85 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
85 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
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A GUIDE TO THE VANCOUVER LOCALES WHERE THE X-FILES IS FILMED.
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By Laurel Wellman
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(First published in Vancouver magazine, October 1994)
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_________________________________________________________________
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EVERY WEEK ON THE CULT-TELEVISION hit The X-Files, special agents
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Scully and Mulder criss-cross the continent in pursuit of UFOs,
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genetic mutants and covert government derring-do. But few viewers
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might know that Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Mulder (David Duchovny)
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never leave a region known as "The Grid." It's hardly Nevada's
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hush-hush Area 51-rather, it's the geographical zone in the Lower
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Mainland within which film crews will work without travel penalties.
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We asked Todd Pittson, one of two X-Files location managers, to give
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us a tour.
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1 Reality: City Square Mall, 12th and Cambie.
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Television: Office building at 66 Exeter St., Baltimore. A mutant
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makes its papier-mache and bile nest under one of the mall's
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escalators in "Tooms." Shoppers may feel queasy riding the escalator
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after watching the beast get munched in the works.
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2 Reality: Buntzen Lake, Port Coquitlam.
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Television: Lake Okobogee, Iowa. B.C. Hydro would probably frown on
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any UFO caught singeing trees on its property. So the props department
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created some realistically burned fakes, trucked them in and set them
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up in the park for "Conduit."
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3 Reality: Iona Island Sewage Treatment Plant.
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Television: Newark Sewage Plant, New Jersey. Twelve hours of filming
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here on a sweltering July day were as much as the X-Files crew could
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take. Luckily, Mulder's hunch that a Russian mutant would pop up in a
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cesspool proved correct.
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4 Reality: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby.
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Television: FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C. Those who've carped
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about the brutalist architecture of the Arthur-Erikson-designed campus
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must feel the drafty structure has finally received its due. Look for
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shots of SFU's facade lettered J. Edgar Hoover Building.
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5 Reality: Lighthouse Park, West Vancouver.
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Television: Olympic National Forest, Washington State. Mutant (yes,
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again) insects eat hapless loggers from the inside out, leaving them
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mere shells in Episode 19, "Darkness Falls." G-men plan a covert
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spraying program, but just to be safe, don't drink from that tap at
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the trailhead!
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6 Reality: Powertech Labs, Inc., Surrey.
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Television: Secret facility, Mattawa, Washington. After an Iraqi
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fighter downs a UFO over Turkey, the feds spirit the surviving
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alien-or "extraterrestrial biological entity"-to Mattawa. Powertech
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Labs, incidentally, is a B.C. Hydro subsidiary. What do they do? "Some
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kind of research," shrugs Pittson. Hmmmm.
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7 Reality: Steveston Village, Richmond.
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Television: Kenwood, Tennessee. Having served as Steveston, Maine,
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home to homicidal transexual aliens, scant weeks earlier, Steveston is
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again witness to murder as a faith healer battles the forces of
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darkness. Even more mysteriously, Coquitlam's Riverview Hospital
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appears just off the touristy main drag.
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8 Reality: Versatile Shipyards, North Vancouver.
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Television: Maryland Waterfront. Mulder discovers evidence of a
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human/alien hybridizing project in an abandoned warehouse, but
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government bad guys whisk it away before he can show anyone.
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9 Reality: Boundary Bay Airport, Ladner.
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Television: Ellens Air Force Base, Idaho. Despite warnings from Deep
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Throat, a mysterious informant with CIA ties, Mulder tries to catch
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the USAF test-flying a secret UFO-based craft. And you thought those
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were just Cessnas...
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