I have all 9 seasons of X-Files on DVD, a birthday gift from Cal a few ago, one of my all time favorites. I have some favorite episodes for different reasons, but all have one common thread, memorable writing.
In season 5 Scully, the female partner of Mulder the all believing FBI agent, begins to succumb to the cancerous tumor in her head lodged behind her sinus cavity, a place that is inopperable. The episode opens with her voice over as she writes in her journal, a letter to Mulder:
I feel these words as if their meaning were weight being lifted from me. Knowing that you will read them, and share my burden as I have come to trust no other, that you should know my heart, look into it, finding there the memory and experience that belong to you, that are you, is a comfort to me now, as I feel the tethers loose, and the prospects darken for the continuance of a journey that began not so long ago, and that began again with a faith shaken and strengthened by your beliefs. If not for which I might never have been so strong now, as I cross to face you, and look at you in complete, hoping that you will forgive me for not making the rest of the journey with you.
That's just a bit of it, written by X-Files creator, Chris Carter. My favorite episode of all time is a very unusual one, written and directed by David Duchovny who played Mulder. It's called The Unnatural and it's told in glorious flashback. Searching through an FBI reference book, Mulder finds a photograph of Arthur Dales with a baseball team and the alien bounty hunter. Mulder goes to Arthur Dales'(an ex FBI agent), house to ask him about the photograph. There he finds Arthur Dales' brother, also named Arthur. Mr. Dales proceeds to tell Mulder a story of a 1940's Negro baseball player in Roswell named Josh Exley who was closing in on breaking some professional baseball records. Mr. Dales tells how he was assigned to protect this player from the KKK and that Exley was actually an alien.
It's a great premise and an original and well told story. The casting was spot on, especially the baseball playing alien as played by Jesse L. Martin of Rent and Law and Order fame.
Here are some bits of dialogue I know you'll enjoy. This is after Exley is discovered by Dales for what he truly is.
Officer Dales: "So why did you, uh, leave your family in, uh... in Georgia?"
Josh Exley: "My people guard their privacy zealously."
Officer Dales: "I can understand that."
Josh Exley: "They don't like for us to intermingle with your people. Their philosophy is we stick to ourselves; you stick to yourselves — everybody's happy."
Officer Dales: "So what happened?"
Josh Exley: "Well, you know what happened."
Officer Dales: "You fell in love with an earth woman."
Josh Exley: "No. I saw a baseball game."
Officer Dales: "Oh."
Josh Exley: "See, there's something you got to understand about my race. We don't have a word for laughter. We don't laugh. I don't know if you noticed in between all that fainting you was doing, but we have very tiny mouths, so no smiling even."
Officer Dales: "Wow."
Josh Exley: "But I tell you, when I saw that baseball game being played this laughter just... it just rose up out of me. You know, the sound the ball makes when it hits the bat?"
Officer Dales: "Yeah."
Josh Exley: "It was like music to me. You know, the smell of the grass, 11 men — first unnecessary thing I ever done in my life and I fell in love. I didn't know the unnecessary could feel so good. You know, the game was meaningless but it seemed to mean everything to me. It was... useless, but perfect."
Officer Dales: "Yeah, like, uh... like a rose."
Josh Exley: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a rose. Yeah, see., you get it, Arthur. You're a fan."
Officer Dales: "Uh-huh."
Josh Exley: "Tell you, from that moment on I just couldn't fix myself to go home."
That's such a great exchange between those two characters. If you've ever loved baseball before all it's steroid posing, this will bring it back, just for a moment.
Of course, Dales is telling this tale 50 years later. He is older, cynical and isn't taking any crap and could care less if Mulder believes him or not.Mulder: "Let me get this straight; a free-spirited alien fell in love with baseball and ran away from the other non-fun-having aliens and made himself black, because that would prevent him from getting to the majors where his unspeakable secret might be discovered by an intrusive press and public and you're also implying that..."
Arthur Dales: "You certainly have a knack for turning chicken salad into chicken spit."
Mulder: "You're also implying that this baseball-playing alien has something to do with the famous Roswell UFO crash of July 47, aren't you?"
Arthur Dales: "You're just dying to connect the dots aren't you, son? Look, I give you some wood and I ask you for a cabinet. You build me a cathedral. I don't want a cathedral. I like where I live. I just want a place to put my TV. Understand my drift?"
Mulder: "Drift it is, sir."
Arthur Dales: "Trust the tale, Agent MacGyver, not the teller. That which fascinates us is, by definition, true. Speaking metaphorically, of course."
Mulder: "Okay, so was Ex a man who was metaphorically an alien or an alien who was metaphorically a man or a something in between that was literally an alien-human hybrid? It's official. I am a horse's ass."
Arthur Dales: "What is it to be a human, Fox? Is it to have the chemistry of a man? In the universal scheme of things a dog's chemistry is nearly identical to that of a man. But is a dog like a man?"
Mulder: "Well, I have noticed over the course of time, a man and his dog will often start to look like one another."
Arthur Dales: "To be a man is to have the heart of a man. Integrity, decency, sympathy; these are the things that make a man a man and Ex had them all, had them all, more than you or I."
Everything I read or watch becomes part of me in some way. This story, written in 1999, has stayed with me a long time because of it was about love's transforming power. In the end, Exley is killed by an alien bounty hunter and instead of bleeding the noxious green blood of his people, he bleeds human blood. Baseball made him human, the love of baseball changed him. It's a romantic notion in the most unromantic setting, about how love can change us in the most alien ways.
5 comments:
I'm wondering if you have all that dialogue memorized or do you have the V on next to you, hitting pause, so you can get it right, or is there some website where you find the juicy bits of dialogue you need. Whatever it is, it's impressive and allows you to illustrate your points beautifully.
My middle aged memory could never be that exact, although I do remember precisely what scene I want to find. Nope, there are sites that have the dialogue on them, the tricky part is finding just the right ones.
It's true that loving something makes a human. It creates a vulnerability.
Beautifully written - the post and the dialogue.
Isn't it magical how great writers can use any medium, genre, or style to convey the basic truths about our human condition? That's art. And your examples sounded like great art.
Halfway through, I was already thinking of my comment. I started to say something light, like how baseball, like sleeping in, is mostly unnecessary, and mostly good. And while I was reading, my own thought-comment was intruding. Then your last line - it really got to me - "how love can change us in the most alien ways." That is beautiful. Next time I'll read all the way through without interrupting...
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