From: fakeaddress@mindspring.com   
      
   tambabay1701 at the Haven found this.  Don't know which press day   
   it's from.   
      
   ===>   
   4/23 article from 'THE TAMPA TRIBUNE" (Tampa, Florida)   
      
   "Celebrity Q & A with David Duchovny"   
      
   David Duchovny has had a tough time without the creatures and wackos   
   of "The X-Files."  The actor has flopped on the big screen with   
   "Evolution," "Return to Me," and last year's "Connie and Carla."   
      
   Now he's having another try, for the first time as writer and director.   
   The coming-of-age tale "House of D" stars Duchovny's wife, Tea Leoni,   
   as a woman emotionally paralyzed by the death of her husband and whose   
   son (Anton Yelchin) is left to his own devices to cope with a hard   
   stretch in his teen years.  (It is tentatively scheduled to open   
   in the Tampa-Bay area on May 20th).   
      
   Robin Williams co-stars as the boy's best friend, a retarded janitor,   
   and Erykah Badu plays the youth's "fairy godmother," an inmate who   
   dispenses advice from the bars of her cell in a women's prison   
   in Greenwich Village.   
      
   Duchovny himself plays the main character as an adult, living in   
   Paris and reflecting back on his childhood.  The drama was inspired   
   by stories Duchovny's mother told of a house of detention for women   
   in his boyhood neighborhood of lower Manhattan, where prisoners   
   would converse with people on the street below.   
      
   Q: "House of D" is a movie without a huge marketing budget.   
   What are you doing to get the word out?   
      
   A: I'm doing a city-to-city, hat-in-hand tour.  It's just that   
   the market is such that movies that don't have almighty hooks,   
   that are hard to sell in 30-second commercials, have a hard time   
   making themselves known in the marketplace.   
      
   Q: Are there movies with almighty hooks you passed on that went   
   on to become hits?   
      
   A: Probably.  I've probably made mistakes that way.  It's always   
   good to do good business because it can help you do other things,   
   but it's hard to tell what's going to work in a movie with a big hook.   
   Sometimes it could be great, sometimes it can be horrible.  I get   
   better and better at figuring out what I think is going to be good,   
   but it's hard to know.  There are so many variables involved   
   in making a movie.  Any one weak link can bring it down.   
      
   Q: You wrote the "House of D" script really, really fast.   
   Was it one of those ideas that percolated for years and years   
   then suddenly spilled out?   
      
   A: You could say it took me a week to write the script or that it   
   took me 20 years.  The images always were there.  Women would hang   
   out of the bars and have interactions with strangers, passers-by   
   or people who would come to visit them.  I thought, "What if some kid   
   needed advice and he actually became friends with a women he never   
   saw, a voice from above?"  Mythically, like the lady in the tower.   
   I wanted to just try to make this urban tale function on one level   
   as a realistic story but also as a fairy tale.   
      
   Q: How did you come to cast your wife as the mother?   
      
   A: I think I offered it to Meryl Streep.  What I did is I sent her a   
   letter and said, "Please be in my little movie."  She wouldn't do it,   
   so that was the only person I had asked to do it.  Tea was like,   
   "Yeah, yeah, try to get Meryl Streep.  She'd be great in that."   
   Then when Meryl Streep didn't do it, Tea waited awhile.   
   I think I was casting other roles.  I remember one night she   
   just came to me and said, "Do you think I could play the mother?   
   I think I'd like to do that."  I said, "For sure."   
      
   Q: And Robin Williams?   
      
   A: He was early on.  He really drove the making of the movie,   
   because he was the big star.  Robin got the script pretty much when   
   I finished it.  He read it and just called me and really got it.   
   I went, "If you want to do it, that's great news for me.  Thank you."   
      
   Q: What's going on with another "X-Files" movie?   
      
   A: I talked to ("X-Files" creator) Chris Carter (recently),   
   and he said all systems go for winter, early 2006.   
   <===   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)