Columnist Scott Dickensheets: ‘X’ marks its spot in Vegas

Scott Dickensheets

Sunday, March 21, 1999 | 9:36 a.m.

This week, two of the singular mythologies of our time will link arms when "The X-Files" shoots part of an episode in fabulous Las Vegas. The ultimate show about concealed truths comes to the ultimate city of artificial reality.

Before we get to that, there's this: Put those autograph-ready "X-Files" collectibles back in their boxes. I'm told Agents Mulder and Scully (David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson) aren't in this script, probably won't be in town, although maybe that's just what they want me to think. "It's an all-Lone Gunmen episode," says Dean Haglund, the actor who plays Langly, one of the Lone Gunmen.

For those unschooled in "X-Files" lore, the Gunmen are the three stooges of our secret history, a rather comic, all-knowing nerd tank of conspiracy wonks who consult with Our Heroes about covert ops, Martian techno-whiz, glitches in the official story and deep background on the shadowed men who pull conspiratorial strings. Nice work if you can get it.

The plot: Langly (looks like Garth from "Wayne's World") and his fellow Gunmen, Byers and Frohike (Byers: clean-cut, wears a suit; Frohike: trollish, longs to ensnare Scully in a conspiracy of geek love) are in Las Vegas for the International Defense Contractors' Convention. They're attempting to detect black ops agents among the conventioneers during a card game or something.

"We're there on a surveillance mission," Haglund says. "Because the Lone Gunmen have to know everything, and that requires a lot of research." To say nothing of comp drinks from hot cocktail waitresses.

I can't say where the filming is taking place, other than to deny in the strongest possible terms that it's at the Monte Carlo. Nor am I at liberty to reveal when, except to note that certain recognizable figures will be seen moving through the airport today and will likely leave Tuesdayish.

There's a definite confluence of vibes here. "The persona of Las Vegas, of Area 51 and the hauntingness of the desert enhances the whole story," Michael Watkins, "X-Files" co-executive producer, says. "It can really be a lonely kind of place once you get out of the oasis of Las Vegas. If you blindfolded someone in downtown Las Vegas and drove an hour in any direction and untied the blindfold, they'd think they've been beamed to another planet."

True, but not quite what I meant.

"I think there is a lot of mysticism about Las Vegas that works well with our show," Watkins says.

There you go! Both the show and the city are about manipulated reality, about the obsessive quest for a key that might unlock coded secrets, whether a veil of government lies or the mysteries of blackjack. Las Vegas has an undeniable dark gravity underlying its perky contemporary image as a big theme park. Part of its allure is the sense that there are strange goings-on behind the neon; that in penthouse suites we'll never have access to, powerful men are using our money to pursue fantastical agendas we can't imagine. Also, both have a lot of cigarette smoke.

"I couldn't agree more," Haglund says when I preview a little of that theory for him -- no more than he needed to know, of course; I didn't want to have to kill him. Haglund sees such dovetailing in this very episode. "It involves black ops, mysterious deaths, mind-control, brainwashing -- which would be a good thing for Las Vegas. They can brainwash you into believing you didn't lose any money."

The Lone Gunmen, then, are white ops amateurs, wise nerds hacking into the reality behind the reality behind the reality, analogous, I think, to those dreamers and schemers who pit their secret gambling systems against the house in hopes of cracking the forbidden vault. Or maybe that's just what they want us to think, or even what they want us to think they want us to think.

"We've been good guys for six years," Haglund says, "but you never know. It could turn out the Lone Gunmen are behind it all. That would be a kick, if we were secretly controlling everything. That's the 'Trust no one' part."