This is from 'Blessing Way', which was the season opener. Scully comes home to see her mother, and a portion of this scene is left intact -- Scully breaking down, unable to talk to anyone else but her mother, to tell her things that she has no one else to tell. She's feeling very guilty about the loss of Mulder: that he may be dead, that she should've done more, that she should've acted differently, and in a very heart-to-heart conversation which is now removed, deleted from the episode, she talks about what she should've done, how she should have behaved, and how her loyalties to the FBI were greater than her loyalties to Mulder, and that she doesn't know what the truth is now. She's very confused and she becomes angry because of her confusion. And the scene is really more about character than it is about story, because she's speaking about what she should've done, and that's why it could be deleted.
It leads into a scene with her sister Melissa that is also important in terms of her character but had to be deleted as well. It was sad to have to omit this scene, probably more due to time than anything else, because it was particularly well acted by Sheila Larken, and by Gillian, and then by Melinda McGraw who played Scully's sister. What was important about this set-up was Scully would end up having an argument with her sister about Mulder. Her sister, who is very different from her, who is intuitive and really came at life from her gut and her instincts and a sort of spiritual side that Scully didn't have. She told Scully that she didn't believe what she was saying, which was that Mulder was dead. She felt that Scully truly hoped and wished Mulder were alive, and she believed, in fact, that Mulder may be alive, too. The argument that came out of this really set up the ultimate and very then conflicted loss Scully would have of her sister when she was murdered mistakenly, the murderers believing that they were murdering Scully. So she really left her relationship with her sister completely unresolved, and I think that left an interesting dramatic approach if we would have been able to take it in a more complex way on the back of this scene.
* * * This is from 'Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose', which was episode four of the third season. It's funny to me now looking back, that we actually cut this scene out, because I didn't remember that it had been cut out. I think of this as one of those perfect little episodes. It was so charming and well-written and well directed by David Nutter, written by Darin Morgan. This is one of those scenes that plays very funny but it is -- the whole scene is actually extraneous to the picture, but because it's so well-written it remains almost intact. Only a small portion, I think, was cut out, which was after Scully's kind of scene-ending line about, I think, "This case is almost solved." So the scene actually has two endings: that line which is now the ending, and an ending after Mulder walks over and picks up a doll and ruminates on the nature of psychics and psychic phenomenon, and what he wishes were -- a psychic who would come out and explain all things paranormal. It's probably a scene that could have stayed in and been very charming, but because of air time and pace probably was omitted.* * * These are deleted scenes from 'The List', which aired as episode five of the third season. I directed this episode and wrote it. It was the second time I'd ever directed. I look back now and see that there were scenes that actually could've been cut from the script and probably didn't need to be filmed. The episode is about a man, Neech Manley, who claims he is going to come back, reincarnate, to avenge the treatment he has gotten while in prison. It's not whether he's innocent or guilty, but he's going to come back and punish those who have treated him wrongly, and the deleted scenes have to do with -- mostly with the characters who feel most threatened by this pronouncement and they are character set-up of their nervousness. There's a scene where a character named Bobby Charez, who is his lawyer, goes to talk to the governor, and he'd like to see the sentence commuted because he's afraid that Neech is a powerful enough man that he can actually do what he's predicted, and so when he goes to the governor it really is more about his nervousness than anything to do with the bigger story. So I think that it went and the picture benefited from it. The second scene is a long "dead man walking" scene where Neech Manley, after having his legs shaved, is taken by the warden and a character named Parmelly who will ultimately also fear for his life because he has other betrayal and secrets that he fears Neech will either know about, find out about, or will come to avenge. The walk down the corridor is really about Neech's relationships with other inmates who believe him and who have nothing to fear, including a character named Speranza who is played wonderfully by John Toles-Bey, and then a character named Roque who is very afraid of Neech but is taunting and is disbelieving of his abilities, or at least in his taunt hopes that he can shake the soul of this man. Those were really character set-ups as well and did not propel the story and were ultimately easily lost. The scene in Neech's cell then cuts right to the execution room where he sees the chair for the first time and Neech Manley is led in where he will make his proclamations about who will die as a result of his mistreatment.* * * This is 'Revelations', a scene that was cut featuring our guest star Sam Bottoms. I think this is a very surprisingly good episode. There was a tremendous amount of work done on this episode by Darin Morgan, uncredited. And this is one of the scenes that I think plays more to the millennial idea of the show, which is that the forces of evil are gathering and that the father of the kid in the show, Kevin Kryder, is very much affected by these forces and believes them, and speaks a bit of gibberish in this scene that Scully understands, and Mulder will ultimately be propelled into the hallway to ask her what that piece of gibberish was and how she was able to understand it, and Scully says she doesn't know what he's talking about as if it never happened. So it really adds to the mystery, the X-File. Because the story sort of worked without this scene and because I'm sure we were long on time and short on airtime, this scene would ultimately go into the garbage.* * * This is a scene deleted from 'Avatar', episode 21 of the third season. The Cigarette-Smoking Man was introduced into the episode to really be the devil, to offer Skinner another way out of his predicament and it was unnecessary. The predicament was tense enough, nervous enough, and good enough without it, so what was really just a mood-heightening or a tension-heightening scene would be lost for reasons of time, but also because it was unimportant to the story. It was really just to make Skinner realize that there were other forces at work. |