21st Century Fox
by Jenny Cooney Carrillo

David Duchovny has finally dumped The X-Files for a movie career, beginning with Ivan Reitman's Evolution. Jenny Cooney Carrillo talks to the veteran alien-buster and discovers why he's over the moon (in more ways than one!) about life after Fox Mulder…

David Duchovny has been the star of The X-Files for the past eight years, but lately he has made no secret of the fact he wanted to get out. Last season, he returned for limited appearances in half the episodes and it looks unlikely he'll return next season. So it's more than a little ironic that his film career away from The X-Files gets a boost with the new Ivan (Ghostbusters) Reitman-directed comedy Evolution about - you guessed it - aliens invading Earth!

Starring opposite Julianne Moore, Seann William Scott and Orlando Jones, Duchovny plays a small-town college professor with a science background who stumbles on to the beginnings of an alien invasion after he shows up to investigate a local comet landing.

What was the biggest challenge about making Evolution for you?
The exact challenge that Ivan Reitman had in holding the movie together was that in this kind of movie you have to have reality. He created Ghostbusters and the genre of films that followed that and knows that is has to be a good enough story that you're paying attention, yet it's primarily a comedy. The problem arises when the reality weights down the comedy and the comedy makes the reality unrealistic, so how do you balance the two? It was the same for me as an actor. I had to make the reality real and yet it's a comedy, so I have to be funny. There are times I have to be silly and goofy and [in] a movie like this is deceptively simple. When it works, it looks like it was easy and hopefully it does but, in fact, it's a difficult balance that you are trying to create.

How is Ivan Reitman as a director?
I think he's a fan. He loves comedy. He loves to laugh. He is a fan of 'funny', so in that sense he is very secure in his judgment of what is funny, what is completely right and what works. He is very disciplined in that way and yet, because he's a fan, he also wants you to bring what you do. He knows what he can do and he wants you to bring something extra so you feel free to add to what he's doing. He is philosophical when he tries to explain what he was doing, but in the moment he can just point and say "that was or wasn't funny." People laugh or they don't. It's the only criteria for comedy.

You have been described as having a great sense of humour and you certainly show it in this film. Where did your comedy sensibilities come from and how have they helped you to deal with Hollywood?
I don't think of my sense of humour as something that exists apart from me. It's a part of who I am. I think that everyone is the sum of their attributes, so I never single it out and wonder where it's from. My father thinks he's funny so I probably get that from him. I think I'm funny just like he thinks he's funny. My brother thinks he's funny. That would be the family trait: we all think we're funny (laughing). Whether or not we are funny is a different story.

On Hollywood, the only sane reaction sometimes is just to laugh or see the absurdity. I don't see Hollywood as being different from the rest of the world. It's a business. The business of Hollywood is like any other business and they're all egocentric and screwed up. As for myself, I have no sense of humour about myself. It's all very serious when it comes to me (laughing).

I heard you were quite the practical joker on the set. Was there any payback from you co-stars?
Not yet. I'm on the lookout. I started to lock my trailer when I went to work because I knew Seann was hanging around trying to get me back. Orlando hasn't gotten me back yet, but I think revenge is a dish best served cold. I think they will get me back at some point when I'm least expecting it.

Obviously everybody will be talking about your 'mooning' scene. Was that spontaneous and how nervous were you to show off your butt to the cast and crew?
I was shy about the front really. I wasn't worried that I was mooning so I wasn't concerned about showing my ass. But I was concerned with keeping things up in the front covered. I was more concerned with the sun than the moon, so to speak.

Does this mean you've had experience with mooning?
Yeah, well, I was on the basketball team and we used to travel great distances on the weekends to go play and we'd have long bus rides back on those big yellow buses. A lot of times we'd get caught in traffic and we would just plaster five asses across the back window. Some poor woman who was stuck in traffic would have to spend an hour looking at these asses steaming up the window.

If you look at the box office right now most of the successful movies are full of computer-animated characters. Do you worry about these characters taking over from the actors?
I think that computer animation can help in some respects by adding to the basic storytelling or film, but they have to be in service to the story. I don't think they will computer generate actors. I don't know. Maybe they will. I don't think I can really answer that, but it's a good question.

What is your relationship to science and SF today?
Science is great. I wasn't very good at science but I always found science to be very inspiring. I used to try to read Scientific American but it was too difficult for me. I couldn't even get through that Stephen Hawking book [A Brief History of Time]. It was supposed to be for idiots, but I guess I'm even beneath that level. As for science fiction, I am not a big fan. I don't really read it or watch it.

How do your feel looking back on The X-Files now that you are not involved with the show?
The best thing now is that my time is my own. I feel liberated and I can do whatever I want without having to spend 10 months of the year doing the show. The liberation is not from the character or the show or the people, just the time. It was really great, however, to have the response we did on the last show. I mean, it makes sense that so many people tuned in to see Mulder back on, because that's the classic show, how it all started. I would like to say that I'm irreplaceable or Gillian [Anderson]'s irreplaceable or Chris [Carter] is irreplaceable but the fact is once you set up a show like this, with all the paranormal experiences and whatever, the frame is so great that you can replace anybody. We are all replaceable. The show is not the same without me or Gillian or Chris, but it's a show and it's a show that people will probably watch.

There has been talk that you would be interested in doing a sequel to The X-Files movie. Is that true?
Yeah, I'd be open to that, depending on the script. I don't hate the show - I'll miss it. I just needed a break and I need to do other things. But I'd love to do Mulder for a little while and a film would be perfect.

How do you feel about trying to make the transition from television to the big screen?
For me, what I consider a convincing portrayal is not tied to the box office. I'm very proud of Return to Me. I thought that was a great, beautiful little film. The X-Files movie, I guess, doesn't count. I haven't had time to do many other projects due to the demands of the show. I don't think I've lost appeal since leaving the show. I was talented before I got The X-Files and I didn't leave my talents when I left the show. There will be hits and misses for me but I'm hopeful my career will carry on.

The X-Files was successful in large part because it broke new ground. Do you think your movies need to do the same thing?
I am not so sure that breaking new ground makes for a successful movie. I've only been at it a few times in the last few years, so you're stuck with your decisions. You can only forecast kind of vaguely what you think a movie is going to be. Unless you write it, direct it and act in it, you can't control the outcome. I'm proud of the work I've done in those movies - whether or not they change the cultural landscape…

You can't bet on a show like The X-Files. It just happens. I can't think of a movie that changed the cultural landscape in the last 10 years, so it may be the kind of thing that comes once in a lifetime. So I am more concerned with doing movies that interest me and entertain me and not so much worry about going to change the landscape.

What is your fondest memory of your time on The X-Files?
Oh, there's many. Probably the beginning… In the beginning we didn't know so much what we were doing and the show wasn't a hit and we were just working as hard as we could to make it as good as it could be. I have fond memories of collaboration at that time. We were all just involved in trying to figure out what it was, what the show was and how to make it great. That was everybody's life at that point and when things become popular and successful, people start to go away and have other interests. But in the beginning, we were really all tight and trying to make something good.

Did you enjoy filming in Canada and what do you miss most about it?
I miss Vancouver often. Contrary to popular belief, I miss Canada. I miss the weather, the rain. I like the rain. I miss how green it is and how clean it is and how safe it is. Vancouver is a really livable city and I miss friends that I made up there and restaurants where I used to eat. I miss everything about it really. I had a great time up in Vancouver.

After all those years you must have thought about aliens. How do you think they would appear?
I think of them as us, only different. I never really thought about their shape or their form so much, but that's one of the great things about this movie - you get to create this whole other evolutionary scale of a life, from single cell organisms all the way to monkeys to that big amoeba at the end of the film. I find that to be an imaginative part of this movie and really interesting. I never really thought about it on my own. I guess I figured he would look like E. T.

Do you foresee making a movie in the future with you wife, Jurassic Park III star Téa Leoni?
I don't know. It would have to be a perfect kind of situation because, on the one hand, it would be great to have the schedule where you get to go to work with your wife and you don't have to be apart and all that, but on the other hand there seems to be some kind of weird taboo about actual couples doing movies. There's like a lack of chemistry that seems to happen sometimes, which I don't know exactly where that comes from. Maybe it's because acting is about lying and maybe people get uptight lying in front of the people that they're most honest with. I can't explain why it happens but it does seem to happen. Also, an audience doesn't seem to be as interested either. They'd rather see two strangers making love (laughs).

Your parents were divorced. Do you think that's why you waited so long to marry and start a family?
I think divorce affects everyone in a fundamental way. I couldn't say how it affected me. I wouldn't know how, but it changes your life and you become a different person. I became the person I am and I can't imagine how things would have worked out, how I would be, if things had gone differently. As far as waiting to get married, I don't think it really went into my decision to wait. I just wasn't ready for some reason. I wasn't consciously going around thinking I was going to wait. It just happened that way.

Do you worry about whether you're a good father?
I think any parent worries about that and I think, I'm going to make mistakes, I just try to minimise them. If I don't make certain mistakes, I'd make other mistakes. You make mistakes as a parent, as a person, so you just hope they'll forgive [you]. You often react to what your parents did and sometimes go too far in the other direction with your own kids. So you make different mistakes than your parents did. It's all so instinctual that you can't plan for any of it, really. It just happens.

Do you have anything planned for later in the year?
No. Like I've said, I wanted to take a breath, because I feel like I've been working straight for eight years. Eight years of the television show with four movies in between. Four leads in movies in between is a lot of work, so I want to catch my breath and figure out what I want to do rather than just do, do, do.

Source: GADDArchives.com (you can link to this article)