r/Crazy_retro_stories

LSD and the Drugs of the Mind

Newsweek: May 9, 1966

As I was lying on the ground, I was looking up at the sky and I could sort of see through the leaves of the plant and see all the plant fluids flowing around inside it. I thought the plant was very friendly and very, very closely related to me as a living thing. For a while, I became a plant and felt my spine grow down through the bricks and take root ... and I raised my arms up and waved them around with the plant and I really was a plant!

“But toward the end I was watching Lois and I thought I saw the drug take hold of her in a bad way ... Suddenly I was afraid. I looked down and Lois was miles and miles and miles beneath me sort of as if I were looking at her from the wrong end of a telescope.”

The man who thought he was a plant is a 29-year-old Yale graduate. And he was indeed looking at his wife through the wrong end of a telescope: his perceptions had been altered by a chemical called d-lysergic acid diethylamide.

‘Inner Space’: Largely unknown and untasted outside the researcher's laboratory until recently, the hallucinogenic drug LSD has suddenly become a national obsession. Depending on who is doing the talking, it is an intellectual tool to explore psychic “inner space,” a new source of kicks for thrill seekers, the sacramental substance of a far-out mystical movement—or the latest and most frightening addition to the list of mind drugs now available in the pill society being fashioned by pharmacology. “Every age produces the thing it requires,” says psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond of the New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric Institute in Princeton. “This age requires ways of learning to develop its inner qualities.”

The new LSD subculture, for the moment at least, is mainly American and young. It has its own vocabulary: on college campuses, in New York's Greenwich Village, Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard and San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury District, the drug is called “acid” and its devotees “acid heads.” Users “turn on” and go on LSD “trips.” Some of the trips are contemplative affairs; but on others, hippies take off their clothes and turn on orgiastically. And as the young world turns on, the adult world—shocked and bewildered—turns off.

The LSD culture also has its own leader, former Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary. To 45-year-old Leary, LSD is a “cerebral vitamin.” Instead of the term hallucinogenic drug, Leary promotes the less invidious phrase “psychedelic (from the Greek: mind-manifesting) experience.” “I get revelations from my cells,” says Leary, “which are wiser and older than my mind.”

And the new LSD culture has its own special horrors. Last month, a 5-year-old Brooklyn girl, Donna Wingenroth, accidentally swallowed an LSD-impregnated sugar cube, became hysterical and was hospitalized for six days. Her 18-year-old uncle told police he had bought the cube in Greenwich Village at the going rate of $5. A week later, Stephen Kessler, a 30-year-old former medical student, was arrested in Brooklyn for killing his mother-in-law with a kitchen knife. Kessler told police that he had been “flying for three days on LSD.” Patients have been entering New York’s Bellevue at a rate of about two a week. Seemingly, an LSD epidemic was raging in the nation’s largest city.

Bootlegging: Amid great hand-wringing, politicians and law-enforcement officers have rushed before TV cameras to call for new drug laws and stiffer penalties. Alarmed by reports that college students were making LSD in chemistry labs or buying it from bootleggers, U.S. Food and Drug Administration director Dr. James L. Goddard recently wrote to college administrators asking them to report the use of LSD and other hallucinogens to his agency.

But the first to feel the heat of the political blast was the only legitimate LSD distributor in the U.S. Reacting to the unfavorable publicity, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals of Hanover, N.J., which distributed LSD supplies to U.S. researchers working on government-approved research, abruptly withdrew the drug and asked for return of laboratory supplies. The action made no dent in the black market, since the LSD bootlegged on campuses and city streets is obtained from manufacturers abroad or, in many instances, home-brewed and then dropped onto sugar cubes. With police on the lookout for the cubes, the newest dodge supposedly is to coat the glue on an envelope flap with LSD so that it can be licked off.

‘Uppies’ and ‘Downies’: In truth, however, LSD lives up to neither the scare headlines nor the glowing tributes of the believers. The number of Americans who have ever tasted LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and the other hallucinogens is small compared with users of such other mind drugs as the amphetamines (“uppies”) that provide users with psychic energy, the barbiturates (“downies”) that put them to sleep and the tranquilizers that allay their anxieties and fears. “Every other prescription written in this country,” says Dr. John D. Griffith, a Vanderbilt University psychiatrist, “is written for a drug that affects the mind.” Last year, 24 million prescriptions for amphetamines and 123 million for sedatives and tranquilizers were filled in the U.S. (the total bill: $508.2 million). Moreover there is also a huge bootleg market for such drugs. An estimated 13 billion amphetamine and barbiturate pills are manufactured each year—enough to supply every man, woman and child in the U.S. with almost six dozen apiece—and at least half are distributed through illegal channels.

Such drugs, of course, all have important legitimate uses. Amphetamines are prescribed to treat depression and for weight control because they curb appetite. Tranquilizers have revolutionized the care of the mentally ill and emptied hospital wards; properly prescribed, they have helped normal people face crises in their lives. But these mind drugs have been more widely abused than any other type of medication. Many of the barbiturates and amphetamines legally distributed are carelessly prescribed. The barbiturates—and a number of tranquilizers—can become addicting; and overdoses can seriously depress the nervous system. Each year some 3,000 deaths are blamed on the overuse of barbiturates alone; many of the victims are menopausal women.

New Law: Such cases have led to the Drug Abuse Control Amendments to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The amendments, which went into effect last February, require manufacturers, wholesalers and pharmacists to keep records of drug shipments and sales for FDA inspection, limit prescription refills to five within a six-month period (after that another prescription must be written), and provide a $5,000 fine and two-year prison term as a maximum first-offense penalty for giving such drugs to minors. LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs will now come under its provisions.

Yet, if the number of Americans who have taken a trip at one time or another is relatively small—Leary estimates 1 million, possibly a high figure—the potential health hazard is great.

LSD can be used almost at will, since it produces few toxic side effects, even in high doses, and it isn’t addicting. It is powerful: just 1 ounce of the drug can provide enough doses for 284,000 full-scale trips. Finally, it is colorless, tasteless and odorless when dissolved in a glass of water. (These attributes gave rise to the story that a pound of LSD dumped into a city’s water supply by an enemy agent would render the community helpless. But a Pentagon expert asserts that such a plan couldn’t come off.)

On top of this potent chemistry, an alluring patina of pseudo-intellectuality and adventure coats the LSD pill. The combination has proved particularly attractive to certain affluent members of today’s pop society—students from multiversities, young professionals in the big cities, artists and self-proclaimed creative types, and fringe people of all kinds.

Drugs of Distinction: Psychiatrists, for example, have already noted a distinct difference between the mind-drug takers and the “hard” narcotics addicts. Most of the LSD users admitted to Bellevue have been white, while two-thirds of New York heroin addicts are Negroes and Puerto Ricans. According to Dr. Donald Louria, chief of the New York County Medical Society’s subcommittee on narcotics, “the reason is not racial, but social, economic and cultural.” Heroin addiction goes with a sense of social, economic or personal inferiority. The addict typically is not a beat but the beaten—he seeks euphoria as an escape from the squalor of his circumstances and his sense of inadequacy. The users of LSD and pot (marijuana), which is technically a hallucinogen rather than a narcotic, may live in high rises and split levels rather than slum tenements. “The LSD people I know,” says Jack Margolis, a 31-year-old Hollywood scriptwriter, “are doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists. Talk about trips. Well, taking LSD is more enriching than going to Europe.”

Finally, the psychedelics are also supposed to provide deep religious insights and break down the barriers of communication between individuals, creating a deeper love of mankind. These themes surround the psychedelic experience with an aura of sexuality. Yet, contrary to widespread belief, the hallucinogens don’t necessarily increase sexual desire or prolong the act of intercourse. “All of these drugs,” says Dr. Nathan S. Kline of New York’s Rockland State Hospital, “tend to dull sexual capacities.” But, he adds, they may lower sexual inhibitions. “Under drugs like pot you tend to feel that you love everyone and the world is a great place,” Kline says. “And if anyone wants to go to bed with you, it’s just one more great experience to share. Pregnancy becomes the most frequent serious side effect of pot.”

In such highly charged circumstances it is not surprising that the public discussion of LSD has blurred the fact that the drug first made its appearance in the laboratory and was used as a research tool.

The drug was synthesized by Dr. Albert Hofmann of Sandoz Ltd., a Swiss pharmaceutical firm, from ergot, a fungus that attacks rye, in 1938. (LSD and atomic energy, Leary likes to point out, were developed in the same decade.) Five years later, the chemist discovered LSD’s ability to alter mental perception when he accidentally inhaled some of the whitish powder. “Objects, as well as the shape of my associates in the laboratory,” he wrote in his notebook, “appeared to undergo optical changes ... Fantastic pictures of extraordinary plasticity and intensive color seemed to surge toward me.”

Because the distortions produced by LSD resembled those of schizophrenia, Hofmann’s discovery was soon used to produce “model” psychoses in the laboratory. But although hallucinogens may be useful in studying mental illness, psychiatrists aren’t convinced that the LSD experience exactly mimics schizophrenic distortions. Schizophrenics tend to have auditory hallucinations, while LSD effects are usually visual.

The discovery of LSD also gave a boost to the theory that mental illness, particularly schizophrenia, involves disturbance in body chemistry. Chemically, LSD resembles a substance called serotonin, which aids in the transmission of impulses between nerve cells. The hallucinations of schizophrenia, therefore, might result from an excess of serotonin in certain brain centers.

Unblocked: The mechanisms of mental illnesses might be easier to understand if scientists knew now just how LSD acts on the brain. Some researchers believe the drug acts on the cells of the reticular activating system and parts of the limbic system lying deep within the brain; in these subcortical centers, the level of awareness is regulated and the impulses of rational thought are integrated with the senses and emotions.

Some psychiatrists believe hallucinogens can help break down the unconscious roadblocks of patients undergoing psychoanalysis. A New York psychiatrist, Dr. Harold Abramson, cites a patient who couldn't remember his father at any time in his life prior to the age of 8. With the aid of an LSD-like compound, the patient recalled being beaten by his father, while his mother stood by saying, “Give it to him! Give it to him!” The patient vividly recalled what he was wearing at the time, and remembered it had happened when he was 4.

Psychiatrist Osmond, who administered Aldous Huxley’s first dose of mescaline, believes the drugs should be further explored as an aid to creativity and expansion of awareness—but in the right setting, supervised by a competent physician. “One needs to have a technically qualified person there,” he says, “a psychiatrist who really knows something about the drug.” A patient’s bad reaction to LSD, for example, can be stopped quickly by administering a potent tranquilizer such as chlorpromazine. Strangely, there is no known lethal dose of LSD. In fact, the only known victim of LSD was an elephant at the Oklahoma City zoo, given an unintentional overdose during an experiment.

Over the Line: The real hazard of LSD lies in the personality of the person taking the drug, the dose, and the setting in which it is administered.

Even the most normal “normal” may have a bad reaction. And the drug may push a latent psychotic over the borderline into a full-blown break. “There are a sizable number of these individuals,” says Nathan Kline. “Unfortunately, these are the people who usually go seeking this type of experience.”

Most psychiatrists believe hallucinogenic drugs are far more dangerous than narcotics in their potential effect on overt behavior. “Your ego or central control mechanism falls apart,” says Kline. “It's not that the drugs themselves induce anger or violent behavior, but that they loosen the controls over impulsive behavior.” Violent reactions to LSD are rare—but when they happen they are memorable. One of the Bellevue LSD patients, responding to “voices,” hurled himself in front of a subway. Others have jumped out of windows or hurtled down stairs, thinking they could fly.

On and Off: LSD may have more subtle as well as violent effects on the psyche. Dr. Sidney Malitz of the New York State Psychiatric Institute is convinced that a number of people who have taken hallucinogens habitually have undergone distinct personality changes. “They become very self-centered, very grandiose and feel their own standards are the new standards of the world,” Malitz says. Some psychiatrists have suggested biochemical changes may occur in the brains of habitual users of LSD.

Leary began experimenting with psychedelic drugs five years ago. And by his own account he is so conditioned that he turns on without drugs. Naturally enough, he doesn’t agree that changes brought about by the drug are necessarily bad. Yet there is a poignancy about Leary’s present position. He considers Fellini’s masterful film “Juliet of the Spirits” an LSD movie because “you never know when the heroine is hallucinating and when she’s not.” Critics think the same seems to apply to Leary. But he recently advised his young followers to relinquish psychedelic drugs for a year. “The psychedelic battle is won,” he said. His next piece of advice: “turn on” parents and teachers “by the messages you have learned.”

In point of fact, the battle hasn’t been won—even on the hip campuses. In one large Eastern university, where up to 50 per cent of the undergraduates reportedly used marijuana, a careful faculty investigation revealed that only about 1 per cent of the students had ever smoked pot. But at San Francisco State, an estimated 35 per cent of the students have used LSD at least once. In fact, George Harrison, a 26-year-old graduate student in psychology, has started a kind of “LSD Users Anonymous” to help those who have had bad trips. One of the cases Harrison saw involved a couple who went to Golden Gate Park after taking LSD. “They got separated and the girl called me, panic-stricken,” Harrison recalls. “We found the boy sitting and watching the buffalo herd they keep in the park.”

Some of the replies the FDA is now receiving from Goddard’s letter to college administrators provide another measure of the amount of tripping going on. An Ivy League university official called it a “problem of great concern,” and asked Goddard to send an FDA man to counteract the favorable publicity LSD has gotten.

Future Trips: Where do LSD and the trippers go from here? First of all, law enforcement will be tightened; the FDA has already sent undercover investigators to some of the bigger campuses to find out who is distributing LSD. According to one San Francisco pharmacologist, the major California supply comes from Mexico, where it can be sold legally to drug distributors.

Second, legitimate research will go on, but quietly. Despite Sandoz’s action, the National Institute of Mental Health has enough to supply current projects for years.

Third, tripping for kicks will continue. Most psychiatrists believe LSD is here to stay. Osmond suggests LSD is now part of the battle between older and younger generations, between those in authority and those in rebellion. Stricter drug laws may only make drugs more fascinating, Osmond notes, just as Prohibition made drinking more adventurous and appealing. Many teen-age trippers are quick to cite their parents’ drinking habits when reproached for their own misbehavior. And statistics from non-psychedelic sources suggest that alcoholism remains a bigger mental crutch and health hazard than cerebral vitamins, goof balls, pep pills and tranquilizers combined.

Psychiatrists themselves disagree on whether society’s growing dependence on mind drugs is good or bad. “The notion that we can be in this world without stress and conflict is one of the major errors of our time,” says Dr. Sidney Cohen of UCLA. And critic Marya Mannes asked young people last week: “Why do you need drugs to give you excitement and revelation, when the real world, if you really bothered to examine it, is so full of both?”

Whatever the answer, LSD and the current mind drugs are only the curtain-raisers for the brave new world taking shape in the lab. Learning drugs are next. Researchers at Albany Medical College have tested a drug called magnesium pemoline and have found that it improves the memory of rats; they are now testing it on humans. Others are working on drugs to improve concentration. Researchers studying the chemical cyclazocine to block effects of heroin also found the drug may increase sex drive.

All these experiments in the lab—like LSD trips that began in laboratories only a few years ago—may seem beyond the fringe today. But for doctors, educators, parents—and for the young—they will raise basic questions. When “learning pills” become available, what value can be placed on artificial intelligence? What fulfillment for lovers in chemical sex? And what worth for anyone in synthetic human experience?

 

From the Movie “Poetry In Motion II”

G&E Productions

From the Movie “Poetry In Motion II”

A G&E Productions flick

Tana Forte- thrashing…

Gregory Cioffi- Director

“And it was all a dream…”

Back in 1985, Patrick Duffy wanted to move on from the #2 rated tv show Dallas, so the producers obliged by having his character Bobby Ewing dramatically killed off in the finale of the 1984-1985 season.  (He was run down by a car after heroically pushing his wife out of the way.)

The producers were blindsided when the show's ratings began to collapse the next Duffy-less season.  After all, J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) was the iconic star and the engine of the show, the villain everyone loved to hate. But in retrospect, it seemed that for J.R. to work, the show required his brother Bobby as his foil. Bobby was conscience of the Ewing family. Also, Bobby’s relationship with Pam (Victoria Principal) was the emotional center of the series. Hagman later recalled that without Duffy, it was a "terrible year" creatively. Behind the scenes, Hagman was miserable, calling Duffy almost every week to complain about how much the show was struggling and how it wasn't any fun anymore.

Hagman was determined to get his friend back on set. He called Duffy and asked him to meet up at a Mexican restaurant in Malibu. Duffy knew exactly what the meeting was about, and even joked with his wife before leaving that they were going to ask him back. According to Duffy, he and Hagman got drinks, and Hagman simply said, "Damn it, come on back." Duffy immediately replied, "Okay," and that was pretty much the entire negotiation. Duffy missed his TV family and just wanted to "come back home."

So that was easy. The hard part was how the writers would un-paint themselves out of that corner, since they had killed off the character pretty decisively.

They decided to work it out through the show’s yearly cliffhanger- finale. The show’s audience absolutely expected Dallas to end every single season with a massive cliffhanger. Dallas kind of invented the high stakes, tabloid fodder cliffhanger with the 1980 finale where an unseen character guns down J.R.  "Who Shot J.R.?" was the tv question of that summer.

This clip is the final four minutes of the 1986 finale. The audience expects some shocks, so the producers choose to fake them out.  An enemy of J.R.'s named Angelica Nero has planted bombs. First, J.R.’s cousin Jack has his car blown up with his sister Jamie (Jenilee Harrison) inside it.  Moments later, J.R.’s wife Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) runs into J.R.’s office at Ewing Oil just as another bomb goes off.  “Did they really die?” the audience is thinking.

Well, that question will never be answered.

Because in the last 30 seconds, the camera cuts to a peaceful bedroom. Victoria Principal wakes up from a nightmare, hears the shower, opens the door, and there is Patrick Duffy. But notice that you never see them in frame together.

Millions were astonished to see Patrick Duffy in that shower when the show was broadcast.  One of them was Victoria Principal.  She filmed the scene without Duffy and did not know who would be it the shower.

They had shot the shower scene under total secrecy, pitching it to the press as a commercial Patrick Duffy was filming for Irish Spring soap!

It may not be accurate to say the retcon aired that night, because although the new storyline started with Duffy in the shower, the shocking narrative explanation for his return wasn’t revealed until the the new season started next fall.

CBS admitted Patrick Duffy was back on the show, but they fiercely guarded how he was back. Over the summer of 1986, the producers actually filmed three different explanations to throw off tabloids:

Bobby survived the original car crash and had been hidden away in private. 

The man in the shower was actually an evil lookalike who had plastic surgery to steal the Ewing fortune. 

His death had been a bad dream by Victoria Principal’s Pam.

The third explation was the one they aired.  The show explicitly established that the entirety of the 1985-1986 season, all 31 episodes of story and character development, was just a long, incredibly detailed dream Pam had!

Did the show’s audience accept this.  Hard to tell.  Ratings stabilized, but a year later Victoria Principal left (and didn’t come back) and they went into terminal decline.

I guess you can call this the ‘nuclear option’ – erasing a big piece of a show’s history to get back to a more favorable place.  The only other example I can think of this being tried was Roseanne in 1997, when they claimed the season after the family won the lottery was just a novel Roseanne had been writing.

Haunting recollection -Alan Walowitz
From the Movie “Poetry In Motion II”
A G&E Production
Gregory Gioffi- Director

X-Files Undercover

When you're investigating the bizarre success of Fox's paranormal, paranoid drama, truth is stranger than science fiction

May 16, 1996

The truth about The X-Files is in here. At least I hope so. If I seem confused, suspicious or even full-out paranoid, trust me — I have my reasons. From the moment I fearlessly chose to accept this assignment, strange things started happening. Unexplained things. Totally paranormal shit.

First, how can I explain away the phenomenon of finding myself entranced by a show that I — and much of the Western world — initially dismissed as goofy, spooky kids’ stuff? After all, The X-Files was a series that even the Fox network considered less promising than The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. The cast’s star power was unproven. Gillian Anderson was a complete unknown; David Duchovny was most familiar for wearing a skirt on Twin Peaks as well as for breathing heavily on the Showtime sex series Red Shoe Diaries. Chris Carter, the show’s creator, was a former Surfing magazine editor whose most notable credit may have been Rags to Riches, a short-lived musical-comedy series starring Joe Bologna. The X-Files premiered on Sept. 10, 1993, with little hype and less hope. “This show’s a goner,” proclaimed one critic.

Gradually over the last three seasons, as if part of some uncannily orchestrated scheme involving alien DNA, this unlikely show has struck a big, paranoid chord with the American public. The X-Files marks the spot where our collective fears get the best of us. It has become a massive cult phenomenon, a sober but trippy conspiracy a go-go.

The X-Files chronicles the adventures of Fox “Spooky” Mulder and Dana Scully — two FBI agents investigating paranormal cases who share a profoundly sexy yet chaste partnership as they take on sinister foes. They attempt to shed light on the shadow government that would keep the truth about aliens covered up; meanwhile, they also do battle with the occasional liver-eating serial killer, Satan-worshiping New Hampshire PTA, sideshow murderer, flukeman, vampire and — is this one redundant? — woman-beast from New Jersey. Dramatically lit and eerily scored, The X-Files has proved that even at a time when many humanoids take Pat Buchanan seriously as a presidential candidate, we’ve not entirely lost our ability to be scared.

“The X-Files touches a pulse and taps into a public perception that the government can’t be trusted and that rational science isn’t giving us the whole picture,” says Bud Hopkins, a leading UFO investigator. In terms of convincing others of the reality of aliens, Hopkins says, “On balance the show is probably doing more good than harm, but it’s not an unmitigated blessing.”

At first, staking out this show was strictly a professional obligation, but gradually my behavior became curiouser and curiouser. I found myself planning to be home Friday nights to watch The X-Files. As if in some ’90s twist of an old Kafka plot, I woke up one morning to find myself an X-Phile. Could this inexplicable adjustment of my aesthetic judgment perhaps be the result of some complex and sinister attempt at mind control? Or could I possibly have been watching too much TV?

Having been sucked into the show’s vortex, I decide to drive to the Burbank Airport Hilton, near Los Angeles, to check out the Official X-Files Convention. While the truth may be out there, some of the attendees seem way out there — imagine paranoid Trekkies who think the Vulcans might actually be out to get them.

I don’t make it to the Official X-Files Prop Gallery, and I miss a seminar on “Mulderisms/Scullyisms.” Some unseen foe conspires to make me purchase all sorts of merchandise. I buy X-Files novelizations, comic books, the official series guide, a diary, a phone card — even an Alien Autopsy (Fact or Fiction?) video. Later I will pick up Songs in the Key of X: Music From and Inspired by the X-Files and the new X-Files videos. As it says in TV ads for the videos, owning is believing.

Properly accessorized for convention duty, I laugh and cry during the screening of “The Gags Are Out There,” the official X-Files blooper reel. At one point I hear the hundreds of people in the audience — who have paid about $20 to attend — cheer wildly as they watch video of an oozing wound. At least they look like people.

Intrigued, I decide to press on in my investigation. When I finally arrive in Vancouver, British Columbia, where The X-Files is shot, things only get stranger. At the airport, I notice that the “dollars” here have pictures of some middle-aged woman on them. After I order the penne arrabiata from hotel room service that night, my food arrives immediately, as if They already knew exactly what I wanted. Later that same evening somebody eats every last one of the overpriced Famous Amos cookies in my minibar. On a music-video channel, somebody — or something — actually plays a Rush video.

At the show’s suspiciously placid-looking production office the next morning, I closely encounter Chris Carter and realize something is very wrong here. Supposedly the show’s creator, executive producer and leading writer, he’s not remotely pasty — as a writer’s supposed to be — but handsome and boyish at age 39. When I watch David Duchovny at work, again something is suspicious. Some scenes end with Duchovny saying “motherfucker,” yet strangely this word never appears on the air. The next morning I meet up with Gillian Anderson in a faux cemetery set that’s been erected in a frigid Vancouver park. As her colleagues adjust the fake gravestones, she looks around and says, “This is so weird.”

Actually, the set seems almost lighthearted. The two real stars are Duchovny’s beloved dog, Blue, and Piper, Anderson’s 1-1/2-year-old daughter with husband Clyde Klotz, whom she met when he was an art director on the show. “Piper’s cuter,” Duchovny says. “But Blue has nicer hair. Blue used to be smarter, but Piper has eclipsed her in that area. I don’t see Blue gaining.” Charmed but unconvinced that I understand exactly how high up this thing goes, I head back to Los Angeles, where I interrogate Carter.

What follows, then, is my best effort to make Carter and his two stars explain the unexplainable. But as Deep Throat — Mulder’s dear departed government source — said in his dying words, “Trust no one.” Not even me. That said, I’m ready for another assignment — maybe delving into the mysteries of Savannah.

Subject: David Duchovny

Even if he did lose to Stephen King on Celebrity Jeopardy! last year, David Duchovny remains one smart cookie. How many TV hunks do you know who went to Princeton, then grad school at Yale, and started a doctoral thesis titled Magic and Technology in Contemporary American Fiction and Poetry?

The 35-year-old Duchovny grew up middle-class and “half-Jewish, half-Scottish” on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His father — who wrote such books as David Ben-Gurion in His Own Words and The Wisdom of Spiro T. Agnew — and his mother, a schoolteacher, divorced when he was 11. David earned a scholarship to Collegiate, an elite day school where his fellow students included John F. Kennedy Jr.

Just shy of earning his doctorate, Duchovny, who’d taken to hanging around the Yale Drama School, decided to switch paths and act. Many of us first spotted him as the transvestite FBI agent Dennis/Denise Bryson on Twin Peaks. He’s also been seen in films including Beethoven, The Rapture, Chaplin and Kalifornia. His dating résumé, meanwhile, includes Maggie Wheeler (Chandler’s whiny ex-girlfriend Janice on Friends) and Perrey Reeves (Mulder’s vampire love thang in the “3” episode of The X-Files); more recently he’s been spotted with Kristin Davis (Brooke on Melrose Place).

During our interview, Duchovny appears to be more of a witty and quirky wise-ass than an intense brooder like Mulder. He’s also apparently more of a team player than the maverick Mulder — he’s even contributed story ideas to The X-Files.

Oh, yes, he’s smart. Maybe too smart. As I’m leaving his trailer dressing room after questioning him, Duchovny turns to me and in that famously charming monotone says, “It’s really nice to have someone intelligent to talk to.” A beat later he adds, “I wasn’t referring to you. I just meant that as a general rule it’s really nice to have someone intelligent to talk to.” Such displays of alienating humor make me hope someday he will use his erudition to pen a memoir. I Am Not Fox, perhaps?

Tell me about your first acting role.

In fifth grade I was one of the Three Magi at Grace Church. I stopped after that, like, “Don’t send me these The X-Files other parts. I brought frankincense to the Lord, and now you want me to be a spear carrier?”

So when did the acting bug bite?

It was being around Yale. And my friend Jason Beghe had become an actor. I was like, you can actually do that?

Deconstruct the success of “The X-Files.”

X-Files is like any popular show — you don’t deconstruct it. It works because people say it works. But I think people want answers. This show offers a kind of Oliver Stone world where there are bad guys and they’re the reason we’re all unhappy. If only we can find these bad, white, middle-aged men who killed Kennedy, stole and hid the UFOs, then killed my father and Gillian’s sister, everything would be cool. It’s a nice fiction.

An intelligent response. So how come Stephen King kicked your ass on “Jeopardy”?

It haunts me. Actually, I kicked my own ass. The good thing was that Stephen’s one of the only people who understand how annoying it is for people to say, “This is just like an X-file, David, huh?” because he always gets “This is just like one of your books, Stephen, huh?”

Did you enjoy cross-dressing on “Twin Peaks”?

It was nerve-racking. Twin Peaks was such a big show, and nobody knew who I was. I didn’t do research. I let instinct take over.

Did you get positive reaction from the crossdressing community?

No, but in my heart, when I think of Mrs. Doubtfire and To Wong Foo and the crossdressing craze, I feel I was an underappreciated pioneerette.

How was doing “Red Shoe Diaries”?

The pilot was a great experience that taught me a lot about acting.

And your ongoing stint as the narrator?

That’s a good paycheck.

Did you think “The X-Files” would make it?

I didn’t think so. A show about extraterrestrials — no matter how well-made — how many can you do? I didn’t see the show opening up to be about anything that’s unexplained, which is limitless.

When did you realize the show was connecting?

People would come up to me and preface their comments with, “I don’t watch TV, but …” We’re not the kind of show you watch just because you’re sitting in front of a TV. We’re must-see TV.

Were you aware of Fox’s reluctance to casting Gillian?

That’s overblown. You look at Gillian, and she’s a beautiful woman. And how often do you see Scully in a bathing suit? Gillian’s not 6 feet tall and doesn’t have what’s-her-face’s tits, but she’s got as nice a face as any of them. Maybe they thought she’s not all enough or not Pamela Sue Anderson [sic] enough.

What’s the secret for the heat between Mulder and Scully?

We have a kind of furtive understanding that it’s me and her against the world. That’s kind of sexy regardless of whether or not you want to fuck them all the time.

Do you play it like Fox has impure thoughts about Scully?

No, what I tend to play is that I always want to check with her. Whenever I hear something interesting, I’ll look at her. That’s sexy to people. I don’t play it like Fox wants to fuck her. But there’s some tension between us whenever there’s another woman around.

Apart from the rare vampire fling and his porno collection, Fox is pretty asexual.

He’s not asexual. Sex is just not high on his list of priorities. It’s weird because most of the time women don’t register with this guy, then there’ll be an episode where he’s led around by his dick.

How many times has Fox gotten laid?

Once. The one time with the vampire.

Were you uncomfortable with his having a porno habit?

A little queasy at first, but it made sense. Mulder never gets any, and it’s hard for him to make connections. I guess it’s also to tell people I am interested in women — at least in abusing them. Oh, he’s not gay — he loves to abuse women!

I’ve heard you’re sick of answering whether you believe in this paranormal stuff.

I’m not the character that I play. And even if I did believe, I wouldn’t want to discuss it with every stranger. We want to believe there’s something more intelligent than us, something kinder, something that will help us in the end. But I’ve never understood exactly why these shadowy figures would want to hide this information. It’s like JFK. I can’t even keep a secret with my best friend. We can’t even get a health-care plan, but they can hide extraterrestrials.

Do you feel responsible for adding to our cultural paranoia?

No. We didn’t create this — we tapped into it, and we’ve come to symbolize it. I did a course at Yale and there was a thing about advertising and the fact that the armpit didn’t even exist as a body part until deodorant companies decided it was a problem. Sometimes I feel that’s what we’ve done. We verbalized a problem people didn’t know existed. But there was always an armpit.

Do you see “The X-Files” as a spiritual show?

Yeah. We could do a lot of religious shows because at the heart of the Jesus story — with all the faith healing and miracle working — the dude was into some paranormal shit.

That’s your Lennonish “We’re bigger than Jesus” line.

When I said “bigger than Jesus,” I just meant more muscular.

Would you watch “The X-Files” if you weren’t on it?

Hard to say. It’s like saying, “Would you love me if I killed your rabbit?” I actually had this discussion with an old girlfriend. She had a rabbit with cancer, and it smelled terrible. I asked her if it’d be OK if I killed her rabbit, and she had the greatest line. She said, “No, because you wouldn’t be you.”

Despite being the right generation — X, oddly enough — Mulder and Scully are anything but slackers.

I guess our work running around chasing aliens in the woods is so much fun. Whenever I talk to an FBI agent, I ask if we’re doing it kinda realistically. They’ll say, “Not enough paperwork, man.”

So you run into G-men a lot?

No, but there was one in the audience at Jeopardy! I asked him what I can do better. He said, “Don’t ever reach for your ID with your gun hand.” That’s very smart.

What’s the FBI’s attitude toward the show now?

They like it because we’re courteous and we don’t use racial epithets and don’t bust people’s doors.

Plus, like J. Edgar Hoover, you’ve got a background in cross-dressing.

I had a line I wanted to use in the first season: “This dates back to the first X-file, back to our illustrious cross-dressing founder.” They took cross-dressing out.

Was there anything called an X-file?

Maybe a Malcolm X file.

Do you go online to get feedback?

No, I’m self-conscious enough with 10 million people looking at you every week. I don’t need to go on the Internet to get confirmation that I suck.

What are Fox’s politics?

I think Fox is an anarchist. His passion comes out of a sense of justice — more a symbolic sense of right and wrong, not so much right or left.

Will there be an “X-Files” endorsement of a presidential candidate?

I don’t know. However, there will be no X-Files endorsement of Diet Coke.

What do you think when you see all the “X-Files” merchandise?

I think, “Here’s another thing I don’t get money from.”

Unlike your colleagues, you haven’t appeared at any of the “X-Files” conventions.

I have my convention virginity intact. It’s nice to do a good show, but I want to be able to move on. Doing conventions is a way of not moving on. I meet people who like the show all the time, and I shake hands. I don’t need to get paid $15,000 to go to some convention. In 20 years I might.

What about the rumored film version of “The X-Files”?

I think they want to do it the next hiatus. At this point I’d rather play other roles, but I wouldn’t want anyone else to do this role.

I’ve heard you and Gillian don’t socialize much.

No, we never do. We spend enough time together.

What did you think of posing in bed together?

I thought the photos were great. And I thought that Chris Carter grooms his chest hair.

[As we wrap up, Duchovny realizes that we are mysteriously locked in his trailer. Heroically jumping to action, he calls the production office for help on his walkie-talkie.]

Boy, getting stuck in here is sure just like an X-file, huh?

If there was no resolution — if it ended up maybe we’re in here, maybe we’re not — that would have been like an X-file. The difference between Mulder and David would have to be that Mulder can escape from a burning boxcar buried in sand in the middle of a desert and David can’t even get out of his new Airstream trailer.

Subject: Chris Carter

As we talk in his mysteriously small office on the Fox lot in Los Angeles, Chris Carter is surrounded by a library that includes Dolphins, ETs and Angels, Conversations With Nostradamus, Cosmic Top Secret, UFO: The Continuing Enigma and perhaps the scariest book of all — The Bridges of Madison County.

Carter grew up in Bellflower, Calif. He started surfing at 12, and after he graduated from California State University at Long Beach, he worked as an editor at Surfing magazine for 13 years. With the encouragement of his future wife, screenwriter Dori Pierson, Carter started writing screenplays and soon found himself working for Disney TV. Softball pal Brandon Tartikoff brought Carter to NBC, where he developed some pilots and produced the aforementioned Joe Bologna vehicle. In 1992, Peter Roth, the president of Twentieth Century Fox Television, brought him on to develop programs for the studio.

A few short years later, Carter’s a power broker. “The X-Files phenomenon is first and foremost Chris Carter,” says Roth. “He’s extraordinary, unique, slightly twisted, a little paranoid with a huge commitment to quality.” John Matoian, the president of the Fox Entertainment Group, is similarly impressed: “Chris is a perfectionist and his own worst critic, which is great for me.” Carter has recently created a new fall drama for Fox called Millennium, which will follow the exploits of a 21st-century Seattle private investigator trying to solve seemingly unsolvable crimes.

Everywhere one looks in Carter’s office are reminders of the huge impact of The X-Files, including a Mad magazine parody (The Ecch-Files, with Fax Moldy, Agent Skulky and FBI Assistant Director Skinhead) and the box for The XXX-Files — a porno tape featuring one Tyffany Million. I plan on investigating this last title further.

When you’re onstage at one of these “X-Files” Conventions, do you ask yourself, “Who the hell are these people?”

The weird thing is, I know exactly who these people are. They’re kindred spirits.

So you don’t have the Shatneresque urge to say, “Get a life!”

No, no. How do you feel when you see people who aren’t just fanatical about the show, but fanatical in general?

You mean the paranoids? Again, we’re kindred spirits. The thing that has come through on this show that’s really alarming and wonderful for me is that almost everybody feels the government is not acting in their best interests. One survey by the Roper poll said there are 5 million people who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens. People say, “Well, then you knew you had an audience.” But that’s not my audience; that’s my fuel.

Don’t you worry about the lunatic fringe that thinks of “The X-Files” as a documentary series?

The lunatic fringe is there whether they’re watching us or not. There’s tons of UFO literature — these people have much more than The X-Files to hold on to. The X-Files is just high profile because it’s so successful.

And at least one hour a week, you keep us safe from them.

I don’t think they’re dangerous. I think these are peace-loving folk. People have asked me about the connection between The X-Files and the Oklahoma bombing. And as I’ve tried to make clear, I’m saying question the government, not overthrow it. This is not a revolutionary show. It’s fiction, first of all — we make this stuff up.

So you think most conspiracy freaks are actually nice and benevolent, like your lovable Lone Gunmen on the show.

When you go to conventions, you see these guys. They exist. They have booths with literature about mysterious organizations like the Illuminati. But is it anything more than wacky and subversive? I don’t think so. I don’t think these guys are making pipe bombs.

How do you feel about the very explainable phenomenon of “X-Files” merchandise?

I resist a lot of stuff. If this becomes a show you can find at your local Kmart or Wal-Mart too easily, it’s going to lose the thing that’s made it special. The X-Files is coming out on videotape, and it’s going to be in all those stores. It makes me a little sad. I’d like it better if you could only find them at a head shop in Van Nuys.

Talking about head shops, were any of your ideas for the show drug-inspired?

I was actually never a big druggie. But I was a surfer, so I was around it. There are certain sacraments and rituals that had to be conducted. I did do a Native American Church peyote ritual with the Navajos in New Mexico, so that spawned a couple of the early Indian episodes.

I always dismiss conspiracy theories on the basis that the government seems incapable of conspiring to do much of anything.

That’s my feeling, too, about, like, JFK. Everything comes out in the end. But the idea that there are bad people out there working in dark and shadowy ways outside the system, I think, is very believable and real.

Have you gotten any postcards from any cigarette-smoking members of the Trilateral Commission saying, “Love the show. Now shut the hell up”?

No, but I bet there are people who watch the show and say, “They’re onto something.”

In casting, it took some convincing to get the network to go along with Gillian, correct?

I sort of staked my pilot and my career at the time on Gillian. I feel vindicated every day now.

How do you explain the celibate sexual heat between them?

I’m adamant about not putting them in a romantic situation. Their passion would be directed toward each other, and all the aliens, mutants, and other ghosts and ghoulies would run amok. But when you have two smart people who are passionate about what they do and happen to be physically attractive, you get sexual heat. Fox is very respectful and protective of Scully. He’s gentle with her and playful, and people take it as flirtation.

So then what do you make of our cover shot?

That’s David and Gillian in bed, not Mulder and Scully.

What kind of reaction have you received from the FBI?

There’s been no official reaction. Mr. Freeh [FBI Director Louis Freeh] has not commented. He did unofficially allow us to come and visit the FBI. We got nice treatment from the agents who were big fans of the show. They think it has shed a good light on the FBI.

Applications up?

They tell me that’s the case, and that they have to tell people there are no X-files to investigate.

Any fear of running out of stories?

I won’t allow myself that fear. The stories are out there.

Do you think that the show plays into our victimization craze? Now we can not only blame our parents for our being fucked up, we can blame the government and aliens, too.

To a certain extent we play on fears that things are out of control, out of your power. I think that’s what is scary about life, so we capitalize on that.

Are X-Philes more likely to vote for Clinton or Dole?

I have to think they’re more conservative in a weird way. The idea of questioning authority is not just a liberal idea. People say the show is obviously Republican because it says government is a bad thing. I think Republicans say, “Trust us.” And I’m saying, “Trust no one.” I do often wonder if Chelsea Clinton is an X-Files fan.

Who are the most surprising fans?

Grandmas and grandpas. People in the intelligence community who say, “You don’t know how right you’ve got it.”

“The X-Files” is also an Internet phenomenon. How often do you go online?

I’m on like 12 times a week, but I’m a surfer. I lurk.

Do chat types want romance between Mulder and Scully? They do and they don’t. They want elements of it without them jumping into the sack. There are these “relationshipers” who kind of dominate the online chats. I’m a little dismayed because I don’t want to do a show about fuzzy warm Mulder and Scully. Never.

[At this point the subject begins looking nervous, as if an alien force had taken over his brain or, alternatively, as if he had a lot of work to do and couldn’t waste any more time with me. He says he and story editor Frank Spotnitz have to meet with visual-effects editor Mat Beck to check out some alien discharge.]

Subject: Gillian Anderson

Petite and unimposing in person, Gillian Anderson has a huge and unusually believable presence onscreen. Perhaps that explains why fans have sent mail for her to the FBI, which forwards it on to her.

Anderson, 27, grew up in so many places — including Puerto Rico, London and Grand Rapids, Mich. — that you wonder what her parents did for a living. “They were circus geeks,” she says, showing more of a sense of humor than Scully. (Actually, her father runs a film post-production company, and her mother is a computer analyst.) A former punk-rock lover, Anderson studied acting at DePaul University’s Goodman Theater School, in Chicago, before heading off to act in New York. After stage work including Absent Friends and The Philanthropist, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a film career, eventually landing the role of Scully in 1993.

In conversation, Anderson proves to be a tough nut to crack, much like The X-Files‘ elusive Cigarette-Smoking Man. At first she seems scared, as if some alien reporter demanding a universal exclusive had gotten to her first.

When David signed on, he didn’t see a long future for the show. How about you?

I had no idea what I was getting into. And I have a feeling 10 years from now, I’ll still have no idea what I got into.

You’re committed for five years, right?

Initially it was five. We added a couple more during the last negotiations.

Are you ready for that much Scully?

I don’t know if anybody is. You take it one year at a time.

In the beginning, the network didn’t seem convinced it would last one year, right?

Actually, I thought they were all anxious because they cast me.

How aware were you that some forces at Fox wanted to choose a different type of Dana Scully?

At the time I didn’t know. I recall that during auditions, the network kept asking me to wear something smaller and more formfitting, and higher heels.

Did you and David have instant chemistry?

He came over to me in the hallway at the network audition and asked if we could read through the scene together. We did, and it was amazing. Better than anything that we’ve done since.

Some British member of the press called you “the thinking man’s crumpet.” Two questions: Did you like that? And what’s a crumpet?

A crumpet is like a piece of ass, basically. A juicy morsel. It’s a wonderful compliment. That’s a raunchy statement in a way, but it’s toned down by the fact that it’s an intellectual comment.

How much of your mail is thanking you for presenting a strong female role model and how much is from people telling you that aliens are eating their brain?

About 95 percent is the first option, and the other 5 percent … the interesting thing is, the mail comes from every kind of person in every walk of life around the world.

So tell me about losing your convention virginity recently.

I went in thinking it was going to be weird and I was going to hate it. But everybody was so loving and so normal, I was overwhelmed, touched. I didn’t prepare a speech. I wanted to just react to the moment. It wasn’t exactly the right choice, because I had nothing to say. I went right to the questions and answers.

Have you and David made a lot of public appearances together?

We did at the beginning. Then the object was to individualize us a bit.

Oh, so you are two different people?

We are!

I’ve heard you’re a former punk. Have you embraced the new wave of punk bands getting rich these days?

No, something happened when I got pregnant, and I’m not able to listen to that kind of music as much. I feel like I’m going nuts when I listen to it. I used to listen to Dead Kennedys, Circle Jerks, PiL, Butthole Surfers. But today, I can’t. I love Alanis Morissette, Emmylou Harris’ latest album, and all sorts of jazz and blues. If I want to hear something heavy duty, I’ll put on the Foo Fighters or a good rocking Rolling Stones song. But that’s as intense as I’ve got.

How do you assess David’s appeal?

Obviously, the audience is only seeing his character, who’s incredibly intelligent, kind, charming and sensitive. He’s like the perfect romantic hero. And a lot of that is also David. He brings such a warmth and intelligence to the role and a smooth sexuality that I don’t think anybody in their right mind could not find him attractive.

There’s a certain powerful sexuality in your characters’ interaction even though you don’t do it.

We don’t do it?

You don’t have sex. Except on our cover. Was it good for you, by the way?

They just happened to show up in our hotel room. Was it good for me? Yes. I think what makes the relationship between Scully and Mulder sexy is the respect they have for one another. They don’t manipulate or take advantage of one another. I’m sure that’s very intriguing for the audience.

Sometimes it feels like a relationship out of a ’40s movie.

It’s that tension. We’ve done some incredibly intimate scenes that have nothing to do with sex. Beginnings of relationships are always the most exciting — that period when you’re courting and you get near each other and start breathing heavily. The hottest stuff is before you ever touch the other person. Or the first touch. So Mulder and Scully’s first touch in an episode or first touch in many episodes becomes more exciting.

Do you think Scully has thought about Mulder in a sexual way?

I think there have been times when she has been completely charmed and touched by him. I don’t know if she’s ever actually imagined him naked.

Does Dana yearn for more of a social life? I worry about her.

Not in the history of Dana has Dana scored. So it really is a science-fiction show. And I don’t think she would go about it the same way that Mulder did. I don’t think she would instantaneously jump in the sack with a vampire.

When you got pregnant early in the series, did you think you might lose the show?

When I first got pregnant, I was afraid they were going to find someone else who wasn’t pregnant to play the role.

How do you react to the charge that “The X-Files” plays into the paranoid victim mentality of our time?

I think we can only make
ourselves the victim. The show deals with many aspects of the paranormal, and
one of the aspect. And that’s very appealing to people. I’m less sure what
intrigues people about the horror side of it, because that never appealed to
me. But on a spiritual level, some of the episodes deal with the possibility of
coming back to life or some sort of spiritual awakening. And that offers some
hope, some way out of the fear and the pain of everyday life on this planet.

[continued in first comment]

TIME May 6, 1996

Here Comes the Knight

“This is the scene in which the Joker feeds poisoned cotton candy to a troop of Boy Scouts,” chuckles Frank Miller, displaying a sheet of rough layouts from his latest big project — a four-part, 200-page work called The Dark Knight Returns. It’s a revisionist pop epic about Batman's middle-aged return from a brooding retirement. The series takes place sometime early in the next century, but it revives the violent film noir tone of the '40s. Miller explains:  “I’m emphasizing his more malign qualities.” He indicates some horizontal squiggles in the next panel: "Those are the dead boy scouts.”

 Miller began shaking up the insular, inbred world of comics in 1979 when, at the tender age of 22, he moved to Manhattan from Vermont to take over the drawing chores on Marvel's long-running Daredevil series. Though he looked back to such idols as Will Eisner (creator of The Spirit), his style was immediately distinctive. He sliced the page space into thin slivers, shattered it, threw thick shadows across it at extreme, expressionistic angles. "This is not illustration, ' Miller asserts of his boldly stylized approach to the medium. "This is cartooning.

When Miller took over the writing of Daredevil a year later, he brought the storytelling into even tighter congruence with his drawing, spinning intense underbelly-of-the-city yarns full of mixed motives, petty thugs, seductive female assassins, and bands of marauding Ninja. He left Marvel in 1983, jumping over to the company's chief rival, DC Comics. to create the six-part Ronin. a futuristic exploration of his favorite Japanese martial-arts motifs.

Though Miller is again working on-four Daredevil-related projects, it's the freewheeling Batman miniseries, which debuted last month, that will probably make the biggest splash. Miller’s violent, no-batshit approach reanimates the Caped Crusader as a killer, a vigilante, a figure of controversy hunted by the authorities, a stalking beast of the urban jungle.

Now in middle age, Bruce Wayne's aiter ego won't leave him in peace: "In my gut,” says Bruce, “the creature writhes and snarls and tells me what l, need.”

'My Batman series has a really grim portrait of how the world works,” explains Miller. “One of the reasons comics aren't doing as well as they used to is that the characters are completely out of date, particularly in social and political terms. We live in frightening times, yet these superhero comics give a benevolent picture of the world.”

Miller calls Batman a “demon,” as if he's not even human anymore: “I went so far as to make the non-Batman personality of Bruce Wayne essentially the character of a man who's a werewolf. Bruce refers to himself as a 'host body’ at one point.

I have his Batman Side speak to him as if it were a separate entity, saying things like. 'l am your soul. You try to drown me out, but your voice is weak.”

If Bruce Wayne is 50 years old, Dark Knight must be a futuristic story. 'Actually it isn't. though technically it has to be set in the future because the story ignores the current Batman continuity. But for me its specifically contemporary. The president in it is a not-very-carefully-disguised parody of Reagan.

“One of the main themes is that we live in an aheroic age. Batman's being out of place is an important part of the story. Everything he does is illegal, he's up against authority. It culminates with Batman having to fight Superman, who is also in his '50s. But Batman isn't a reactionary, he's a radical. The only conservative character in the series is Superman, who takes his orders directly from the-president and helps track down welfare violators.”

— Brian Cronenworth

Modern Living: THE BODACIOUS NEW WORLD OF C.B.

TIME

May 9, 1976 9:00

This cotton-picker name of Red Vine from the Dirty Side was rolling a pregnant skate through Watergate town other day when he passed the home twenty of lady breaker First Mama. There was no city kitty so, mercysakes, Red hammered off, keyed his rig and called “Breaker one-niner for KUY-9532. “Negative copy. That foxy lady wasn ‘t hanging out, didn ‘t have her ears on. Good buddy told her anyway, “You truck ’em easy now, Apple Betty. Eighty-eights and ten, roger and out.”

To the owners of 15 million Citizens Band radio sets, and some of the millions more who have become familiar with CB language from records and TV shows, the message was loud and clear: a nontrucker from New York City, whose CB nickname is Red Vine, was driving his Volkswagen through Washington when he passed the White House, home of fellow CB-Owner Betty Ford, whose radionym is First Mama (TIME, May 3). There were no cops around, so he slowed down and tried to reach her on his set, using her FCC-issued call number, but got no response. The attractive First Lady was not monitoring her set,* so Red Vine reminded her to drive safely, wished her love and kisses and signed off.

The cryptic, demotic jargon—and the Arkahoma accent in which it is invariably delivered no matter where in the U.S.—may seem outlandish to many. If so, they had better hang easy and adjust to it. From 8 to 10 million more CB sets will be sold in 1976, which with extra equipment could amount to some $2.5 billion worth—nearly as much as total sales of TV sets. One of the biggest manufacturers, Hy-Gain Electronics Corp. (maker of Betty Ford’s rig), reported that 1976 first-quarter sales quintupled those for the same period in 1975. A $2.95 paperback CB dictionary has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. “CB Land,” as enthusiasts call it, is served by a babel of newspapers, magazines, thousands of clubs and a lobby in Washington. The cult’s most celebrated recent convert after Betty Ford is Snoopy, who has found solace with CB in the Peanuts strip.

Three of the biggest U.S. electronics manufacturers decided this year to enter the lucrative market for what the song The White Knight described as “that Japanese toy, that trucker’s joy.” Most 1976 American cars can be bought with the sets installed; nearly half of all trucks in the U.S. are CB-equipped. The cost is relatively low—from about $90 to $350 for a serviceable set and antenna—and CB is simple to install in a truck, car or boat, drawing its power from the vehicle’s battery. The same units can be plugged in at home with inexpensive DC inverters to cut house voltage down to the 12 volts needed to go on the air. Portable units cost even less. The FCC estimates that in time there will be 60 million licensed CB sets in operation. As one industry executive says, “The more people are on the air, the more people want to join them on the air.”

Without doubt, simple, low cost, ubiquitous radio conversation represents the biggest explosion of communications since the invention of the telephone. Its cultural impact may not be as pervasive as television’s, but in an odd way, it is a creative one. TV is, after all, a nonparticipant pastime. CB radio, by contrast, is a two-way medium that enables everyman to write his own script. It has not only nourished a proliferating vocabulary that threatens to outdate any dictionary of American slang within months; as well, it catalyzes an egalitarian, anti-authoritarian philosophy that has never been expressed in this fashion before. In the TV series Movin’ On, hit records like C.W. McCall’s Convoy (which sold 5 million copies and is to be made into a film) and the movie White Line Fever —all of them CB oriented—the good guys v. the cops is a basic theme.

Such considerations were far from the collective mind of the FCC in 1945, when it set aside a sliver of the broadcast spectrum for the noncommercial use of ordinary citizens such as hunters, boaters, construction teams and farmers ranging far from homes and telephones. The first CB license was not granted until 1947. In the next quar ter-century, only 850,000 CB licenses were issued. Then came the 1973 oil embargo, speed limits were dropped to 55 m.p.h. (“double nickel” in CB argot) and truck drivers installed the units to warn each other of lurking cops (“smokey bears”) and radar cars (“Kojak with a Kodak”). Television news picked up the story, and the rest is hysteria.

Chaotic Delay. In January 1973, there were 26,682 CB license applications; in January 1975, 79,375; in January 1976, 544,742. At Gettysburg, Pa., where the FCC processes the applications, conditions have been hardly less chaotic than they were in July 1863. Unopened envelopes overflowed into the ladies’ lounge; the FCC fell two months behind. Last month the agency moved to cut the delay by allowing anyone who buys a set to obtain an immediate temporary permit on mailing in $4 and an application form.

While CB “radiddio” is widely used by truckers and ordinary drivers to warn of speed traps ahead, the network is highly esteemed by highway patrols and police for its ever-increasing role in reporting accidents, crimes, stolen cars, fires, traffic tie-ups, even reckless drivers (“Harvey Wallbangers”). Several volunteer organizations of CBers have sprung up to monitor the air waves and provide round-the-clock emergency services. The biggest, called REACT (for Radio Emergency Associated Citizens Teams), claims more than 70,000 members in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, seven Canadian provinces and West Germany. Since its formation in 1962, REACT claims to have handled 35 million emergency calls, including 12 million highway accidents.

The social and economic background of CBers is changing rapidly. Once populated mostly by truckers and blue-collar hobbyists, CB land is attracting growing numbers of businessmen and middle-class families who use the sets for safety and information. CB is also a “bodacious” (in CB lingo, super, fantastic) way of relieving freeway tedium—so much so that truckers’ use of amphetamines has declined drastically in recent years. Ordinary drivers tend to be as evangelistic about the medium as oldtime gear jammers. “When I’m on the road these days,” says New York Businessman Lawrence LeKashman, “I’d sooner leave the spare tire behind than my CB.” Enthusiasts predict that CBs will some day be required equipment on all cars.

The macho world of CB is part soap and part horse opera. Says Amitai Etzioni, the eminent Columbia University sociologist: “A CB allows you to present a false self: to be beautiful, masculine, tall, rich, without being any of those things. Like the traveling salesman who drops into a singles bar and says he’s the president of his company, a person can project on the air waves anything he wants to be.” The person who installs a CB set and adopts a “handle” (nickname) and starts “modulating” on the air, is creating a character and reaching out to others while still maintaining anonymity. Adds Etzioni: “People in our kind of society, torn from our roots, want to relate without fully investing ourselves in a relationship, as we would if we joined a church group or worked on a campaign. With a CB, you can have personal contact with the turn of a dial. It is very controllable and protects you from getting too involved.”

CB is a godsend for many shut-ins and others who are isolated from the community. For some enthusiasts, like Mrs. Patricia Schey (“Kissy Face”) who monitors her “home base” 16 hours a day in Madison, Wis., it is more of a passion. Almost everyone, however, responds to what Manhattan Psychoanalyst Joel Kovel calls “CB’s element of voyeurism.” That aspect of the CB phenomenon has not been lost on Mitchell Brothers, the porno-film producers. They recently released an opus with the self-explanatory title C.B. Mamas.

Potty Mouths. The real CB land has more sinister denizens. Police departments across the country report that mobile radios are being used increasingly in holdups and burglaries. CB sets themselves have become the favorite target of street thieves; 500 CB thefts were reported in Los Angeles during a three-month period. Game poachers use CB to outwit conservation officers. Though the California department of fish and game frequently changes its code, admits one officer, “poachers seem to know what we’re doing before we do.” Prostitutes (“pavement princesses”) who plug their charms on CB have become so common that there is even a song about them, Rosie on the Ridge.

Potentially even more annoying is the widespread abuse of the channels —especially by so-called potty mouths using obscenities. The language on the Los Angeles air waves, says a sheriffs department engineer, Henry Richter, “is filthy. It’s a disgrace; it’s like a gutter.” “Uncle Charley” or “Candy Man,” as CBers call the FCC, also has a major problem with broadcasters who illegally use “hamburger helpers,” or linear amplifiers, to boost the output of standard 4-watt transmitters beyond their normal range of five to ten miles. Their beefed-up blat can splatter normal television and radio reception. Yet another migraine for the feds is CBers’ use of what they call “SBC,” for “sick bird channel” —”ill eagle” (illegal) use of channels reserved for vital services.

CB’s existing 23 channels are already badly overcrowded in metropolitan areas. Even Channel 9, which is supposed to be reserved for emergencies, is often invaded by mindless chitchatters (“ratchet-jaws”). Says James McKinney, FCC’s deputy chief of field operations: “I have a feeling that by 1979, all I’m going to hear is one loud buzz.” The FCC is working on a short-term solution: to expand the band to as many as 115 channels. But even that would be little more than, so to speak, a Band-Aid. Eventually, authorities agree, they will have to find a place on the radio spectrum for a second-generation band with 200 or more channels.

These problems are to be expected in so radical a coupling of social change and technological innovation. Questions about CB’s influence have not even been formulated. With a “good buddy” system of 100 million or more Americans speaking compulsively in inelegant private tongues, what will happen to the language of Jefferson and Henry James? Will future presidential candidates have to campaign by mike from the expressways—and learn to call them “double slabs”? Or will the whole CB cult simply go the way of goldfish swallowing and Hula-Hoops?

Talk Shows. That fate seems unlikely. CB provides too many valuable uses and affordable comforts to fade out. From Nastyville to Tricky Dick’s —Nashville to San Clemente in pre-CB parlance—the new radiddio offers a kind of openline talk show that entertains and instructs while conveying at best a genuine feeling of neighborliness never before associated with highway driving. “When you’re riding around and listening to these people,” says a Manhattan disc jockey, “what you hear is America at its best.” Well, not always. But there is a bodacious new world out there, and its people are talking to one another again and even exchanging eighty-eights.

* Or perhaps was listening in on one of the other 22 frequencies that CBers can tune to simply by switching a TV-like channel selector.