'X-Files' actor is a (super)natural
'X-Files' actor is a (super)natural
By Eirik Knutzen
Copley News Service
If they had tried to, the producers of "The X-Files" couldn't have done a
better job of typecasting than when they hired David Duchovny to portray
FBI Special Agent Fox "Spooky" Mulder--a man possessed when it comes to
tracking ancient genetic mutants and 200,000-year-old parasites from
another galaxy.
The highly educated Ivy Leaguer, who holds degrees in English literature
from Princeton and Yale (where he is also a dissertation away from a PhD),
has an open mind when it comes to paranormal phenomena. He's
intellectually receptive to certain "wierd stuff," due to a few personal
experiences for which he is still seeking explanations.
"I certainly have experienced the paranormal--I was in love once," says
Duchovny, 34, a man of dry humor.
"Actually, I saw something in the sky during the spring of 1982," he says.
"A student at Princeton at the time, I was running along the beach in
Ocean City, N.J., on a bright and sunny morning when I looked up and saw
what I thought was a ship or plane, about 100 yards directly above me. It
made no noise; I didn't hear a thing.
"Thinking it was an odd-looking plane, I took a couple of steps before
looking up again. It was gone. Looking back, it seemed triangular in
shape, somewhat similar to today's stealth bomber."
Duchovny, "in a way," also believes in ghosts.
"My (Scottish) grandmother said that when she was a little girl, she saw
her grandfather--who had drowned a couple of years before--come into the
house and go up to the crib where her younger brother was sleeping. The
'ghost' kind of looked in, nodded and walked out. I believed it happened
to my grandmother, and I have definitely felt the presence of loved ones,
though I have never seen anyone."
Duchovny approaches his character and life in general with a handfull of
salt.
"Special Agent Mulder gave up a thriving career in the FBI's violent-crime
section and disgraced himself in the eyes of peers when he went after the
paranormal cases no one admits to," he says. "And, because nobody trusts
or believes in him, he has become hard and sarcastic. I guess that
happens to people who get buried in office basements while higher-ups try
to take their budgets away. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) is a medical
doctor charged with observing this nut case and debunk some of his
outrageous theories."
During a recent visit to the FBI's headquarters in Washington, Duchovny
and his co-star had a close look at the organization's high-tech approach
to crime, but received no hint that anything resembling "The X-Files"
actually exists.
"I have no proof of it, but I assume that (the FBI) possesses classified
documents dealing with such things as alien life forms," he says with a
shrug. "I don't know if we've been contacted or the aliens have landed,
but it would seem rather odd to me if this planet is the only one in the
universe with life on it."
Long before chasing UFO and telepathic pyromaniacs on locations in and
around Vancouver, British Columbia, Duchovny was a jock-scholar in various
parts of New York City. His mother, Margaret, is a Scottish-born
grade-school teacher, his father, Amram (Ron) Ducovny, of Russian-Jewish
extraction, went from public relations to being "a writer of sorts" and
saw his play, "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald," performed on Broadway in
1967.
When his parents divorced, David was raised along with two siblings,
Daniel and Laurie, by his mother.
"My father took the 'h' out of our last name because he was tired of
having it mispronounced," Duchovny says matter-of-factly. "But when my
parents divorced, my mother put the 'h' back in, as a show of solidarity
with how a family member spelled the name. I spell it with the 'h'; my
brother doesn't use the 'h.' My sister goes back and forth, depending on
her mood.
"Regardless, I think it's a beautiful name that I'm told means 'Spiritual'
in Russian. I don't care how people spell the name as long as they get
the meaning."
Smart and athletic, Duchovny earned an academic scholarship to an elite
Manhattan prep school and parlayed his physical skills at Princeton into
one year as a basketball guard and two seasons in center field on the
baseball team. While Duchovny was at Yale as a teaching assistant
outlining his Ph.D. dissertation in 1985, a friend suggested trying a few
acting classes.
"It made sense, because I was 26 years old and didn't feel like spending
the rest of my life teaching," he says. "I liked teaching, but it seemed
like being coddled in an unreal world."
Duchovny found a teacher affiliated with the New York Actors Studio and
discovered he was able "to have an emotional life really for the first
time. It was great. I could scream, yell and cry on stage without
consequences. I could have a full life; nobody would arrest or leave me
for (behaving) like that."
Two years later, while still teaching at Yale, he made $9,000 for
appearing in a TV commercial for Lowenbrau beer. It was twice as much
money as he made as a teaching assistant.
When cast in the feature "New Year's Day" in 1987 (but released in 1989),
Duchovny left Yale in a flash, only to spend the next 1-1/2 years in
Hollywood virtually unemployed and "leeching off people pretty much."
He lived with his girlfriend, actress Perrey Reeves, who paid the rent.
He kicked in with earnings for occasional commericals, writing a couple of
magazine articles and making himself useful with a catering company.
Duchovny eventually picked up speed with feature film parts in "Chaplin,"
"Beethoven," "The Rapture," "Julia Has Two Lovers" and last year's quirky
"Kalifornia."
The handsome actor has a serious bent for the offbeat, as he continues to
act as the enigmatic host of Zalman King's "Red Shoe Diaries," the
half-hour weekly series (tomorrow night at 10) on the Showtime channel
that "focuses on the secret desires of women."
But his strangest character to date is undoubtedly Dennis/Denise Bryson,
the "Twin Peaks" (1990-91) transvestite FBI agent.
"I was chosen for 'The X-Files' because of previous experience playing an
FBI agent--although it's the first time I'm doing it in a suit," he says.
"Fortunately, I don't have to use J. Edgar Hoover as a role model this
time around."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Coffee, Tea, and David Duchovny
An afternoon chat with the star of "The X-Files"
by Rhonda Krafchin (The Prydonian Renegade, June 94)
(Note: The Prydonian Renegade is a publication of the Princeton Dr. Who
Fan Club)
The first thing David Duchovny, star of the cult series "The X-Files" on
Fox, would like to know, as we sit in a rain-splashed cafe, is what
Creator/Exec. Producer Chris Carter has said about him. This is not
the demand of an egomaniacal actor, but rather the modest curiosity of
one who can't quite seem to grasp his place in the world of television.
"I try to stay Socratic about the whole thing. It's like Socrates said,
`I know nothing.'"
Duchovny is in a calm state, having just finished a killer Power
Yoga class, reserved for those in great physical shape. In baggy sweats
and a green t-shirt, a flannel shirt hanging loosely on his lean frame,
Duchovny is the antithesis of the of the conservatively-dressed FBI Agent
Fox Mulder, his character on "The X-Files." His face is whiskered, and
his hair slightly askew from the workout. He is whimsical and
good-natured, and seems to find it very funny that Carter described him
as having a "facile mind." He wonders, kiddingly, if Carter had
said something else far less complimentary. I assure him that was not
the case.
But Duchovny does enjoy working with Carter. "He's got a very
facile mind," Duchovny quips, then adds with all seriousness. "Chris is
very collaborative. He respects what I have to say. We have different
ideas about Mulder from time to time... I'm always trying to make him a
little funnier, a little lighter. He's always afraid that that's going
to take away from the mystery and suspense, and the scare. That's a
constant battle we have." But Duchovny has no illusions about who always
wins. "He's the boss," Duchovny said. "But then again," he adds with
a mischevious grin. "He's not always there. When he's away, I do what I
want. Then he comes back and scolds me."
In fact, the self-effacing humor and easygoing, devil-may-care
attitude of Duchovny often do come out in Mulder. Adding a little color
to the single-minded character is done with intent, and, according to
Duchovny's fan mail, often appreciated. "I've argued some against every
emotional moment being linked back to Mulder's sister. I don't like
that. I think it was important to set that up as my character's
foundational interest in the supernatural... My sister disappeared, was
abducted, I think, by aliens. But we have to get beyond that. It's not
realistic in a person's life to think that everything goes back to one
event... So hopefully we'll get away from just relating everything back
to my syster and get more into, maybe a relationship with a woman.
The current "relationship" with character Dana Scully will be on
a short hiatus next season as actress Gillian Anderson is pregnant.
"I'll have more work to do, which I can't even imagine." Duchovny, all
jokin aside, does seem dog-tired. One too many questions about the
future of the X-Files and he answered dismissively, "I'm trying to take
a break right now. I'm not even thinking about it."
But it's easy to find escape this late afternoon in a
neighborhood coffee shop. The cleansing rain has given way to blue,
cloud-speckled skies. "I've lived in LA for almost five years now," he
said as the setting sun streaks across our table. "My brother's here, my
girlfriend, I miss LA when I go away, though it was a very good year to
be away!" Shooting in Vancouver, B.C., kept Duchovny a safe distance
from wildfires, floods, and the devastating earthquake. "I was pretty
lucky," he admits, although he almost made it for the big Monday morning
shaker on January 17. "I was visiting my girlfriend... I was here for
the weekend. I was having a good time and called our producer, Bob
Goodwin, and asked `Is there any way I could take a morning flight? Can
you push the call back?' He tried, and couldn't do it. We're very
lucky, because if I'd stayed, I wouldn't have been able to fly out for
two or three days and they would have had to shut down production.
Almost the Hand of God came down on the X-Files," he said with a laugh.
With Vancouver now a second home, and the pressures of playing a
series leading man, Duchovny hasn't quite gotten a handle on the
subtleties of change in his life. "The amount of work has been so
intense. I haven't really gotten to see exactly how my life has changed,
because I haven't really had a life. I've just been working." Though he
claims to rarely being recognised on the street, we're interrupted
halfway through the interview by a man wanting to know if "The X-Files"
will be back next season. There is no doubt about that. Shooting for
the second season begins in July, leaving a short time for recuperation.
With the first season's 24 episodes completed, "The X-Files" has
had its share of good and bad stories. Duchovny lists the season finale
as his favorite, along with "Ice" and "Fallen Angel." He also dispelled
any theories for the future of Deep Throat, who was shot in the final
episode. "He's dead," Duchovny says with finality. There are also
those episodes he recalls with little affection, namely "Ghost in the
Machine" and "Lazarus." He admitted "There was one recently that I
detested. The one with the little girl." But Duchovny quickly added,
"If we can turn out 18 good ones, I think we're doing much better than
anyone hoped for. It's not amazing that TV's as bad as it is, it's
amazing that some of it is as good as it is... I know what it takes to do
a good job. It's very difficult."
The unusual dramatic parameters of "The X-Files" occasionally make
it difficult to develop its main characters. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully
are often left as mere observers of that week's otherworldly phenomenon.
"If you watch the show, you know that some are different than others,"
Duchovny explained. "There's no way that two people could have the amount
of experiences that we do if we were emotionally and personally involved
in every case. So for every two that we are involved in personally, you
have to have two where we're just detectives. We're just agents trying to
solve a case who don't have anything at stake, personally."
Much of the 33-year-old actor's work has been in feature films,
including "The Rapture," "Kalifornia," and Showtime's "The Red Shoe
Diaries," most recently. "TV is so different from movies," he said.
"If you can imagine, we shoot about eight pages of script a day, and in a
movie we'd probably shoot two to three pages in a day. We're doing 400
percent more work. It's frustrating that you can't give it the kind of
time that you might want to Then again, it teaches you good habits and
bad habits. The bad... that you have to do stuff on the spur of the
moment. The good habit is that you don't agonize over things. You just
realize you've got to do it today and tomorrow it's toilet paper. Move
on. Instincts are all you have. You don't have time to prepare.
The third acting venue that Duchovny has worked in-- live
theatre-- has dynamics all its own. "There's something different about
working with an audience," he said, "because you're working *with* an
audience. You're making an experience together in the present moment,
rather than making something for future use or recorded use. There's a
different feeling and a different pleasure that you get out of it."
One might think that from an actor's point of view, the theatre
would be the more nervewracking experience, but Duchovny disagrees. "As
an actor you're always dealing with nervousness or anxiety and tension.
When you're working on film or in television, you're just doing little
bits and pieces... you have to deal with your nervousness and tension in
each scene or shot. In a play, you come out, say your first few lines,
and then you relax. You have an hour and 45 minutes of bliss. In
television you don't get that. It's not like you ever relax. I'll have
days when all of a sudden, I'll just be a basket case. I've been doing
the show for eight months and I'll ask myself, why am I nervous? But
that's just the way it is.
Each actor handles anxiety in their own way. For Duchovny "I
just try and figure out why I might be nervous. If I can't do that, I'll
try to yell and scream, do (yoga) positions. If that doesn't work, I get
mad at somebody else," he says with a grin. Sitting in the setting sun,
it's rather difficult to imagine Duchovny getting mad at someone. Today
he seems far too reserved, barely letting out an exclamation as an
enormous Great Dane saunters breathtakingly close to us.
Glancing at a copy of "The Renegade," Duchovny made sure I knew
of his alma mater. Raised in New York City, Duchovny attended Princeton
University and went on to graduate studies in English Literature at
Yale. The state of New Jersey has obviously made an impression. He
recalled the sign "Trenton Makes, the World Takes," on a bridge in the
state capitol. Duchovny's plans for doctoral studies and a career in
teaching were interrupted in 1987 when his attentions turned to acting.
His PhD dissertation, "Magic and Technology in Contemporary Fiction and
Poetry" was never completed. "It's a good topic," said Duchovny. "If
any graduate student wants it for a dissertation project, feel free.
Help yourself."
Lately, Duchovny is far too busy to contemplate any writing,
though he hopes to get a little done during the hiatus. "The state of
mind that you need to have to write, and the state of mind that you have
when you're acting are very different," he said. "You don't want to spend
energy on things when you're writing. You're conserving everything.
You're not even good to the people that you love. When you're acting,
it's very similar. You don't know why you're saving it up, but you know
you're going to have to put it out at some point. In order to do one of
them well, you have to give it everything that you have.
Assuming "The X-Files" continues its upward trend, Duchovny
should be concentrating most of his energy on acting in the next few
years. "I'd like to write, actually, in this little time that I have
now," he says. "I can't do both at the same time." After a moment of
contemplation, he added. "I don't know how Sam Sheppard does it." Well,
we might add, it would be interesting to see what the PhD candidate could
turn out in the off-season.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- "NYPD Blue's" David Caruso is clearly
television's rear-nude poster boy of the season.
But for viewers who like their leading men darkly rebellious, and
who are willing to use their imaginations, consider David Duchovny as
UFO-obsessed FBI agent Fox Mulder of "The X-Files."
Duchovny has the looks, the wit, the haircut. And he plays Mulder,
a true believer in extraterrestrials and government cover-ups, with an
understated intensity that is magnetic.
The character single-mindedly probes unexplained cases --
X files -- the FBI and certain shadowy government figures would rather he
and fellow agent Dana Scully (costar Gillian Anderson) drop.
No "Blue" sex scenes for our hero; it's all nerve-jangling alien
encounters, mixed in with immortal killers and science gone badly awry.
There is a tantalizing trace of chemistry between Mulder and the
lovely Scully in the Fox Broadcasting Co. series, airing at 9 p.m. EST
Fridays, but producer Chris Carter has vowed not to exchange chills for
romance.
Playing a man whose work is his passion is a turnabout for
Duchovny, who racked up his share of sexy scenes in movies pre-"X-Files."
He was a sweet-talking bounder in "Julia Has Two Lovers," a
swinger who gets religion in "The Rapture," and a cuckolded (but not
sexually deprived) architect in Showtime's "The Red Shoe Diaries."
Duchovny's most recent film was "Kalifornia," in which he played a
writer making a dangerous foray into the realm of murder -- with a comely
girlfriend, of course.
Given the clever plots and sharp writing of "The X-Files," the
actor is willing to take a dramatic cold shower for now. Besides, he says,
it's a refreshing change.
"I was kind of happy to play a character that didn't have women
register at all on his radar," Duchovny said in a call from Vancouver,
British Columbia, where the series is filmed. "I take the energy that
another character might have directed toward women and direct it toward UFOs."
Or, he suggests wryly, viewers can come up with their own
off-screen scenarios: "You can just imagine what happens in between cases:
When I'm not chasing UFOs, I'm chasing skirt."
Duchovny, 33, a native New Yorker, didn't start chasing an acting
career early in life. He was on an impressive academic path, attending
such swank private schools as Collegiate in Manhattan.
"I was a scholarship kid. It was an introduction into a different
world," he said. "I remember going to visit a friend for the first time
and seeing the elevator opened up into his apartment, which was wild. I'd
only seen elevators open into hallways."
Following ability more than inspiration, Duchovny earned his
undergraduate degree from Princeton and a master's in English literature
at Yale, where he prepared for a teaching career in the Ph.D. program.
"I enjoyed reading, I enjoyed writing. It was pretty much because
I hadn't found anything that moved me, and this was something I could do
and I liked in a tepid kind of a way as a career," he said.
He began acting in off-Broadway plays to help him develop as a
film and theater writer. But the performance, not just the play, turned
out to be the thing.
Acting "is where I can be a full human being, a full emotional
person, and have none of the dire consequences that you can have in life,"
he observed. "You don't have to go to jail when you kill someone."
Duchovny left Yale in 1987, moving to California about two years
later. Movies were now his goal.
"I don't know why. I wasn't obsessed with actors," he said. "I was
a sports fanatic, really. Acting gave me a sense of team that I hadn't had
for a while, one of the things I liked about it."
A TV series wasn't in Duchovny's plan, but he was impressed by the
pilot script for "The X-Files." He also figured the show, and his
involvement, would be short-lived.
"I didn't see that you could do a show about aliens every week,"
he said. "Little did I know there were other things in store." The series,
lavished with critical praise, already has been renewed for next season.
What's ahead as the first year winds up? Tough times for Mulder,
Duchovny hints.
"I would look for some big things to happen in the last few
episodes, some trouble for Mulder. ... I think they're going to try to
shut him down," he said.
Duchovny has had his own problems on the action-heavy show: he's
been cut, burned and suffered a separated shoulder in the course of
filming. But the actor, who's single, also came away with a roommate to
keep him company in Vancouver.
"Hey, don't bite the suit," he says, interrupting himself in
mid-sentence. The attacker is a puppy, Lightning, the offspring of a dog
that appeared in an earlier episode.
"She's a foot-licker," he says affectionately of his new pet.
And they claim there's no room for love on "The X-Files."
Note: The dog's name is *Blue*, not Lightning.
Kellie Matthews-Simmons//matthewk@ucsu.colorado.edu
Member: SFLA&EBS, PSEB, DDEB, X-phile "ego eum in calido puncto egi"
"Would you, could you, with a Fox?"
By Eirik Knutzen
Copley News Service
If they had tried to, the producers of "The X-Files" couldn't have done a
better job of typecasting than when they hired David Duchovny to portray
FBI Special Agent Fox "Spooky" Mulder--a man possessed when it comes to
tracking ancient genetic mutants and 200,000-year-old parasites from
another galaxy.
The highly educated Ivy Leaguer, who holds degrees in English literature
from Princeton and Yale (where he is also a dissertation away from a PhD),
has an open mind when it comes to paranormal phenomena. He's
intellectually receptive to certain "wierd stuff," due to a few personal
experiences for which he is still seeking explanations.
"I certainly have experienced the paranormal--I was in love once," says
Duchovny, 34, a man of dry humor.
"Actually, I saw something in the sky during the spring of 1982," he says.
"A student at Princeton at the time, I was running along the beach in
Ocean City, N.J., on a bright and sunny morning when I looked up and saw
what I thought was a ship or plane, about 100 yards directly above me. It
made no noise; I didn't hear a thing.
"Thinking it was an odd-looking plane, I took a couple of steps before
looking up again. It was gone. Looking back, it seemed triangular in
shape, somewhat similar to today's stealth bomber."
Duchovny, "in a way," also believes in ghosts.
"My (Scottish) grandmother said that when she was a little girl, she saw
her grandfather--who had drowned a couple of years before--come into the
house and go up to the crib where her younger brother was sleeping. The
'ghost' kind of looked in, nodded and walked out. I believed it happened
to my grandmother, and I have definitely felt the presence of loved ones,
though I have never seen anyone."
Duchovny approaches his character and life in general with a handfull of
salt.
"Special Agent Mulder gave up a thriving career in the FBI's violent-crime
section and disgraced himself in the eyes of peers when he went after the
paranormal cases no one admits to," he says. "And, because nobody trusts
or believes in him, he has become hard and sarcastic. I guess that
happens to people who get buried in office basements while higher-ups try
to take their budgets away. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) is a medical
doctor charged with observing this nut case and debunk some of his
outrageous theories."
During a recent visit to the FBI's headquarters in Washington, Duchovny
and his co-star had a close look at the organization's high-tech approach
to crime, but received no hint that anything resembling "The X-Files"
actually exists.
"I have no proof of it, but I assume that (the FBI) possesses classified
documents dealing with such things as alien life forms," he says with a
shrug. "I don't know if we've been contacted or the aliens have landed,
but it would seem rather odd to me if this planet is the only one in the
universe with life on it."
Long before chasing UFO and telepathic pyromaniacs on locations in and
around Vancouver, British Columbia, Duchovny was a jock-scholar in various
parts of New York City. His mother, Margaret, is a Scottish-born
grade-school teacher, his father, Amram (Ron) Ducovny, of Russian-Jewish
extraction, went from public relations to being "a writer of sorts" and
saw his play, "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald," performed on Broadway in
1967.
When his parents divorced, David was raised along with two siblings,
Daniel and Laurie, by his mother.
"My father took the 'h' out of our last name because he was tired of
having it mispronounced," Duchovny says matter-of-factly. "But when my
parents divorced, my mother put the 'h' back in, as a show of solidarity
with how a family member spelled the name. I spell it with the 'h'; my
brother doesn't use the 'h.' My sister goes back and forth, depending on
her mood.
"Regardless, I think it's a beautiful name that I'm told means 'Spiritual'
in Russian. I don't care how people spell the name as long as they get
the meaning."
Smart and athletic, Duchovny earned an academic scholarship to an elite
Manhattan prep school and parlayed his physical skills at Princeton into
one year as a basketball guard and two seasons in center field on the
baseball team. While Duchovny was at Yale as a teaching assistant
outlining his Ph.D. dissertation in 1985, a friend suggested trying a few
acting classes.
"It made sense, because I was 26 years old and didn't feel like spending
the rest of my life teaching," he says. "I liked teaching, but it seemed
like being coddled in an unreal world."
Duchovny found a teacher affiliated with the New York Actors Studio and
discovered he was able "to have an emotional life really for the first
time. It was great. I could scream, yell and cry on stage without
consequences. I could have a full life; nobody would arrest or leave me
for (behaving) like that."
Two years later, while still teaching at Yale, he made $9,000 for
appearing in a TV commercial for Lowenbrau beer. It was twice as much
money as he made as a teaching assistant.
When cast in the feature "New Year's Day" in 1987 (but released in 1989),
Duchovny left Yale in a flash, only to spend the next 1-1/2 years in
Hollywood virtually unemployed and "leeching off people pretty much."
He lived with his girlfriend, actress Perrey Reeves, who paid the rent.
He kicked in with earnings for occasional commericals, writing a couple of
magazine articles and making himself useful with a catering company.
Duchovny eventually picked up speed with feature film parts in "Chaplin,"
"Beethoven," "The Rapture," "Julia Has Two Lovers" and last year's quirky
"Kalifornia."
The handsome actor has a serious bent for the offbeat, as he continues to
act as the enigmatic host of Zalman King's "Red Shoe Diaries," the
half-hour weekly series (tomorrow night at 10) on the Showtime channel
that "focuses on the secret desires of women."
But his strangest character to date is undoubtedly Dennis/Denise Bryson,
the "Twin Peaks" (1990-91) transvestite FBI agent.
"I was chosen for 'The X-Files' because of previous experience playing an
FBI agent--although it's the first time I'm doing it in a suit," he says.
"Fortunately, I don't have to use J. Edgar Hoover as a role model this
time around."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Coffee, Tea, and David Duchovny
An afternoon chat with the star of "The X-Files"
by Rhonda Krafchin (The Prydonian Renegade, June 94)
(Note: The Prydonian Renegade is a publication of the Princeton Dr. Who
Fan Club)
The first thing David Duchovny, star of the cult series "The X-Files" on
Fox, would like to know, as we sit in a rain-splashed cafe, is what
Creator/Exec. Producer Chris Carter has said about him. This is not
the demand of an egomaniacal actor, but rather the modest curiosity of
one who can't quite seem to grasp his place in the world of television.
"I try to stay Socratic about the whole thing. It's like Socrates said,
`I know nothing.'"
Duchovny is in a calm state, having just finished a killer Power
Yoga class, reserved for those in great physical shape. In baggy sweats
and a green t-shirt, a flannel shirt hanging loosely on his lean frame,
Duchovny is the antithesis of the of the conservatively-dressed FBI Agent
Fox Mulder, his character on "The X-Files." His face is whiskered, and
his hair slightly askew from the workout. He is whimsical and
good-natured, and seems to find it very funny that Carter described him
as having a "facile mind." He wonders, kiddingly, if Carter had
said something else far less complimentary. I assure him that was not
the case.
But Duchovny does enjoy working with Carter. "He's got a very
facile mind," Duchovny quips, then adds with all seriousness. "Chris is
very collaborative. He respects what I have to say. We have different
ideas about Mulder from time to time... I'm always trying to make him a
little funnier, a little lighter. He's always afraid that that's going
to take away from the mystery and suspense, and the scare. That's a
constant battle we have." But Duchovny has no illusions about who always
wins. "He's the boss," Duchovny said. "But then again," he adds with
a mischevious grin. "He's not always there. When he's away, I do what I
want. Then he comes back and scolds me."
In fact, the self-effacing humor and easygoing, devil-may-care
attitude of Duchovny often do come out in Mulder. Adding a little color
to the single-minded character is done with intent, and, according to
Duchovny's fan mail, often appreciated. "I've argued some against every
emotional moment being linked back to Mulder's sister. I don't like
that. I think it was important to set that up as my character's
foundational interest in the supernatural... My sister disappeared, was
abducted, I think, by aliens. But we have to get beyond that. It's not
realistic in a person's life to think that everything goes back to one
event... So hopefully we'll get away from just relating everything back
to my syster and get more into, maybe a relationship with a woman.
The current "relationship" with character Dana Scully will be on
a short hiatus next season as actress Gillian Anderson is pregnant.
"I'll have more work to do, which I can't even imagine." Duchovny, all
jokin aside, does seem dog-tired. One too many questions about the
future of the X-Files and he answered dismissively, "I'm trying to take
a break right now. I'm not even thinking about it."
But it's easy to find escape this late afternoon in a
neighborhood coffee shop. The cleansing rain has given way to blue,
cloud-speckled skies. "I've lived in LA for almost five years now," he
said as the setting sun streaks across our table. "My brother's here, my
girlfriend, I miss LA when I go away, though it was a very good year to
be away!" Shooting in Vancouver, B.C., kept Duchovny a safe distance
from wildfires, floods, and the devastating earthquake. "I was pretty
lucky," he admits, although he almost made it for the big Monday morning
shaker on January 17. "I was visiting my girlfriend... I was here for
the weekend. I was having a good time and called our producer, Bob
Goodwin, and asked `Is there any way I could take a morning flight? Can
you push the call back?' He tried, and couldn't do it. We're very
lucky, because if I'd stayed, I wouldn't have been able to fly out for
two or three days and they would have had to shut down production.
Almost the Hand of God came down on the X-Files," he said with a laugh.
With Vancouver now a second home, and the pressures of playing a
series leading man, Duchovny hasn't quite gotten a handle on the
subtleties of change in his life. "The amount of work has been so
intense. I haven't really gotten to see exactly how my life has changed,
because I haven't really had a life. I've just been working." Though he
claims to rarely being recognised on the street, we're interrupted
halfway through the interview by a man wanting to know if "The X-Files"
will be back next season. There is no doubt about that. Shooting for
the second season begins in July, leaving a short time for recuperation.
With the first season's 24 episodes completed, "The X-Files" has
had its share of good and bad stories. Duchovny lists the season finale
as his favorite, along with "Ice" and "Fallen Angel." He also dispelled
any theories for the future of Deep Throat, who was shot in the final
episode. "He's dead," Duchovny says with finality. There are also
those episodes he recalls with little affection, namely "Ghost in the
Machine" and "Lazarus." He admitted "There was one recently that I
detested. The one with the little girl." But Duchovny quickly added,
"If we can turn out 18 good ones, I think we're doing much better than
anyone hoped for. It's not amazing that TV's as bad as it is, it's
amazing that some of it is as good as it is... I know what it takes to do
a good job. It's very difficult."
The unusual dramatic parameters of "The X-Files" occasionally make
it difficult to develop its main characters. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully
are often left as mere observers of that week's otherworldly phenomenon.
"If you watch the show, you know that some are different than others,"
Duchovny explained. "There's no way that two people could have the amount
of experiences that we do if we were emotionally and personally involved
in every case. So for every two that we are involved in personally, you
have to have two where we're just detectives. We're just agents trying to
solve a case who don't have anything at stake, personally."
Much of the 33-year-old actor's work has been in feature films,
including "The Rapture," "Kalifornia," and Showtime's "The Red Shoe
Diaries," most recently. "TV is so different from movies," he said.
"If you can imagine, we shoot about eight pages of script a day, and in a
movie we'd probably shoot two to three pages in a day. We're doing 400
percent more work. It's frustrating that you can't give it the kind of
time that you might want to Then again, it teaches you good habits and
bad habits. The bad... that you have to do stuff on the spur of the
moment. The good habit is that you don't agonize over things. You just
realize you've got to do it today and tomorrow it's toilet paper. Move
on. Instincts are all you have. You don't have time to prepare.
The third acting venue that Duchovny has worked in-- live
theatre-- has dynamics all its own. "There's something different about
working with an audience," he said, "because you're working *with* an
audience. You're making an experience together in the present moment,
rather than making something for future use or recorded use. There's a
different feeling and a different pleasure that you get out of it."
One might think that from an actor's point of view, the theatre
would be the more nervewracking experience, but Duchovny disagrees. "As
an actor you're always dealing with nervousness or anxiety and tension.
When you're working on film or in television, you're just doing little
bits and pieces... you have to deal with your nervousness and tension in
each scene or shot. In a play, you come out, say your first few lines,
and then you relax. You have an hour and 45 minutes of bliss. In
television you don't get that. It's not like you ever relax. I'll have
days when all of a sudden, I'll just be a basket case. I've been doing
the show for eight months and I'll ask myself, why am I nervous? But
that's just the way it is.
Each actor handles anxiety in their own way. For Duchovny "I
just try and figure out why I might be nervous. If I can't do that, I'll
try to yell and scream, do (yoga) positions. If that doesn't work, I get
mad at somebody else," he says with a grin. Sitting in the setting sun,
it's rather difficult to imagine Duchovny getting mad at someone. Today
he seems far too reserved, barely letting out an exclamation as an
enormous Great Dane saunters breathtakingly close to us.
Glancing at a copy of "The Renegade," Duchovny made sure I knew
of his alma mater. Raised in New York City, Duchovny attended Princeton
University and went on to graduate studies in English Literature at
Yale. The state of New Jersey has obviously made an impression. He
recalled the sign "Trenton Makes, the World Takes," on a bridge in the
state capitol. Duchovny's plans for doctoral studies and a career in
teaching were interrupted in 1987 when his attentions turned to acting.
His PhD dissertation, "Magic and Technology in Contemporary Fiction and
Poetry" was never completed. "It's a good topic," said Duchovny. "If
any graduate student wants it for a dissertation project, feel free.
Help yourself."
Lately, Duchovny is far too busy to contemplate any writing,
though he hopes to get a little done during the hiatus. "The state of
mind that you need to have to write, and the state of mind that you have
when you're acting are very different," he said. "You don't want to spend
energy on things when you're writing. You're conserving everything.
You're not even good to the people that you love. When you're acting,
it's very similar. You don't know why you're saving it up, but you know
you're going to have to put it out at some point. In order to do one of
them well, you have to give it everything that you have.
Assuming "The X-Files" continues its upward trend, Duchovny
should be concentrating most of his energy on acting in the next few
years. "I'd like to write, actually, in this little time that I have
now," he says. "I can't do both at the same time." After a moment of
contemplation, he added. "I don't know how Sam Sheppard does it." Well,
we might add, it would be interesting to see what the PhD candidate could
turn out in the off-season.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- "NYPD Blue's" David Caruso is clearly
television's rear-nude poster boy of the season.
But for viewers who like their leading men darkly rebellious, and
who are willing to use their imaginations, consider David Duchovny as
UFO-obsessed FBI agent Fox Mulder of "The X-Files."
Duchovny has the looks, the wit, the haircut. And he plays Mulder,
a true believer in extraterrestrials and government cover-ups, with an
understated intensity that is magnetic.
The character single-mindedly probes unexplained cases --
X files -- the FBI and certain shadowy government figures would rather he
and fellow agent Dana Scully (costar Gillian Anderson) drop.
No "Blue" sex scenes for our hero; it's all nerve-jangling alien
encounters, mixed in with immortal killers and science gone badly awry.
There is a tantalizing trace of chemistry between Mulder and the
lovely Scully in the Fox Broadcasting Co. series, airing at 9 p.m. EST
Fridays, but producer Chris Carter has vowed not to exchange chills for
romance.
Playing a man whose work is his passion is a turnabout for
Duchovny, who racked up his share of sexy scenes in movies pre-"X-Files."
He was a sweet-talking bounder in "Julia Has Two Lovers," a
swinger who gets religion in "The Rapture," and a cuckolded (but not
sexually deprived) architect in Showtime's "The Red Shoe Diaries."
Duchovny's most recent film was "Kalifornia," in which he played a
writer making a dangerous foray into the realm of murder -- with a comely
girlfriend, of course.
Given the clever plots and sharp writing of "The X-Files," the
actor is willing to take a dramatic cold shower for now. Besides, he says,
it's a refreshing change.
"I was kind of happy to play a character that didn't have women
register at all on his radar," Duchovny said in a call from Vancouver,
British Columbia, where the series is filmed. "I take the energy that
another character might have directed toward women and direct it toward UFOs."
Or, he suggests wryly, viewers can come up with their own
off-screen scenarios: "You can just imagine what happens in between cases:
When I'm not chasing UFOs, I'm chasing skirt."
Duchovny, 33, a native New Yorker, didn't start chasing an acting
career early in life. He was on an impressive academic path, attending
such swank private schools as Collegiate in Manhattan.
"I was a scholarship kid. It was an introduction into a different
world," he said. "I remember going to visit a friend for the first time
and seeing the elevator opened up into his apartment, which was wild. I'd
only seen elevators open into hallways."
Following ability more than inspiration, Duchovny earned his
undergraduate degree from Princeton and a master's in English literature
at Yale, where he prepared for a teaching career in the Ph.D. program.
"I enjoyed reading, I enjoyed writing. It was pretty much because
I hadn't found anything that moved me, and this was something I could do
and I liked in a tepid kind of a way as a career," he said.
He began acting in off-Broadway plays to help him develop as a
film and theater writer. But the performance, not just the play, turned
out to be the thing.
Acting "is where I can be a full human being, a full emotional
person, and have none of the dire consequences that you can have in life,"
he observed. "You don't have to go to jail when you kill someone."
Duchovny left Yale in 1987, moving to California about two years
later. Movies were now his goal.
"I don't know why. I wasn't obsessed with actors," he said. "I was
a sports fanatic, really. Acting gave me a sense of team that I hadn't had
for a while, one of the things I liked about it."
A TV series wasn't in Duchovny's plan, but he was impressed by the
pilot script for "The X-Files." He also figured the show, and his
involvement, would be short-lived.
"I didn't see that you could do a show about aliens every week,"
he said. "Little did I know there were other things in store." The series,
lavished with critical praise, already has been renewed for next season.
What's ahead as the first year winds up? Tough times for Mulder,
Duchovny hints.
"I would look for some big things to happen in the last few
episodes, some trouble for Mulder. ... I think they're going to try to
shut him down," he said.
Duchovny has had his own problems on the action-heavy show: he's
been cut, burned and suffered a separated shoulder in the course of
filming. But the actor, who's single, also came away with a roommate to
keep him company in Vancouver.
"Hey, don't bite the suit," he says, interrupting himself in
mid-sentence. The attacker is a puppy, Lightning, the offspring of a dog
that appeared in an earlier episode.
"She's a foot-licker," he says affectionately of his new pet.
And they claim there's no room for love on "The X-Files."
Note: The dog's name is *Blue*, not Lightning.
Kellie Matthews-Simmons//matthewk@ucsu.colorado.edu
Member: SFLA&EBS, PSEB, DDEB, X-phile "ego eum in calido puncto egi"
"Would you, could you, with a Fox?"
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