“Hollywood A.D.” is episode nineteen of season seven of The X-Files.
In a graveyard, Mulder, who is not Mulder but Gary Shandling, is being told to give it up by a cigarette smoking priest. Credited as ‘Cigarette Smoking Pontiff.’ Said pontiff’s sniper zombies are everywhere. Give him the Lazarus Bowl and he can have Scully (Téa Leoni, David Duchovny‘s wife at the time). Mulder threatens to smash the bowl but the pontiff says it’s Mulder’s holy frail. It raised Lazarus from the dead and 2,000 years later is still capable of this. Proof positive of the paranormal. He will no sooner destroy it than le the redhead die. One of the zombies offers to switch sides, ‘Mulder’ throws the bowl into the air and he and ‘Scully’ end up tumbling inside a coffin.
At the Daryl Zanuck Theater, 20th Century Fox, Hollywood, this film is playing out. The actors are in the audience, as they kiss onscreen. As are Scully and Mulder. Scully looks horrified. Mulder’s feelings go beyond that. Skinner is there too; he’s finding it funny.
18 months earlier and Skinner is briefing Mulder and Scully about a small pipe bomb being detonated in the crypt of Christ’s Church in DC. No casualties, nothing taken and no-one is taking credit. There’s another person in Skinner’s office and he’s taking Dictaphone notes on Mulder and Scully’s’ appearances.
Scully asks if this is Cardinal O’Fallon’s church. It is. Mulder doesn’t know who he is. One of the most powerful people in the Church today and possibly the first American pope. The man behind them is bugging Mulder, especially as said individual’s phone is ringing. Skinner introduces him as Wayne Federman, a buddy of Skinner’s from college. Now a screenwriter working on an FBI based movie. He asked for access. Federman just wants a taste of how they operate. Skinner says Federman will accompany Mulder. Treat him well. Skinner needs Scully’s services. Mulder asks Skinner if he’s annoyed him more than normal.
At the church, Cardinal O’Fallon says there’s nothing in the crypt worth targeting. Mulder thinks this is less a murder attempt than terrorism. A phone starts ringing but it isn’t Federman’s this time. Nor Mulder’s, nor O’Fallon’s. It’s coming from the rubble where the pipe bomb went off. There’s a corpse under it that Mulder recognises as Micah Hoffman.
Mulder tells Scully that Hoffman was one of Mulder’s holy trinity of 60s counterculture. Federman says Hoffman took a low profile in the seventies. They enter Hoffman’s place, where it looks like he was making pipe bombs. And, according to Scully, has the equipment needed for forgery. As well as a Greek text that looks like the lost gospel of Mary Magdalen, that describes Christ’s life on earth after the Resurrection. Heretical, long rumoured to exists, and a fake.
They head back to the crypt again. Federman likes it. No warrants, no permission, no research. They’re like studio executives with guns. There are more copies of the gospel there which Mulder and Federman take a look at when Federman’s phone rings and makes them both jump. Federman walks off and doesn’t see a skull move out of his way before he can stand on it. He does see it when various bones start trying to assemble a bowl.
Outside, Scully tells Federman his eyes were playing tricks on him. Federman says no, it wasn’t a hallucination. It was mechanical or CGI. Mulder points out this is real life. Federman has got all the flavour he needs and he’s leaving. No, he doesn’t want to get to the bottom of this. They’re both crazy; Mulder for believing what he does and Scully for not believing it.
Afterwards, Scully hesitates to mention this, but the story reminds her of the Lazarus Bowl. A wacky nun, they called her Sister Spooky, told them stories at school. One being that, when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, an old woman was spinning a clay bowl nearby. Christ’s words were recorded in the clay like music recorded into vinyl. The words still have the power to raise the dead.
Mulder is going to head back to see the cardinal and get Chuck to come over to examine the bowl. Chuck says he’s getting sound from the bowl, and it’s incredible. Who made it? A forger. Or someone in the vicinity of Jesus. Yes, Scully is serious. She also starts seeing things.
All in all, possibly one of the less serious episodes. Mulder and Scully – and Skinner – do get to go to Hollywood though.