http://www.zap2it.com/movies/news/story/0,1259,---26919,00.html
Duchovny Hopes DVD Brings New Life to Tenacious 'D'
Mon, Oct 03, 2005, 03:10 PM PT
By Daniel Fienberg
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com)- "House of D," David Duchovny's
feature debut as a writer and director, was released this
April and quickly vanished, a gentle little film that got
lost in the marketplace.
"Of course I have regrets, because I would have wanted the
movie to do great at the box office," Duchovny says of
"House." "Even now, I could tell you that we wouldn't do it
the same way, but I wouldn't be able to guarantee that that
way to do it would work. A movie of this size either catches
on or it doesn't, and this didn't catch on at the box office
and that's why I'm really looking forward to the DVD release."
Although it isn't explicitly autobiographical, "House of D"
is a very personal effort for Duchovny. The film, getting
its DVD debut on Tuesday (Oct. 4), stars the "X-Files"
star as an American artist living in Paris. On the day
of his son's 13th birthday, he feels the need to unload a
secret from the year he turned 13 (Anton Yelchin played
the younger character), of his experiences with woman,
particularly his manic-depressive mother (Tea Leoni).
"I think Neil Simon said it's all autobiography, even the stuff
you make up, and that's true of any writer," admits Duchovny,
who still distances himself from most of the film's specific
plot points. "There's some stuff you get from actual lived
experience and then there's others that are your concerns.
I think that being a father definitely played into this,
having lost my own father right before we started shooting.
There's the stuff that you plan to put in the movie and the
stuff that just comes out while you're doing it."
The result is a movie that mixes tragedy with humor,
without even a hint of the dark and occasionally twisted
irony that have served Duchovny well in his years as Fox
Mulder on "The X-Files" and in his stints as one of late
night television's most popular guests.
"I'm a big fan of irony. I use it whenever I can.
But I think it's a distancing tool," Duchovny says.
"When you're making a movie about a 12-year-old,
at its heart it's not going to be ironic, because it's
about innocence, in a way, and the loss of innocence.
There's nothing ironic about innocence."
Duchovny describes his film as a "urban fairy tale," with
much of the action revolving around Greenwich Village's
Women's House of Detention and the main character's
relation****p with a mysterious con played by Erykah Badu.
Even with the presence of Robin Williams, as a mentally
handicapped janitor, the plot and themes of the movie
seemed difficult to promote and complicated to describe.
"It's not Robin Williams comedy, it's not a drama and
it's not a comedy," Duchovny lists. "What is it, exactly?
Which is what I thought, 'OK, that's going to be its strong
point.' It's really not like anything else out there.
But that's a hard thing to define."
Indeed. "House of D" never played in more than 305
theaters and it failed to make even $400,000 domestically.
An intimate film, "House of D" won't lose any scale on
the small screen and Duchovny hopes this will prove to be
the film's ideal medium.
"I feel like now the movie's going to be sitting there
where it's accessible," he says. "It didn't really reach
many theaters, so it's going to reach more people this
way and it's not going anywhere. It's going to sit in
that bin and eventually people are going to find it.
In a way, you don't need to market it anymore."
Duchovny continues, "In a way now it's just the movie that
it is. I'm very confident that over a length of years,
people are going to find it and enjoy it."
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