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Why Millennium ?: Chris Carter wanted to write about a character "behaving selflessly and heroically to solve violent crimes. Frank Black is the idealised hero.

Initially Lance had reservations about doing the show but Chris Carter's intention "was to do something that was more poetic, more language driven. Millennium is a reaction against the kind of smut sentimentality of most stuff on TV that trivialises the depth of people, of relationships. When a bullet hits a human being," Lance notes, "it turns them into pink mud that no longer has a defence or a life. We're dealing with the underbelly of the world in the sense that if you do this, you can't live in denial about it. That's very exciting to me." Copyright Fangoria #191

Bletcher: "This Millennium Group ... They really believe all that stuff? Nostradamus and Revelations? The destruction of the world?

Frank Black: "They believe we can't just sit back and hope for a happy ending." 'The Pilot'

"And there will be such intense darkness that one can feel it" Exodus 10:21

How did it happen? "I happened to be in Vancouver working on a film and Chris Carter put a note under the door of my hotel room. It said 'I'm Chris Carter and I'm doing the X-Files and I'm interested in you doing a guest role in one of the X-Files'. I never even answered it. I had no interest in TV whatsoever, none."

"Then a year went by and Chris had sent the script (of the Millennium pilot) to my agent and my agent said 'I want you to read this script, but I'm not going to tell you a thing about it until after you've read it. So I read it , and it was really good, but I thought it was a motion picture... I have no respect for TV . But my agent convinced me to meet with Chris. He was extremely persuasive that we should pursue doing the show in a certain way, to try for a unique quality."

"I am always one to take a challenge, even if I do go kicking and screaming. So I took the role. I think, bye the way, that he must've been thinking about me after offering the XFiles role and ended up writing Frank Black for me because he had me in mind." Copyright Xpose issue 22

"I've seen the face of evil, Frank. I've looked into its eyes. Seen it staring back at me. But, the face has always been a human's face. I've always believed that evil is born in a cold heart and a weak mind." Mike Atkins, The Millennium Group 'Gehenna'

"We live in a world where too many people won't go far enough, won't do what they know is right, what they believe." Frank Black

About Frank Black: "Frank isn't in a bad place inside, Frank stands in a place that it would be wonderful if we all had the guts to live in more - observing without judgement. To stand in the midst of a crime scene or to be presented with a puzzle that's like a chess game where you have to unravel something, not to be judgemental and be able to pull items and gather all the information - that's a very meditative place, especially if you've accepted your position in the whole thing, which Frank has."

"I don't ever see him as a hero, you can't play Frank as the hero - you'd be a fool to try in the situations he's placed in. Frank has the courage to stand in a storm and not be judgmental, and is willing to see all the pieces, wherever they fall. That's different than me, so it's kind of neat to play."

Playing Frank Black was a learning experience for Lance. Just as Black himself grew and developed over three seasons, so did Lance. "My reasons for doing the show are feeding me so that if ever this show is over - and I don't have any idea when that will be - and I go back to films, I'm going to be a fine actor. I now know how to use the film rehearsal time incredibly well, because this has been such a great lesson. I've never stopped learning, so it's been a really good experience." Interview by Matt Brady in ???

"Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic sign gives forth such hints; yet with me, as with the colt, somewhere those things must exist. Though in many of its aspects this invisible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright." Herman Melville 'Moby Dick' 'The Judge'

"I am responsible for everything ... except my very responsibility." Jean-Paul Satre '522666'

"The cruelest lies are often told in silence." RL Stevenson

About Frank's future: "I can see him having slipped into a level of chi, or spiritual energy, that grants him a certain amount of serenity and inner peace. Partly I feel this comes from knowing that you're closer to the back door of life than you are to the front door - there's a certain serenity that starts to move in on you, and there's a certain reality to it as well. You realise that you don't need to be thinking about building a giant building any more. You'd be quite content to enjoy the lobby, and that's where Frank has been growing toward over the three seasons - there's a phenomenon of serenity coming over him, and with that comes authenticity and wisdom."

"Goodbye to chimneys and funnels,
old wives that spin in the smoke,
He was blind to the eyes of candles
In the praying windows of waves ..

And steeples pierce the could on her shoulder
And the streets that the fisherman combed
When his long-legged flesh was a wind on fire
And his loin was a hunting flame.

Dylan Thomas 'The Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait' 'Loin Like a Hunting Flame'

About the Show: Lance was disappointed with the turn the show took in Series 2. "It just about destroyed the show. It was the Morgan and Wong idea about a cultish kind of Millennium group, which to me was a mistake. The Academy Group (the ex FBI group that Chris Carter based the series on) are very bright ex-FBI people ... They do terribly difficult cases all around the country and are real people who do credible jobs. I wanted the show to go more in that direction." Copyright Fangoria #191

"Those tools you showed me were clean. They weren't part of his torture kit, Bletch. He was using them to hide the body." Frank Black 'Sacrament'

About getting creeped out: "The story lines and story elements on the show have affected me somewhat from time to time, but I align myself with the people who really get involved with this - the real police, and the real FBI. They have to be constantly looking at the refuse of our lives, the murders and robberies, and all the brutality that goes on. The reality of it in the real world is what gets to me, not the reality of what we're doing in the show. It's different."

About lengths: Talking about the lengths he goes to in order to get into character, Lance says "There's something more serendipitous going on with Frank Black. When I was gonna do the pilot, my wife Jane and I went to a jeweller and found a watch that was perfect for the role. It was an Omega, a 'Sportsmaster Professional' -the one they went into space with. And it was like $5,000. And I said, 'Are we crazy? What if the pilot doesn't go? We're spending our last $5,000 on this watch?' So we didn't do it. Instead, I bought a lesser watch with a big face on it, [which] was still in the ballpark of Frank Black. But in the second season - without ever saying anything to them - Omega came to me and offered this watch to use, because [the other watch] was featured a lot in the first season. And guess which watch it was? The same watch. And that kind of stuff has been going on all the way through."

"A man's past is not simply a dead history ... It is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame." George Elliot

"O Lord, if there is a Lord, save my soul, if I have a soul." Ernest Renan

"You remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones." Plato

"I remember the very things I do not wish to; I cannot forget the things I wish to forget." Cicero

"Two souls alas are housed within my breast." Faust

"This generation is a wicked generation; it seeks for a sign, and yet no sign shall be given to it..." Luke 11:29

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