My David Duchovny story

I know everyone has one so I am boring.  I have also noticed my more personal posts, even ones where I am not torturing readers with tales of my wonderful childhood (ps. I really didn’t mean to torture anyone, sorry), get more hits than my brilliant political analysis so I am going to write more.  Plus the more I write, the more I want to write (in terms of variety) so that’s a win-win for me and my stalled screenplay/sitcom pilot.

When I was packing my crap yesterday, and it is all just so much crap, I found my X-Files watch.  Yep, I was one of those people.  Now, I was not a follower from day one, nor did I refuse to go out on nights it was on (even back then we had ways to record shows when we weren’t at home).  I really actually got into it after my first presidential campaign — Clinton/Gore ’96.  Indeed, the Crypt Keeper and I are twins.  In my months of stressed-out unemployment before I went to work for RCA Victor, I stayed up late into the evening watching Fox Mulder and Dana Scully trapse around the country looking for aliens and whatnot.  It’s a good thing I am a fiscal liberal because in hindsight, that does seem like a wasteful government program if ever there was one.

It is true that I found the subject matter interesting.  It is also true that my roommate came home one afternoon and told me had his hair cut like Duchovny.  There is no connection between the two.  Just felt it should be said.  It is equally true that I had a major crush on David Duchovny.  If you have not heard the Bree Sharp song, I highly recommend it.  Now, this is partly because I read a quote of his about how his parents’ divorce impacted his view of love.  Without looking it up, I believe he said something to the effect of “It introduced the idea that love can leave and changed the way I view it.”  Now, if there was a more succinct way for me to explain my commitment phobia better, I haven’t found it.  But this isn’t about that. At the end of the day, however, I just thought he was hot.

The next year, I found myself working in NYC at RCA Victor as a publicist.  One night, I went out with some friends and played some pool and drank some beer (not a ton but enough) and when I got home, Saturday Night Live, was on.  David Duchovny was hosting.  For the record, I am no stalker and have had issues with people stalking me so  I take that very seriously but… I thought it was silly for him to be in NYC and me to be in NYC and for us to not meet.  I mean, really!  So, I pulled out a phone number for SNL that Darrell Hammond had given me (story for another day) and called it.  Darrell, they said, was on stage “saying goodnight” (it was on TV, I knew they weren’t lying) — why didn’t I just pop into the cast party?  Where is it?  I asked.  They told me.  And it was on.

My pool playing clothes weren’t gonna cut it.  Threw on a tight dress, did my hair and makeup, called a car service and I was on my way.  While the lovely woman at the entrance went to check if my name was on the guest list, two security guards asked Why are you on that side of the desk and we’re on this side?  To which I said, You tell me.   I was in.

Before 30 seconds, I saw there was a VIP area.  Of course there was.  What to do, what to do… I walked over and talked to the person there. Listen, one of my clients is in there and I just need them to know I didn’t leave without letting them know.  I am super tired and just want to go home — can you give them my card and tell them I will call on Monday?    To this day, I have no idea where that lie came from.  The woman told me she could not leave the desk and wasn’t sure she could let me in but she clearly believed me.  Lucky thing number two happened just then.  Jim Brewer was in the VIP area and he said, Don’t worry, I know her, she’s fine.  That part wasn’t a lie, we had met at several record company things in the months before this.

To recap:  In under and hour I went from a bar in Brooklyn to the VIP part of a SNL cast party.  This was clearly as far as this Icarus was going to make it.  I was fine with that so I did a few shots of what, I’ll never know.  That was a bad idea because that’s when I met David Duchovny.  Standing there, feeling Ke$ha tipsy, I felt a tap on my shoulder and a man extended his hand to shake mine:

“Hi, my name is David.”

“I believe you.”  Then I turned brain dead and went into auto-pilot.  I always have some canned response for when I meet a famous person so I can avoid saying things like, nice tie.  Instead I went with, “There are four people on earth who make me starstruck and you are one of them.”
“Who are the other three?” (For some reason, Fight Club dialogue seems appropriate here, we have just lost cabin pressure…)“Uhhh…. President Clinton, VP Gore and Hillary Clinton….” EPIC FAIL.

The conversation didn’t last too much longer than that.  I went home with my tail between my legs and couldn’t look at his picture for at least six months without wanting to vomit.  The only upside was I did tell myself that I had been an idiot in front of the one famous person I really had a crush on and the sun still managed to rise the next day, thereby giving me licence to be stupid in front of all sorts of new and exciting people.

And now, it’s just a fun story I tell.  Hope you enjoyed it.

The X-Files: I want to believe

 

Oh, I wanted to believe.  I REALLY wanted to believe.

 

 

WARNING:  If you have not seen “The X-Files:  I want to believe” and want to, do not read this. 

 

I loved the X-Files when it was on TV so I really wanted to enjoy the movie.  I wanted to believe so much that I kept believing it would get better throughout the entire movie.  This is going to get good any minute.  Any time now it is going to make sense.  I chanted that to myself silently throughout the film and was chanting up until the closing credits ran.  It never got good and Chris Carter et al should never be allowed to make a movie again.  Ever.

 

Why was it so bad?  It’s hard to know where to start.  If your characters are good people will follow them anywhere.  Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) were the heart of the series and are two of my favorite TV characters ever.    My core problem is with them.  Never before have I seen two characters resist change so vigorously.  Anyone who watched the show is familiar with the general story arch we always got.  Mulder believed all sorts of crazy things and Scully was a skeptic.  Fine.  That worked for however many years the show was on but now it seems they have had reset buttons installed where any insight they may have gained earlier is gone.   Their dichotomy is one thing that makes this team work but in this film they were both static.  Duchovny was actually the best part of the movie but I wanted to throttle Anderson.  The Scully on TV was a skeptic, the film Scully was a bitter bitch.

 

The plot didn’t help matters.  Aside from the very gratuitous scenes reminding you of the show (Mulder still eats sunflower seeds and throws his pencils at the ceiling, fascinating I know) the movie could not really decide if it was about the Mulder/Scully relationship or the case they were trying to solve so you never really got enough of either.  The film, I guess, takes place in the present day, some six years since the last film.  Scully is a practicing doctor at a hospital – and here I must digress.  The scenes where Dr. Scully is in the hospital killed any credibility for me.  Seriously, she supposedly joined the FBI right out of med school and never did a residency.  Maybe she did it since the last movie.   Maybe I can give them that. I cannot, however, believe that a responsible physician would look up a highly dangerous and experimental procedure on the internet and then perform it herself.  Also if she is a primary care doctor, she would not be a surgeon.  Especially not a brain surgeon.  (Is that too nitpicky?)

 

Anyway, Scully is a doctor with a very sick patient and Mulder spends his days clipping articles about random things and tacking them to walls in his home office.  The FBI charged him with something (we never learn what) and he is a bearded (BAD look) recluse who is not married to Scully but they are together.  When the FBI reaches out to Scully to find Mulder she replies “I don’t work with Fox Mulder anymore.”  The only reason they go through her is so she can say that line because two minutes into helping the FBI she has a hissy fit and yells “Mulder, this is not about saving your sister!”  Another gratuitous reminder of the show put in there just to give Scully something to say.

 

The case involves an FBI agent who has been kidnapped and a psychic who has been helping the FBI.  The lead agent (Amanda Peet) needs Mulder’s “insight into psychics.”  The catch?  The psychic is a Catholic priest, wait it gets better; “Father Joe” (Billy Connolly) is also a pedophile!  No!  Did I mention Scully’s hospital is run by the church?  Anyone remember she was a huge Catholic? (Side note:  how can someone be so immune to new ideas and have so much ‘faith’?)  Conveniently, the agent disappeared close to where Mulder and Scully live so she can continue to work at the hospital while he works on the case.

 

The movie gives you a taste of what the Mulder/Scully romance is like but not enough to really care about it.  They are in bed one night and she can’t sleep because of her really sick patient and then he can’t sleep because of the case and they talk about a child, who apparently died, but never scratch the surface.  By not allowing us to care about them, the romantic scenes are just gross.  I felt like I was in the fifth grade or had turned in to Fred Savage from “The Princess Bride” Oh, gross.  They’re kissing again!  Do we need to see the kissing parts?

 

The irony is that while we are not catching up with our old friends, we aren’t really getting a good mystery, stand-alone X-Files story either.  The case starts out well enough but then as we get interested, everything moves too fast.  When another girl is kidnapped, her car is found later that day.  When Mulder is driven off the road and a snow storm hits his car is also found really fast.  Scully is able to get help from their old boss, Wayne Skinner, and they both find Mulder and rescue everyone in about five minutes.  Whaa???  One thing, I liked about the show was they always seemed to point out that just because a certain theory can work, and may make sense, that does not mean it explains what happened.  Where the show had creativity, this was rushed and way too neat.

 

I’d give kudos to Chris Carter for making a stand alone movie rather than one with that conspiracy that even he never understood, if the result didn’t SUCK.

 

That’s two hours of my life I am never getting back.

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