as the cadence was a bit odd because the language needed to fit the visual layout rather than feel natural when spoken.
- raffael_de 26d ago
  the distinctive cadence is not a direct consequence from eliminating widows but from the mental process used to achieve this efficiently. language goes from natural fluidity to stacking Lego bricks.

thinkafter 26d ago

Meanwhile Xfiles has a montage on YouTube of all the times the boom mic crept into the shot. So I can’t super accept that these are geniuses - it was cheap TV. In hindsight sure, whole cult following etc. but doesn’t mean it is well designed or even thought out.

bluefirebrand 26d ago
What does the writing quality, genius or otherwise, have to do with the boom mic though?
- defrost 26d ago
  Bugger all - particularly given the boom mic operator and other framing "gaffs" are (as I recall) all part of the "wide screen" 16:9 later release on BluRay etc that were somewhat rushed out the door. A number of shows of that era were filmed wide (16:9) and post processed / coloured / reframed and broadcast on TV in a box 4:3 aspect ratio No visible boom mic operators, etc - careful eyes in the initial post production for TV phase saw to that. Later wide screen releases were rushed with no real post production budget to address these and other issues - that's on the studios wanting a second grab at money, not the original creative teams. Similar complaints abound for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and (IIRC) The Wire (?) and their wide screen releases.
  - iaaan 26d ago
    There's a famous example of this in Malcolm in the Middle where the camera cuts to a different shot and a stand-in for Dewey is visible in the 16:9 release, but was not visible in the original 4:3 broadcast. So in one shot you have Dewey's normal actor, then in the next there is some random kid.
    - ZeroGravitas 26d ago
      A recent similar example was Mad Men rerelease in 4k where the VFX weren't redone properly after a rescan of the film and you can see the man operating the machine with the pipe that spews sick out of a characters mouth.

vanity0 25d ago

That's interesting, I didn't know that's what they were called. I definitely try to avoid widows and orphans in my own writing, and have definitely chosen words carefully to that same effect. I thought it was just my own OCD.