The subject of this YOU DECIDE! feature is Chris Carter. There are two dates given on the Internet for his day of birth. Help us to determine which one is correct.
Chris Carter, in case you didn’t know, is a television screenwriter, producer and director. He is the originator of the highly successful X-Files television series, which by the way, is returning for it’s eleventh season on FOX on January 24th. This time around the show is being aired on Tuesday. Originally it was shown on Friday. I wonder how the change of days will effect the ratings! You know how I am about the seven days of the week.
Carter claims he had a fairly normal California childhood spending much his free time playing Little League baseball. As a teen he surfed avidly which lead to his involvement as a writer for a popular surfing magazine. After graduating from California State University with a degree in journalism, his first job was with Disney Studios writing scripts. It was at NBC that he began to produce television pilots, however most of them were never produced.
It was while Carter tried his hand at producing, that he learned from his friend John E. Mack, that three percent of the population believed they had been abducted by aliens. This led him to look into the subject and found it to be a gold-mine of story-lines. At first Fox turned down his proposal for the X-Files, but after second pitch they greenlighted a pilot for the series. The show was slotted to be shown on Friday night, at that time an unpopular viewing time slot.
As they say the rest is history. The X-Files was a runaway hit for nine seasons. It’s first award was won for its distinctively eerie opening, which literary glued the viewers to the screen. Later two feature films were released. They were well-received considering the fact that the storyline was never fully revealed. Since the X-files Carter has produced several other projects, but none of possessed the appeal as the show featuring Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.
So which of the two signatures is correct?
  #79 SAT LIB – 10/13/1956 |
 #07 SUN LIB – 10/13/1957 |
It appears that television producer, Chris Carter, was born on Saturday, or at least according to Wikipedia. As to why Carter’s birthday has been published incorrectly in a dozen other places, it’s a mystery. Saturday makes sense considering his the dogged persistence that he displayed as he developed his formula for success, even trying to revive it again from the dead. And the X-Files series, even if it was a fantasy, was characterized by a chilling plot line and some dire issues.
