X-Files
Australian Information Kiosk
September 2000

Duchovny Can't Stop Chasing Aliens

Let's get this straight: David Duchovny worked hard to reduce his X-Files duties so he could make it on the big screen ‹ and the first film he's lining up is about aliens?

Hey, why not embrace your place in the sci-fi galaxy, David and then give it a good, hard tweak. It looks like Duchovny is willing to send up his TV hunk status in the sci-fi comedy Evolution, which is being billed as "a Ghostbusters for the new millennium."

Duchovny is in negotiations to join Julianne Moore, Road Trip's Seann William Scott, and The Replacements' Orlando Jones in the sci-fi comedy from DreamWorks, the same studio that brought us the riotous Star Trek sendup Galaxy Quest.

That Ghostbusters ref? Well, besides promising chills and chuckles, like that classic '80s flick, Evolution will be helmed by director Ivan Reitman. It's expected to start shooting before the end of the year.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Evolution is about an alien-laden meteor that crashes -- where else -- in the New Mexico desert. The alien organisms then evolve at an alarming rate and threaten to (dum dum dum) take over the world. It's up to a local community college science professor (Duchovny), his eccentric geologist buddy (Jones), a wannabe fireman (Scott), and a government scientist (Moore) to vanquish the alien hordes.

Perhaps the cult flick ref they were looking for was Tremors.

Duchovny's absence from half of the upcoming season of The X-Files is being explained away by an alien abduction. But just squint during his scenes with redhead Julianne Moore and you'll be able to get that longed-for X-vibe.

Cast of "Evolution" starts to take form

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Julianne Moore ("Hannibal," "Magnolia") and Orlando Jones are both in final negotiations to star in DreamWorks' "Evolution," opposite David Duchovny.

Seann William Scott ("Road Trip") also recently inked a deal for another role in the Ivan Reitman comedy, and final details of Duchovny's deal are being ironed out as well.

Reitman's DreamWorks-based Montecito Picture Co. will produce the picture, which revolves around what happens to a group of misfits when a meteor carrying alien organisms crashes in the New Mexico desert and threatens to take over the world.

By Carl DiOrio

• An 11 Minute documentary - The Truth About Season One
• 12 Chris Carter video interviews discussing specific episodes
• 12 Behind the Truth segments
• 2 deleted scenes from Pilot
• 1 special effects clip
• 1 60 second US TV spot for the Pilot episode
• 1 10 second and 1 20 second US TV spot for each of the remaining 23 season one episodes

X-Files creator Chris Carter named Gillian Anderson's character Scully as a tribute to longtime LA Dodger's announcer Vin Scully. And Robert Patrick's character (he's the guy replacing David Duchovny this season) is named John Doggett as homage to Scully's late Dodgers sidekick Jerry Doggett.

There were also numerous references to host Garry Shandling's late lamented never-Emmied HBO series The Larry Sanders Show, including the famed homoerotic attraction between Shandling's Sanders and X-Files star David Duchovny. At the Emmys, Duchovny appeared as a washroom attendant (working undercover of course), supplying Shandling with a towel and seeking a tip -- and advising Shandling that he'd been "voted out of" the washroom. Duchovny also brushed down Shandling's suit, and while his brush was below the camera frame asked, "Too hard?" and Shandling replied "Too low."

Although DAVID DUCHOVNY will only be appearing in a few episodes of the next season of The X-Files, he cannot get away from aliens. The actor's next project will be starring in writer-director IVAN REITMAN's comedy film Evolution in which he plays a college professor involved with an alien invasion.

"It wasn't my choice to do a movie with aliens but I took it because it is such a good script," he said. "Also, it's a comedy so it's nothing like The X -Files."

After appearing in Ten's X Files for years, you could excuse David Duchovny if he wanted a break from aliens in TV series. But Duchovny is reportedly developing another sci-fi show, although this time it will be a comedy. Called Evolution, it's about a rogue meteor which releases some very odd organisms after crashing on Earth.

SPOOKY ALIENS, EVIL CONSPIRACIES, SLIMY MUTANT MONSTERS. ISN'T IT SEXY? It's the defining drama of the '90s. Definitely the spookiest. But the most Byronic? "The whole premise of The X-Files is intrinsically romantic," argues star Gillian Anderson. "And Chris Carter is the ultimate romantic." Carter, who created the series in '92, doesn't cite the Romantics as an influence, but they may very well have appreciated it--if they didn't gag on the occasional sewer-dwelling fluke. Carter's coiling mythology of alien invasion and paranormal hanky-panky my have sprung from cynicism and suspicion, but it evolved through its protagonists--FBI agents Dana Scully (Anderson) and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny)--into an epic fable of passion and faith. Despite the endless warnings of "Trust no one," the soul of the show is proclaimed on Mulder's infamous poster: "I want to believe."

In Mulder and Scully, Carter says he was after the most elusive of TV relationships: "Two people who cared about one another in a deep way that didn't end in easy consummation." Ironically, in realizing Carter's ideals, Duchovny and Anderson succeeded in making the most respectful of comrades look irresistibly sexy. "These are heroes whose friendship and search for truth are transcendent," says Carter: "We all want their relationship."