The X-Files reunion during Wizard World Chicago last Saturday opened on a cringe-inducing note. Moments after the quartet of cast members, including stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, strolled onto the stage and sat down for a 45-minute Q&A session, a young spiky-haired panel moderator kicked things off with an utterly vacuous question: “So . . . what’s your favorite pizza?”
One model of success at comic conventions is B-movie idol Bruce Campbell, who wears the events like a second skin. The star of the cult-favorite Evil Dead and other low-budget horror films exudes a hammy vaudevillian swagger that feels like an extension of his onscreen persona. At a session promoting his Starz series Ash vs. the Evil Dead and as host of a Wizard World horror-movie festival he programmed, Campbell strutted around in a gaudy purple suit and riffed with the crowd while handing out fake-blood-splattered chainsaws as awards. “You guys are great!” Campbell bellowed at a screening. The audience roared.
Such enthusiasm was muted at the X-Files panel, thanks in part to some uninspired questions the host and fans posed to Duchovny, Anderson, Mitch Pileggi (Agent Skinner), and William B. Davis (“the Smoking Man”). The follow-up to the aforementioned pizza inquiry was a question about why the 90s sci-fi series has endured in the pop-culture imagination after more than two decades. Duchovny initially sleepwalked through a boilerplate answer, something about how unique X-Files was for its time. Then he stopped suddenly and gave a more honest response: “You know, I appreciate your questions, but we’re, like, the last people qualified to answer some of these things,” he said. “The fans sitting out there, they’re the ones that could tell you why it’s popular.”
