WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1197 - David Duchovny

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

David Duchovny knows you know him from The X-Files. He knows you know him from Californication. But that's not going to stop him from wanting to be taken seriously as a novelist and a recording artist. David and Marc talk about his multifaceted career, his early academic pursuits, and The X-Files episode that gave him the foundation for his latest book, Truly Like Lightning. David also explains how he became friends with Garry Shandling and why they maintained such a strong connection.  Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each year without checking out Zensurance, you're probably spending more than you need. That's why you need to switch to low-cost coverage from Zensurance before your policy renews this year. Zensurance does all the heavy lifting to find a policy, covering only what you need, and policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance, mind your business.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store

and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucknics? What the fucksters? What's happening?

I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast, WTF. David Duchovny is on the show today. Okay, he's, you know him from the X-Files and Californication, but he's also a musician and he's an author and he's got a new novel out. It's called Truly Like Lightning, and it's an amazing conversation. If you listen regularly, you'll find, and I know this just because I'm doing it, that a lot of the interviews during the plague have been thorough and good and connected in a way that is surprising. And actually, in some cases, deeper and better than had I done them person to person live here in the garage, which is, believe me, when we chose to start doing Zoom because we had no choice like everybody else or figuring out some platform to make this work, it was a big deal because we have really stood by this in-person interview thing since the beginning of the show. It was a big transition and both Brendan and I were nervous. But oddly, what's happened is we've gotten a lot of guests that we probably wouldn't have gotten before. And I couldn't quite figure out why some of these things were going so well or that they were

more interesting and connected and deeper in a way is there's a lot of things that aren't happening. There's a lot of defenses already down. There's a couple of things happening. You know, when you don't have a celebrity or an actor or an artist who's in the middle of a day driving around doing TV hits, doing radio spots, you know, some of them traveling with hairstylists or trying to figure out how to get here or just dealing with traffic, all that stuff. You know, what has to shed when they get in here on the mic and see, you know, whose houses is what's going on?

It's great. It's real. It happens in the moment. But these things, the new ones happens in the moment but these things the new ones happen in the moment too but what i started to notice differently was that and i i sort of thought about this is that none of that they're coming in from the other room of their house or wherever they're staying they're just you know they're setting up in their living room or they're just walking down their hall some Some of them may not even be wearing pants.

I don't know. But what I'm saying is that all this sort of buildup of shields, defenses, and just dealing with a day of work, not there. So that's one part of it. The comfort factor that they're in a place that they're already comfortable. I don't have to make them comfortable. And the other thing is, I think a lot of people are starved for connection. I don't, like some people have a better relationship with their parents. I don't FaceTime with my mother. I don't FaceTime with my brother. I don't Zoom with anybody. There's

no family Zooms going on. The only Zooming I'm doing is for my podcast and there's a few people i still see in person but i think a lot of people even if they're seeing people on zoom or in their orbit family most people are not having the casual conversations that they used to or just having the comfort of regular life so i think a lot of times like with dukovny because we had an amazing conversation and i think it was just because he's a smart guy i don't think a lot of times, like with Duchovny, because we had an amazing conversation. And I think it was just because he's a smart guy. I don't think a lot of people talk to him like we talked or that he assumes they will. I'm not saying I'm smart, but I can keep up.

But I think a lot of people just aren't having conversations in general. So that combination of them already being comfortable where they are and the fact that people aren't talking to people as much as they used to. They're not out in the world much. They're a little starved for connection. The combination of those two leads to what have been some fairly amazing conversations on this show. And Duchovny's no different. It's a really good one that you're going to listen to shortly. is no different. It's a really good one that you're going to listen to shortly. But I got to tell you, just talking to other people, even if it's people I don't know, like I interviewed,

who did I interview last week? Sam Neill. Or even this Decovening conversation that you're about to hear. Just to connect with somebody, just to unload a little bit, relax, get into their life, what's going on with you, How you doing? Tell me about your life. I talked to my buddy, Sam Lipside every night. I asked him about his kids. You know, it's really what we're built to do and you should keep doing it. Cause I'm sometimes I'm out of my fucking mind and I don't know what the fuck is going to happen or how I'm even going to, or how I'm even going to be able to talk to somebody else or what about, or what are they like, or what the fuck is going to happen god damn it why am i even doing this to begin with and then i have a

conversation with them within five minutes of talking to somebody a stranger i feel better that's what people do man this is not the time to just get lost in rabbit holes of buying things you don't need although it is fun and our economy relies on it you don't take that back please buy a lot of stuff you don't need but help people out give to charity do what you do whatever you got to do to make you feel engaged like you're doing something but the i guess my point is, talk to people. You can do the better help thing, but also talk to your friends. Try to talk to your family. I always forget because there's something about, I've learned that I like to isolate.

I didn't realize it, but I'm okay by myself. And some days it's sort of, I'd rather sit at home and feel sorry for myself for no reason than engage. You know, feel like somehow my life, you know, got. Feel like somehow my life got derailed. Everyone's life got derailed. And everything is amplified now when we have all this time and this plague is upon us and there's fear and tension and anxiety politically and financially is that every little thing that if it would have just happened in ordinary life would have been daunting but it would have just folded into the flow of ordinary life now everything is amplified and you can fully process everything all the bad shit all the good shit that happens to you

you can really fucking take it in it really lands tragedy joys appreciation horror man you could take a few days with any of that really fucking churn on it and i'm trying to stay in the light people trying to stay in the light if any of you want to hang out in the morning i'm available usually i've been doing these live instagrams for months now. Even when I have nothing to say, I'll get on there. We'll play some music together, go through some records, hang out with my cat. If that interests you, it helps me out. David Duchovny's book, Truly Like Lightning, comes out tomorrow, February 2nd. And I told him, I didn't read it, but I looked over it and I kind of got a sense of it a little bit.

But I told him, you know, there's other things we could talk about, but you can get that wherever you get books. He has a third album coming out, music, soon. He's already released a single from it called Laying on the Tracks. You can check that out on YouTube. And we're going to talk about a lot of stuff.

This is a good talk, folks. It's a great talk. This is me and David Ducat. meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive.

FX's Shogun. A new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Where are you at, David? I'm in L.A. Oh, really? Yeah. I was in New York until Saturday.

I came out of here. I'm going to shoot a couple things all over the world, which is crazy. Have you done any shooting in the plague? Yeah, I did a reshoot about four or five days on a movie, and it was odd. As you know, you want kind of a loose feeling on set, kind of creative. You just have to get used to this kind of stilted, masked.

Mask on, mask off. I know I shot a movie for 12 days and it's definitely bizarre. Screws your hair up, you know, it's not good for an actor. No, hair, face, you know, you got the mask on the whole time. And then like right before you talk, you take it off. Were you able to focus? Yeah, I was. In fact, it created more of a special space for just that moment of performance.

I'm not saying I prefer it by any stretch, but certainly, you know, you just felt like, okay, there's this little magic circle here. We're just going to do what we need to do and, you know, do what we can't do. It's a lot of squirting and wiping going on everywhere. Never enough. Never enough squirting and wiping. Hands are always dry. I don't think my hands are ever going to be the same again.

Well, also, I've grown this thing out for the thing I'm going to shoot next week, and it's not, a beard is not mask friendly. I don't know why you're doing it. No, no, the virus can just sneak right around through the whisker gap it's also uncomfortable there's nothing comfortable about any of it yeah these are small complaints but uh i flew when i flew on saturday i i was triple masked quadruple masked oh my god you flew commercial i did but i've I've had COVID, so I figure I'm kind of immune right now. I mean, I had it almost three months ago, so I'm told I'm pretty good for another few weeks anyway.

Really? Yeah. How bad? What were the symptoms? What happened? Well, since you asked my symptoms, I will tell you my symptoms. I'll take it. The main one was an astonishing diarrhea.

Great. Which, yeah. Lost some weight. It didn't feel, it didn't, because that's not the symptom that people seem to focus on. Yeah, you can still breathe with diarrhea. Yes, you can. Yeah. diarrhea. Yes, you can. Yeah. And no, I just didn't think I had it.

I thought, oh, I've got food poisoning. So a couple of days went by and I thought, okay, food poisoning is usually done in a day. So then I got tested and sure enough, I had it. And it wasn't that bad. I mean, it was bad, but it wasn't certainly nothing like I've heard. Yeah, it seems like it's a unique experience for everybody who gets it. And like my uncle and my aunt who are in their 70s, they got it. He was tired for a week and couldn't really do anything.

She had a head cold and it was over. Right. I've not talked to the diarrhea people. You're one of the diarrhea people. That's actually how we like to be known. Yeah, the COVID diarrhea crew. I've started a support group. But like fevers, breathing, all that okay?

Taste, sense of taste? Taste, smell, none of that went away. I had fatigue. I had a very weird kind of muscle powerlessness in my legs. It just felt like the way I would describe it is, and this is completely made up. And again, remember, I'm not a doctor. Yeah. It just felt like something my body had that it had never seen before. And it was trying to throw all these symptoms at me,

alert me that something was fucked up. But they didn't make any sense. They didn't seem connected. So it didn't feel like anything you'd had before all at once. That's an interesting way to look at it. So it's like your body's like, well, this is new. Let's try to fight it and just give is new uh let's try to fight it and just give him diarrhea let's try to fight it let's let's alert this body here that that there's

something we didn't understand that's going on so we're just going to make odd things hurt for a while and see if we can get his attention oh you got you got like a joint pain and stuff well just that that that powerlessness in the legs just that weird feeling of not having my legs underneath me. Wow. Well, you got lucky, it sounds like. I did. I got lucky. Did you have any visions? Did you have any moments of like, oh, fuck, this is it?

I guess I was maybe a little afraid at first just because I didn't know what the intensity was going to be. I was more focused. I had seen my kids. I'd seen my daughter. I'd seen my son. And my daughter has preexisting lung conditions. So I was just terrified that I had infected them. And once that passed, which was like five or six days into mine,

I was really just focusing on that in the beginning. So by then it was kind of over. Did you, were you able to track it? Like where you got it? Not that it matters, but you were in, you were in New York though,

right? Find the guy, find the guy, you, you sneeze. You fuck. Now you'll pay. No,

it was weird because I'm really careful. I was in New York. I hadn't really careful. I was in New York. I hadn't traveled, so I got in New York. And maybe a cab, maybe an Uber. But really no event. That's the scariest thing to me. I'm doing N95 mask. I go out with a plastic shield.

Now I've gotten this far without getting it. Now the vaccines are in trucks somewhere. And I just have this horrible fear of like, if I get it in the next couple months, are you fucking kidding me? So all that work. Why didn't I just get it at the beginning? Exactly. Exactly. Well, I can't answer that.

I can't answer that. Because I was scared and terrified and careful. And I go to fucking, I go this. But now there's a version out here that is highly contained everyone one in three people get the way they talk about it like one in three people it's almost like we're trying to get it here we're getting close yeah we're getting that herd immunity going oh yeah i don't i don't know if that's gonna i don't know if that just works on a county level well there's also culling the herd is the problem. You got to cull the herd to get to the herd immunity. Well, that seems to be happening.

And that's the sad part about the whole thing. So you're out here to work. You're just doing five days reshoots. Is that what you said? No, no. I did a reshoot about six months ago. But I'm going to work for like four days on an indie. And then I'm going to work on a Netflix

TV show and then I'm going I'm actually going to go to London and shoot a movie. So I'm like chasing the COVID hot spots as well. Good for you, man. They probably know that you've already had it. Your agents are like, that's how they're pitching you now. Look, he might not be right for the part, but he's already had

the COVID. So on an insurance level, this is the best choice you can make. Yeah, to be you know when i was starting out as an actor they would ask for like special skills on the back of your headshot yeah yeah and i'd always lie and put like horse riding juggling fencing rock climbing none of i didn't do any of that shit but now i'll just put had COVID. I'm good to go. I'm set. Yeah. Do you have a place out here?

Yeah. Yeah, I do. Oh, that's nice. I love LA actually. You do, right? Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's like this whole, I mean, I'm kind of delusional or not delusional.

I'm just so detached now. It's hard to remember what things used to be like. I can't what new york is like it's just like this weird ghost town right well it's not quite a ghost town you know because i think at this point in the pandemic people are are they're fed up and frustrated and bored and they're they're kind of inching back into into their their normal ways of moving around so it's definitely quieter you know obviously there's no surround activity or anything like that but people are out yeah people are out people are definitely out out here in la it seems like people give zero i mean you go places it's like there's traffic again i don't know what everyone's doing

you know i go hiking out here and try to dodge the maskless armenians out here and try to dodge the maskless armenians let's not single out an ethnic group i'm sorry that maskless people in my neighborhood which has a high armenian population i think that it's just human nature it's been it's been almost a year right i know yeah yeah yeah people people are ready to die they're ready to die unfortunately i so, but people can't be vigilant this long. It's just not in our nature to stay on guard for that long. I think we're built to be on guard for short spurts. Yeah, and we enjoy entertainment and eating out. I mean, that's the problem.

Well, there's that, too. So now I've got the book. I looked at the book. I couldn't read the whole book. You just looked at it. You held it in your hands and you looked at it. No, I read some things. Yeah.

Truly like lightning. Now, when you start a novel, because I don't know how many people know you as a novelist, and I don't know how many people know you as a musician. Five. Five. But I know people know you as the guy on the X-Files. Most. And in Californication and whatever, you know,

but this is your fourth novel. Yeah. So, I mean, you're a busy guy. You don't stop doing shit. No, no. And when you write a book about a guy who's in, like, what was the beginning of this book? The guy's a Mormon.

So were you just, you're like, were you obsessed with Mormonism and then decided I want to learn more about that and I'm going to set my guy there? Not at all. The beginnings of this story are from like 20 years ago. Actually, when I was doing the X-Files, I had written an episode that was kind of based on a guy named, not based on on but had used this guy named mark hoffman as an inspiration and mark hoffman was a mormon forger and and and a murderer and and uh

bomber actually he ended up being he's in prison now and uh he he forged uh joseph smith's letters oh i think i kind of remember this when was it yeah like in the late 90s yeah yeah i kind of yeah right right so i was kind of captivated by this story because uh hoffman well the amazing the brilliant thing he did was he there are rumored writings of joseph smith as you can imagine not a lot survives but there are rumors of writings that deal with fringe beliefs. Sure. So what Hoffman did was when he was forging these Joseph Smith writings, he would forge like the most controversial, most non-fundamentalist Mormon strains into these things, knowing

that the church, he wasn't trying to sell it to collectors right he wanted to sell it to the church who would buy it to suppress it who would buy it to keep it quiet oh clever so he had this amazing scam going on very specific and very very small audience for the scam he needed probably big the elders were, yeah, it was a good angle. Yeah. So I kind of translated that into an X-File where I wrote about a 60s radical who had started forging Jesus Christ's kind of lost gospels. Right. In which Jesus took a wife and had sex with women and, you know, was more of a human than he is in traditional Christianity. Isn't that the last temptation of Christ?

A little bit like that. Well, you know, am I guilty of forgery? Maybe, but maybe just influence. Right. Like that's a book that I love and a movie that I was certainly aware of. And so I wrote this X-File that was kind of based on this guy who believed he became jesus that was the thing about hoffman is when he wrote as as joseph smith he believed that he was that he was joseph smith so he didn't think they were actually forgeries in the end and and also if

you think about the credibility of joseph smith i mean we you know whoever decides to believe what he wrote about the golden plates and where the underpants whatever those are i mean it seems like there's a it seems like joseph smith of all people would be flattered that hoffman took it upon himself to create some more bullshit in his name right so so i had i had all these strains in my mind from that time i had never addressed the Mormon aspect of it, but I kind of addressed it through a Jesus Christ aspect of it. And there was also this sentiment, or, you know, I don't know if you know anything about the history of Mormonism,

but in order to join statehood, Utah, which was Mormon in the late 1800s, had to not denounce, but set aside polygamy and this thing called blood atonement. Otherwise, you know, everyday American, the union wouldn't allow them in. So, lo and behold, Brigham Young said, ah, you know, we don't really practice that stuff anymore, and they joined the union. So, it was polyggamy and it was blood atonement. What's blood atonement? Well, that's the thing. This is how I started getting into the story, or the story started taking shape in my mind. Blood atonement is this idea that there are sins that a man can commit that are beyond the atoning blood of Christ. Now, the beauty of the Christian sacrifice is that

it achieves forgiveness it's all inclusive well that's what i thought but not not in this this blood atonement says and i'm sure it's some kind of a murder usually with the murderer's state of mind and play intent so there are certain kinds of murder that you have to be killed in return for this is in in the mormon religion or in christianity in the Mormon religion or in Christianity? Yes. In the Mormon religion. This is a fringe Mormon belief.

It's kind of a capital punishment. So I was like, oh, wow, blood atonement is an excellent driver of a story. You know, blood atonement is an excellent fictional device. Either administering it or running from it. Both. Right. Or deciding, in my case, it's a father and son. The father is looking

at his son thinking, do I have to, in order to save my son's soul, do I have to kill him? So I was like, wow, this is the kind of stuff that I really like thinking about. And I like writing about. And I thought if I could write a tale or a novel that was, you know, not a religious novel at all, but around these issues, you know, I use the word fun, you know, because the middle of the book is kind of comedic, because you have these three kids who have been raised in a gata devita, which is what they call their compound in the desert, haven't seen any other humans their whole life. They basically lived in this bubble. Wow. And they get taken out and put into Rancho Cucamonga High School. So the middle is this very fish-out-of-water culture, cultural innocence trying to survive. The weirdo Mormon kids.

Yeah, exactly. Right. So I don't know if that answers your question, but it's like my interest in Mormonism was then driven by my knowledge of these strains within it. I really liked the idea that they had pushed aside these, not anti-American, but things that America couldn't handle like polygamy or blood atonement in order to join the union. And then I had studied with a guy named Harold Bloom at Yale when I was a graduate student. That guy, huh? Brilliant. I mean, just the most brilliant mind I've ever been around.

What was his big book? The Anxiety of Influence. How'd you reference him in your mind? He had written about Joseph Smith, and he called him an American genius. And I was like, what the fuck, Joseph Smith? One of the great hucksters. Well, yes, but I read Bloom on Joseph Smith and it informed my book in that Bloom talks about Smith as, you know, his whole anxiety of influence, Bloom, is about being belated. Like here we are, you and me, we've come in the 21st century. It's about being belated.

Like, here we are, you and me. We've come in the 21st century. There's a lot of genius behind us. There's not a lot of stuff we can say or do that's new. We have that anxiety of influence. We can't be better than our betters and the people that came before. It's very difficult. So that's a condition, not a fact. That's a condition, a psychological condition.

A literary condition for Bloom. Right a condition, a psychological condition, a literary condition for Bloom, literary slash psychological condition. So what he says about Joseph Smith is, you know, it's in the name, they're Latter-day Saints. Smith is taking this backwards-looking religion, Christianity, which is, you know, based on something that happened 2,000 years ago, and he's saying, no, that shit's still happening. We're saints now. It's very American And he's saying, no, that shit's still happening. We're saints now. It's very American. It's like, no, you're a God.

I'm a God. We're all gods. We're all saints. Miracles are still happening. Yeah, we can move Jesus to the States. He's our guy. No, I like the idea of it being an American phenomenon. But I think what you're addressing then is that the notion that even though Brigham Young said, all right, we're on board with being part of the union,

but, you know, secretly we've got our own code and we've got our own laws and we've got our own way of life. You know, it's interesting you say that because there are, I don't know if it's historical fact, but there's been heavy rumors that, I don't know if it was Smith or Brigham Young that had tried to negotiate with a foreign country while they were to move the church there like yeah yeah yeah i don't know just doing negotiations you know not not allowing the american government to do it right right well you know it is salt lake city is one of the only you know kind of functioning theocracies in this. I would say the only one in this country.

But it is that. I mean, you go to that town. You're like, we're in it. This is how this is here. That was my fear when I had like the vague cloud of this novel idea in my mind about a year ago. I was like, oh, fuck. You know, I'm'm gonna have to go to utah nothing against utah but it's like if i want to if i want to know what it looks like and feels

like it sounds like yeah i could go there for some months and really get the lay of the land and and you know it's nice there i'm sure it's beautiful yeah but i'm lazy you know and i i like my home in la so i was like oh i set out like out like the first feelers of research, which I'm very, very lazy. I don't like research, but I know it's necessary. So I contacted this guy who was working with me for me, and I said, just find me pockets of Mormonism throughout the country and let me know where they are and how valuable the land is where they are, because it's a land grab book too. There's a capitalist land grab happening underneath. Did you go to New Mexico? I think a lot of them are down in Silver City, aren't they?

Yeah. Well, I got this document back that was fascinating. So there were pockets, real pockets of Mormonism all over the country. But they fucking founded San Bernardino. Mormons founded San Bernardino. And I was like, it's my novel. I'm going to write my novel. Thank God. I'm too lazy to go to Utah, which is an hour plane ride. But now I can just drive to San Bernardino.

Well, that's interesting. So, like, I get the feeling that this was the goal, that this is what you wanted to do. Which? Right. Oh, yeah, I didn't really have a goal. I mean, that was the idea. Where'd you grow up? New York City.

And was your dad an academic? No, my dad was, he worked for the American Jewish Committee, the AJC. Oh, really? Yeah. In what capacity? I don't really know. I mean, he had like a nine to five job. I believe he was in public relations, they called it.

What did the American Jewish Community, what did they do? I remember seeing the AJC as a Jew. I know the AJC. I know those letters. But what is their goal? I wish I could get you my dad and tell you. But he's no longer with us. But I don't really know.

I was young. He had an office in Midtown. It's so funny about people and their dads. It's like, I go to the office, and I can play with the stapler, but I don't know. That's all I remember. And he wrote speeches. I know that. He was a writer.

He was good with words. Were you brought up Jew-ish? No. No, he was a total cultural Jew, I'd say. Not a religious Jew. And your mom's Jewish or no? No, my mother is from a small fishing village in Scotland. Wow.

How did that happen? It was an unholy match. But how did they find each other? Yeah, in Europe after the war. My dad was in Rome and Paris, and they were both teaching Berlitz English. Really? They were teaching English as a second language? Yeah, she was the first woman, probably first person in her family to ever attend college. She got out of there. I mean, her she's a strong strong person and she

valued education and left and was i don't know what she was doing in europe but she was out there alone on her own and she met my dad and uh they came back to new york and she met a charming jew yeah he's charming he was charming oh yeah oh yeah yeah and he he brought her back to new york saying oh basically i got to say goodbye to my parents. You know, we're going to move to London. I think he wanted to raise kids in London. But he didn't know Jews well enough to know that he was never going to leave his mom. Got her.

So does that mean that you have family in Scotland? Yeah, I do. And do you go there? I've been to Scotland a few times. I have a kilt. I have my own tartan. I have my own tartan kilt. Oh, so you're official?

Is that what that means? Like if you go, you're ready to, you know, you can hang out with the fellas? I guess. I don't know. But I feel very much that mix, though. I guess. I don't know. But I feel very much that mix, though. I feel very much a mix of, as I said, cultural Jew and rural Lutheran. I feel like that's my sweet spot. So you grew up in New York. Did you act as a kid or you didn't act. And I read and I wrote. My dad, you asked, my dad actually supplemented his income from the AJC by writing little political books. Oh, really?

Little knockoff satires like The Wisdom of Spiro Tiagno. Yeah. Like paperbacks? They were published? Yeah. These. Yeah. Like paperbacks? They were published? Yeah. These Ballantyne paperbacks. They were these little, like you could fit them in your back pocket.

And they're funny. They're funny. Yes, he was a satirist. He wrote a couple of coloring books. He wrote the psychiatrist coloring book, the Nikita Khrushchev coloring book. And this was all kind of to supplement the income

because he also liked to play poker. He had like different ways of like- He played poker at the house? Did he have a group of guys that would come over and smoke when you were growing up? No, not at the house. He played out and he usually won. He was a good poker player. He'd win like a hundred bucks, which is a big deal. So my dad, then he wrote a play that was on Broadway in 1967 called The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. And it was not a comedy, as you can probably tell from that. So he wrote that after Oswald was shot, obviously. Only four years after. So the hypothesis was if Oswald hadn't been shot, this is the trial.

Interesting. So I feel like I've heard of that play. Is that possible? Closed in like three days. Really? Why? To hear him tell it, he would say that people just weren't ready to see shots of Kennedy's head blown up and exploded. I remember I was seven.

It was the first theater experience I ever had. I remember I was seven. It was the first theater experience I ever had. Aside from maybe You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Right. Which was a little lighter fare. Yeah, they don't show Charlie's head being blown open. Not yet.

It's like when Lucy trips him and he flips up on his back. His head doesn't blow open. You're a motherfucker, Charlie Brown. Yeah. So that kind of blew your mind. Well, it was my first experience of any kind of performance. It's pretty radical. What year was that?

So that was 67, 68? Yeah, I was seven years old. And my dad asked me what I thought after. And in the play, which was very, very long, as I recall, Oswald is sitting in a chair. It's a courtroom scene. He's sitting in a chair and he doesn't say anything for the whole first act before intermission. So like, he's like an hour sitting in that chair as the prosecution and the defense is talking around him. And my dad asked me, what did you think after the play? And I said, how did he not have to go to the bathroom?

So that was my, I was perceptive about acting from the very beginning. What do you do if you have to go and you're sitting there? What do you do if you're Oswald and you still got to pee? Stuck on stage. Can't get out to pee. So, but it seems like you still got to pee. Stuck on stage. Can't get out to pee. So, but it seems like you ended up at Yale. So, you know, your family or you obviously put a premium on education. You must have been a pretty good student. It didn't seem, you know, you don't seem like you were necessarily connected. So you had to do the work. Not connected at all. It was all

scholarship stuff. I went to a very fancy New York high school on scholarship. And then I had a scholarship at Princeton based on need. And then I got a Mellon Fellowship to go to Yale. So pretty much all my stuff was paid for. My mom had to take out some loans to help pay for school. I took out student loans, but we did get help. Yeah. What'd you study undergrad at Princeton? I studied English literature, just the general liberal arts. What was your focus? Did you have a focus on the literature?

Probably modern. Like my junior year, I wrote on Virginia Woolf and my senior thesis. At Princeton, you have a choice of choosing. You can either take four courses or you can take three and write your senior thesis. So it's basically a year-long book that you got to come up with. So that's what I did. And I wrote on Beckett, Beckett's novels of all things. So you were in it, man. You were like on the professor track. Exactly. That was my track. So you're not even going to write about Beckett's plays. You're like, you know, there's not enough attention being paid to Beckett's novels. What was the... Well, you're giving it a much nicer slant than the one I had,

which was there's so many brilliant people who've written on Beckett's plays, but nobody's written about Beckett's novels. I'll do okay, you know? It's unexplored territory. I just got to make sense. And I don't have to do much research. Again, we can go back to my laziness. All right.

So what was the angle on the novels? Was there a theme? Was there like, you know, like. I was caught up in the sway of this French stuff. What, like like Lacan or like Foucault and like. Yeah. Yeah. The postmodernists.

Yeah. So I was the name. I can't remember what I wrote about, but the name of it was the schizophrenic critique of pure reason. That's what it was called. And. And. Fuck that guy. That was Lacan calling. From the grave. He's like, how dare you?

How dare you? And I don't really remember what I was writing about or what my idea was, but it was basically, in a nutshell, it would be, and this is to make it a cliche and everything, but the only sane response to an insane world is insanity, basically. It was basically that. Got it. And so then you go to Yale for master's in English? No, PhD, but I didn't finish. So I was admitted into the PhD program, but I did my classwork and I sat my orals and I passed those. And then I was

supposedly onto my dissertation when I started acting, really. You mean you started acting to get out of your dissertation? That's one way to interpret it. Yeah, probably. I would say my soul did that. My mind didn't make that decision, but my soul was looking around like, you can't do this your whole life. You just can't.

What was the dissertation that drove you to acting? What was that one? I want to know the name of that one. That was called Magic and technology and contemporary american fiction and poetry that seems a little broad but probably you know you just pick a few and go at it exactly well that's what you do yeah so what i was what you pick a few and you go at it that's life isn't it so so i was going to write on uh onchon, James Merrill, the poet, Robertson Davies, the Canadian author, Ishmael Reed,

an African-American author, and Norman Mailer. So I had those five that I was going to write about. And basically the idea behind that one was that throughout human history, there's been this notion of magic. But magic has always been like black magic and white magic. There's a sense in which there's some magic that you shouldn't do. Right. Like Faustus.

Sure. It's a very heavy strain. Don't conjure up the devil and ask him for a favor. Exactly. But magic also is a primitive technology. It's a way in stories, the way people made shit work, like they're flying in magic. Right.

Now we have technology that does magical things. Right. But we don't discuss technology in terms of bad and good, in terms of moral and immoral. So I was saying that these writers are kind of imbuing technological fields with magical thoughts and that they're saying just because we can do it they're not saying it they're authors but just because we can do something right does that mean that we should well that those

conversations are definitely happening now i know that was and i that was how many years ago did i was i thinking it right god damn it if you'd only finished it you could be a professor now damn it it'd just be a kind of weird tenured uh broke professor having this conversation with a student and sitting in your office wondering why you never pursued acting i should have been an actor so what what so what was the moment where, why you bail on your dissertation to act? How did that, what was the opportunity around that? How did you just all of a sudden switch tracks? Did you, were you taking classes? Did you get a part out of nowhere?

All good questions and kind of zeroing in on the truth. I think that I was trying to, I knew that I wanted to write, which is what you asked and it's true. I knew that that's what I wanted to do. And I also knew that I'd written poetry up until that point mostly. I hadn't really written prose. Yeah, I used to do that. I was an English major. I wrote some poetry. Again, how do you feel about that? It seems like that's the easier route. Poetry's easy? Well, it's not that it's easy. It's just like, who's going to tell you it's no good? It's just two ways to go with it. Either that's people who don't really read poetry.

I guess what I'm saying is that in order for poetry to be judged properly it's a very uh small world oh for sure i mean that some i've heard it said that poetry is wonderful because you can't make any money at it you know that's why that's why poetry is yeah i still enjoy reading a few poems here and there and uh you know because i've been going through my books but like you read poetry and you know what makes it land what makes it not land is you got a wide a wide birth there do you know i mean what i'm saying is that if you were the guy that doesn't like doing research it seems to me that it would make sense that like why you know i can knock out a poem you could just kind of work a poem like a math equation you know you don't have to spend your

entire life writing 400 pages well it's an it's an insulated world that you're doing a poem you know it it it will give you the terms in which it wants to be read right each poem do you do you look back at your poetry and you're okay with it or do you sort of not it's decent like the poetry itself is okay my mind was young right so the the things that i'm feeling and thinking are, you know. Yeah. Right. You look at that like, if only that kid knew what he was getting into. Exactly. He's got a way with words, but he's got nothing to say. Yeah.

So, okay. So then you're a poet. I was thinking, well, that's super lonely. Yeah. And prose, wow, that seems even more lonely because you really got to sit your ass down and and work through that stuff so i thought okay the only way that i can you know be out in the world which is what i was interested in being was to write plays so i thought i'll i'll be i'll go into the theater you know i'll write i'll write plays and then and

then i thought well if i'm going to write plays, then I should probably learn something about acting. If I'm going to write words for actors to say, I should probably think, I should probably know something about what that is. Interesting. So you took a class? Yeah, I did take a class. It was also the same time when I was told I needed to make like $3,000 to, to, for the summer, uh, for my graduate life, my, my,

my fancy graduate lifestyle. And a buddy of mine who was an actor said, you can make three grand doing a commercial. And I was like, okay, I'll do that. And he said, we got to meet my agent. I met the agent and she said, yeah, I'll send you on commercial auditions, but if you want to go on TV, theatrical and movie auditions,

you'll have to get into class. And I was like, all right, I'm not doing anything this summer. I don't want to work on my dissertation. Exactly. So did you get a commercial? I got a commercial the last day of summer. Oh, so all that, you put the whole summer of work in, then you nailed it. What commercial, what was it for? It was for Lohenbrau beer. Was that what instilled the love for acting in you? Oh, no, not at all. I remember I kind of choked on it. I didn't have a good day. I didn't have a good day at work. I wasn't ready for that pressure. And what did the class teach you? Was it a good class? Did you take it at Yale? I didn't take it at Yale. No, no, no. I was kind of schizophrenic at that point because I was teaching.

I also had to teach at Yale while I was a graduate student. So I would come into New York and go to class. I kept that going. I would ride my bicycle to the train station in New Haven, get my bike on the train, take it to Penn Station, ride around New York, get back on and go. It was kind of a cool graduate student kind of vibe. I found this amazing class i say amazing because it was strasburg technique which is like known as the method i guess sure call it and it was very um you know nothing to do with the words i you know my conception of what acting was when i first thought about it or began was like oh i gotta

figure out like smart ways to say these things right but this was all about you know what are you feeling and what's behind the words and the words don't matter yeah at all who taught it woman named marcia halfric she was wonderful uh and uh you know these classes were just going forever you know people would we put on these scenes yeah and and marsha would stop them in the middle and she'd make you relax and do like sense memory stuff so you'd watch a scene that was a five minute scene but it would be two hours watching these people struggle through

yeah I've been in those where people there's a lot of crying involved yeah a lot of blaming of the father yeah well that is the complaint of civilization at this point. Yeah, the patriarchy fucked it all up.

They fucked it all up. Yeah. It's been dad's fault since the beginning of time. That's a poem I'm working on. So apparently that class, but it sunk in. You got it. You understand what makes acting acting. And did you write the plays once you kind of got a sense?

I wrote one play. I wrote one play. I've written screenplays, teleplays, things like that since. But I just wrote one play while I was at Yale. I did. And never put it on. And it's not good. No.

And I'll say this. And it's not good. No. And I'll say this, you know, coming from my background in literature and in like the halls of literary criticism, academe, you know, these kinds of things. I was not, you know, I didn't read for plot, you know, but movies and stories that we film are plot. Yeah.

I had a disdain for plot. I was like, you know, when I'm going to talk about a book, I'm not going to talk about what happens. What are you going to talk about? Magic? Talk about,

yeah, I'm going to talk about, you know, the structural aspect of it. I'm going to talk about the political aspect of it. Right. Right. The meaning. Or the meaning that the author didn't even know.

Right, right. That's where we're at at that point, blindness and insight. You write around exactly what you're blind to, and the critic who's empowered now to find out through your blindness to your own stuff what exactly you were actually trying to say. So is this Bloom's influence? Oh, that's not Bloom. That's Paulul the man and people that came after him bloom was much more of a humanist so who are these guys these other guys paul the man i don't know him um shit uh what's his name not dito uh well people at la con going back to nichi yeah um just uh are we gonna think were you were you thinking derrida yes i was thinking derrida thank you boom it's fun to say isn't it's a good word to say good word to say i have no idea what Were you thinking Derrida? Yes, I was thinking Derrida. Thank you.

It's fun to say. It's a good word to say. Good word to say. I have no idea what it means. Just drop it. Derrida. Also, I'll say this. What I wanted to say was becoming an actor, especially getting

The X-Files, which it's an action show it's a plot show that really i needed to be exposed to that as a writer actually i needed to and as an actor i needed to see that what happens is what draws people in it's great because you got to see it 210 times and a couple of movies worth exactly plenty of plot for you to understand yep yep but that wasn't the first role though i mean you kind of kicked around a little bit didn't you yeah yeah i uh i was on twin peaks i did a movie called the rapture uh with michael i was gonna talk to you about that because i love that fucking movie i like michael tolkien movies a lot and i miss him i haven't seen a michael tolkien movie in a long time uh michael wrote the uh the mini

series that ben stiller did last year um uh oh yeah that's right that was great yeah yeah the one with benicio and uh yeah and uh the arquette uh yeah like i'm like i'm at that age where i'm like i know there's an it's an Arquette. And I know I've interviewed her. But Michael's a great writer. You know, I wrote The Player. I know, The Player. I love that. But that rapture with the, what's that guy's name?

The blonde guy who played the sheriff or the cop in that movie. Yeah. Will. Patton? Will Patton. See, together we can get there. Yeah. You and me.

Yeah. I always liked that guy, too. But that was an intense movie because it dealt with such a big idea. It literally dealt with the rapture, the Christian rapture. And it's such a small movie. And you're really talking about the end of the world. And the end of that movie where it's just that sound and you've got to buy it the poetry of the thing was very it worked you know i was i loved that movie it had an impact on me well me too uh when when i when i was finished with this book truly like lightning i i realized that i had

been influenced by the rapture long long ago because, because I was dealing with similar themes in this, and I actually called Michael up, or I emailed him, and I said, hey, I just finished this novel, would you care to read it? I really think that, you know, the rapture kind of marinated in me all these years, and when I was writing it, I had not even one conscious thought about the rapture, but I realize now, and I sent it to Michael, and he actually blurbed it for me. He's written a nice blurb for me on the book. How's he holding up?

He must be an older guy now. Yeah, he's good. I think he's good. I haven't seen him, but, you know, his emails are sharp. That's good. And then, all right, so Twin Peaks, you did a few episodes of that. I did a movie called Ruby, which was about Jack Ruby. The Jack Ruby movie.

Yeah, I played J.D. Tippett, the officer who Oswald shot, or was shot in Dallas the same day as Kennedy was shot. See, that would have been the perfect moment to, you know, from the recognition from that, you should have put up your dad's play. Now you sound like him my dad said to me once and he said i you were talking about dads before and the fucking patriarchy and all that but he said i'm giving you the greatest gift a father could ever give his son. I'm not very successful. You can win. Yeah.

That's true. That's kind of, there's a wisdom to that, right? You're not going to fight that fight. No, I don't, I don't think I ever did. Well, I mean, it seems like, you know, from the way you talk about him, you know, specifically the fact that he was, yeah, outside of not understanding his work specifically the fact that he was yeah outside of not understanding his work you understood that he was a creative guy and a funny guy and a guy that had a political point of view and you know something to say and some balls you know and those are all the good things not like you know we could have you know could have you know been a schmata hustler who made a billion dollars selling garbage clothing you know you got lucky yeah i knew i also knew that he was frustrated i also knew that he considered himself a novelist

and and he he did publish his first novel when he was 73 two years before he died so i and i published my first novel was 55 so i did win, you know, at least the chronological race, you know. But we're both late. And we both kind of ran from, well, I don't think he ran from it. I think he had to make, you know, he had to support a family, you know. Right. But it sounds like he got a lot done. So you got a good work ethic and a good career.

That's from my mom. That's from my mom. My mom is, oof, oof. She's still around? Yeah. She's 90. She'll be 91 in a good creep. That's from my mom. That's from my mom. My mom is, oof, oof. She's still around? Yeah, she's 90. She'll be 91 in a couple days. And she's together? Yeah, let's see.

Good, good. So now, I have to, so you get the X-Files. I mean, you had no idea that that would be your life for a decade, did you? Oh, hell no. I mean, I thought it came my way and and at that point i shared the prejudice against television actors that was that was the current during that time it was before the so-called golden age of television where we realized that

you know actors are actors and they can exist in any medium but then it was like oh if you're if you're a tv actor you're a shitty actor right and i but then it was like oh if you're if you're a tv actor you're a shitty actor right and i mean partly it was x files er you know these these shows that were or nypd blue especially you know shows that were very well acted you know but that was before that right and i thought but i needed money and i thought it was a really cool pilot. And I thought, there's no way. I wasn't interested in aliens. And I just thought, there's no way. How can this go on for very long?

Right. I thought, okay, maybe we'll do six. Maybe if we're lucky, we'll do a season. But there's no way. I'm really good at that stuff. I should run a studio. I really have a good mind for seeing what's going to hit. It's so funny because it's not just the acting thing.

You stepped into a thing where it's like, it's not about TV acting or not TV acting. It's that you stepped into a world that is going to have an eternal well of weird cult attention. It's almost like being on Star Trek. I mean, for the rest of your life, you're going to deal with guys coming up to you going like, hey, you know, in that episode where...

It's the obituary line, you know? And yeah, I make peace with that because I kind of, I struggled with that for a while, but then I realized there's no way to outrun it because it is it is one of the biggest shows of all time. So you're not going to you're not going to you're not going to make a bigger show. So I just feel lucky to have been on that show, you know. And then at first it was like, OK, I've got to I've got to compete with that. I've got to somehow erase it, you know.

Oh, so you're conscious of that. You're like after 200 episodes. But so you have a good relationship with the fans. Oh, absolutely. But at the time, maybe I didn't. You know, at the time I was like, don't typecast me. I can do other things. I can do other things. And then I went, you know, and then I, when I got off the show, I was, you know, I wanted to do movies and I did a few, but I really wanted to do comedy and I wasn't getting those roles in movies. And that's when I, I, Californication came my way.

And then I had never thought about doing another TV show because the season of an X-Files was so onerous and debilitating 25 one-hour episodes running around in the in the in the cold yeah night and i was just like no never again i can't do that again and uh then cable came around i was like oh eight episodes that was like whoa yeah why not you can do this and then cal California Case was really like adult comedy. The kind of comedy that I wanted to do reminded me of like movies from the 70s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll do that. In a way, that was like me pushing against, you know, Mulder was sexless.

Mulder never had a woman. Right. You know, and it was comedy, which I really, I liked the challenge of that. What was your relationship with Shanley? I mean, were you guys friends? Yeah, yeah. We were just very, very good friends. Because I love those episodes with him.

And, you know, I was, you know, I went to that memorial service. I interviewed him here and he was like such a amazing. He loved you. He told me about you years and years ago. Oh, that's nice. He told me about your, you know, did you start nice you told me about your you know did you start with a radio show or did you start with a podcast i don't know i well i had a radio show many years ago on air america and then uh i think he knew you from that yeah and then we did a podcast together

and we had a nice time and you know he was he was a he was a special person. He was special to me. Yeah. I miss him daily. It's weird to say, you know, but I, what one, one year when I was finishing up the X-Files, like the third year,

I guess I, I said to my agents that I didn't have the energy to go do a movie in my short hiatus, which was like six or seven weeks but I did want to do Saturday Night Live and I did want to do the Larry Sanders show because I was I loved it I would get the VCR tape sent up to Vancouver oh yeah when that music would come on I'd just get excited and they came back and said oh gary loves you he wants he wants you to do it and uh so i came i was back in la and drove down to radford where they shot it and i was i came in

and i was watching gary do a like a talk show segment i was sitting really close and he he looked at me walked behind me clear to me he had no fucking clue who i was you know barry did not love me in any way and uh the guy did not know me and then um came time to shoot our first scene and um it's a scene in which i i'm me obviously and and uh i'm a guest on the show but bill cosby has talked so much that my spot has been pushed and i pull a fucking hissy fit right that's the that's the idea yeah showbiz showbiz story right so we do one take in the hallway todd holland the director good guy good director and uh they cut and gary looks at me and he goes how old are you and i said 32 and he goes, how old are you? And I said, 32. And he goes, what took you so long?

And I was like, to this day, it's like, you know, it's one of those moments that I treasure in my entire life, not just in my friendship with Gary. treasure in my in my entire life not just in my friendship with gary or it's just like to me that was such a validation of what i was trying to do my comedy whatever it was just like from him that was worth everything and that's when you became friends on his show yeah and then he said you play basketball and i said yeah so well i have a game every Sunday at my house. Why don't you come by and play? And came by and played a few times. And then that's when I started talking about this coming back on and talking about the man crush and all that stuff about where I want to come back on and kind of have a crush on him,

but it wasn't homosexual crushes. Yeah, those are funny episodes. That was a famous basketball game. You must have seen a lot of people over there. Oh, yeah. It was a very funny basketball game. Yeah, I bet. Yeah, good people. Yeah.

Yeah, it's hard, man. It's hard when people go, you know? It is. It is. And like I said, but he's not, you know, to me, he's not. It's weird because people do go. I was just thinking not, you know, to me, he's not, it's weird because people do go. I was just thinking today, you know, I was saying, I rarely think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg anymore. And it's not been long that she's dead.

Right. And she wasn't my friend, but she was something that I thought about, someone that I thought about. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, how much did you think about her when she was alive, honestly? Well, a lot, a lot for somebody that I didn't know, you know? And I just feel like she's gone, and I don't feel that way about Gary, oddly. Yeah, it took me a long time to really fully appreciate him, you know, because I used to see him when I was a doorman at the comedy store in the 80s, and I'd see him a few times. Yeah, but, you know, he appreciate him, you know, cause I used to see him when I was a, I was a doorman at the comedy store in the eighties and I'd see him a few times. Yeah. But, you know,

he didn't go there that often, but it took me a long time to really sort of appreciate the uniqueness of his, um, voice, you know, of how he did it, you know, in history, you know, and certainly talking to him was one way. And then, you know, you know, talking to Judd and then, you know, posthumously, you know, really sort of, you know, and I watched Joey Sanders and everything, but, you know, after he passed away and hearing to see people talking about him and Kevin Nealon and every like, and then, Oh God, he was so fucking funny at that memorial service.

I saw, I saw a recording. Oh my my god i mean yeah but but yeah you know just really appreciating the way he handled life and what his struggle was i think judd definitely you know did did a beautiful job with that documentary oh in the book he really kind of locked in he really loved uh gary a lot so where do you like like, in terms of, like, I know I listened to some music too. I mean, when you, like, are you just like a workaholic or wait, before we get to that, let's talk about, like, I'm a recovery guy and I know you had your issues. Now did, did Californication, did that, did you become that guy or how did it happen? No, no, not, not at all. Um, that, that, that was something I don't really talk about it i don't like to

talk about it because i don't like to give it kind of currency yeah yeah you know sure but but i was trying to save my marriage you know right yeah yeah and it it almost happened right you almost saved it you tried i almost did it i almost saved it are you guys do you get to get are you are okay with each other in terms of things with the kids and everything fantastic oh that's good yeah yeah i think she's great oh she's she's wonderful okay well then moving on from that what um where do you what's the music thing do you play an instrument or you just write songs and get you got a band a little. I play enough guitar to throw chords together. I can hear melodies, which is weird because I never could sing.

I don't have what they call an instrument. But I can hear melodies, and I can more and more approximate them with my voice, and I can certainly write lyrics. So I have a band, and I'll come up with little demos on my garage band and just play guitar under under melodies and lyrics and then we work on it and is it's just a passion project you don't have any expectations i never had any expectations for it i mean the fact that i've you've done three right you got a new record coming out you got a novel coming out and you got this new record coming out yeah so that's all startling to me you know especially because like i mentioned in terms of my voice uh you know i was actually someone

you know they told you know they said you know you want it you just mouth the lyrics you know you just you know in in church or whatever um but uh I did go out for the choir when I was probably 11 years old because they got paid. I went to a school called Grace Church School in Manhattan. Oh, that's a famous school. Yeah.

My mom was a teacher there many, many years. And my friends who could sing, they were in the choir, and they got paid a few dollars a month. But not only a few dollars a month was, forget it. For me, that was all I needed. I never could imagine, what would I do with $4? I didn't know. I could get that album, or I could save up and get those adidas right yeah so uh i was like yeah i'm gonna be in

the choir and uh not only that but with the money man yeah for the money i don't i don't know if you know this but when the church pays you yeah you probably don't know that being a jew yeah you don't know that when the church pays you they cut you a big check like a golf tournament check it's like oh yeah it's only for four dollars but it's the actual check it's the size of you yeah when you're but i was like i want one of those big checks so i uh i auditioned for the choir and and you have to audition in front of the whole choir, all my buddies. And the choir master sat at the piano, and he said, okay, I'm going to play a note, and I want you to sing the note after it. And I heard literally, okay, I'm going to try to sing the note after the note he plays. Not singing that note, the one that comes next.

That's how I heard it it so he'd be like and i'd be like and i'd be like and i just remember looking around the room and people were like oh my god like not only tone deaf but in a really weird way so that was my relationship to my singing voice uh until i started writing a song you were misunderstood exactly and what do you have like a record deal or you just do it you just self-produce it yeah self-produce um but you know we've had tour we've had like three or four tours we i've played like 3 000 seat places uh you know pretty big you know big huge venues for me but like are there a lot of people waiting for after the show so they can ask you ask file questions well yeah i mean

part of the the shame of of the music now is you know there's like the meet and greet yeah sure so there's a lot of that stuff a lot of signing of the yeah arms. A lot of excited nerds. Well, you said it. I didn't say it. But how come, like, let me ask you this. So when he first started doing X-Files and the stigma of, you know, wanting to be a movie actor and then taking the TV gig. Double stigma though, because also sci-fi couldn't be cheesier. So it's not just TV, sci-fi,'t be cheesier. So it's not just TV.

Sci-fi, triple stigma, it's Fox. Right. Not even a network at that point. Wow. You put a lot of thought into self-flagellation at that point. Yeah, right. But what about the stigma of the actor fucking playing rock music? Yeah. Well, if I want to do it, that's not going to, that's not going to get in my way.

I mean, you know, if you're going to yell that at me all the time, it's going to hurt my feelings, but it's not going to stop me. Because you like doing it. And I think I'm good. You know, I think I have something to say.

I wouldn't do it if I didn't think I had something to say. Right. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, sure, I guess that's egotistical, but I think we all need that

or else we wouldn't be sitting here on microphones talking like we're going to entertain or notify people. I mean, I get that from you. I mean, like, you know, just from knowing you from, you know, what certain things you do or your presence in the culture, I always thought like, well, that guy seems like he he's OK with himself. Well, that guy seems like he's okay with himself. Oh, I don't know about that. But, you know, it's like, I guess I just keep on trying to express something. Right. And it's sort of, it's a great thing to, I think, to realize, like, if you have talent and to move it around and to take all the risks you want to take with it, it's a rare thing. Not everybody has it.

So why not see what you can do with it? Yeah, I guess. I mean, it's like, for me, it's just, I have ideas or I have notions or I have impulses and they take different forms at this point in my life. And I feel very, almost lucky to be able to pursue them in that way right but but also it's you know it's not like i'm just sitting around like having this great time you know it's hard yeah it's hard that novel you you looked at you pick up the pick up the weight of it i mean it's it's big book i mean i mean business yeah i do i mean business no i can see you take it seriously i do i mean that's that would be that would be my my weakness probably you want to be taken seriously. I do. I mean, that would be my weakness, probably. You want to be taken seriously. I want that book to be taken seriously, yeah.

You don't want people to go like, the guy from the X-Files wrote a book, I guess. That's what they're going to say, but... The guy from the X-Files made a record. Exactly, exactly. I'm sorry to get a laugh out of it. But yeah, I guess that is the deal that you made with uh with the devil when i took that big check that's right that is the magic that is the faustian uh contract absolutely that's the magic and technology right there and

it's and i i can't go back on that deal, nor do I want to. And that is the way it goes. And I just need to, in my mind, I keep on doing the work. And I hope and believe that eventually people will see that I mean business. Well, I hope so, too. And I didn't not read the book out of disrespect or no desire. I just didn't make the time. But I have it. And I will't not read the book out of disrespect or no desire. I just didn't make the time. But I have it.

And I will. Thank you. And it was great talking to you, man. Thank you. It was nice to meet you, too. There you go, folks. Huh? What an enjoyable conversation. The new book, book Truly Like Lightning comes out tomorrow

and you can check out his music he's got a new album coming out there's a single called Laying on the Tracks you can check out on YouTube you can watch all the X-Files if you haven't seen the X-Files spend the rest of your life watching them there's enough of them

alright I'm putting my gum back in my mouth and I'm going to play some guitar for you. Thank you. Thank you. BOOMER LIVES Boomer lives and monkey and Lafonda and cat angels everywhere and secret underwear. We'll be right back. Almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th

at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com.