David Duchovny
David Duchovny returns to the big screen this week as Agent Fox Mulder in X-Files: I Want to Believe... but unlike Hank Moody, his sex-crazed and Golden Globe-winning character in Californication, anything X-rated for this 47-year-old New Yorker is top-secret
By John Sellers
On behalf of male writers everywhere, I want to thank you for making us look like total studs. I guess that is every writer's fantasy. Once upon a time, though, people were turned on by the written word. Has that time passed?
We pray not. Why not call the second season of Californication, Word Your Loins for a Syntax Sex Fest to be sure? Y'know, I never liked the title anyway, because I didn't want the focus to be on sex. I thought fornication kind of did that. So I tried for a long time but couldn't come up with a better title.
What about Pecs and the City? There is a bunch of sex in it, yeah, but the sex part is really a marketing notion. Because you can't say, "Hey, watch this show because it's intelligent and it's funny in a way that you haven't seen in a while." Early on it was apparent to me that they were going to hang it on tits and ass even though that's never what the show was to me. But whatever. Come for the tits, stay for the dialogue.
That's the tagline on the new X Files film, isn't it? What was it like to finally do the long-awaited Mulder-Scully horizontal rhumba anyway? Somehow I don't think that'll happen.
Damn. You're not going to reveal anything about the X-Files movie, are you? Well, we've done a good job of keeping it quiet so far, so I don't think I should ruin it now.
We strongly disagree, David. The idea behind that is that the kernel at the heart of the movie is surprising if you don't know it.
Surprising like The Crying Game? Yes. Mulder's a woman. Oh shit - it slipped out! No, not like that so much. More conceptual. And a concept that I think is fun to discover in the movie theatre rather than going in knowing, "Oh, that's what this is about."
The big secret revolves around a Lost City of Monkeys, doesn't it? The Lost City of Monkeys? No. We're going to get to that in the next one. Or maybe in the fourth. But hey, if you want to flesh that story out, I'm
all ears.
OK, I'll have my people send it to your people. Before filming, did you go back and watch old episodes? I will catch one here and there and call [creator] Chris Carter the next day to say, "That sucked," or, "That was great." I actually just e-mailed him because I happened to catch the first few episodes. I was just terrible, and the show was cheesy and cheap. So I e-mailed Chris and said, "Thanks for giving me the opportunity to get better."
What do you want to believe in? At the risk of sounding like Barack Obama: change.
I want to believe in free meat pies for everyone. No, you already believe in that. That's just something you want.
So true. When referring to hard-core X-Files fans, which of the following words do you use: Nerds, Dorks or Geeks? I refer to them as old friends.
Very political, Mr Duchovny. Maybe you're the next Obama. I want to believe.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe is out now. Californication Season 1 is out on DVD through Paramount Home Entertainment