The Sunday Herald, June 10, 2004 Copyright 2004 Scottish Media Newspapers Limited Evening Times (Glasgow) June 10, 2004 SECTION: Pg. 12 LENGTH: 836 words HEADLINE: PLAYING IT STRAIGHT;CAMP COMEDY IT MAY BE BUT DAVID DUCHOVNY IS DEFINITELY ONE OF THE BOYS BYLINE: Andy Dougan BODY: David Duchovny is momentarily taken aback. His pleasant smile is just a little more fixed as he weighs up an idea that hasn't crossed his mind before. I have just suggested that in his new film Connie and Carla he may appear to be a financial analyst called Jeff, but he's actually Marilyn Monroe. The film is heavily influenced by Some Like it Hot, in which murder witnesses Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis drag up to join a ladies' jazz band and fall for Monroe as the sultry chanteuse Sugar Kane. In Connie and Carla, Nia Vardalos and Toni Collette are murder witnesses who hide out in a drag revue. They are women playing men playing women and Duchovny is the hunk that Vardalos falls for. Therefore his is the Marilyn role. "You're right," he smiles. ''I hadn't thought about that before. But I am the innocent abroad in this strange world. I'm sort of the eyes and ears of the audience." Duchovny's character is trying to re-establish a relationship with his drag queen brother who has become one of Vardalos's new best friends. That means he doesn't get to wear a frock, something he has done before with some distinction in the cult TV series Twin Peaks. It was a loss he learned to live with. "I didn't want to make anyone else insecure," he says dryly. "I missed it," he says only half-joking, "because it was a lot of fun to do that part, but the fact is, my character has to be the eyes of the audience. If I join in too easily in the fun of all that, it would ruin the trust that you build up throughout the film - so they didn't let me dress up." The 43-year-old actor also allows that he wasn't allowed to sing either for which, he insists, we should all be grateful. "I sing in private," he says. "It has to be private because once I sing everybody else leaves." Duchovny is relaxing in a London hotel suite at the end of a day of interviews and publicity chores for Connie and Carla, which opens in Glasgow tomorrow. Settling into a sofa, he is in an expansive mood. An international name on the back of The X-Files, he hasn't been seen much on screen lately. It's almost three years since his last starring role, in the disappointing Evolution, and since then he has only done a cameo in Zoolander and a small role in Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal. Not that he needs to work. Seven series of The X-Files have left him financially secure - "I'm fixed for life" he once, perhaps incautiously, remarked - but that doesn't mean he's going to sit back and do nothing. "I'm not sure how I choose what to do," he says giving it some thought. "A show like The X-Files does give you some security but you can miss out on a lot too." HE stresses however that films such as Connie and Carla should not be seen as any attempt to draw a line under Fox Mulder. "It's not for me to draw," he says reasonably. "I drew that line when the show ended. It was eight or nine great years of my life, and now there are other things I want to do. "I also recognise that it's not in the past in terms of the way people react to me," he concedes. As he points out, if you are playing Fox Mulder for all those years then there's a lot of work that's not going to come your way. Even so he admits that he might actually be a bit too keen to work sometimes. "My wife can find a reason to turn down almost anything. I, on the other hand, can find a reason to say yes to almost anything," he smiles. Certainly for the past two years David Duchovny hasn't been doing much in the way of bringing in a pay cheque, wrapped up, as he has been, in his directorial debut, The House of D. The film came about by accident, he explains. He had wanted to direct something else and while that was going through development he began writing another film that turned out to be The House of D. "It was uncanny," he recalls. "It just came out almost fully formed, I wrote it in no time at all." The film is set in the 70s and is the story of the relationship between a young boy, Tommy, and his best friend, a 40-year-old mentally challenged school janitor played by Robin Williams. As well as writing and directing Duchovny also appears in the film as the adult Tommy. The House of D screened to warm praise at last month's TriBeCa film festival in New York and it is now heading for the Toronto Film Festival as a platform for a US release. The film has been picked up by Lion's Gate, one of America's leading indie distributors, which pleases Duchovny. And for all those X-Files fans, Duchovny has revealed that the wheels are spinning on a second X-Files film. He's keen, co-star Gillian Anderson is keen, and writer-producer Chris Carter is also keen. "What we are looking to do is a stand-alone story with a third cast member. If we get another star to do that, one who can bring something with them, we can take the story in a whole new direction." lConnie and Carla (12A) opens in Glasgow tomorrow. GRAPHIC: WHAT A DRAG: a scene from the new film, left and below, with Gillian Anderson in The X-Files