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From 'The Sunday Mail'
Send in by Lucy
The laughs are out there
by PAUL FISCHER
10 June 2001
THE former Agent Mulder from TV's The X-Files has always been convinced that "the truth is out there". And it's the ultimate truth about the character that his alter ego, actor David Duchovny, is dying to learn.
"I'm as curious as any fan of the show how they're going to get me out of there, because I'm not there." Not even in a cameo, he insists: "I'd be surprised if I was on The X-Files at all next season."
Eight years have passed since Mulder first appeared on the small screen and Duchovny confirms it's all over for the character – despite a longing kiss he shared with Scully in the final episode of the eighth season, which is airing in Australia. (The ninth goes to air in the US later this year).
But he might consider "being open to the idea of being in a movie, but obviously I'd have to look at a script first".
There's more than a touch of irony in the fact that David Duchovny is back fighting aliens in his latest film, Evolution. He plays a community college science professor who finds himself eyeball-to-eyeball with oozing, dripping aliens that arrive via a meteor crash. It's intended to stir laughs rather than screams of terror.
So what is it with the former Agent Mulder and aliens?
"I really don't know," the actor smiles. What he does know is that he wanted "to do a broad comedy" and circumstances allowed him to get involved: "I was able to take a year off from The X-Files, pretty much to do a big comedy with (Ghostbusters director) Ivan Reitman."
There are key moments in the film in which one gains the distinct impression that the actor is poking fun at himself.
Though Evolution is a sci-fi comedy, Duchovny went out of his way to keep his performance real and not overplay the film's comic elements.
"I think this movie's deceptively simple, because the science fiction has to be real and the reality undercuts the comedy and the comedy undercuts the reality, so you have to constantly keep the reality and comedy in check."
It is also Hollywood moviemaking on a grand scale, full of elaborate special effects.
Duchovny says working on such a project was "nerve-racking, because you really do have to deliver yourself into the hands of the director, who is going to keep the tone right.
"There's a lot of trust involved. In a drama, you pretty much know how to keep it real, interesting and be true to my character; it's a drama, so people are either going to believe it or not.
"But in a comedy, if there are no laughs it doesn't work and if they don't laugh because you didn't do your job correctly, then you'd feel like an idiot, so it was terrifying.
"Doing comedy, I decided, is so exhausting, because you just never know how something is going to turn out."
It was The X-Files that put Duchovny on another whole level.
He was still a relative unknown prior to The X-Files, and remains as surprised as anyone that this singular television show not only became such a cult phenomenon, but changed his life.
"It's crazy when I think about it," he muses. "It's a defining event in my life, but one that I think I take for granted, like a car accident."
Duchovny never made a conscious decision to be an actor, but recalls just having backed into it.
He could well have become a teacher had he finished his doctorate in contemporary American literature.
"I would have loved to have done it but it's two or three years out of your life and the acting thing took over. I mean, I would have loved to have stopped time and devoted that time to writing this thesis, but I felt I didn't have it."
Another aspect of Duchovny's life that has changed is marriage (to actor Tea Leonie) and fatherhood, but he is not allowing either of these momentous events to change the way he chooses a project.
While his family is his first priority, when it comes to travelling the world promoting Evolution – a tour which takes in the Australian premiere in Sydney on Thursday – the family will not be joining him, "because it's going to be so quick and my daughter's only two, it's not like she would gain anything out of it except severe jet lag".
Evolution opens on July 12
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