Blind Plea - Listen Now: Fail Better with David Duchovny

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

We are dropping in your feed today to tell you about a new Lemonada Media series called Fail Better with David Duchovny. On Fail Better, David, who has experienced both low and high profile failures throughout his life, explores the vast world of failure - how it holds us back, propels us forward, and ultimately shapes our lives. Each week, he will chat with guests like Ben Stiller, Bette Midler, and more about how our perceived failures have actually been our biggest catalysts for growth, revelation, and even healing. Through these conversations, he hopes listeners can learn how to embrace the opportunity of failure and fail better together. You’re about to hear a preview of the first episode of Fail Better, where David catches up with Ben Stiller. Believe it or not, Ben Stiller has failed. (Remember Zoolander 2? He’d probably rather you didn’t.) As it turns out, Ben has had his share of flops, and he chats with David about those times in his life and how they sometimes led to something better. To hear more of Fail Better, head to: https://lemonada.lnk.to/failbetterfdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, listeners, I'm about to tell you about Fail Better, Lemonada Media's newest weekly series hosted by X-Files and Californication star David Duchovny. On Fail Better, exploring the world of failure, how it holds us back, propels us forward, and ultimately shapes our lives is the whole point. Each week, he will chat with artists, athletes, actors, and experts about how perceived failures have actually been their biggest catalyst for growth, revelation, and even healing.

Through these conversations, David is hoping that both he and listeners can learn how to embrace the opportunity of failure and fail better together. You're about to hear a clip from episode one of Fail Better. After you listen, search for Fail Better in your podcast app to hear the second episode of this brand new season. You can also find a link in the show notes that will take you there. Okay. I'm starting to record something for you. I just got to say off the bat, I'm so

bad with anything technological. I've spent the last 10 minutes fucking this up and oh man it's so frustrating to me all right all right I think I got everything working now. You're hearing my voice, right? We're making a podcast. It's called Fail Better, and I'm David Duchovny. Why am I making a podcast? The best answer I can come up with is that I felt like I've been failing my entire life, so on some level I can speak from plenty of experience.

I've had personal failures like we all have. I've had professional failures like we all have. I have things that I've been called as an actor. I had a high profile divorce. I had a magical mystery tour through rehab. We don't have to get into specifics now, but stay tuned, maybe we will. get into specifics now, but stay tuned, maybe we will. There's a sense in which failure looms over us and I want to know what's good

about that and I want to know what's bad about that, what's inhibiting about that. What is pushing us forward to be better and what is holding us back in shame, that's what I want to get into. That would be a wonderful result of this, if even a little bit of shame in our lives could fall away. You know, one of my most painful professional failures is kind of what prompted the whole idea for this podcast. I was in Canada shooting a movie. And my movie, House of D, that I wrote and directed, the first movie that I directed had just come out in the States. And what I read is in bold letters, David Duchovny's House of D gets an F. An F. An F. And the hairs on my neck

started to do weird things. I could feel sweat dropping from my armpit to my waist. I could feel my ears getting red. I was at vertigo. I don't know what else to call it, but like when you just feel shame or humiliation and it's a real interior feeling like you're sent kind of deeply inside yourself in some kind of childhood shame. And the first line of the review was, have David Duchovny's brains been abducted by aliens? Oh, good one. Yeah, it was a good one because it, I mean, that just went, you know, it hurt.

I get to my trailer and I'm still like in this kind of vibrating, you know, dizzying, jittery state. Like I'd had 10 cups of coffee, but it was like shame coffee, the best, strongest coffee of all. But then I thought, you know, I have a job to do. These people have hired me to act on their movie. My review from another movie is not their problem, not their interest. So I kind of tell myself I got to suck it up. I got to figure out a way to go out there and do decent work today, even do good work, you know, do work. And so I do that. I go out and I have

a day, I can't remember, you know, if the work was good or bad or indifferent. I suppose it was good enough. And then I went home, went to bed, and I woke up, and I feel fantastic. I've never felt better. And I remember, oh, that paper, oh, that review. And I realized in that moment that I felt so light and free is because my whole life I've been terrified of getting an F. From school on, you know, from childhood on, just like an F, I think at some point in my head I made the equation F equals death. And here I was on a Saturday morning in Montreal and the sky was blue and I was breathing air and I was drinking coffee and I was feeling good and I had my F because I realized that you don't die when you get an F and I'm so happy now

all these years later to have gotten that F and to have been somewhat freed from the tyranny of pass fail of ABC D. Why do they leave out E? What happened to E? Why can't E be a grade? Why do they go from D to F? I guess because of failure. Fail Better is a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are.

This is my very first interview. It's my very first interview that I've ever done. I've been an interviewee. I've never been an interviewer. And it's a different seat. It's a different vibe. But luckily, my first time is with a man who I've been fortunate enough to fail alongside a few times over the years. He lasted only four episodes on Saturday Night Live. His sketch comedy show won an Emmy after it had already been canceled.

He is the man who directed the cable guy and he's responsible for Zoolander 2. That's right, it's Ben Stiller, my friend, and here's our conversation. Hey, there you are. How's it going, man? All right. How are you? I had to get all, make sure I had my cup of coffee ready. I know, I got one right here. Good.

I'm just gonna slam it at some point. How you doing? I'm good. Thanks for doing this. Yeah, I'm so into it. Look, I, it's actually, I think, a really good idea. Well, I see the thing is, it's nice that you say that because I don't really know, you know, I have this idea of what I'm going to do.

I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things.

I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I, I think, a really good idea. Well, I see the thing is, it's nice that you say that because I don't really know, you know, I have this idea that it's a good idea. Right. But I'm not even sure how it happens or how it takes form, which is kind of exciting, but also, you know, nauseous making. Yeah, I know. On the other side. Yeah, taking a chance. But there's so much to talk about in that world, I guess. I don't know. I know. I know. Um, what I wanted to say to you was, do you remember how we,

we came to do Zoolander together? I say together. I had a small part in it, but you know, Small yet pivotal role. That's very important. Do you remember, do you remember how it happened? Not quite. So you sent the script or the producer sent the script to Taya to read for some role. And it was lying around the house. And I was like, what's this? And she said, oh, that's a Ben Stiller movie. I said, why? Ben Stiller is not sending me a script, he's sending you a script. Well, can I read it? And then I read it and I think I got in touch with your reps and said I would love to do anything that you want me to do. And you offered me the brother role or the hand model. And I thought I'll do the hand model. I think I can understand

that. So we go and we're on set and we're shooting, what was that island? That was the coast of New York City. That was the island, right? Right across from the U.N.? Yeah. So we're shooting that scene and I've got this crazy monologue basically with a few interruptions from Zoolander. What you stumbled upon goes way deeper than you could ever fathom. The fashion industry has been behind every major political assassination over the last 200 years.

And behind every hit, a card-carrying male model. We did it like three, four, five times, and the fourth or fifth time I fucked up, I flubbed the line or whatever. And you and Christine both said, finally. And I was just so liberated by that because there I was trying to be perfect, you know. I was trying to get it right, get it right, get it right. And I just wanted to, you know, that was like a moment of gratitude I had for you as a director, as a creative artist and everything to just recall that, to recall that moment. You know?

Yeah. Wow. I didn't remember that part of it. I also, I do remember from that scene that I think I screwed up my line and said, but why male models twice. A couple times. And we ended up leaving it in the movie.

Because it seemed like Derek was just stupid. It was really just me being stupid. But why male models? But why male models? Yeah. But why male models? You serious? I just told you that a moment ago. Right.