June 2001

K/B: Time to bring our next guest onto the Kevin & Bean Show this morning. He just successfully wrapped up 8 seasons playing Fox Mulder on the XFiles. He's in a brand new film opening today called Evolution that apparently is very, very funny. One of our favorites, Dave Duchovny!

K/B: Good Morning David, How are you?

DD: Good Morning Kevin, Good Morning Bean

K/B: Great to talk to you. You know we were just talking about the Lakers and Philly's game tonight, and uh… and it occurred to me that you are the Knick's fan, right?

DD: I… well, actually I'm pulling for the Laker's a little bit now.

K/B: How come?

DD: Because I'm a frontrunner…

(Laughing)

K/B: You like to pick the favorite.

DD: Yeah. Well, whatever city I'm in. You know. I've been in LA. It's time to acknowledge that I've been in LA for over 10 years now.

K/B: (Laughing). Yeah, you are right. We had your co-star from Evolution, Orlando Jones in a couple of days ago. That guy's a funny guy

DD: Could you get him out of there?

K/B: Well, it was difficult.

DD: He loves the mic

K/B: He keeps talking doesn't he. He was telling us how much he enjoyed playing basketball with you in the downtime making Evolution, too. He said "David is good, but he's no brother". (All Laughing) Orlando told us that he had the weight of the whole race on his shoulders.

DD: When he was in Arizona, he did.

K/B: He couldn't let you beat him

DD: No. In Arizona he was the only black man on the court.

K/B: He was the only black man in the state, Dave.

DD: It's about that way. (all laughing) Well, Orlando is a good ball player, but he's not white man.

K/B: That's right. That's what I'm talking about. Now, this Evolution looks very funny.

DD: It's hysterically funny. It's like what Ghostbusters was 20 years ago. You know. It's a believable science fiction story with that kind of comedy.

K/B: Were you a little afraid to get involved with a project like this after being…

DD: Eh, I kind of backed into it. Cause, uh.. I wanted to work with Ivan Reitman who directed it.

K/B: Right.

DD: He called me up and said he wanted to work with me. And he basically just handed me this script and said let's do this one. And I said, fantastic. That's not usually the way life works where what you want to do gets handed to you.

K/B: Right, No kidding. but were you a little worried about the fact…

DD: No, I hadn't read it. So, I go home and I read the first scene and this guy's girlfriend breaks up with him. It's funny. I'm that guy. Ok. This is cool.

K/B: Right

DD: And then page 11, and then the aliens land.

K/B: Oh no!! (All Laughing) I wondered if maybe you were going to shy away from it for that reason

DD: Well, I thought about it. But what I wanted to do was just a kind of different… I wanted to do a comedic performance. Something different from what I've been doing. In the end, I didn't care about the subject matter, but just the kind of thing I would be able to do.

K/B: Chance to be funny. Now, you play a college community professor?

DD:Yeah.

K/B: Is that right?

DD: Community college professor.

K/B: That's a better way of saying. Probably the preferred way of saying it.

DD: Either one is good. (laughing)

K/B: It's fun to be in summer blockbuster. These kinds of movies are a lot of fun for actors to do because they are light hearted.

DD: Yeah, they are different. They have their own kind of tensions that come along with them. Because, like if you are doing a comedy, it's got to be funny. No one ever walks out of comedy and goes "you know, I really liked the costumes". You laugh or you don't. But if you don't laugh, it's no good. So, hopefully, people will come out of this laughing.

K/B: Yeah, swing and a miss if you don't.

K/B: Did you enjoy working with Ivan after the experience?

DD: I did. Ivan had a real specific vision of what is funny to him. He doesn't think.. he's never sitting there going "hmmmm maybe that is funny". It's either yes or no with Ivan.

K/B: Did you ever disagree with him-- you thought it was funny, he didn't?

DD: Yeah. Yeah, we disagreed, but he's the director

K/B: Oh, he won.

(all laughing)

K/B: Dave, I'm desperately in love with Julianne Moore. She is just one of the most beautiful women on the planet.

DD: You have a thing for redheads? Because weren't you desperately in love with Gillian

K/B: Yeah. Yeah, he was. Oh, she's on the list.

DD: Is it the redhead thing?

K/B: I don't know. I think what it is.. honestly, they are both obviously very attractive women, but they come across as being very smart and funny. And that's a hard combination to beat. But.. uh… now Julianne has not done this sort of broad comedy before that I'm aware of.

DD: No. No, that's why she wanted to do the movie. She wanted to do the movie for similar reasons as I. She wanted to try to do something completely different. So, we bonded in our terror.

K/B: It's almost like everybody who has done drama at this point is trying to figure out a way to do comedy and everbody's vying for the same movie.

DD: Yeah, actors are just that way. They want to try different things. It's not necessarily doing the same thing over and over again just because you are good at it. You get to feel trapped after a while.

K/B: Right.

DD: You also kind of like the shared terror of maybe failing at what you don't really know how to do.

K/B: Yeah. At this point Dave, you want to make sure that you aren't the next David Caruso. You don't want to leave a big hit tv show and then not have it work out for you.

DD: This is how I look at it. I worked before the Xfiles, and I figure I'll work after it. And it was a great job for 8 years and it's a fantastic show. But there are no guarantees and at some point you have to move on.

K/B: The only question I had for you about the Xfiles is if there is another movie, would you do that?

DD: Oh, absolutely!

K/B: Do you think it will be hard if Robert Patrick works… I mean… are you almost… how do I ask this… are you almost happy that he didn't stoke the fire again and that the Xfiles didn't take off again because then it would be harder for you to come back and do the movies.

DD: No. I didn't really concern myself with that. To ask Robert to bring the show back to its popularity it once had-- that's impossible. I wasn't able to do it, either. That's just not going to happen. I think Robert did a great job. It just proves that the show is a great frame. It's a great show. It's a great structure. And you can pretty much, as long as you are telling great stories,…

K/B: You can put carrot top in there

DD: Well, I don't know about that. (all laughing)

K/B: I don't know that it's THAT great of a frame.(all laughing)

K/B: How tough was the last day? And was the last scene we saw on the season finale between you and Scully, was that the last thing you shot?

DD: No. That wasn't the last day. I think it was the second to last day. But that was basically the last day because on the real last day, all I was doing was running and jumping and I was ActionMulder. (all laughing) I had to save Skinner and things like that. So, it was my last acting day, and the last scene of that day was with Gillian.

K/B: So, it's tough like that.

DD: Was it tough? Yeah, it was very tough. Especially it was the big mystery scene. We weren't allowed to get it until about 2 hours before it.

K/B: Is that right? They wouldn't even give you the scene?

DD: I don't know. Could have been that they were just covering for the fact that they hadn't written it yet. (all laughing). It was like Chris Carter showed up on the set with a briefcase handcuffed to his hand. (all laughing).

K/B: I just can't wait until next season when they turn the baby over and it has a tail or something, that's what is going to be awesome.

DD: Well, I just can't believe that Mulder is going to be a deadbeat dad.

K/B: Hey, I saw you on Rosie the other day, when she unfortunately, introduced you as the cutie patootie David Duchovny, but..

DD: Ah, you know when you are waiting in the wings at that point, you don't really hear.

K/B: That's embarrassing!

K/B: You said a very funny thing though. You said that all these years nothing scared Mulder all these years of fighting the world and all of a sudden, he knocks a chic up and he's out of there.

DD: Well, uh.. that's realism then.

K/B: Now, I want to ask you one more thing that you talked about on Rosie O'Donnell show. I believe that you lied to the American public this week on national television, and I'm going to call you on it.

DD: There's a good chance of that…

K/B: You were on, and she brought up your appearance on the celebrity edition of WWTBAM a couple of months ago, right? I don’t even know what happened. I guess you missed a question, or you didn't go as far as you liked, and you had to go home.

DD: Go home crying.

K/B: Right. You said on her show that you didn't remember what the question was. And the reason I want to call you on this is because I was a life line for Ray Romano last year.

DD: No, I remember what the question was

K/B: You told her that you didn't remember. That you blocked it out because it was too painful.

DD: Uh…

K/B: LIAR!

DD: Um… Maybe I was just panicking because I was on television.

K/B: And you forgot for a second.

DD: But if you watched the Regis show, we had a big dispute over the question.

K/B: I just know that when you miss it on tv like I did, it will haunt me to my grave. It will be the last thing in my head that I was the guy who let America down. You don't forget something like that.

DD: No. Not at all. In fact, I'm Mr. Sour Grapes. On Regis, I claimed that my question was poorly punctuated. They got so panicked that they actually called the writer of Witness. It was the last line of the movie that I missed on Millionnaire.

K/B: Let me ask you my question Dave, because you are a smart… uh.. Ivy League graduate. Let's see if you knew the answer to the question that I blew. What is the capital of the Republic of Georgia.

DD: Uh…

K/B: oh wait, you got four answers though. Ok. Right. Here is the tape for you to listen to (playing tape of Ray asking him the question)

DD: (laughing) it's coming from a tape over a phone line… uh… I'm going to say.. uh…Ray, you're screwed.

K/B: That's what I said!

DD: I'm going to say the first one.

K/B: Actually, the answer was Tblisi. I didn't know it either. That's a tough one but it makes you feel better because if David Duchovny doesn't know it, I do feel better about myself.

DD: Well, we all know that Geography is the most important subject you learn.

K/B: Right (laughing) Dave, we love having you on. We want to have you in the studio the next time you are in town.

DD: I.. yeah, it's been a while since I've been in there and I remember how tall you guys were.

K/B: Seann William Scott, Julianne Moore, Orlando Jones, Dave Duchovny are in Evolution. It opens today. And we would say, definitely, it's directed by Ivan Reitman and we would say definitely go see it. Looks like a great movie.

DD: It's the only movie out there right now that is a party in the theater.

K/B: Give your, our best to your wife, too because she's pretty cha cha

DD: She came in (?) when you were asking me that question about the capital of Georgia

K/B: (laughing) No wonder you were distracted. I forgive you then.

(All laughing)

K/B: Thank you, David.

DD: Thank you. Bye.

Transcript courtesy of "C".