WYWIAD Z DAVIDEM DUCHOVNYM

AD: You must be tired?
DD: Why?
AD: You've been working a long day, is that right?
DD: No, they all kind of blend into one another at this point.
AD: What are you working on at the moment?
DD: They all kind of bleed into one another too.
AD: It's just a constant mix of paranoia and strange things.
DD: Just doing a scene where I'm eating some blood today.
AD: Oh yeah, another day at the office.
DD: But it's not actually blood. I don't know what it is actually, I forgot to ask.
AD: Do you suddenly find yourself in the middle of shooting thinking, "I don't know what I'm doing?"
DD: Yeah, most of the time, but that's life isn't it?
AD: Actually you're right, except I don't feel nearly as paranoid in life as I do on the screen.
DD: The thing about doing a scene is you do it maybe 20-25 times before you're through. So you kind of do understand what you're doing by the end of the scene, whereas in life you only do it once and you never understand it.
AD: I like it when you get existential... In the course of shooting _The X-Files_, what are some of the unusual requests?
DD: I was hanging from a moving train the other day.
AD: Is that fun?
DD: That actually was fun. That had a certain kind of James Bond flavour to it. What else? I try to forget them after I do them.
AD: Do you insist on doing your own stunts?
DD: I don't insist on it because other people know better than I do about those kind of things. But I do like to be physical, I do like to get out and run around. So I say if you're going to shoot it and I'm going to be doing it, at least see that it's me. If it's the real actor, it's usually more exciting than shooting a double.
AD: What sort of trailer do you have? Do you have a very large star- type trailer?
DD: It's pretty large and it expands when it's on the street, you know, so you can tow it. It's kinda thin and it expands, but on days when we're on a residential street like we are today, you can't expand it so it ends up being about three feet wide.
AD: What do you keep in your trailer - is it just basic stuff or do you have lots of mementos?
DD: Basically water and music.
AD: That's an interesting diet. What sort of music?
DD: Oh all kinds.
AD: Not Barry Manilow.
DD: Sometimes. I don't usually bring him to the trailer.
AD: That's probably best as a private habit. What other music?
DD: Today I was listening to Simply Red, actually.
AD: When the audition script landed on your desk, what did you think?
DD: I thought it was a good script and it would make a good pilot and possibly get picked up for a few shows, but I didn't see enough buried material in it to continue on.
AD: Have you been surprised at the variety of subjects it covers?
DD: Once it got opened up, then it's pretty much limitless. So, I wasn't surprised once I understood the concept of the series.
AD: I can only assume that you get some pretty weird mail and presents through the mail.
DD: Yeah. At a certain point, you don't have time to read it and also you stop getting it. People don't want to worry you. So it's rare that I even see any fan mail anymore.
AD: What about when you go out to restaurants and so on? Do people try and hit you with their stories of the paranormal?
DD: Once in a blue moon that happens. But when I'm not working, my time is very precious to me and I try to make it very clear that I'm not really interested in hearing those stories.
AD: Is there something about the whole _X-Files_ thing that's a bit odious to you?
DD: Well, not the X-Files per se, what is odious is your life becoming public. Once you lose your anonymity, you don't realise what a great loss that is until it's gone and then you can never get it back. Even if your career spirals downward, you can never get your anonymity back. You go from being a hero to being a joke and neither is very pleasant.
AD: No, I can't see you on sort of a Howard Stern New Year's Eve pageant panel somehow as an ex-famous person.
DD: Anonymity is certainly something that you can miss very dearly.
AD: You're going on Letterman again. Is that sort of thing fun for you or is it all part of the merry-go-round?
DD: It was a real thrill, just because I've watched David Letterman for so many years. And it was just kind of an exercise in surrealism for me to find myself sitting there on that side of the screen with him. And it was one of those things that I like to do because it's part of the ridiculous adventure that I'm having, you know? Being on _Letterman_ was a thrill, doing Saturday Night Live was a thrill. This is like the third time I've been on Letterman. I feel like I've run out of things to talk about. The pressure to be funny and entertaining is so strong. So we'll see.
AD: Can you get someone to write a couple of anecdotes for you?
DD: Well, maybe not to write them. But what you can do is steal other people's stories and palm them off as your own.
AD: Oh, that's good. So what are the options here, whose story could you take?
DD: I already did it once, but I cleared it. I called him up and said, "Look, that story you told me was really funny, I'm thinking about telling it on Letterman." He said go ahead.
AD: Wow, that's vicarious fame. I love it. You went on Larry Sanders and played yourself as an egocentric asshole. Was that a cry for help, David?
DD: I hadn't thought of it that way, but maybe it was, yeah.
AD: That's one of the great things about _Larry Sanders_: you see people playing themselves very unsympathetically. Do you enjoy sending up your position?
DD: Not so much my position, but just the kind of infantilisation of actors that happens. You'd see people throwing tantrums and fits and you'd think, "Fuck you, you should just be happy that you're working". But it's this slow, gradual erosion of your perspective. So eventually you find yourself becoming caught up in snits about things that are absolutely meaningless. And not even from a cosmic perspective, but even from like a daily perspective. I found being able to do that on Larry Sanders, I was kind of laughing at myself. Not that I act that way, but just that I have certainly felt the impulse to act that way.
AD: Simply because you can.
DD: Well, you think you can. But there's always somebody bigger, stronger, better looking, you know, who makes more money. It's all relative.
AD: One of the really boring things about becoming famous is that you become the subject of every conversation you're in.
DD: [Laughs] Well, it was always that way before.
AD: Was this because you have such a magnetic personality or just because you got in first?
DD: Just because I couldn't stop talking about myself. No, I think that's very well put. I wish I said that. When you write the article, I think you should say I did say that.
AD: You'll probably say it on Letterman... Did you know there's an internet group called the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade?
DD: Yeah, they've been around for about 40-45 years now.
AD: Really? So they pre-date your actual birth?
DD: It's shocking, but possible.
AD: Hmm, they were waiting for the chosen one.
DD: They've been around since the first year, they're like one of the earliest members of _The X-Files_ brigade.
AD: Have you eavesdropped on their conversations?
DD: No, I haven't done that yet, or I don't have any plans to. But I'm flattered by all the attention, especially in the first year when nobody was really watching, it was kinda cool to think that people were talking about me.
AD: Do offers come through your door now that you'd never expected?
DD: Are you talking about personal offers or professional offers?
AD: Professional offers.
DD: Well, yes and no. Obviously more people are aware of me now, just 'cause of the show. But I don't have much time to do other things. I've got a short hiatus. This year I hope to squeeze in a movie. So, you know, people may be interested, but they also know that I'm out of commission for 10 months of the year.
AD: Isn't that the best way to be though, tantalisingly unavailable?
DD: No, I'd rather be available. I'd rather, you know, do something else.
AD: How many years are you signed up to _The X-Files_?
DD: Oh, it's hard to say. Contracts, they're written on paper I believe.
AD: Actually it's quite ironic that your character Mulder is so paranoid about conspiracies - everybody's out there listening and so on - and your real life is starting to parody that because everybody's out there listening to you and hanging off your every word.
DD: In a way. The trouble with celebrity is that people equate it with meaning.
AD: Now, I wish I'd said that.
DD: You will.
AD: You bet I will, I'd better put that in my quotation marks. That's the beauty about writing articles... Now I noticed that you seem to contribute as a storyline writer to the most paranoid episodes of _The X-Files_, the ones where the conspiracy theory looms largest. Why is that?
DD: When I try to come u with an idea for the show my interest is obviously anything that would uncover the original mystery of this person - the abduction of his sister and all stories hovering in and around that abduction. So you end up with a kind of _Rashomon_ effect where you've got so many stories that you must get paranoid and you can't choose the truth. As a writer, I'm most interested in Mulder.
AD: He is a very interesting character. But I can see parallels - and I'm not trying to make out that you are Mulder and vice versa - but, for instance, you seem to have very little time for your own life and the same applies to Mulder. He has no life outside of the X-Files, it seems.
DD: That's true.
AD: Can't Mulder go out and let his hair down once?
DD: No - it's a strict guideline that Chris Carter seems to be following. He's dead set against these two characters having lives and interests outside of the X-Files. It's frustrating as an actor, because, like in NYPD Blue or ER, you want to be able to play the scenes that you're used to playing. You'd love to go home and have a nice tender scene with your wife, or whatever.
AD: It's a very low-key style of acting, which is one of the things that sets The X-Files apart. Is that something that sits comfortably with you?
DD: It's hard for me to hear that phrase without thinking that it's pejorative.
AD: No, not at all.
DD: I know it's not meant that way. But I always hear no energy when I hear low-key. It's definitely the style that I've brought to the show and it's become the style of the show. I think it's my natural style, and I look forward to pushing that in other roles, but right now in The X-Files, I try to make it as real as possible so that you buy all the impossible crap that we're throwing at you.
AD: Do you sometimes look at the storylines and think, "This show is dumb"?
DD: Yeah! Oh, it is dumb, but it's smart-dumb and it's fun-dumb.
AD: The one that sticks in my mind is the episode with the six-foot intestinal worm.
DD: It's not dumb in the sense that it could never happen. It's a TV show and it pushes the limits of what is possible so it's going to have its moments of idiocy. We're all aware of that.
AD: It's an interesting thing to put on your CV though - upstaged by a six-foot intestinal worm.
DD: The beauty of Mulder, I think, is that he doesn't care. He doesn't mind that he's being upstaged by a six-foot intestinal worm or whatever the hell he comes across.
AD: He's a very cool character. It seems to me that you're much the same, fairly unshockable.
DD: I think I'm unshockable partly because I grew up in New York and partly because I think I understand that human beings are capable of anything.
AD: What's your star sign?
DD: Leo.
AD: Okay, that's it, bye. No, no, no, I don't mean it. Does it worry you that you might be typecast forever as Fox Mulder?
DD: No. If that ever happened it would have been my fault and nobody else's.
AD: The show's popularity seems to be increasing exponentially. Can you imagine it becoming like Star Trek with X-Files conventions and people walking around saying, "Scully, what do you know about killer dolphins?"
DD: [Laughs] There already is. There are conventions [about The X-Files] nearly every week in [the US].
AD: Have you ever braved one?
DD: No.
AD: Does it bother you that there are people out there who might be living their life through you?
DD: No, I never thought of it as living their life through either Star Trek or The X-Files or anything like that. I think of it as more like a Book-of-the-Month club where it actually brings people together. It's almost like church used to serve a function, "Oh, you like The X-Files?" and then they start talking about this show and five minutes later they're not talking about The X-Files anymore. It's just a way to say here are my hobbies, I'm into macrame, skinning armadillos and _The X-Files_.
AD: Skinning armadillos? How did you know? I noticed in the publicity from Fox that Mulder is a keen collector of pornography. Where did that come from?
DD: That came from two writers who left the show in the middle of last year, Glen Morgan and James Wong. They wrote some of our best episodes and in one episode they just said, "Mulder, late at night, watching a porn flick" and then it became like a leit-motif for the show, like the sunflower seed. So I never minded it. At first I was kind of like, eh, not such a great thing to be into porn, but then I thought the guy doesn't have time for anything. That kind of thing makes sense, he's the kind of guy who has trouble making emotional attachments. So I said why not, can be a little joke, yeah, he's definitely into porn.
AD: I think it's a nice, mindless escape for an FBI agent. You actually went to the FBI, what was that like?
DD: It was interesting. They're professional people; they're not demigods or you know, mythical Eliot Ness figures running around. They're basically cops in civilian clothing.
AD: Did they like the way that Mulder portrays his role in the FBI - that there are some people at the top who can't be trusted?
DD: It's not so much that. I hadn't really done any research for the role in terms of FBI procedure and stuff like that, [but] they were saying that Mulder's a good role model for FBI agents because he's courteous and polite and this and that. I was pretty shocked by that.
AD: Is there an X-File you'd really like to see, a subject area that interests you particularly?
DD: As an actor and as somebody who's trying to maintain artistic aspirations within the daily grind of making a TV show, the shows that are really exciting for me to tackle are the ones where Mulder's character deepens and takes on new twists and turns.
AD: If Saturday Night Live were to ask you to participate in a send-up of The X-Files, where would you start?
DD: They already did.
AD: How was it?
DD: It wasn't that inspired.
AD: What would you have done?
DD: I have this theory about alien abduction which stems from the fact that everybody who claims to have been abducted ends up talking about how they were subjected to cavity searches and proctological exams and stuff like that. My theory - and the X-File that I would like to see - works out the supposition that an alien culture has rounded up all its sex offenders and put them on a ship and sent them to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, which is where we happen to be. So basically what's happening is we're being orbited by alien sex offenders who occasionally abduct us and subject us to proctological exams.
AD: I can see that winning a few Emmys.
DD: Yeah.
AD: That's a very beautiful theory indeed. Have you tried to pitch this to Chris Carter?
DD: I'm not sure, I think I came up with that one just a few days ago.
AD: Mmm, I like it a lot and don't think I won't be pitching that myself, that's excellent.
DD: It's more plausible than a lot I've heard.