From: fakeaddress@mindspring.com   
      
   mulder512a at the Haven found & transcribed this blurb   
   from the 3-11-05 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY ...   
      
   ===>   
   On page 14 in the March 11 issue of EW:   
      
   FROM OUR (EX-)STAFFER   
      
   BROADCAST VIEWS   
      
   It's the perfect gift for culture snobs who trash TV. In Kissing Bill   
   O'Reilly, Roasting Miss Piggy: 100 Things to Love and Hate About TV   
   (St. Martin's, $22.95), EW's former TV critic Ken Tucker (now New   
   York magazine's film critic) shows that the tube, like Tolstoy,   
   merits intelligent discourse. He unpredictably praises infomercials   
   and rails against Six Feet Under, loves DAVID DUCHOVNY and hates   
   The Brady Bunch. No show is too obscure (the short-lived Buffalo   
   Bill gets its due), no figure too sacred (Jack Paar, he argues,   
   was a better Tonight Show host than Johnny Carson). And what about   
   the title? "It got me booked on Bill O'Reilly," Tucker says.   
   "That was very sneaky of me."   
      
   ----Jennifer Armstrong   
   <===   
      
      
   ... so I found the book at Borders yesterday & transcribed   
   DD's half-chapter below.  ;-)   
      
   (note to anyone seeking out this book for themselves -- there's   
   plenty to both please *and* annoy everyone in it.  \;-)  Eg. KT   
   may like DD, MACGYVER, HOMICIDE, NEWSRADIO, Buffy's mom, etc. --   
   but he also hates *all* STAR TREKs, THE WEST WING, CHINA BEACH,   
   MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, THE KIDS IN THE HALL, QUEER AS FOLK,   
   QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY, M*A*S*H, etc. etc. etc..  In fact,   
   the more I read his non-DD chapters, the more annoyed I got.   
   So watch out for your blood pressure. ;o)   
      
      
   ===>   
   "Kissing Bill O'Reilly, Roasting Miss Piggy: 100 Things to Love   
   and Hate About TV"   
      
   by Ken Tucker   
      
   p. 122   
      
   LOVE: The Mona Lisa of Television: David Duchovny   
      
   He's the Princeton and Yale English-lit grad whose most   
   famous character once decribed America as being run by the   
   "military-industrial-entertainment complex."  He's the actor   
   portraying himself on Garry Shandling's LARRY SANDERS SHOW as a   
   preening narcissist who finds Shandling's own preening narcissist   
   irresistible to flirt with.  He's the star who launched a   
   gazillion Web sites, yet who once described his job to me as   
   "pretty workaday . . . You get up, you take a shower, you read   
   the paper, you play Mulder."  He said this, as he says almost   
   everything, on-screen and off-, with that enigmatic small smile,   
   an anti-grin, an acknowledgement of the amusement of life,   
   even if he doesn't quite share in the laugh.   
      
   David Duchovny is often described as being "deadpan," especially   
   in the early days of the show that made him famous, THE X-FILES,   
   but that's not true at all.  He's more like an imp with restraint,   
   a quality that served him well even before he entered the X-FILES   
   maelstrom of cult followings and inscrutable scripts.  The title   
   of his Ph.D. thesis was "Magic and Technology in Contemporary   
   Poetry and Prose."  His somber speaking voice was perfect for his   
   first notable job, that of narrator for the Showtime network's   
   soft-core cable-porno RED SHOE DIARIES.  No one could listen to   
   Duchovny's diffident voiceovers and doubt that there was a gentleman   
   who would one day portray a guy named "Fox" whose bachelor   
   pad was a mess littered with some of the more hardcore stuff.   
      
   Duchovny's barely animated affect was perfect for THE X-FILES,   
   a show that was often compared to everything from THE TWILIGHT ZONE   
   to TWIN PEAKS, in which, no coincidence, Duchovny played a role --   
   that of a cross-dressing DEA agent.  Creator Chris Carter declared   
   he was inspired by the old '70s Darren McGavin show KOLCHAK:   
   THE NIGHT STALKER, tales of the supernatural told by writer   
   Richard Matheson with genuine jolts as well as an overlay of quiet,   
   knowing humor.  In the first season, you could see that Duchovny's   
   costar, the less-experienced Gillian Anderson, was unsure of how   
   to play Dana Scully from scene to scene.  Sometimes she was too   
   hard-boiled, sometimes too laid-back, other times verging on   
   despair.  But Duchovny had it nailed right from the start.   
   He just met every smug FBI superior, every alien manifestation,   
   with the same shadow of a smile, as if to say, "You think I'm a   
   schmuck, but someday you'll come around to MY way of thinking,   
   schmuck."  As he once remarked to me about FILES, "If we ever   
   revealed the secrets behind all this, the show would be unmasked   
   as the ridiculous little hoax it is."   
      
   The Mona Lisa smile hasn't served him as well in movies.   
   In the flimsy thriller KALIFORNIA (1993), it came off smug.   
   In the charming romantic comedy RETURN TO ME (2000), he seemed   
   perpetually bemused -- not a bad thing to be in a screwball   
   comedy, but his face needed to register as much energy as Bonnie   
   Hunt's script and directing demanded.  There was a part of Duchovny   
   that he withheld from the audience -- the Princeton part, maybe,   
   or the guy who was leery of committing lest he look like a sap.   
      
   Television remains Duchovny's medium.  He was achingly funny on his   
   three SANDERS appearances.  In the RED SHOE/TWIN PEAKS tradition,   
   perhaps he's more free with his emotions when he's playing sexually   
   upfront guys, even when that guy is a cartoon of himself, than when   
   he's portraying a more conventional leading-man.  The few episodes   
   that Duchovny directed for X-FILES, particularly the sixth-season   
   baseball fantasy, "The Unnatural," were smooth and assured, yet   
   brimming with emotion just beneath their surfaces.  His direction   
   was imbued with the same unknowable smile he brought to Fox Mulder's   
   barren, obsessed life, making it glow as mightily as any hovering   
   spacecraft.  This slightly hidden quality in Duchovny, whether in   
   front of or behind the camera, may prove his long-term strength.   
   <===   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)