Crampton
July 18, 2016 4:53 PM   Subscribe

In 1998, cult horror author Thomas Ligotti and coworker Brandon Trenz wrote a script for an episode of The X-Files which draws more on Ligotti's style and sentiment than on Kolchalk and flying saucers. The episode, "Crampton", was never produced, but the text is online.
posted by Pope Guilty (26 comments total) 42 users marked this as a favorite
 
i never realised it could be more interesting to read scripts than watch programs.
posted by andrewcooke at 5:04 PM on July 18, 2016




This would be top-ten, up there with the cockroaches one and the baseball-playing alien.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 5:40 PM on July 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'll take any excuse to slide in this picture of teenage Kate McKinnon cosplaying as Agent Scully.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:49 PM on July 18, 2016 [18 favorites]


This would have made a good hour of television. Thanks for posting it!
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:56 PM on July 18, 2016


I really think of Ligotti as more of a Millennium guy.
posted by No-sword at 6:34 PM on July 18, 2016 [6 favorites]


More of Kate McKinnon on Gillian Anderson, because, you know.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:36 PM on July 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


From Artw's link, wait, Final Destination began as a spec X-files script? Wait, what?
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:44 PM on July 18, 2016


I saw that Jeff VanderMeer wrote the forward for the Penguin volume of Ligotti's work, and that tipped me off that it was something special.

In all honesty, I haven't read it yet, but I'm really looking forward to it.
posted by newdaddy at 7:09 PM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


From Artw's link, wait, Final Destination began as a spec X-files script? Wait, what?

Yup, the black & white buddy cop pair in the first movie (named Agent Weine & Agent Schreck after the director of the Cabinet of Caligari and the star of Nosferatu) was supposed to be Mulder & Scully.
posted by jonp72 at 8:04 PM on July 18, 2016


By the way, here's the unproduced X-Files episode, Flight 180, that became the movie Final Destination.
posted by jonp72 at 8:09 PM on July 18, 2016


Penguin volume of Ligotti's work

WHAT
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:12 PM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Penguin volume of Ligotti's work

I've been reading the first part: Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I'd read a lot about Ligotti and I'm not disappointed - he's incredible, really - but after a while his preference for women-hating-schlubs-given-to-soliloquy as narrators has begun to rankle. I find myself reading it in Comic Book Guy's voice. Think I'll take a break.
posted by misterbee at 9:19 PM on July 18, 2016 [5 favorites]


Very much a good in small doses writer for me, beyond that the vibe gets less True Detectuve Season 1 and more Season 2.

The script is very fun though - I can see why they didn't go for it - that kind of non-sequitur shaggy dog story was something they'd done a bunch of by that time in the shows run and the vibe is a bit more Twin Peaks than Files, but I could see it working with the right direction.
posted by Artw at 9:36 PM on July 18, 2016


Crampton was published, albeit in a limited edition, and with the character names changed, which, for me, detracted somewhat from the effect of it. The book was accompanied by a CD comprising six tracks of Ligotti playing guitar and reciting some of his prose. An example track: Welcome to the Unholy City.
posted by misteraitch at 11:16 PM on July 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


accompanied by a CD comprising six tracks of Ligotti playing guitar and reciting some of his prose.
Crampton Comes Alive?
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:26 AM on July 19, 2016 [15 favorites]


Penguin volume of Ligotti's work

I bought this for my library. The first person to check it out promptly kept it six months overdue while backpacking. He kept the book in his pack where he also stored gravel and just ran the whole thing through the wash a few times. He returned it a tattered, ripped mess, thinking he could just pay a late fine. I told him he'd have to pay for a replacement and he complained that he never even read it, so why should he have to pay for it?

And that, reader, is where I got this new "leather" bag. Lean in to notice the fine stitching around the eyelashes and listen closely to hear the soft moans.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:46 AM on July 19, 2016 [11 favorites]


Crampton Comes Alive

♫ I want you-uuu ♫
To show me R’LYEH
posted by miles per flower at 8:11 AM on July 19, 2016 [7 favorites]


Wish they had produced this instead of the mostly terrible scripts the picked for the newer mini-series.
posted by melissam at 8:14 AM on July 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


List of unmade episodes of The X-Files

Holy shit, there were talks on doing a Night of the Living Dead episode written by Stephen King and directed by George Romero?
posted by Sangermaine at 8:30 AM on July 19, 2016


I like Ligotti in small doses too, but this piece kind of nails his weaknesses.
posted by anazgnos at 11:58 AM on July 19, 2016


I have yet to read any of Ligotti's fiction, but I did dive into The Conspiracy Against the Human Race while my wife was pregnant with our firstborn. And that after bingeing on Robert W. Chambers and Lovecraft....

I enjoyed it quite a bit, but that drubbing linked to by anazgnos is hard to argue with. "Creaky half-autistic deadpan" is pretty much dead on.

The script was entertaining, but with that ending I have no doubt why it never got made. I can hear the nerd debates from this timeline.
posted by quite unimportant at 1:48 PM on July 19, 2016


It's nice to imagine an extra one though, and yes I'd sooner have it than any of the "new" ones, including the Darin Morgan one.
posted by Artw at 1:50 PM on July 19, 2016


And that after bingeing on Robert W. Chambers

You've got a stronger stomach than I do, I guess. My university library system (I-Share) had something like 35,000,000 books, so pretty much everything published before 1950 was in there somewhere. I got started reading all authors recommended in Supernatural Horror In Literature, and R. W. Chambers wrote about 70 books, so I set to work. Once you get past The King In Yellow and The Maker Of Moons, they are almost all turgid dreck!
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 8:58 PM on July 19, 2016


Actually there was an episode in one of the early seasons that felt a lot like the beginning of this unfilmed script. Can't remember the name but it involved a guy who could make people not see him. He was a Vietnam vet who apparently learned how to do it as a forgotten POW. He went around killing people he felt responsible for his and other POW's situations. It was one of the better episodes and both stories start out with the similar "what just happened, how did this guy die, the criminal must be invisible or something" feel.
posted by engelgrafik at 5:38 AM on July 21, 2016


It doesn't reall come back to that past the cold open, though.
posted by Artw at 6:21 AM on July 21, 2016


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