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• Bio on Mr. Duchovny
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Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome David Duchovny back to this program. The former "X-Files" star has written and directed his first feature film...a film he wrote in just 6 days. Is that a good thing?

David Duchovny: I don't know.

Duchovny: I don't think it's a good thing to advertise.

Tavis: Yeah, maybe I shouldn't be saying that.

Duchovny: Well, maybe you could say I rewrote it for 2 years after that.

Tavis: He wrote it in 6 days, rewrote it for 2 years after that. The movie is called "House of D." It opens in New York and L.A. on April 15th. The cast includes his talented wife...-his beautiful wife Tea Leoni, and Erykah Badu. Here now a scene from "House of D."

Warshaw: The dance was great. It's Pappass. He stole this bike, and he just keeps disappearing. I went to try and find him, and he's not coming home.

Bernadette: Well, what bike did he steal?

Warshaw: It's this bike that we were saving up for. After the dance, I took Melissa to the meat locker so we could be alone.

Bernadette: You left Pappass?

Warshaw: Yeah, 'cause he had work to do. I've been trying to catch him, and he won't go home, and he's gonna lose his job.

Bernadette: It's your fault!

Warshaw: What?

Bernadette: That's your buddy. He stole that bike for you. He knows you're going someplace he can't go.

Warshaw: I'm not going anywhere. Where am I going?

Bernadette: Well, not where you're going, but what you're becoming.

Warshaw: What am I becoming?

Bernadette: Something he can't. A man.

Tavis: David, nice to see you again.

Duchovny: Thanks for having me back.

Tavis: I was cracking up. We were looking at our calendar. You were here in our first season, almost a year to the day.

Duchovny: It feels like it.

Tavis: Yeah.

Duchovny: I have actually stayed here. You haven't seen me, but I've been here all year. I've been stalking you.

Tavis: Well, the good news is you came back a year later and I'm still here.

Duchovny: You're still here. Yes. We're both still here.

Tavis: Speaking of still being here, I read a piece the other day that...I hope I'm not springing anything on you. I read a piece the other day about the late night TV wars, and what networks are thinking about. It's an article, really, about ABC, and what they're going to do in the post-Ted Koppel world, because Mr. Koppel is leaving "Nightline" next year.

Duchovny: Right.

Tavis: And it was a lot of talk and conversation about how to make ABC's late night lineup work. And your name popped up in this article as a guy who's really, really funny, who's not in the late night game, but might be a great get.

Duchovny: I hadn't heard of that. I hadn't heard of that.

Tavis: Would you ever consider doing a talk show?

Duchovny: Um, you know, I think that you've got the perfect kind...well, I don't know. You're on...how many shows a year do you do?

Tavis: We do 5 days a week for...what do we do, Neal? How many weeks a year? 48? 45 weeks a year?

Duchovny: Yeah, I'm not interested in that.

Tavis: I got 45 weeks and a few weeks of reruns.

Duchovny: I think, you know, in a limited kind of a run it could be a lot of fun, but I...you know, there are just other things that I want to be doing that I couldn't commit the kind of time that you have to commit to this, you know.

Tavis: Yeah. It's a lot...it's a good time for me. But the point was that you're smart, you're funny, and if they're really trying to bring in a younger audience, you would kill in late night. But it's just too much work for you.

Duchovny: I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I gotta run.

Tavis: Got some work to do, huh? So, back to the joke...well...

Duchovny: "House of D?"

Tavis: It's really not a joke. "House of D." Yeah.

Duchovny: Well, I wrote it so quick. As you say, the 6 days. I didn't even finish the last word.

Duchovny: It became a letter.

Tavis: That's what I want to get to. So how do you write a movie in 6 days?

Duchovny: Uh, you...well, you know, it seems fast, but this is kind of based on places and certain aspects of my childhood, so it was things that I'd been saving up and thinking about for years and years, and it just...the way I seem to write is I seem to wait and wait and wait, and then it just kind of comes out, and so...

Tavis: The movie has autobiographical parts in it, but it's not your life.

Duchovny: No, it's not my life at all. My life is not as dramatic as this kid's life in the movie. It has...you know, the place is something I know from growing up, and the time is something that I know from growing up. There are certain similarities. Like I had a meat delivery job. I delivered meat, and I was a scholarship student to a church school. But other than that, you know, what happens is not autobiographical.

Tavis: Mm-hmm. Tell me again how...since you wrote this thing...how, then, you would describe what the movie is..."House of D."

Duchovny: Um, I would say it's kind of a classic coming of age story where, you know...I wanted to make kind of a gritty, seventies-style realistic movie, but to have underneath that this kind of fairytale aspect of fables and kids' stories kind of to inform it, so I have Robin Williams playing this kid's...a 12-year-old turning 13...-he plays this kid's best friend. He's mentally challenged.

Tavis: He's amazing.

Duchovny: Yeah, he's great in the film and, uh, he's kind of like the...the protector that we all have when we're kids that we can't take with us when we become men. And also, Anton's mother...played by Téa...also you can't take her with him on his journey to manhood. And Erykah Badu plays this prisoner up in the House of D...the women's house of detention, which was an actual prison in the village in New York City where women would hang out the bars and actually talk to people...strange people...you know, they're bored, they're in prison, so he can't take her with him, either. She becomes his mentor, but she's in prison, so he's got to go and individuate, he's got to become a man, he's gotta leave all these things behind, and to me that was a heartbreaking kind of universal story.

Tavis: Talk to me about the relationship between him and Erykah Badu.

Duchovny: Well, he and Pappass, the role played by Robin Williams, they bury their tips from their meat delivery job outside of this women's House of D, so they don't have to give all their money to Pappass' dad, who kind of extorts their tips out of 'em. So one day she just kind of calls down. She uses a mirror to see straight down on the side of the building, and she just calls out. She's bored; she wants to talk to anybody. She asks Anton to go and get her some weed at Washington Square Park. And he won't do that, but they start to talk. And he finds because of the certain anonymity of this relationship that he can tell her things that he can't tell anybody else. And she can mentor him in a way that he can't be mentored by this mentally handicapped man, or his mom, who's overprotective, and it becomes kind of this perfect...it's almost...it reminds me of like an internet relationship now, you know, because they're basically, you know, sending messages back and forth over space.

Tavis: Fascinatingly not unlike the Internet, you allow us to see a relationship develop between these two characters, one white, the other black, but race has nothing to do with the relationship, which is the great thing about the Internet. I mean, you can develop friendships or whatever it is you do on the internet...-if you're a black-owned business or any business for that matter, you can put your best stuff out there, be accepted for what you are on the internet, and there's a certain...to use your word...anonymity that comes along with that, but I thought that was cool for you to have this relationship that develops where this black woman who is in prison is serving as a mentor to someone who does not even...-but the race factor just doesn't...

Duchovny: Well, I wanted it to be both real and mythical. You know, I wanted her to be kind of like the lady trapped in a tower from fairy tales, but I also wanted her to be a real person. And, uh, you know, to me, obviously, race is such an important issue in our country, continues to be, uh, maybe the most important issue for us as a country, but when movies tackle racial questions, it tends to dominate the entire film and become only about race. And I just wanted to...I wanted this relationship...because race wasn't a factor in this relationship...to not make it the overriding factor of the relationship, and I just wanted them to, I guess because of that anonymity, view each other just as people or as voices.

Tavis: We're looking forward to having Erykah Badu on this program a few weeks from now.

Duchovny: She's great.

Tavis: How is she to work with?

Duchovny: She's great. You know, when I cast her, uh, she had a huge Afro, and I kind of...I knew the way I was gonna shoot her...she was gonna be in silhouette a lot, so I liked the way that silhouette looked. And, in fact, Angela Davis had been imprisoned in the women's House of D. And there's a T-shirt that you can still buy across the street from the garden that is now in place...

Tavis: Angela rockin' that 'fro.

Duchovny: Well, it looks exactly like Erykah Badu. And, uh, so I said to Erykah, "I don't want you to cut your hair." And she said, "Don't worry, it's not mine."

Tavis: The thing about Erykah, though, and I'm looking forward to seeing her in a few weeks on this program, you never know what head wrap, what hairdo, so we all got bets going on around here what Erykah's gonna be looking like by the time she gets here, so we'll see her in a few weeks. Um, let me go back to the character that Erykah plays 'cause I want to draw a parallel to your own life. Again, I know the movie's not autobiographical, but there are parts in it. Growing up as a kid in New York, who was that "Erykah Badu" for you?

Duchovny: Well, strangely enough, it was...I didn't have somebody who was that strong and that powerful in my life like her, but there was a Latin teacher that I had that came to me after I had an accident as a senior in high school, and basically came to the hospital and said, "Don't hurry back." you know, and I was pretty much of an overachieving...you know, captain of the basketball and baseball team, getting a straight "A," that kind of a thing, and I thought that was all great, and he was saying, "You're working too hard, you're pushing too hard. Don't come back right away." But I didn't get it. 'Cause I was 17, I didn't get it. And then maybe 20 years later, something else happened to me, brought me down, brought me low, and in a moment of humility, I got his point, which was...you know, to put it into words, I don't know, but it's basically, you know, be for yourself and not for others. And so, that was also very interesting to me in the making of this movie, how do I make a movie in which a kid gets advice, he's too young to get it, and then many years later when this boy grows up to be me in the film, he gets the advice and he wants to go back and thank these people, he wants to go back and acknowledge them, and in my case, when I wanted to acknowledge him, he was dead. He had died of AIDs, you know, maybe 10 years before I got this message, so I thought that's a...that's a sentimental and a feeling kind of relationship to be in to want to give thanks to somebody that you can no longer thank.

Tavis: I guess in a certain way, as this film goes into wide release, the audience will get a chance to grade David Duchovny's work, but how does David Duchovny grade his work? This is your directorial debut.

Duchovny: Well, yeah. I give myself an "A" then. What the hell.

Tavis: I would have done the same thing. Why not? If I can grade myself, I'd give myself an "A." Um, you mentioned being an overachiever.

Duchovny: So it's like grade inflation. "A" is the new "C," right?

Tavis: I'd give myself an "A," but I'd be grading on a curve, I'd still give myself an "A." you mentioned a moment ago you were captain of the basketball team, captain of the baseball team, um, and you played at Princeton your first year. What happened?

Duchovny: I guess I wasn't good enough. That's, you know, their story.

Tavis: That isn't what I heard. What I heard was...was it your decision or their decision?

Duchovny: Well, you know, it's...

Tavis: Or a mutual decision?

Duchovny: Well, I don't know. You know, time plays tricks with one's memory. But, you know, Pete Carril is the famous coach at Princeton, now coaches the Sacramento Kings. I got a chance, went to a Laker game a few years ago, got a chance to talk to him after the game. I told the owners of the team. I was sitting close. I said, "I'd like to talk to Coach Carril." They said, "Fine." 'Cause in my mind, it was a sad moment in my life when I couldn't play anymore, and I thought that I'd quit...-that was my story. So, I knew that I quit, to tell you the truth. I know that I did quit.

Tavis: It's coming back to you now, is it?

Duchovny: But I wasn't going anywhere. You know, it was either...yeah, I had to quit, basically, so I waited until after the game and Pete Carril is this little figure, comes kind of shambling out of the shadows, and he's not 10 feet from me, but he says, "Aren't you glad I cut you? You're doing so well." So he was like taking credit for my career. It was just fantastic.

Tavis: But, hey, Bill Bradley played there. You could have been in the NBA maybe. You were pretty good.

Duchovny: No, not even close.

Tavis: Not that close?

Duchovny: No. No, not close.

Tavis: Ha ha! But you did go on, you got on the basketball team, but you did go on to do...you completed your academic work?

Duchovny: Yeah, sure.

Tavis: And then went on to grad school.

Duchovny: Yes.

Tavis: And then started working on a Ph.D.

Duchovny: Yeah.

Tavis: And in the middle of working on your Ph.D., we look up and see you in a Lowenbrau commercial.

Duchovny: Yeah, yeah.

Tavis: What happened? You were supposed to be Dr. Duchovny, and you're pitchin' Lowenbrau.

Duchovny: Yeah, I don't know. You sound like my mom now.

Tavis: Ha ha ha! And while I'm on that soundin' like your mom, what ever happened to Lowenbrau? Did you like kill off the campaign? I have not seen a Lowenbrau commercial since you were in the Lowenbrau commercial.

Duchovny: I was instrumental in destroying the Lowenbrau profile. No, I just...I had been told by a friend of mine...-you know, I was in between seasons of graduate school, academic years, and I was gonna get a job bartending or something that would give me a little money over the year, and he was an actor, and he said, you know, if you get a commercial, you can...you can live all year on that if you get one, and I tried all summer long to get a commercial, and I finally...I got one on the last day of the summer, and it was the Lowenbrau commercial, and it was a terrible experience for me 'cause it was the first time in front of a camera, and I just...I completely froze up. Completely. And, you know, obviously, I did the same for Lowenbrau sales.

Tavis: How'd you...to that point, though, how did you ever learn to get comfortable with your craft? Obviously, you took off.

Duchovny: Just by trial and error. You know, just by simply...as you know, I'm sure, every day you just get a little better. I mean, you go back and forth sometimes. Some days are better than others, but it's just a gradual realization that this is what I do, and, therefore, I better figure out how to do it, you know?

Tavis: Back to the coach's comment. This is a strange question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. Back to the coach's comment because you have done so well, have you ever had a moment in your life or in your career...I mean, once you became a success...ever thought about or processed what life might have been like had you finished that Ph.D. And, moreover, ever thought that even with the success that you have that you wish you had completed the Ph.D.? I ask that because, I mean, I've been very fortunate and done well, but there's still a part of me...and my mom's watching. She watches every night. There's still a part of me, you know, that wishes I had taken the LSAT and was on my way to law school, and something happened in my life that took a turn, and I wound up on radio and television. It's all worked out. I'm not complaining, but there's still a small part of me every now and then that wishes I'd gone to Harvard and gotten that law degree.

Duchovny: Right. Well, I think we all do that. We all do that in our lives, you know? We just look at that other path that we didn't take, and certainly, uh, you know, I look at that academic life, and I see it, you know, in my imagination...it may not be the truth...as a quieter life, a life that is really chunks of time that are devoted to certain things. There's teaching, and then there's the vacation, and, you know, it just seems very civil and very ordered and very...and to be around young people all the time would be very nice, and to just have a life of thinking and a life imparting thoughts, so...now I'm getting very depressed telling you about it 'cause now it sounds really good.

Tavis: Let's change subjects then. I don't want to depress you, so let me offer an exit question and let you walk out of here on a high note. So, "House of D" has done one of 3 things for you...tell me which one. Made you know that you don't want to direct anymore? You're like, this ain't what I want to do. You're itchin' to do the next project, uh, or...you don't know?

Duchovny: Uh, 2. I will go with 2. No, I think the happiest times in professional career were the 34 days that I was shooting this movie, and I just loved being so all-consumed with this task, and I loved collaborating with all the actors and everybody that comes on a set and gives you the benefit of their expertise every day. I just...and I get to take credit for it, you know? I just loved all that.

Tavis: That said, there'll be a lot more to come from David Duchovny, but there's only one first.

Duchovny: There is only one first.

Tavis: And this is the first one. "House of D," the directorial debut by David Duchovny. David, nice to have you on the program.

Duchovny: Thank you. A pleasure.

Tavis: Pleasure's mine, as always. Don't take another year to come back, but if you do, hopefully, I'll still be around.

Duchovny: OK. You will be.

Tavis: That's our show for tonight. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching, and, as always, keep the faith.