X-It Vancouver -- The City That's Been Home To `The X-Files' For Five Years Will Miss The Creepy Cachet, But Life Goes On For Its Film And TV Industry

VANCOUVER, B.C. - The signs were out there.

Inside a vast sound stage on a studio lot, the only remnants of what used to be the set of a basement FBI office were blackened pieces of wood.

Outside, elsewhere on the lot last month, a movie marquee on the facade of a building featured this message: "Lions Gate Studios Thanks The X-Files For Five Wonderful Years."

All signs that Fox's international hit TV show, "The X-Files," in which FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate all manner of paranormal phenomena, was pulling out of Vancouver, B.C., the city in which it has filmed for the past five seasons. You might've thought it was a rumor about the imminent takeover of the world by shape-shifting aliens, the way the buzz built about the show leaving Canada: Would "The X-Files" be the same? Could the Vancouver film industry survive?

Well, the show, which will now be filming in the Los Angeles area, will presumably continue to flourish in the Top 20, albeit with possibly a slightly different look. "There's going to be a lot more sunshine," "X-Files" director Rob Bowman (who also directed the "X-Files" movie opening today) told The Calgary Herald recently.

And Vancouver? It's doing just fine, thank you. In fact, it's doing better than fine. A record $630 million Canadian was spent in British Columbia last year on film and television production, the latest sterling year in a decade of solid growth. 1998 promises to generate even more.

"The X-Files" brought in only a "small amount" of that $630 million, according to Tom Crowe, manager of community affairs for the British Columbia Film Commission. (Crowe estimated "The X-Files" might have brought in about $30-$40 million Canadian.)

The show's leaving is "more of an emotional impact than anything else," Crowe said. "It's a high-class and very prominent show. . . . A lot of shows shoot here, but they just don't . . . have the cachet of an `X-Files.' "

For impact, consider this: Some 6,000 people responded to a call for extras for a recent "X-Files" episode shot at General Motors Place in Vancouver. (It housed a scene featuring an international chess tournament.) GM Place will then go down on the list of Vancouver locales used on the show - places that, in the past, have substituted for Hong Kong, Russia or New York.

For true X-Philes, of course, Vancouver is full of such "X-Files" lore. The mall escalator that stood in for a Baltimore office escalator that crushed a human-liver-eating mutant; a sewage-treatment plant that served as the New Jersey dwelling place of a half-man, half-flukeworm.

Here's another: Pendrell Suites, which rents out short-term suites, was used by "The X-Files" for some shots of Scully's apartment. Look at the second-season episodes where Scully is kidnapped by a man convinced he's a UFO abductee and you'll see quick shots of the exterior and interior of the building.

That's enough to attract "X-Files" tourists, some of whom Boyd McConnell, who runs the family-owned Pendrell Suites, see periodically, standing outside his windows, cameras in hand.

"What a wonderful place! St. Scully is truly blessed," wrote one fan in the Suites' guest register. "Tell Scully `Hello' from us!" wrote a couple from Nebraska.

It's also as good a reason as any to start the X-Tour to sites where "The X-Files" and other productions have filmed. The tours, based at Pendrell Suites, started this month and tour organizers don't foresee demand going down just because "The X-Files" is pulling out of town.

"First thing, at 8 a.m. June 1, we had people coming through," said Emilia Palombi, tour director. "We've been getting a great response. People are just eating this up." About 50 people have already taken the tours.

"There're always tourists coming to Vancouver," Palombi said. "And it's still a mecca for X-Files fans." Tours can be customized, and include sites from the many other productions that have filmed in the city that has been called Hollywood North.

" `The X-Files' made landmarks of places in Vancouver," McConnell said. "But Vancouver can sell itself."

That's basically the message coming out of Lions Gate Studios as well, the North Vancouver production studio where "The X-Files" has, for years, occupied three of the lot's six sound stages.

On the walls of the studio's main office hang posters from numerous projects filmed at Lions Gate: "The X-Files" of course, but also "Little Women," "Jennifer 8," "Intersection," "Millennium" (another Fox show by "X-Files" creator Chris Carter, which will continue to be filmed at Lions Gate) and others.

The world of "X" was rapidly disappearing from Lions Gate last month. The "I Want to Believe" UFO poster was no longer hanging on the wall of the set of Mulder's office; the file cabinets and office clutter were gone. All that was left were blackened, burnt-looking pieces of wood (the final episode of "The X-Files" this season had Mulder's office destroyed in a fire), which several crew members were dismantling. All that remained of another set - that of Mulder's boss' office - were some stage lights and the backdrop of the building across the street.

Fox has a hold on the three sound stages until the end of June, said Peter D. Leitch, vice president and general manager of Lions Gate Studios. But already "a lot of major studios are interested" in taking over that space.

Demand for studio space has been high for quite a while in this city. Last year's $630 million Canadian generated by film production in British Columbia was up from $536 million in 1996. Film and TV producers are attracted to B.C. by its varied geography and architecture; it can stand in for midtown Manhattan or small-town Maine. For American companies there's also the favorable exchange rate. The number of productions (including feature films, TV movies and series and other types of projects) filmed in the area has exploded. In 1985, there were 28 productions; in 1992 there were 61. Last year, there were 167.

When "The X-Files" first came to Vancouver, "we were doing maybe 20 to 21 shows at a time," said Crowe of the B.C. Film Commission. "Now we can crew 30 easily."

Not to say that "The X-Files" hasn't benefited Vancouver as well. "It was probably the largest-budget show we shot here for the last couple of years," Crowe said. "The actors and crew combined employed about 200 to 300 people over the past five seasons."

Crew members who've worked on "The X-Files" have reportedly been snatched up by other productions. "With that under their portfolio, they're in demand," said Peter Partridge, president of the Union of B.C. Performers, the local branch of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists Performers Guild. "Five years of filming up here really enhanced their careers.

"Certainly my actors are benefiting from having such an internationally prestigious show on their reel," Partridge said. "We have people like Nick Lea (who plays the slippery Alex Krycek) and William Davis (Cancer Man) and a whole slew of performers from British Columbia who've enjoyed international recognition by virtue of being on `X-Files.' It's really given a lot of careers here a jump start."

"The X-Files" may no longer be in Vancouver. But signs of its influence are still out there.

To take the X-Tour, call 604-609-2770.