page_title: The Rain King
section_title: Filming
hierarchical_section_title: The Rain King / Production / Filming
caption_attribution_description: English: Kansas windmills in Flint Hills.
context_page_description: "The Rain King" is the eighth episode of the sixth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It premiered on the Fox network on January 10, 1999. "The Rain King" was written by Jeffrey Bell and directed by Kim Manners. The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. "The Rain King" earned a Nielsen household rating of 12.5, being watched by 21.2 million people in its initial broadcast. Critical reception to the episode was mostly mixed, with results ranging from negative to positive.
  The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal, while the skeptical Scully has been assigned to debunk his work. In the episode, Mulder and Scully are asked to investigate the strange weather phenomena occurring in a small town. They find a man, Daryl Mootz, who claims to produce the rain.
  "The Rain King" was written by Jeffrey Bell, his first script for the show. The episode was originally purchased as a freelance script, but Bell was later hired on as a full-time writer.
context_section_description: The scene in which Daryl Mootz crashes his car into a pole after being pummeled by heart-shaped hail was filmed on a "lonely road" near Grapevine, California. The road was so seldom used that the California Department of Transportation had no problem shutting down the entire road so that the crew could film the scene. Director Kim Manners was happy with the way the filming turned out, although he did note that filming the actual crash was difficult, because the car kept crashing into the pole at an undesired angle.
  Ilt Jones, the series' location manager, decided to use Piru, California as a stand-in for Kroner, Kansas—a fictitious city named after Bell's college roommate. Exterior shots for "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" would later be filmed in the same town. The climactic scenes in Kroner's high school were filmed at an abandoned high school in Culver City, California. Corey Kaplan and her art team were tasked with turning the derelict gym into a believable reunion set.
caption: The episode was set in the fictional town of Kroner, Kansas (Kansas prairie pictured).
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