From Vox (a German website), July 30, 1998

Interview mit David Duchovny

VOX: When did you get here?

Duchovny: Last night.

VOX: In Germany the X-Files are very popular.

Duchovny: I´m told. Why? You tell me ! You ask me I´m not gonna know. You come here and you´re german and you live here and you say “why is the show so popular in Germany" and I´m supposed to answer. I don´t know you have to tell me.

VOX: Why is it so popular in the U.S.?

Duchovny: I think that first and foremost only because, and this is gonna sound trivial, it´s good. People get caught up and try to figure out, the millenium approaching, the people don´t trust the government anymore, people are more paranoid than they ever were. Maybe, but that´s secondary if it´s a good show. I mean you have lots of other shows that are about now, that are about aliens and about not trustuing the government and even you got “millenium", wich is Chris´s other show that people don´t watch. They are not as good as X-Files. The X-Files people want ´cause it´s good. They are well written, are well acted, are well shot, it´s well produced, it´s all good. I look at television, which is really hard, the movie is one thing, I think it´s a really good movie, but if you give me 60 Mio. $ in a year it´s possible to make a good movie, but on the TV-show we have 2 Mio. $ for eight days.

VOX: Why does it work in overseas countries too?

Duchovny: You mean in Germany you trust your Government? I think the show exports well because like you have a sitcom based on verbal humor, based on inside jokes, cultural references - you know “Seinfeld" - there is a lot of. It´s verbal, you got to know the language very well to get some of the jokes. I don´t know how many people in Germany get everything. So if you watch “Seinfeld" you have that feeling maybe it´s funny but I´m not getting everything. Same with “ER" or other american shows wich are very american. But the X-Files, even though it´s FBI - nothing can be more american than FBI - you still have two people searching for aliens which are non-national. They don´t belong to any country so it´s worldwide, anybody can be interested in that. And it´s told very visually. For TV-shows it relies less on speak, speak, speak, less on language - certainly not a lot on idiom and not a lot on inside jokes references and things like that. So I think you get the idea even if you don´t get the language so well and you get the idea even if you don´t get the americaness of it so well. So I think it exports so well.

VOX: There is a mythical level in it.

Duchovny: That´s true, too, because it´s interesting you have one character that is looking for the same thing for five years and it´s like a mythical quest, like the Holy Grail. On “ER" they are trying to heal people but there´s not one thing that´s driving the show the whole time. I think people can relate to that - underneath the exterior differences, i.e. I speak english with an american accent and maybe I make jokes that are insides sometimes in the show. Underneath there is Parsival. Is that the german Hero, too?

VOX: Did you implant that mythical level into the show?

Duchovny: When you start to do a show, when Chris starts to write the show, really what exists is that first script and in that first script all that exists about Mulder is that he´s interested in aliens. Life began when he went under hypnotic regression and came to believe that his sister was abducted by aliens when he was 12. This is really all we had. The rest of all the stuff we had to create because we had to make more shows. Chris never had it in his mind, certainly I never assumed that anything like that existed. Just like in “Twin Peaks", the first show is “Who killed Laura Palmer?" - David Lynch didn´t know who killed Laura Palmer, that just happend. He had to say as he went on. So, we had to do more shows, we had to explain the past, we had to dramatize the past in certain ways. I wanted to be involved in that because it was my character and I wanted to be able to play interesting things. So there were certain kind of moves and certain kinds of movements mythological that I like in other stories like starwars, Joseph Campbell´s writings or pick and choose from anywhere wich is what we do. The idea I had was in that movie, Sophie´s Choice, they are taking Sofie´s boy and just impulsively she gives them the girl. So I thought what if that happened to Mulder - if they came to abduct him and his mother as they were taking Mulder away gave them the girl. We haven´t seen that episode yet, but I would like to have that play and all these little things that we steal. There is stuff we still haven´t done, that I enjoyed like being involved and figuring out how it all happened.

VOX: You don´t just steal quotes?

Duchovny: Good writers borrow, great writers steal!

VOX: So you steal.

Duchovny: Sure, if it´s good - steal - nothing new under the sun, right? Except the aliens!

VOX: I think you don´t have to be familiar with the show to see the movie.

Duchovny: I think so too. It´s a very difficult job to make the movie satisfying for people that know the show inside out better than me and for somebody that has managed not to ever see the show. When I saw it my impression was we did it, it works. You´re always gonna get some spoilsport out there who´s gonna say it´s only a TV-show and it´s just another TV-show except it´s on the big screen. That´s why people get money to talk but my opinion is that it works. I think that that kinda critisism is somewhat unfair because let´s say you walked into a James Bond movie - the tenth one, they don´t tell you who James Bond is. Even if you come from Mars and you never heard of James Bond you could pick up who that guy is by watching 20 minutes. Even though they don´t say 007 is an agent with her majesty secret service - you don´t even know. You get the idea and it´s the same with our movie. You don´t need to know, but some critics have the idea - I think it comes from prejudices against television - that it´s just a TV-show and they want to shoot it down - that´s too bad it´s not working.

VOX: Do you read reviews?

Duchovny: I don´t want to but there they are. Everytime I say no, I´m not gonna read reviews and everytime. Well this one - in the past it always been... I´ve never done a movie that I was sure was really good like I think the “rapture" was interesting but I knew that there would be criticsism of it, I thought “California" was interesting but I knew there will be really harsh critisism of that. I think “Playing God" was interesting and I knew I´d be attacked. But I thought this is really perfect, this is really good, it´s a good film, it´s not attempting to be anything other than a fun smart scary summermovie, how can they attack it. It´s so much better than Godzilla, I think it´s better than Titanic, I think it´s better than all these movies and how can they attack it. So I gonna read these reviews ´cause they gonna love it - and they gonna attack it. So I´m not gonna do it, forget it. If there are bad reviews of this film - I can understand it´s not your cup of tea, you don´t like anything having to do with aliens or you don´t like any kind of science fiction, understand that, but attack it in some of the ways some critics did! I say 80 % of the reviews were very favorable but the 20 % that attacked it they were fighting against the flow. So they were trying very hard to shoot it down - I was “God, that´s me!"

VOX: The fans love the movie anyway.

Duchovny: I mean why not, it´s simular to the TV-show. If you like watching the TV-show there´s no reason to not like this. But every movie has mixed reports. What movie has unanimously good reviews. Titanic had unanimously bad reviews and they all changed when it started to make a lot of money.

VOX: Scully and Mulder a Millenium´s Adam and Eve?

Duchovny: Adam and Lilith? Lilith was before Eve. I don´t know, yes.

VOX: David Duchovny, Sexsymbol of the 90s?

Duchovny: I imagine I´m one of them, that´s what they say. I don´t think I´m the only one, there is a couple of other people.

VOX: One of the great unconsummated marriages in popular fiction?

Duchovny: Yeah, that´s true I like that about it. But what the people don´t know is that we have sex all the time off camera. Mulder and Scully are constantly having sex, it´s just never during the show.

VOX: Is the unreleased sexual tension the key to the success?

Duchovny: Possibly, I think it´s also the storytelling. I think you can´t take that and go “Okay, lets do a show about two people not having sex. I don´t know if that´ll necessarily be a hit.

VOX: David Duchovny, the vertical expression for horizontal desire?

Duchovny: I gonna use that for the rest of my life. Thank you.

July, 1998. "Interview mit David Duchovny." Vox.