The Naked Man Who Tried To Shut Down The X-Files
The X-Files is a show filled with memorable foes who tried to shut down Mulder’s investigations, including the notorious Cigarette Smoking Man. However, the fiercest foe was arguably someone we never even saw onscreen but who would do anything to stop the show itself. During the production of the episode “Shadows,” the X-Files crew broke a local curfew, resulting in a naked man coming out onto his porch and spewing endless obscenities in an attempt to drive the crew away.
One Man’s Naked Wrath
To properly understand this bizarre X-Files tale of the crew’s naked adversary, you need to know a bit more about the episode in question. “Shadows” was a season 1 episode that was a bit different, focusing on a vengeful ghost rather than aliens, monsters, or shady government conspiracies. This was at the request of 20th Century Fox, which went out of its way to ask the series’ writers to start telling ghost stories.
The ghost in this episode goes out of its way to protect a woman named Lauren from various threats, including two assassins sent to kill her. To bring this scary plot to life, the show’s crew had to shoot a nighttime scene where the attackers were coming for the woman in question. On paper, this sounds like a pretty straightforward X-Files scene, but the crew ended up encountering one man’s (literally) naked wrath due to how late they were shooting.
The Dangers Of Breaking Curfew
Obviously, The X-Files shot many scenes at night, and this meant having to follow local curfew laws. This “Shadows” scene, though, was cutting it way too close: they had to deal with an 11:00 PM curfew, and around 10:30 PM, Location Manager Todd Pittson began arguing they’d have to scrap this particular scene as there was no way they could finish shooting it on time. Unfortunately, the new show had no second unit crew to handle any filming, so Line Producer Joseph Patrick Finn insisted on finishing the scene so the show could stay on schedule.
A Sight For Sore Eyes
The crew blew past the 11:00 PM curfew and kept shooting, but they got the mother of all interruptions at 11:50 PM. Finn claims this was when the X-Files crew was interrupted by a naked man who appeared on his porch and began “screaming obscenities at the crew, telling us to go home, that we had no right to be there.” The crew kept shooting until 12:30 AM even after the naked man “blustered on,” and Finn remembers this as “one of the most ridiculous on-location moments” he could remember from half a decade of working on the show.
Apologies Were Made
If you thought that the X-Files crew was rude and dismissive of the naked man’s concerns (a man who just wanted to get some sleep while an entire TV crew kept filming next door until half past midnight), you might be surprised that the producers agree with you. The crew ended up hand-delivering notes of apology to everyone affected by their late-night work and donated $500 to the Neighborhood Blockwatch program. Eventually, the naked man even called the show’s production office to apologize for his angry outburst; in turn, the producers apologized to him for filming past curfew.
More Frightening Than The Cigarette Smoking Man
When we think about the show’s scariest villains, we normally think about the Cigarette Smoking Man, the Flukeman, or any number of other existential threats to Mulder and Scully. However, nothing was more frightening to the X-Files crew than the naked man screaming obscenities at them as the clock approached midnight. He didn’t exactly merit an FBI investigation, though, because this was a man who clearly had nothing to hide.
