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Imagine waking up inside your mother’s life, back in time, suddenly clashing against outdated norms and rampant misogyny.
Now fling a low-empathy, modern MAGA cable commentator pining for the mythical “good old days” when men “held a door open” into this jarring situation, thrust into her pregnant mother’s body in the 1950s, when over-handsy doctors examined their patients with a cigarette in their mouths.
Schadenfreude alert, right?
This is the thought-provoking, darkly funny and intentionally harrowing premise of The X-Files creator Chris Carter’s new film Queens for a Day, written by his wife Dori Carter, and produced by Edmonton-born Grace Gilroy – founding member of Directors Guild of Alberta.
Shot in Californian Carter’s beloved Vancouver in February as Ryan Coogler was filming his updated X-Files series there, the situational horror film has its world premiere 6:30 p.m. Sept. 25 on Day 2 of Edmonton International Film Festival , which runs Sept. 24-Oct. 3
Before heading to wider release, it plays Calgary International Film Festival 3 p.m. Sept. 27 .
Beautifully staged from mid-century modern wood-panel waiting rooms to hairdos and costumes to simply die for, the film is a fascinating mix of Freaky Friday, Sliders, It’s a Wonderful Life and the Next Gen episode where Picard lives someone else’s entire life (and learns to play flute) in 25 unconscious minutes.
Carter and his wife deftly pull from our collective past, building a world that while full of colour and gorgeously uncluttered with ubiquitous screens of Donald Trump barking, was still a real nightmare for women of intentionally suppressed means and nightmare compromises.
Over the phone from his home in Santa Barbara where he and his wife are packing up for the trip to appear at the screenings, smart and friendly Carter talks about directing again, MAGA world and The X-Files, old and new.
Q: One of the things I loved about Queens is it really made me empathize with my mother. A lot of people would make a time-travel film about their own childhood, but you and Dori dove into your parents’ generation.
A: My parents never drew Social Security, so they never really got to see my success. So anything I do makes me think of them. And for both my wife and I, this was a trip back for us, and it’s very personal to her. But as you might imagine, I was with her every step of the way through the rewrite process and the prep process. So this has a lot to do with us personally.
Q: How did collaborating work? Did she go off and write first?
A: And how. This is a good story. So Dory wrote the script over 30 years ago, before the X Files, actually. And I was in the garage digging around about a year ago, and I came across the script, and I looked at it, and said, “Would you ever consider tackling this again?” She didn’t know who Janine Pirro is, but if you if you made someone like her the central character, I think you’ve got an interesting story. So she got a full dose of Pirro and everything fell from there.
Q: That must’ve been hard to watch. Obviously the two of you aren’t huge fans of what’s going on in your country right now?
A: (Laughs) I think the end of the music suggests where our politics lay.
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Q: There are a lot of ways to do this, but can you talk about Jerri skipping forward through the past? I think there’s something scarier about that.
A: Exactly, that’s what we liked. She never knew, and of course, when she wakes up very pregnant with herself, that’s her first inkling that’s even going to happen. We decided to have her go through it in a day because there was an actual show called Queen for a Day where women got to escape their lives, which we show in the movie.
Q: You obviously had fun with the time jumps, like the “don’t let the bed bugs bite” line cutting to a cockroach crawling on her …
A: It’s funny, that cockroach time cut wasn’t in the script, but it was a better jump scare. What’s always remarkable is you write a script and you’re wedded to it, in love with every scene, and it just falls away so easily. I think we cut about half an hour out of the film.
Q: Editors will break your heart, but they sure make a movie.
A: I always said to Mark Snow, our composer on The X-Files, we deliver you a corpse and you breathe life into it. But the editor has a lot to do with that, too.
Q: Now as soon as I saw the cockroach, my head popped back to that Darrin Morgan X-Files episode…
A: War of the Coprophages! Where the cockroach crawls across the TV screen. (Laughs)
Q: Morgan was such a good writer, those Jose Chung episodes of the X-Files and Millenium are two of my favorites because they deconstructed the shows. Do you have memories of how the cast and crew reacted to being able to turn the tropes inside out, which you’re kind of doing in the new movie with such a central pitbull?
A: Oh, they loved them! It’s funny, you cast Mulder and Scully, David and Gillan (Duchovny/Anderson), for dramatic parts. I knew David was a funny guy, I just never knew Gillian had comedic chops like she does.
And Darrin’s idiosyncratic style in every episode is making fun of the show and the characters. And when he directs, his constant direction is “Bigger! Bigger!” It’s not often on The X-Files you heard that direction.
Q: I don’t want to spoil Queens, but can you talk about balancing the horror with the joy?
A: There’s so many funny parts of the movie, the cockroach, the vomiting, silly horror movie stuff – but we never play it for laughs. We found this amazing composer Tricia Turnbull and told her we didn”t want to hit comedy, we wanted to hit the drama and the horror in those instances, and it plays so much better without telegraphing the humour. A lot of it involved the director of photography, Craig Wrobleski . I say this is a movie of long hallways, we have lots of scary, The Shining hallways.
The horror is Technicolor.
Q: So much is on lead actor Erin Boyes evolving through time. Can you talk about directing that?
A: It was monumental what she had to go through, but a lot of my job – and it’s not always this way – was putting her on the map in I think five distinct time jumps. You become her navigator as well as director.
Q How much of the budget was the Gwen Stafani song? I’m kidding, but …
A Oh, it wasn’t cheap. (Laughs) Funny fact, in the bar scene we wanted to put Liberace on TV and it was cost prohibitive, you wouldn’t believe it! Then we thought Lawrence Welk. Same thing, super expensive.
Q Ryan Coogler’s X-Files was shooting in Vancouver when you were shooting this, what did that feel like?
A I want to say it was weird, but I knew it was coming for so long. What was mysterious was how under wraps they kept the whole process. Somebody was working on Queens for a Day who had been hired as a camera assistant, and said, “You know, they’re shooting with eight cameras,” and it’s like, “What?! Wow!” Like, we shot the pilot of The X Files on one camera, and on a couple occasions, two cameras. So you know, we’ve come a long way.
Q What’s your involvement with the new one? Executive producing?
A No. My name is on it, Fox Disney wanted my name on it. I had a nice conversation with Ryan Coogler, but this was his baby. I decided not to read it because I want to view it like everyone else.
Q So you don’t know if it’s a reboot or a continuation…
A I don’t. He and I talked about what the mythology would entail and he gave me a hint and it sounded interesting. But I’m excited.
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