HOLLYWOOD - The X-Files' agent Fox Mulder sits on a couch in the Mondrian
Hotel. He's clad in slick navy shirt and slim navy slacks, suspiciously hip
garb for the intrepid investigator of paranormal phenomena.
Wait. This can't be Mulder. He's smiling, laughing, totally unconcerned about
aliens, ghosts, vampires and government conspiracies.
"Mulder is a cynical innocent," says David Duchovny, who really isn't paranoid,
he just acts that way on TV. "He believes in little green men. He believes
in Santa Claus. He believes in everything. He's like a child."
Not that Duchovny is ungrateful for his four years of TV star status as Mulder
on Fox's cultishly popular X-Files. But he'd like new challenges, please.
That's why he took the role of a hapless, drug-addicted surgeon, Eugene Sands,
in Playing God, which opens Friday.
Duchovny, 37, also wouldn't mind seeing more of his bride, actress Téa Leoni,
star of NBC's The Naked Truth.
"This will be the last year I work in Vancouver," he vows. The X-Files shoots
in the British Columbia city 10 months a year. "I'm tired of it. Whatever
happens with the show will happen. It may move to L.A. or it will end, but
I'll be back here regardless."
Duchovny got involved with God in the early stages. "The reason I wanted
to do it was because it was an interesting character and an interesting story,"
Duchovny says. "I hope that still exists."
He concedes the movie veered from a character-driven film into what Duchovny
calls "this wild ride. But it's always better when someone takes the movie
away from you because you can blame them if it goes bad and take the credit
if it turns out well."
"Mulder is a cynical innocent. He believes
in little green men. He believes in Santa Claus. He believes in everything.
He's like a child."
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That's a joke. After a few minutes bantering with Duchovny, you realize that,
unlike his somber TV persona, he has a great sense of deadpan humor. Imagine
Richard Gere's good looks with Garry Shandling's wit.
Duchovny has some pretty funny one-liners in God. In a scene with
black-leather-clad co-star Timothy Hutton, he asks, "Are you gonna hurt me?"
Hutton responds, "Are you afraid?" Duchovny says, "I'm just trying to plan
my day."
Duchovny's character has been suspended from practicing medicine because
of drug addiction, and, by happenstance, he becomes surgeon for some stylish
but lethal L.A. gangsters. To research the role, he watched operations and
found true-life events that juice up the action.
"I had read this account of someone with a collapsed lung in an airplane.
The classic 'Is there a doctor in the house?' thing. This guy created a suction
with a plastic water bottle, a coat hanger and an oxygen hose."
Duchovny filmed God last year in L.A. on his two-month break from The X-Files.
This year, his "break" was filming the upcoming X-Files movie, Blackwood,
which was just like shooting the TV show. But longer. And slower.
"You're only challenging yourself in terms of stamina, which is not a very
exciting challenge for other people to watch," Duchovny says. "It's like,
'He acted 362 days this year!' I don't think you should act that much. You've
got to regenerate."
Born and raised in New York City, Duchovny didn't set out to become a thespian.
He earned a master's degree in English literature at Princeton. He was a
doctoral candidate at Yale studying modern authors such as Harold Bloom,
John Hollander and Geoffrey Hartman. He didn't finish his doctorate but,
at 27, started hanging out at the Yale drama school and performed in New
York coffeehouse plays. His first paying job was a 1987 Lowenbrau TV commercial.
Duchovny's celluloid career has been a slow burn. He appeared in Working
Girl ('88), The Rapture ('91), Julia Has Two Lovers ('91), Chaplin ('92)
and Kalifornia ('93). He played a transvestite (Dennis/ Denise) on ABC's
Twin Peaks in the early '90s and has long been the sexy narrator for Showtime's
Red Shoe Diaries.
"I have a career, and there's a lot about acting that's challenging and fun,"
he says. "But ultimately, I want to write."
Right now, he's trying to forget what he learned in school.
"One of the worst things you can do to a young writer is to make him read
lots of good writers. I think Auden said he felt lucky his first favorite
poet was Thomas Hardy, a great novelist but a mediocre poet. He said that
if it had been Shakespeare or Wordsworth, he would have thought, 'What's
the use? It's been done.' "
David Duchovny, who stars as a doctor with
Angelina Jolie in "Playing God," says he's always looking for challenges
and won't spend another year shooting "The X-Files" in Vancouver. "I'm tired
of it. Whatever happens with the show will happen. It may move to L.A. or
it will end, but I'll be back here" in L.A.
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Duchovny and Leoni recently bought their first house in L.A. He jokes that
the place "should be ready in 2003, when Téa gets done renovating it."
He seems eager for a home base. "Now that I'm married, it's hard to come
back and forth. It's only a 2 1/2-hour flight (between L.A. and Vancouver),
but if I die in an airplane crash, I'll be very angry."
Marriage agrees with him. "We've been married five, six months, and I like
the feeling a lot. It's like, this is my life, this is who I come home to,
this is who I tell the truth to. All those things are good."
He percolates with admiration for Leoni.
"She's gifted. I'm in awe of what she does because it's really physical,
almost athletic. She's one in a million, and the rest of us are working at
it."
Duchovny has also worked on figuring out why The X-Files is so popular, why
it has become a cultural reference.
"The show says there's more out there than meets the eye and you're not a
fool to believe," he says. "I think people still have a need for miracles.
Science keeps telling them there's no life on Mars, there's no God, nothing's
trailing Hale-Bopp, those people are just dead in their Nikes. But they want
to believe in something."
Will The X-Files flick, due out shortly after the TV show's finale next year,
finally solve five years of mysteries?
"Oh, yeah, we'll give answers," Duchovny insists. "For eight bucks, we'll
give answers.
"But it should be illegal," he adds with a chuckle. "It's got to be like
an antitrust violation. You shouldn't be able to have a culmination of a
free show that costs money. It's like, 'Hey, your first shot of heroin is
free, buddy. Next 500 are on you."
Will agents Sculley (Gillian Anderson) and Mulder get romantic in the movie?
"There's something very close to romance in the movie," he hedges.
There was much fan furor over Duchovny's scene in a sexy red Speedo swimsuit
a while back. Any nude scenes in the movie?
"I think you might see mya - -. We shot it, but I don't know if it will be
in the movie."
Duchovny's rear is seen, plausibly enough, peeking through the back of a
hospital gown.
"I told them if they wanted to show my a - -, let's shoot it early in the
show while I'm still working out," he says, totally deadpan.
That makes sense. Like fashion models refusing to pose in bathing suits after
lunch.
"You think that makes a difference? Kind of like a pillow in a pillowcase?"
Duchovny asks with feigned concern. "But I don't think the a - - responds
that quickly. 'I don't want to shoot my a - - today. I just had a big lunch.
It went right to my a - -.' "
