David Duchovny leaves the dour Fox Mulder behind for Ivan Reitman's new comedy
By BRUCE KIRKLAND

HOLLYWOOD -- Popular myth has it that David Duchovny is a lot like his X-Files character, the dour and relentlessly dedicated Fox Mulder, a rogue FBI agent.

Wrong. So wrong. He's a funny guy. An hilariously funny guy with a quick wit and a penchant for intelligent sarcasm honed in his studies at Princeton. Canadian comedy filmmaker Ivan Reitman knew that already, having cast Duchovny in a 1992 romp he produced, the doggone hit movie Beethoven.

"When I met him, hey," Reitman says now of their first encounter, "he's a good-looking guy, real smart and real funny, a very rare actual combination. Then he got hired on The X-Files and didn't smile for eight years."

Duchovny, now 40, smiles a lot in the alien-busting monster movie Evolution, a potential summer blockbuster opening Friday. He even moons the audience, pushing his bare bottom up against the window of a jeep to show his disrespect for a government guy. Unlike Halle Berry's bare breast show in Swordfish, there are no rumours Duchnovny got a bonus for this.

In the movie, Duchovny also cracks wise and gets to play the goofy hero with cohorts Julianne Moore, Orlando Jones and Seann William Scott in the same way Bill Murray and the gang went after those supernatural sprites in Ghostbusters.

Yet Duchovny initially balked at taking a script -- even a comedy script -- that revolves around an alien invasion. It was too close for comfort: "Oh, cruel joke!" he remembers exclaiming when the aliens showed up 20 pages into Reitman's early script. "Now I can't do it. It's horrible! Why?"

The problem is Fox Mulder, says Duchovny. The reason for his caution is simple: "Because Mulder made such a deep impression," Duchovny says. "It's such a successful show, a culturally pervasive show. People refer to The X-Files show all the time. This is just what I have to get out from under.

"So I think that, for the rest of my life, people are going to say: 'I didn't know you were funny!' When I first thought, 'How do I get away from being associated with The X-Files?' I reallized there is no strategy. But I'm just thankful that I'm trying to run away from a success rather than a failure. Because you've got to run away from both of them."

Obviously, because he is in Evolution, Duchovny got over his fear of fighting aliens. It helped that he realized Reitman was not a fan of The X-Files and didn't watch it much, if at all.

"He didn't care about me being with aliens," says Duchovny in appreciation. "He wasn't going for that kind of baggage that I was bringing. He wasn't going to play off it or against it or whatever. So I just decided that the kind of acting that I would do in this movie would be so different from any acting I've done that the aliens would just be a superficial coincidence."

Duchovny does get huge laughs delivering one line about 'knowing' those government guys who are causing our band of heroes some trouble. It was not intentional, Duchovny says, because that would be self-referencing, a style he thinks is cheap.

"But, because it arose spontaneously and because we'll take a laugh wherever we can get it, it's okay."

As for the mooning scene, he did it first as a practical joke: "That was just a spur of the moment thing." Reitman roared and made him do it several more times for a better take, although he wavered later during editing, thinking it might be in poor taste or, at best, inappropriate.

After an early test screening in Albuquerque, however, Reitman phoned Duchovny to report: "People really get on board after you whip your ass out," Duchovny says with a laugh now. "So I'm happy to be of service!"

David Duchovny wants to set the record straight about Vancouver.
Despite media reports, he does not hate the Canadian city where The X-Files was filmed.

"You know," Duchovny says, "contrary to popular belief, I loved working in Vancouver. I loved the city of Vancouver. I loved the rain. I loved all those things I'm not supposed to love. But I got married (in 1997 to actress Tea Leoni) and I started having a life in addition to my professional life."

So he agitated to get The X-Files shooting moved from Vancouver to Los Angeles, where he and his family are based. Duchovny has since left the series. And he has no intention of ever returning. "I'm not going back, no!"

One joking reason is that he thinks his character Fox Mulder is "a real ass" for abandoning agent Scully when she is left pregnant with a child, which may or may not be Fox's baby. He claims he doesn't know whose kid it is supposed to be.

Seriously now, he says: "The only real reason I don't want to come back is that it's time. Eight years, it's time. It's like when you have a stomach ache. It's not rational. One day you're there and it's time."

Yet he would agree to another X-Files movie, if it's offered after all the acrimony generated by his departure from the series and his lawsuit over a cut of the on-going profits.

"Yeah, I would enjoy (it) because I'll miss the character and I'll miss the people and I'll miss the show. So, in two or three years, if another X-Files movie came along, I'd be really happy."

Article courtesy of canoe.com.