Sanguinarium: from Idea to Execution
Sanguinarium, a female-written episode sandwiched between Aubrey and Post Modern Prometheus. And not without its own interesting story.
Found some tidbits in an X-Files official guidebook:
Written by Valerie and Vivian Mayhew, the most junior writers on the X-Files staff, "Sanguinarium" proceeded with eerie smoothness from beginning to end. The story was conceived, "beaten out," and outlined in one ultra-productive brainstorming session-- then immediately approved by Chris Carter, written, and put into production with the bare minimum of script changes. Filming and post-production went off without a hitch. After viewing the finished version, hardened and cynical Fox Network executives were seen to burst into tears of joy and spontaneous applause.
END DREAM SEQUENCE.
In reality, making "Sanguinarium" was a rather bumpy and drawn-out "learning experience." But what else would you expect considering:
The gory and touchy subject matter
The X-Files' high standards and demanding production schedule
The fact that the sisters were turning out their very first hour of network television
"It took a while before we got the story right-- and 'Sanguinarium' evolved with input from the entire X-Files team," says Valerie Mayhew, the younger and more talkative of the pair. "We did have some of our own ideas, but one of the things we did was bounce some of them off of Glen Morgan and James Wong. And they kept saying to us, 'The scariest things are the most everyday things. So-- what's scary?' And during one or these conversations, Vivian was paged. She didn't recognize the phone number, but she called it anyway. And we said: 'Isn't that interesting? That could have anybody on the other end of the line. We're so accessible via modern technology. You're connected to a completely unknown person who can influence your behavior as soon as you pick up the phone."
She adds, "So-- pagers are scary. That was the first idea for the episode. But who uses pagers? Doctors use pagers. We all go to the doctor. We all hate hospitals. And doctors are someone you don't want to be influenced; you don't want to have them lose control of their faculties. So what would happen if doctors lost control? And why would they lose control? Well, of course, if they were bewitched. But who would bewitch a doctor? And why?"
By that time, says Valerie, the pagers were long gone.
The Mayhews took their idea to Morgan and Wong, who told them to change the sex of their villain from female to male. "They told us: 'Turn it around again. Plastic surgery is about vanity-- and you expected vanity from a woman. But not from a man.'"
Shortly thereafter, the Mayhews submitted a first draft of their script. It triggered a restrained response-- and several major rewrites by Carter and other members of the writing staff, working individually and as a whole. Carter is credited with focusing the story more tightly on its twin themes of greed and vanity. Howard Gordon came up with some of the emore graphic elements-- like the words "Vanitas Vanitatum" scrawled in blood on Dr. Franklyn's bathroom wall.
Vince Gilligan named one of the surgeons after one of his favorite actresses, Shannon Tweed. As it turned out, the producers ended up choosing Arlene Mazzerolle for the part of Dr. Shannon. Mazzerolle's previous screen experience had primarily been in made-for-TV movies. The role of Franklyn was played by Richard Beymer, well-known to musical comedy fans for his portrayal of Tony, the love-struck gang member, in the 1961 movie version of West Side Story. Among the regular case, though, one guest performance stands out: that of O-Lan Jones, the veteran character actress (Edward Scissorhands, Natural Born Killers, Mars Attacks!) who played Nurse Rebecca Waite. "I loved her. She was really good," recalls Duchovny.
Chris Carter came up with the idea of decorating the plastic surgeons' wooden conference table with a subtly inlaid pentagram-- and production designer Graeme Murray took his idea to undreamed-of lengths. In a tour de force of suggestive design that registered with most viewers only subliminally, he made the ASU surgical unit a suite of five operating rooms, each one positioned at the point of an imaginary pentagram. The scrub room the doctors use is also five-sided, as are the five stainless-steel scrub sinks themselves.
Opinions for the lead actors regarding "Sanguinarium" are decidedly mixed.
