Birmingham Post, June 11, 2004


Copyright 2004 Midland Independent Newspapers plc
Birmingham Post

June 11, 2004, Friday

SECTION: First Edition; FEATURES; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 782 words

HEADLINE: CULTURE: DUCHOVNY STILL HAS THAT VITAL X FACTOR;


BYLINE: ALISON JONES

BODY:
Every  good  comedy needs a straight man. David  Duchovny  pulls
double duty in Connie and Carla. Not only is his naive confusion
the  subject  of  gentle mockery, he is also the  only  one  not
involved in any cross dressing in this showtune-laced story of a
couple of female lounge singers pretending to be drag queens.

But  if  he is honest, the former star of the X Files was rather
disappointed to miss out on being Arthur playing Martha.

Fans of David Lynch's surreal TV drama Twin Peaks will recall he
got  his  big  break  through his portrayal  of  a  transvestite
detective called Denis/Denise.

'I  was kind of pathetic in that I told everybody on set that  I
had done it before,' David laughs.

'I was probably obnoxious. I even brought in the tape and played
it in my trailer just to show that I too could shave my legs for
money.'

Just like his more famous alter ego Fox Mulder, David has a  dry
sense  of humour, so arid in fact that it is difficult  to  know
when he is joking and when he is laughing at his own folly.

'I  missed it because it was a lot of fun to do, but the fact is
my character has to be the eyes of the audience in a way so they
didn't  let me dress up. And thank God they didn't let me  sing.
Once I sing, everybody else leaves.'

Duchovny accepted the role of Jeff -the estranged brother of one
of the drag queens whom Connie (Nia Vardalos) falls for -because
he wanted to do a traditional comedy. He felt that modern humour
was stuck in too much of a gross-out rut.

'I  thought  Nia's  voice was at once really old-fashioned,  yet
really  sharp and modern and I just wanted to be part  of  that.
'The  more  realistic it can be the funnier  it  is.  That's  my
general  rule of comedy, When the person is trying  to  maintain
their   humanity,  their  dignity,  in  the  face   of   comedic
circumstance, to me that's funny.'

Nor  was  he  worried about what this, given this is the  second
time  he has appeared in a role involving transvestites and that
he  was also nominated for an Emmy for playing a chat show guest
with a crush on the host, Larry Sanders, might lead audiences to
conclude  about his own sexuality. Although he is  married  with
two  children, he is aware gossips are prone to make assumptions
based  on the flimsiest evidence, but he just laughs off rumours
that he might be gay 'I don't pass any judgment at all on sexual
orientation.  I  couldn't care less. As  long  as  you  are  not
hurting anyone you should be able to stick it anywhere you want.

'But  it's such a fertile area for comedy because people are  so
uptight  about  these  things, especially  if  you  come  at  it
straight -comedically speaking.'

His wife is actress Tea Leoni, who starred in Bad Boys with Will
Smith  and  Deep Impact. The two met when they were just  making
the publicity rounds of Hollywood, trying to get their faces and
names known.

'My  manager was convinced I should get on a talk show, that  it
would  help my career. She said 'go on theTonight show'. I  went
to have lunch with the producers, who see if you're interesting.
I thought that was barbaric, I thought I was prostituting myself
with my life, which is worse than acting.

'When  I  got there, there was a woman who's doing it  the  same
time  as me. So it's not even a lunch that I get to have  alone,
prostituting myself, but I had to prostitute myself in front  of
a stranger who's prostituting herself to them.

'The woman is Tea Leoni. I'd never met her or heard of her,  she
starts  to  be charming and completely dominates the lunch  -she
knew  everything about everything, the dishes, who made them.  I
was completely nothing, and I became more and more dour and less
interesting. So she got on the show and I didn't. Every  time  I
heard  her  name,  I'd go, 'Oh, that big mouth know-it-all'.  Of
course I end up marrying her!'

He  has come to appreciate her talents as an actress as much  as
he admired her skills as a raconteur.

He  cast her in the recently completed Women's House of  D,  his
feature  film debut as a writer/director. David also appears  in
it, along with Robin Williams and Erykah Badu. Though he clearly
enjoys  this side of filmmaking -he also wrote and directed  two
episodes of The X-Files -he is not about to abandon acting.

In  fact future plans include at least one more go round as  the
alien  hunting  agent Fox Mulder in a second X  Files  movie  'I
think  we're all on the same page. Gillian Anderson wants to  do
it,  I  want to do it, Chris Carter, who would write and  mainly
produce,  wants  to do it, and I believe Twentieth  Century  Fox
wants to do it. So it will happen, just a matter of when -I hope
it  happens  within the next year, it would be fun to  get  back
into it.'