David Duchovny

Many Questions Season two. I've always loved Crust's questionnaire. It was originally a nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature. It's just the scientific method really. In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make observations about which truths appeared to me universal.

I love this discipline and it made me wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping off point, what to depths would be revealed if I ask these questions as conversation starters with thought leaders and trailblazers across all these different disciplines. So I adapted prus questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think a pertinent to a person's story. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least

about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered? What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that's grown out of a personal disaster? And I've gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You may not hear their answers to

all seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to their experience, or the most surprising, or created the most fertile ground to connect. My guest today on many questions is actor, writer, musician, and director David d Kovney. Dave and I made a movie a little while ago, Okay, a lot a while ago that remains one of my favorite movie making experiences, largely because he is so clever and funny and such a good company.

I usually measure a good time by how much I have laughed, and that time was a solid nine point five. Most people at this point know that David is a writer as much as he is a brilliant actor, and I've actually longed for him to finish the PhD he began when he was at university because its title has always been so incredibly satisfying to me. It's called Magic and Technology and Contemporary American Fiction and Poetry. I mean, it's a mouthful, isn't it, But you know, a good one.

Spending time in close proximity to David's brain has only ever been a good and rewarding thing, which is why I would urge you to read any of the novels he's write, my favorite of which is called Miss Subways. I think it's a crucible for some of my favorite strands of Decovneyism, the ideas of myth and mythology, time, love,

and of course New York City. It's always a pleasure to speak to someone I've known for a long time, but it was extra interesting getting to ask Dave these questions at this point in our life, and what I hope is a long continuing friendship. Where and when were you happiest? Don't laugh unless it's because it's a really happy memory. I mean my relationship to the word happy, it's pretty fright, you know, I don't know. I mean it's a question my mother used to ask me all time,

are you happy? And I would always think, well, I don't know how to answer that question. There are times I've felt fully engaged. Those are the times I'm happiest when I'm fully engaged, and usually either with family, with my kids, or with work. When I'm fully engaged to work and just kind of the monkey brain has turned off and it's just like creation, creation, creation, go to sleep,

wake up, trying to create some more. Those are the best moments, and you can have that with kids as well, But an actual specific instance, No, I think that's what I mean, because sometimes it's attached to a thing that we do, But it's really what are the tenets of I'm interested in and what the tenants of happiness off for people? Because it's a weird one. Yeah. For me, it's it's bringing something into being that wasn't here before.

And that's even a person, you know, that's a child, that's a book, that's a song, that's a movie, that's a it's a joke. I don't know, it's just like that to me, that feels happy, like not that I've been kind of basking it, you know, like, oh, now

I've done it, I've created something. No, it's just that feeling of you know, that secle vortex when you're kind of in the middle of creating something and it's it's just this wonderful kind of unseld feeling and what you're doing as I go with your instinct, and that's that's

a lovely feeling for me. I completely agree. The more I've thought about it, and the more that I've lived and the more death that I've come up against, you really do realize that that moment where you can be completely engaged in making something that is part of life, that is really as good as it gets, because I think either everything else. Since my mother died and I do bang on about this a bit, and she would get so annoyed that I kept using it as an illustration.

But it's a good one. There's this brilliant pointlessness when somebody dies. There's this existential kind of nihilism which is awful to begin with, and then if you're lucky, it grows into a proper appreciation for what it might actually be about or what it seems to me to be about, because when you watch somebody die, you really see, oh

it's it just ends. So those moments I totally get that of distilled creation, and in that moment of birthing something, of paying attention, of being engaged, and even if it's fleeting, or if it lasts for five minutes, or maybe it's five hours of sitting writing something or watching your child being born, Like, I completely agree with that. My mom's ninety two. Now are you kidding me? You met her? You met her and oh my god, I did. I

met her in Edinburgh? Yeah, exactly. She's fantastic. She's got dementia and she recognizes us. But no, she's she's not all there at all. And that's the other thing. It's not just life ends. It's like identity ends sometimes before life, and identity ends. And that's a really weird question, like what did that mean? That identity? What was that construct of character of personality? Was it a lie or was it? What was it? You know? Is it just a screen?

What's the real thing? It says? Essential? Like you said, it's as wow, identity is flimsy. It's super flimsy. It's built on sand, as demonstrated by what happens when it begins to disappear. But I do believe in something more kinetic. Let's beyond that. I really really do, having having watched the intellectual side and the body diminished, but still felt the presence of that kinetic something. There was something amazing.

It was just particularly when my mom died, it was almost like just the tiniest beginning of a breadcrumb trail that she left as she left. I think about that a lot, and I don't know if that's just the wishful thinking of of missing somebody or hoping that there is a life. It was a year on mondaysolutely not that one. Yeah, it brings up a lot of just a lot about the bulwark of that you didn't realize

was there between you and your own mortality. When your parents die, it's suddenly like, oh my god, I am next. If you're lucky, you're next, You're lucky. Yes, what person, place, or experience has most altered your life? Person, place, or experience? Well, I think my mother probably the most formative person for me, both going bad you know, place probably New York City.

I grew up there, spent last like eight years there raising my kids that I remember you gave me like a whole when we did that screening of Return to Me Edinburgh Edinburgh Castle, right, I remember, I remember you gave me like a massive prep on your mother, like maybe the whole day before we were doing pressed and stuff. You were just like just dropping things like, now listen if she's really unimpressed and doesn't smile when she says hello to like, don't worry, it means this. Now do

talk about this with her. And there was a whole like you knew her so well, you were saying it all with a smile. She was so brilliant and she was I remember we went on a tour of Edinburgh Castle and she was the mistress of the acerbic asides. She also like out of shot, which I thought was quite kind of her. Of the tour guide filled in the massive bits of history that they had missed out that she knew about the castle, which was brilliant. So I just hung back like the naughty kid with the

really sort of smart acerbic teacher. Yeah, my mother is Scottish, you know. But but I didn't fight out. And here's here's the weird thing about one's parents is I didn't find out till maybe ten or fifteen years ago. My mother was actually born in Queens, New York. What Yeah, I did that show, who do you think? But I didn't. I didn't learn it there, but I learned other things there. But my grandparents came over from Scotland in the late twenties.

They came to Queens where my grandfather worked as a superintendent. That's what I learned in the show. He was super for building. They had three kids and then they went back to Scotland. So they enjoyed the depression here in America. Depression was lifting here, so they decided it's still going on at evening. We love the impression so much, we're going to continue this good thing in Scotland. So that's what they did. Everybody packed your bags were going aback

for more depression. We're no depressed. One para shute for ten years is enough. Mother would als also told me, you know, she was in a small town in Scotland. She was raised in called White Hills, I believe, and she would say that the Germans on their bombing runs would take off from I guess Finland, what is closest to Scotland and it's right there. It's just so is it is it Norway or is it Finland. It's just I'm going to go out on a limb and say

that it's Norway. But quick, someone look at a map. I think it's Norway. Yeah. So the Germans had annexed whatever country it was for that reason, so they could be as close as they could get to London and refuel and just go on their their bombing on. So they would go on these bombing when I'm taking off

from Norway on our way to London. And sometimes if they hadn't dropped their payload, they would just kind of like drop little bombs because any self respecting German aviator can't come home with some bombs still in the tank barry. They would try to bomb bridges. You know, they're trying to trying to create a havoc whatever. You know, they

didn't drop Willie Hilly. But she says one time she was out playing as a young child and this German bomber came screaming in low and she made not an attach with the pilot and he kind of gave an odd and went on his way. Oh my god, It's like wow, that is such an eerie story. God, that's a really weirdly cinematic image here. That's like when I asked my dad he flew in the Second World War, and I remember saying, why was going to the Berlin

Film Festival? And I called him up and I was like, Dad, you know Berlin and he was like, only from twelve thousand food. I was like, I was more thinking along, where could I get a good old schnitzel. That's amazing that she remembers that. It's amazing that it was our parents generation. I mean, my father was really my grandfather, Like I mean, not literally, but he was the same age as because he flew in that war, but got those stories. Yeah, right, because my dad he was eighteen

and so he was entraining when the war ended. He was lucky. He's really lucky. Yeah. My daddy was eighteen and flew the first great and Terrible bombing raid, the first and the last day raid that the R A F flew, and he was one of only four survivors out of twelve planes, five man apiece. There was the Verde ron Braun, who was the inventor of that you two and instrumental in the creation of nuclear mom he's he's a Nazi scientist who re appropriated after the war.

I remember, I remember they took him in. Yeah, I wanted all his intel. Yes, so he you know, he got to live his his autobiography. I believe it's called I Am for the Stars, and Lenny Bruce said it should have been called I Am for the Stars. But sometimes I hit love. Oh my god, yes, exactly. Wow. What stories, what relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? I mean, I'm just gonna go with my first thought.

But I think of Jesus Christ, who is not my lord and savior, but I do recognize him as a good teacher, and in the myth he gives his life the aga. The Greeks had two notions of love. They had aero sexual love romantic love, and they had agape, which was friendship or spiritual love. And Jesus to me his self sacrifice whatever it is on the cross, you know, so that we in the Christian traditions, so that Christians may be absolved. The original sin moves me. It moves me.

It's a kind of a loved one has for what's children. You would lay down your life for them. It's a complete selflessness without a possessiveness of erotic love. I guess that's my definition of that's so lovely. I didn't know that aga. I've had friends who go to gatherings where I guess that is the particular teaching, like a form of worship, like a worship on a Sunday. I didn't know that came from the Greek. I think you're right.

I think that the eros the erotic side, which is different, but I think that kind of it's more encompassing the unconditional love of a child or a dog. Well, you know, I think we confuse ourselves because people in relationships are always talking about unconditional love, and I'm thinking that doesn't sound very smart. I mean, I feel like he is totally conditional for the most parts. You know, the conditions are you know that you are when you say you are,

you know those kinds of things you know. So it's like, I just think it's completely impossible for a human to be unconditional. We create these conditions, and whether they come from like reptilian brains survival, or whether they come from no, I think it really is from that, Like, you can't be unconditional as a human being, but you can, I suppose be aware of how you can sort of maybe release those conditions to let love in because it is

better like that. Yeah, and you know, when you're lucky enough to have children, you realize the different kind of love as possible in one's life, you know. And it's a scarier one for sure, but it's also it's less turbulent. It's it's less subject to conditions. It's not subject to conditions. It's no, I know, there's so much letting go. No one told me that. It's no one told me how much letting go that was with your children. I was like, oh, but it's like we say, we have children. You know

I have a child. It's like, no, you don't. But I think it does make you a nicer person. I think it's made me a nicer person to stand at the side of it. Yeah. I'm always amazed that how how easily they can do without me. You know, I know I thought I was indispensable. I really really thought that were It's so annoying because now that my mother is gone, I just so wish I could say you really were right when you were like, you'll be sorry when I'm gone. I really am, But I think that's

a kid's journey. They have to think that they can completely do without us. Yeah, well you want that, But at the same time, it's it's terribly painful, suppalling, it's appalling. It is to be so entertaining them, you know, unlike

the coolest, the coolest. Yeah, I guess having children it's got some kind of great marketing, like built in marketing campaign, because nobody talks about the stuff that is just brutal aver how hard it is and how much you have to let go of this beautiful thing that used to love you and adore you and then has to individuate and has to kind of cut ties with you being irrelevant. Yeah, at least for a minute. But you know, I'm still

thinking about your mom. And my dad died in like two thousand and five or saying quite a while ago. And it's weird because you say so and so died, you know, that's the way we say it. We say my dad died, and you say my mom died. But my experience of it was more, oh, he's still dead, you know what I mean. It's like he dies every day. In a way. Oh my god, Dave, that's exactly that

is exactly fucking it. That's it. I've been trying to articulate this with these surges of grief, like I had one yesterday and I was trying my poor neighbor who found me on the beach, just sort of like just having a proper moment, and I was trying to explain

to her exactly that it's that she's still dead. There are these moments where my brain simply cannot comprehend that, and I think it must be that's the human that's the reptilian brain, going that it only exists in and of itself, and only when it is gone can the heart or the spirit or whatever it is. I got you, But we've been having to deal with this extraordinary machine in our head that you know, I can't comprehend of

a lot of stuff beyond it. Well, time from one without getting too heavy, because I don't know what I'm talking about when I talk about time, Well, who does stay? That's why I had you on the show. Who then

knows anything? But every you know, all the all the brilliant physicists and scientists will tell you that time doesn't exist in the way we experience it, But it's some kind of a simultaneous past and future at the same time deal going on and the only thing that's going forward is kind of entropy, like things breaking apart, but there's no like linear from the past to the future.

And I think when you have such a strong connection with another human being, like with a parent, it obliterates that illusion of time that starts in the past and go straight into the future and kind of put you in this weird flow, you know, which is where I Sometimes I know my dad's dead, and sometimes I don't know, and so I'll go through a day where I didn't know it, I don't realize oh, you know what I mean,

or a month where I don't think about them. And then there were months where I felt I was closer to him than I was in life, you know, that I needed him to die for me to get really close to him, And that was a weird feeling too. I'll tell you that I had this novella coming out in June called The Reservoir. Because nobody wants to buy a novella much. They don't even really want to buy novels,

but they really don't want to buy an avella. But I had this kind of gimmick but cool thing, which is a bunch of poems and photographs that I've taken and written over the years that you get as like a bonus if you buy it early or something. But one of the poems I wrote about my dad, and I'm imagined him in the poem I think it's called seven years Dead, but I was imagining him growing in

that in death, the way we grow in life. You know that he was a child in death somehow and in some other consciousness, and I was a man, and and does he need me? You know, does he need me? Like does that dead child growing in the consciousness of death? Does he need to to hold his hand? Or you know? You know what we're talking about is like poetry can kind of address things like that because it's not sensical, it's not scientific, but it tries to get at those

paradoxes that we're touching on, you know. So I will say that I kind of have thought about that, just in the sense of, oh, does it grow? Does he grow? He was born into that death that that year and now he's this many years dead, and is he is he growing? Is he you know that kind of a question that's so funny. I just I had a conversation. Well, I don't know whether it's with her or with my head, but I asked Mom something and she went, I, you know,

I'm newly dead. And it was so funny, and it was what makes me think that it was her, because it was both annoyed and funny, which was a distillation of her. I had the dream a long time ago about my grandmother, about my dad's mother, who was dead at the time, and she loved Fire Island when she had a house there and a summer home there, and you have to take a ferry there, you know, you can't really drive there. And I dreamt that I was

on this ferry with Julia. I had to call Julia because she wouldn't allow anybody to call her grandmother because she was eternally and uh so she was out at the front of the boat with you know, she had a scarfon on her head in the wind and her face and she was clearly like loving this moment, being on the ferry and the sun, going out to a place that she loved. And I was withst some people and they were like, you've got to go tell her

she's dead, And I was like, why me. I mean, like she needs to know, she needs to know she's dead. It's not right. So I went and I sat down next her, and I just sat there for a bit. Eventually they said, Julia, I have to tell you something. I have to tell you that you're dead. And she said, but that's such a great dream. Yeah, it was a good forget it. I love that she knew. Yeah, the matter, it was incidental. Maybe it is, Maybe it is incidental. Yeah,

I just I don't know. Having felt my mother so keenly throughout my entire life and lived so far away from her for most of my adult life but felt her as keenly and tuned in, I feel her as keenly now and I can feel like I know she's absolutely fine. I don't know whatever form that takes, but there is nothing disturbed, and I know that isn't mind made. And maybe that's just from having kind of explored feeling as a currency in my life, not just as a

post the actor, but just in general. Do you talk to your sister about your Yeah, we do, and we've started to laugh more like we would do, like we used to laugh at her a lot. And then we call her and go we were laughing at you so hard because we were remembering when you ate that rotten lamb and you said the green stuff was mint sauce and we were like, no, it's not, its mold, and then you ate it and you almost died. Remember that.

But now we've just started telling stories. And even though there's this weird, this adjunct feeling of like falling off the cliff because we can't then call her and say we were just having a laugh at your expense, it's now becoming clear that there can be a different exchange. So what quality do you like, at least about yourself? I think impatience impatience. I'm impatient. Are you impatient with yourself or you impatient with other people or both? I mean,

I'm aware of my impatience with other people. I'm aware how torrible it is, so I really try and keep it to myself. But you know, I feel it, and it's something something I wish I didn't have. You know, I don't know, I don't know where it comes from. I don't think it serves the purpose, but it's there. God, movie sets and television sets exacerbate that. I'm sure, Yeah, certainly, yeah, I felt that a lot waiting around on a movie set. Sure,

I don't know. I think I'm so often in my head like in some kind of whether it's a creative space, I'm maintaining that I'm protective of it. And therefore if somebody is kind of knocking in a little bit and with information that I'm not crazy about or I don't care about, I can I just stop. I don't want to hear about that. So it probably made me a bad father from time to time. You know, when you're living a creative life and you have children, there's no roadmap,

you know, like to a creative life. It's like you're always doing it when you're off. So it took me a while to figure out how to be a decent person and not carve out all this time in which I'm supposed to be creating, even if it's just being quiet. God, that's a good reminder, is that being quiet and appreciating

the pines against the blue sky is being creative. You certainly know that when you've spent a winter in London, I must say where it's like, Oh the slab, gray against the slate, gray against the pigeon, gray against the gray gray. Yeah, well, I remember doing the X Files in Vancouver and we would always say, you know, we go to work in twilight and we rapid twilight, and then we sleep and we wake up in twilight. It

does get to be a weird state of existence. But you know, I don't know how much protection I need, you know, to do the things that I do. But sometimes I air on the side of quiet. Please, you know, leave me be, be be. I think it's interesting if you know what it's in the service of. Like I started querying, like why does this get me so bent out of shape? Like why am I being so impatient? Because I think impatience is one of my worst qualities as well. And I was like, what is it you're

trying to get to you? And I think it's normally that if you're busy wanting to get on with the thing that you thought everybody was focused on doing, because it usually happens for me at work and it's like, oh, but no, it's about someone spraying a little bit of something on my ear and then tugging on my pant leg and having a whole conversation about the buffet at

lunch and suddenly I've forgotten what I'm doing. I had this rule, like, it's going to make me sound I'm a bit of an asshole when I made it up and when I use it. But I say it only in the nicest way. But if somebody on set is super like into their job and they're doing it super super well, but it's getting in my way, I'll say, you're giving a ten percent and that's really admirable. But what I need is like se from you right now. Oh my god, Oh my god. I can so imagine

a teacher saying that to me. It's cool, it's horrible. I can see that you're giving and you already think like, oh, that's a good things. Been is a good thing. And then you're like, what I need from you? Oh ship, I gotta let some air out of tires. Okay, last question in your life? Can you tell me something that has grown out of a personal disaster? Oh? Everything, anything worthwhile, anything worthwhile. But specifically, the only specific thing I can

think of is when I was getting divorced. Obviously I had a lot more time because I was living away from my kids and my soon b ex wife, And that was when I took up guitar started writing songs. I never would have done that if I hadn't had that particular disaster unfolding and slow motion as divorce does. It's like a it's a it's a very slow moving disaster, regardless of who wants to do it, who doesn't want

to every it's a disaster for everyone. I started write novels, I started to write songs on guitar, and these are things I never probably would have done had I not been so uneasy. The cliche that the sand and oyster just so kind of irritated, irritated all the time, anxious, irritated left what can I do? What can I do? And that was my answer was I'm going to do things that I haven't done before. Actually think, however, agonizing and this sort of guys across the board conflict is

is ultimately creative. I mean there's a lot of collateral damage often along the way, but I do think it is creative. I do think that's the other side of it. And this being the last question, it's sort of the antidote to that first question, because I think we do pursue this notion of happiness, probably completely erroneously as human beings, when in actual fact it's about not really where were you happiest? But where was it shittiest? And what grew

that was good out of that? I now think the person who wrote these questions, which was me, is just like dog loving idiot, which was you. Yeah, as me, you solved the mystery. I saw the miship and wondering which asshole which asshole wrote? It was all yeah, but that's it. That's it. Conflict. Conflict is creative. I mean way more kind of fundamentally or or literally, divorce or any the end of or losing a parent or you know, any kind of irrevocable split or loss makes you redefine yourself.

You have to. You're no longer defined in this way. You're no longer defined as a daughter. Necessarily, you're not more defined as a mother. What you said like closer to mortality, any loss that I could go through, this just happens to be the thing that came to mind. But in my life, any loss, you do have to then look at yourself in the mirror and though, well, who am I now? And what does that person do? That's exactly it, Like what the sort of evolution of

identity like on what do you take? What survives that loss? What has gone, and it's a good thing. It's gone. What am I going to go back and sift through the rubble to salvage? But that also takes inquiry, that takes interest in inquiring into that. You have to be curious, everybody's favorite word. You have to be resilient. Without those things, life I think is miserable. I think if there was anything that I ever tried to impart to my children,

it would have been curiosity and resilients. Although it's you can't really do that, you know, that's something they either have or they don't, or they learn on their own or they don't. But I see it all around me, especially as I get older, you know, I see the people that have given up, and I see the people who haven't. I see the people who remain curious and resilient. And I'm not judging it. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying one way is better than the other.

I just think for me, I couldn't go on if I didn't think I could bounce back in some way. I couldn't take chances if I didn't think I could bounce back. That's a really good thing to think about. That's really interesting. It could be very sick too. It could be like, ah, you still have need, You still have need to be seen or to give, to make something that somebody consumes or you know, appreciates, Like I haven't chat enough, motherfucker. You know. It's like I've certainly

had enough. But there's something in me that once they keep doing it, it could be an illness or it could be beautiful. I'm not sure. Oh I hope it's something beautiful. All right, Love, I'm going to text you later loads of love and thank you so much. Thank you really appreciate it. D see you, lovel by bye. Dave's newest book, The Reservoir, will be released on June

seven and is available for pre order now. Dave's in the new jud Apatow movie The Bubble, which comes out on April one on Netflix, but I'll let Dave tell you about it, and also how I came to be in the movie without actually being in the movie, because I'm not in it, but I sort of am, which is lovely. Wait when is the Bubble out? It's so funny. I was just watching the trailers because like obviously I'll watched the trailer with the new jut uptown movie and

you're in it, and then what happens. It's Kate McKinnon. K McKinnon is the movie studio bars. She's like, there's Mini Driver. I love her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really weird. I wonder why that came about. I mean because Jed wal just sit there on the mic and I can just hear him saying, there's a really Driver. Just say something. I can't wait. I'll be first in line on the Netflix queue. You don't have to be

on my actual work. It'll jump right ahead of the cake shows, straight to number one in my wish list? How many times can you watch season? By the way, it turns out a fucking lot, because I've done it many questions. Is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, Supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Levoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver. Additional music by

Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced by Me Mini Driver. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison, No Day, Lisa Castella and Annicke Oppenheim at w kPr, de La Pescadore, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support. Henry Driver