From RadioTimes Magazine, August 22-28, 1998
Duchovny Xplains it all
by Andrew Duncan
David Duchovny may be as baffled by the X-Files' success as most of us
are by the plots, but he hasn't been wrong about much else. The former academic
speaks his mind on sex, the Supernatural and selling out.
A Modicum of good manners - well, hypocrisy - is normally required when
discussing the latest Hollywood blockbuster with its star. Confronted by
"the talent", you try to find something positive to say about even the most
overcooked turkey. But this is an exception and, anyway, it makes no difference
what I say: the film of The X Files has already made a fortune for
all concerned and united millions of credulous adherents into ever more swooning
adulation on the internet for the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade. I think
it’s gibberish, albeit performed in a sophisticated, deadpan way, appealing
mainly to anoraks. He smiles laconically, and I am not sure if he’s
preparing to walk out. "Perhaps you’re being unfair to anoraks," he
grins. Well, cook me an alien for breakfast, I have found that most treasured
of American stars: an intelligent man who doesn’t mind criticism,
understands irony and won’t pontificate about his "art".
Indeed he complains, in his laid-back way, how bored he is at the prospect
of making another two series for television, but blames it cheerfully on
his own greed. When he originally accepted the part of FBI agent Fox Mulder,
he assumed viewers would soon tire of "alien of the month" plots. "I was
virtually unknown, but I wasn’t desperately seeking either employment
or to become a star. I didn’t want to be in a TV series and I assumed,
‘There’s no way this is going to last.’ It wasn’t that
interesting and I thought it was silly.
"Obviously I was wrong. Conspiracy theories - the assumption that three or
four people are responsible for the world’s ills - are soft thinking,
but it makes hard, powerful dramas. Viewers like to see guy’s in big
black hat’s fighting those in white hats. Originally our fan base was
‘fringe’ people who hadn’t seen the subject matter on mainstream
TV before. I didn’t have much in common with their passions, but my
job was to make it real. You can get lost in analysis trying to wonder why
The X Files works, but one of the main attractions is that it’s
a good show. The fact is that there are now many series dealing with the
same subject matter, but they’re not popular because they’re not
so good."
He signed a five-year contract, assuming he would never fulfil it. "The system
is that they sign three or four good actors even before the job is theirs,
so you’re negotiating from weakness. If you press too hard they’ll
lose interest, so you always get a pretty lousy deal. Then, if the show becomes
a hit, you renegotiate at the start of the third year and share in the money
generated for those who forced you into a barbaric deal." He will earn more
than $4 million for this year’s 40 episodes.
"It’s not fair if you compare me to teachers, poets, priests, government
officials. I meant ‘barbaric’ in terms of fairness in the market
place. I had to struggle to assert that I’m indispensable to the show
at present and also that it would have died on a vine if it wasn’t for
me. If I hadn’t grounded it’s unreality in the reality of Mulder
it would have turned ‘camp’ like star Trek which, however wonderful,
is not trying to be real. When I first read the script I realised Mulder
couldn’t be wild-eyed and unreliable. He’s clearly insane, so he
has to appear very sane and earn the audience’s trust.
"One of the nice touches is that Mulder is a man searching for truth, and
yet he may be the most dangerous man around, screwing things up. Liars could
be more responsible and protective, because in this complicated world you
need bluffing and diplomacy to make things work. Hypocrisy is the tariff
vice pays to virtue. Who said that? I wish I’d thought of it, don’
t you? Sometimes I really wish I’d stayed in academia." Keep to the
point, I urge. "OK, I’d love to be off the TV show, but because of my
greed I have to give them two extra years. That’s not very heroic. But
it’s heroic that I remain loyal to the people I work with, never turn
up drunk or unprepared. Gillian Anderson [who plays agent Dana Scully] is
the same. We trust each other and I’m eternally grateful to her, but
when the work is over she is the last person I want to see. I spend 14 hours
a day, ten months of the year with her. People don’t understand our
lack of need to have a friendship, and they think it indicates I dislike
her. In fact, it’s why we’re still able to do the show. Of course
I’ll get bored, but I have a commitment and it becomes a challenge to
find some interest
"The gist of the show is silly and far-fetched - two FBI agents who investigate
unsolved paranormal cases that often involve aliens. And Mulder is convinced
that when he was eight [typist’s note: No I didn’t type this
wrong… it was how it was printed.] his sister was abducted by aliens,
and has evidence they exist in the form of black oil that flows into your
eyeballs and turns into worms, that there are people who morph into any character
you want, that some hibernate for 50 years and then eat livers…"
Stop, stop, I shout. Does he even understand the plots? "Enough to know that
they don’t make sense. There are lot’s of holes, and I say,
‘We’ll make it work.’ That’s our achievement and what
drama is all about - the execution, not the story." He says he can be difficult
with the writers. "They’re scared of me because I don’t have a
good bedside manner. They work very hard, and sometimes I’m fed up with
what I do and take it out on the writers."
His mother is Scottish, and his father a New Your Jew, a combination that
could well have made him schizophrenic, or at least a taxi driver’s
accountant. Instead, he won a scholarship to the prestigious Collegiate High
School in New York, and planned to become a lawyer or doctor, before doing
an Ivy League double whammy - Princeton, followed by a scholarship to Yale,
where he gained a master’s in English Literature and thought of becoming
a professor.
His own ambition, apart from basketball, was to write plays
and poetry, and he hopes to publish a slim volume soon ("One poet said the
best thing about poetry is you can’t get rich off it"). He joined a
drama club at Yale - "There are so many; they’re desperate for actors.
I could have acted my entire life there." And when he discovered he could
earn enough from one Lowenbrau beer commercial to cover his year’s tuition
expenses, he dropped out of academia and joined the Hollywood B-movie
merry-go-round.
His mother, a teacher, remains puzzled but proud. "She says it’s weird
[one of his favourite words] that I’m her little boy and the whole world
believes they know me. It’s painful for her, too, when I discuss my
parent's divorce." That happened when he was 11. At first he rarely saw his
father, a playwright. "I didn’t understand enough about what went on
to really hate him. We get on fine now, but like any father/son relationship,
it’s complicated. We’re not fishing buddies, but we’re not
at each other’s throats."
For several years his one really constant companion seems to have been his
Border/Jersey collie mutt, Blue, who remained whilst other relationships
foundered. "I love dogs. The live in the moment and don’t care about
anything except affection and food. They’re loyal and happy. Humans
are just too damn complicated." But in May last year he married actress Téa
Leoni - "a bit late, I agree. In any other period of history I’d have
been dead a that age and they’d have assumed I was gay. Like Michelangelo,
or Leonardo da Vinci. But I was a late developer. I didn’t go through
puberty until I was 35." Come off it. I know he lost his virginity at 14
- "That’s not the same thing," he replies - and it’s reported that
he attended a sex-addict clinic. He denies the story and, off the record,
provides a touching, wholly believable explanation as to how it originated.
"The English love to hear that sort of thing. I don’t want to denigrate
those who have, or think they have, a sex problem. Anyone could describe
themselves as a sex addict at some point in their life, but there are those
who have behaviour patterns that are dangerous to themselves and to others.
They treat sex as a mood-altering experience, rather like drugs. I may have
hurt my partners’ feelings, ignored my own, put sex over love and sometimes
even food. Who didn’t?
"I still like sex, but only with my wife now. I didn’t have the need
to have a family, and all of a sudden I met her, and then I did. It was pretty
much like that, very weird. But it doesn’t have to make sense. If you
were eating an orange and were asked to explain why you like it, you
couldn’t, even if you broke down the chemical components. In the end,
you know it’s true and it doesn’t have to make sense to anyone
else."
Weird, I say. Now I understand. "My wife is an orange, reveals sex addict
Mulder" should send fans into raptures. "Exactly. That’s your headline."
But behind the laughter is the fear that fame is not only a fickle companion,
but a dangerous one. "Everyone has pressure. If my marriage fails, or
relationships have broken up in the past, it’s my fault - not my
job’s. The only difference is it’s a lot easier to work out problems
in private.
"When people are yacking about you, it’s horrible. OK, I have the
advantages, so I have to deal with the disadvantages, but probably the most
selfish thing a person can do to a child, born or unborn, is to get your
stupid self famous. If the child I don’t yet have - although I’d
like to have -comes to me at 18 saying, ‘how could you have done that
to me?’ I’ll reply, ‘I don’t understand. In my defence
I must say I was doing my job, and fame happened.’ I still have a hunger
to do everything. A poet, John Berryman, has this great line: ‘When
I read the newspapers I'm jealous of everyone, even the corpses.’ I’m
not jealous, but I want to live everyone’s lives."
Maybe, with his cerebral background, he despised the schlock of popular
entertainment. "Quite the opposite. Because I actually went to those schools
with the best and the brightest, I’m not so impressed with them. In
a way it released me and freed me to acknowledge there are so many different
kinds of intelligence, and academics don’t necessarily have any common
sense. Some highly educated people are complete fools, and the reverse applies.
There are idiots in Hollywood who are geniuses at telling a story."
Nevertheless, he shares with his hero Marlon Brando a slight suspicion of
self-loathing; that acting is not a proper job. "Cary Grant was the same.
A lot of people, whatever their work, think it’s not quite right. If
you want to be specific about acting, it has to do with prostitution. I’m
getting money in return for bringing personal things that maybe shouldn’t
be displayed to the market place. In most cases it trivial, but in the best
scenarios you are performing an interesting service.
"We have such a fragmented world with so many cultures. In ancient Greece
they had only one Homer who spoke the Odyssey, and that was their journey,
which they understood. It’s pretentious to think we’re as talented
as Homer, but we have to try to fulfil the same function - provide a mythical
quest and journey for viewers." Perhaps sensing he is verging on the pretentious,
he proclaims, "Because it’s worldwide, we’re bigger than Homer.
Not bigger than Homer Simpson though."
He ruminates once more. "I feel fine about my function in The X Files,
but fans throw adulation at Mulder and it kind of bounces off and sticks
to me. We probably all want that in the abstract, but when you experience
it, it feels aggressive and scary, and tunes you into some kind of primal
fear of a lynch mob, even if they’re adoring you. It’s common sense
to realise that human nature means they adore you today, but they’ll
erect the scaffold tomorrow."
