From: fakeaddress@mindspring.com   
      
   KTOslin at the Haven found this 4-23-05 CONTRA COSTA TIMES   
   interview from HOD's 3-30-05 San Francisco press day at   
   the Ritz-Carlton Hotel (they say "a recent April day",   
   but as we all know, DD was only in SF on 3-29 for the   
   screening and on 3-30 for the press day. ;-)   
      
   ===>   
   Posted on Sat, Apr. 23, 2005   
      
   From Duchovny's files   
      
   By Mary F. Pols   
      
   CONTRA COSTA TIMES   
      
   DAVID DUCHOVNY wants to make you cry.  Oh, and he'd like you to   
   laugh, too.  That's important.   
      
   In order to do so, the former "X-Files" star has stepped behind   
   the camera, directing his first feature film, a quirky little   
   tearjerker called "House of D," which he also happened to write.   
      
   It's a coming-of-age story, but not what you'd call Lindsay Lohan   
   material; the lead is Tommy (Anton Yelchin), a teenage boy whose   
   best friend is a mentally disabled middle-aged man, played   
   convincingly by Robin Williams.  The setting is Greenwich Village   
   in the early '70s, where the duo spend their time delivering meat   
   from a bicycle cart and hanging around outside a woman's prison   
   (the House of Detention of the title).   
      
   With a premise like that, you've got to ask: Would Duchovny have   
   stood a chance of getting a movie like "House of D" made if he   
   weren't a veteran of one of the most influential television   
   shows of all time?  Probably not.  Still, on a recent April day,   
   sitting on a terrace at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco,   
   Duchovny recalled the struggle even he had to find financing.   
      
   "There was the getting of the money and the losing of money,"   
   he said.  "Five days before shooting there wasn't any money and   
   four days before shooting there was.  Then two days before there   
   wasn't.  I stopped paying attention.  I just thought it is either   
   going to happen or it's not.  I've got to just keep working."   
      
   Duchovny wanted to break the typical mold of movies about teenagers,   
   ones that tend to pander to adult sexuality, citing "American Pie"   
   as an example.  In pitching to the money types, he kept telling   
   them there should be room for a movie that makes the audience   
   feel something.   
      
   "That was always my pitch, that this is a movie where you are   
   going to laugh and cry.  That is the cliche movie-going experience,   
   you can't get any more mainstream than that.  So this may seem   
   small and quirky, but if people go to the movies to feel something,   
   if they go to laugh and cry, then this is a blockbuster."   
      
   At 44, Duchovny is heart-meltingly handsome.  Tall and lean,   
   clad in a soft leather shirt, dark jeans and a pair of Ray Bans,   
   he seems far more a movie star than a director.  He knows how to   
   charm; one senses he's adept at switching conversational gears   
   depending on his interviewer.   
      
   But he's also a guy with an unusual resume, one that points to   
   interests far beyond starlets and fast cars.  He'd already gotten   
   his master's in English literature from Yale and was close to   
   finishing his doctorate when he developed an interest in acting.   
   After years of reading screenplays, learning their style almost   
   by osmosis, he decided he wanted to write them.  He wrote a pair   
   of "X-Files" episodes back in the day and has two more feature   
   film scripts in a drawer somewhere.   
      
   The script for "House of D" came rushing out of him in six days,   
   which makes one wonder about the circumstances.   
      
   "You mean what drugs were involved?" he says with that trademark   
   Duchovny wit.  Or how does a dad with two small children running   
   around the Malibu home he shares with his wife, actress Tea Leoni,   
   get anything done?  (Here's a twist: Leoni plays Tommy's mother   
   in "House of D" and Duchovny plays him as an adult.)   
      
   "We have a home office I just kind of disappear into," he says.   
   "When I'm in that way, when I'm with child (as it were),   
   with script, I will tell my wife that I've got to go do this now.   
   And I'll write in 20 page clips.   
      
   "I remember studying John Berryman's poems and some critic said   
   that he used to write his first draft of a poem and then he'd put   
   it under a glass plate and he'd stare at it.  He wouldn't allow   
   himself to change it, but he'd go crazy with wanting to revise   
   it until he couldn't stand it anymore and then he'd take it out.   
   That's kind of me with writing."   
      
   The first spark of writerly inspiration came from his own childhood.   
   The House of D had been a landmark in the New York City neighborhood   
   where he grew up.  He doesn't remember it, but he'd heard about   
   it from his mother.  His plot is structured around that place,   
   with Tommy befriending an inmate (Erykah Badu) who offers him   
   advice from her window.   
      
   "My mother told me that you could just be walking by on your way   
   to work and some prisoner would yell at you.  That doesn't happen   
   in America (anymore) and I thought, that is a really interesting   
   dramatic situation, a fascinating one."   
      
   From inception through final production, Duchovny was a hands-on   
   director.  He took a particular interest in casting Tommy (sensibly,   
   since the success of the movie hinges on Yelchin's bewitchingly   
   touching performance).  The story of how he found his young star   
   is fitting for a man who wants to make his audience weep.   
      
   His personal acting coach and the casting director had both urged   
   him to look at Yelchin, who had starred in "Hearts of Atlantis"   
   in 2001 as a 9-year-old.  But Duchovny didn't want to deal with   
   the time constraints that come with child actors.  He wanted to cast   
   someone older who looked younger.  After a succession of interviews,   
   including one with a kid who, he says, "had chest hair!" Duchovny   
   finally relented.   
      
   "In despair I said, 'Bring me Anton Yelchin, bring me the head of   
   Anton Yelchin!'" he joked.  "After about 30 seconds of him reading   
    I started to cry because I knew that he was the right kid."   
      
   Mary F. Pols is the Times movie critic.  Reach her at 925-945-4741   
   or mpols@cctimes.com.   
      
   PROFILE   
      
   • WHO: David Duchovny   
      
   • WHAT: Director, screenwriter and star of "House of D"   
      
   • WHEN: Opens April 29 in select area theaters   
      
   The D-Files   
   Here are a few things you might not know about actor turned   
   writer/director David Duchovny.   
      
   • He's got something in common with President George W. Bush:   
   He went to Yale, where he earned a master's degree in English   
   literature and started work on a doctorate.  His unfinished thesis   
   was titled "Magic and Technology in Contemporary Poetry and Prose."   
      
   • He's sporty: At Princeton, where he got his undergraduate degree,   
   he was a shooting guard on the basketball team. Now he does triathlons.   
      
   • He's not afraid to be edgy: In "Twin Peaks," he played a detective   
   who also happened to be a transvestite.  On "The Larry Sanders Show,"   
   he played himself, only a version deeply attracted to Garry Shandling.   
   In "Sex and the City," he was one of Sarah Jessica Parker's lovers,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)