Transcript of "David Duchovny"

I couldn't find a bin. Someone else will pick it up. Had to drop it. It's hardly rubbish. Just a cigarette, but...

Where was I supposed to put it?

It's not like I was going to carry it all the way home.

Sure it's filled for the seagles.

It's not like it's my job.

No more rubbish excuses. With 3,500 city little bins, there's no excuse not to bin it. We're doing our part. Are you doing yours?

Together, let's keep Dublin clean.

A message from Dublin City Council.

. Be then, I gore la usgoltia Old School Technoliolkte, Bollyauklea, daisatrin an sixth la nolik.

I'm she gack illerodt, a ta airfall in OTE Bollyauklea.

On inultorokt guna haleena, on gineo, Oliokte, and Rivaerokt.

Lauer le leeg Tori, o gus McLean, o champis illeg OTE Bollyauklea.

Ogas fai mac, kodba kooislin, a ve, sa ched auts d'un usteot keimaha, in Bollyauklea. Clawag gnais, eeg twiudobin. Ie/opendays.

Ote Bollyauklea, sorg on Olam. Hey, guys. Welcome back. This is the first time I've done this, that we're doing the show since we- Did it last? Well, no. We made a... Didn't we make a blood pact?

I mean, not that I know of.

Did we not make a blood pact? Who did I make a blood pact with? Oh, no. I'll figure it out later. All right. In the meantime, let's go to all new I love it. Smart. Lies.

Smart.

Lies.

Smart. Lies. Smart.

Lies.

Hey, you know, J. B, somebody said to me the other day, you've become like the Jack Nicholson of the Dodgers. Oh, yeah. You're at the Dodgers. You're on the broadcast a lot.

What a high compliment.

I know. Shani, you were there with them, and somebody said that the guys were like, Hey, there's two-thirds of the smartlist crew, and where's our money?

We had such a joy. I mean, Willy, if I had three tickets.

I know. Sure. This was last week it was dinner, this week it's the game. I mean, most people would be like, Hey.

Sean, we're still good for Rome, right? Yeah.

This is what it is. You're getting me back for all the holidays that Sean and I went on.

I mean, the stamps on your passport.

No, we missed you, Willy.

We really did have a nice time, didn't we, Shani? Oh, my God.

It was so easy, breasy.

It was great. We haven't done that in ever. A long time. It reminded me, Willy, of I took you to the... Was it game one of the World Series last year when Freddie Freeman hit that walk off grand slam?

Oh, yeah.

How good was that?

We were jumping around like-What was the last game? What was the last game? The beauty contest. The last game of what?

Was that the famous last game last year where the guy hit them? It wasn't the last game.

I believe it was the first game.

It was the first game, and it was a walk off. The World Series, yeah.

Where he just got a bases loaded home run.

Then The series continued for the Yankees to go ahead, and they dropped the ball on the whole series. Yankee fans will know that pun.

Oh, gosh. Well, you alienated 50 million people.

Listen, the Yankees are going to get another chance. Well, who knows when this is going to air, but it seems like they might get another chance.

I also look at what I just fucking did like five minutes before we came on. We're playing with the dog outside, and I ran inside, and I fucking tripped over him. To break my fall, I grabbed the door and my fist finger went all the way back here. Oh, God.

Really?

Yeah, just like five minutes ago.

I was like, oh. Wait, so you're on ice right now?

Well, just in case, yeah.

Well, luckily, no joke, luckily, you're done with the play.

I know. Could you imagine? No. No. No? No. Couldn't play. Wouldn't be able to play.

I know.

That Ricky.

It would be Good Night, Oscar, if that were the case.

Incredible. Wait, Sean, why have you- That's just stupid. Sean, why have you asked me and then my wife separately if my dogs are good with other dogs?

Because I want to bring Ricky over, but I don't want to bring him if your dogs are going to- Why would you be bringing Ricky over? Because I might come see a movie this weekend.

Okay. But you spend three hours plus over at Jen's every week, you don't bring Ricky.

Look at the judging face.

I just don't understand. Is Ricky having separation anxieties lately?

No, it's just a thing. As a dog owner, I just don't like to leave him alone for three, four hours.

Jamie, I would describe your face as a scowl right now. It's a scowl.

I would like to bring him over to Jen's, but they don't get along.

Well, yeah, but- I was like, Oh, if your dogs get along, it'll be great.

I could just bring them over. And if not, by the way, that's fine, too.

No, they get along. But the bigger issue is why do you and Scotty feel like Ricky needs so much constant... Dogs can be left alone. And by the way, you just spent almost a full year out of the country.

I know. I don't know how he fed himself. He fed himself. I don't know how he drove himself around.

Listen, this is going to be controversial, but we live in an era where people bring their dogs over to other people's houses a lot. I'm not judging you, Sean, on this, but people do it. They're like, I got my dog with me. I'm like, What do you mean you I got your dog with you?

It's not okay.

Yeah, and I love dogs. I've had lots of dogs. I have a dog. But you don't need to bring your dog with you when you go to somebody else's house.

I like the dog.

I'm not saying that you don't.

Then continue Can you have more morning play time with them then.

People show up, I got my dog with me. Oh, you got your dog with you? What if everybody brought their dog everywhere? It would be mayhem.

This is what I love. This is what I love to see.

You're like, I'm a dog person. You're a monster.

Sorry, he peed. Where are your paper towels.

No, this is what I love. That's not what I'm going to do. I love the conversation that I know happened this morning in Jason's face as he was having it with Amanda.

It was a couple of days ago, and I've been really stewing on it.

Amanda's like, Sean, just text me if our dogs are okay with other dogs. You turn with your cup of coffee or just sludge, your cup of sludge.

I said, fucking what? What?

By the way, you know where he is. That guy did the same thing as me. He's in his chair in his little study with the fire going in. He's watching MSNBC.

What the fuck did he say?

Then he barely moves and he looks at her and she's at the door because she's too scared to come in because she sees the pre-scale. She sees the pre-scale. Who knows what stage of gummy he's at? You know what I mean? Yeah, I will scratch. He's afraid of dad.

She does a very tentative little...

Yeah, a little knock.

Honey.

Sorry. Are you not on commercial?

Is it not commercial? I tell you what, I tell you who's not tentative is our guest today.

Nice. Let's get into it.

Yeah. Hang on a second.

Check the chat.

Hang on one second. What does that say?

Oh, by the way.

Yeah.

Yeah, sorry. Before we go, before we get into our guests who we wanted to talk to immediately.

Tickets to the Hollywood Bowl, November 15th. For Smartlist Live.

Wait, do I need to buy tickets for that? I'd really like to go to that. Do I need to buy tickets?

No, we're giving you two comps. We're I'm going to give you two comps. One for you and then plus one.

You get a plus one. I'd love a stage seat. If you have a stage seat.

You go to smartlist. Com/live.

You go to smartlist. Com/live for the Hollywood Bowl show on the 15th of November. Guys, this is going to be very nerve-wracking for us because what are we doing up there at the Hollywood Bowl?

We can barely do this. We're barely doing this this morning.

I will tell you that my guest is one of our One of the biggest stars in the movie industry.

So is my guest. Really? Yes. My guest also is one of the biggest stars out there.

Let's have a little side bet. You and me.

Liz, you and I. I can't wait. I'm going to have a single up on a camera. We're going to single up on you. When J. B, when my guest comes out, gets announced.

Oh, and you'll know why.

Oh, yeah, it's going to be great. It's going to be great.

Listen, you know what- It's going to be a guest that's going to make me nervous?

It's going to be so great on so many levels. I can't wait.

Shani, you can I'll be the judge between Will and I's guest. Will lets you and I have a little side $10 bet of who is the bigger guest. Shani, you get to decide. All right, we'll just let go.

We'll do 10, 10, 20. That'd be a big reveal. We'll do a 10, 10, 20 in presses.

We have presses. It's for automatic.

Automatic presses. Okay. All right. I'll tell you what we are. We're pressed for time because we want to get into our guest who is, get this, award-winning actor, writer, director, New York Times best-selling author, podcaster, singer-songwriter, multiple albums, multiple Golden Globes, multiple Emmy nominations, SAG Awards. He's known for his iconic TV show, which was his breakthrough, even though he'd been doing it for a long time. He's got a degree from Princeton. He's got a master's from Yale in literature. He still has an unfinished PhD that I want to ask him about. He's one of the all-time greats of you guys. It's David Dukovny.

Oh, David Ducouveny. Yes.

Hey, David. Was that not who you were going to guess, Shani?

No, I thought it was David Ducouveny or Louis CK.

Oh, wow. Often, often, often mistaken for one another.

I don't think Louis has a master's in literature, all due respect to from you.

You said Princeton. You said Princeton as well.

And Princeton first.

Is that true? David, welcome.

Jesus Christ, David. Is it true? Yes, it's true.

Thank you.

God.

This is so wonderful.

David, why You're such a... I remember we spoke about a year ago.

Let me just say, I don't like the tone of that. Why? Immediately, why?

Why would they give you a degree? No, it wasn't that. Why? It wasn't that. Go ahead. Why would I what? The why would you... Because you graduated, you were head of your class in high school, and then you go to Princeton, and then you go to Yale. Then I feel like you lowered yourself to come into show business a little bit. Why would you do that, David?

Clearly, I have a- Academia needed you. A gaping hole inside me.

You decided to slum it.

You slummed it with us, morons. What did you- What did you...

What did you... Go ahead.

No, that's it.

I want you to walk me through your academic prowess. I'm fascinated with all this stuff.

Well, at Princeton, I majored in English literature, and I wrote my thesis on Samuel Beckett's novel. Novels.

Come on. Novels.

Well, let me tell you why I wrote on the novels, because nobody writes on the novels, and I didn't have to do that much work and research because I could just make the shit up myself. All right.

This is nothing to compare it to.

No ChatGPT cheating.

It was an open field.

And then what happened? That was Princeton or that was Yale?

That was Princeton. And then I took a year off and I traveled, and I didn't really know what I wanted to do at all. I just knew I wanted to be a writer. And then I thought I applied for a Mellon fellowship, which I got from the Mellon Foundation, which they were trying to lure people that might go into money making businesses and steer them towards academia. So it was for people to get PhDs who might not be able to afford staying in school. So I got one of those and I went to Yale. And I thought that I'd become a professor of English literature and then write novels in my summertime. That was the plan. Wow.

And forgive me, have you written like 100 novels in I'm an idiot?

I've written four or five novels. Wow. Yeah. And I just had a book of poems come out.

Oh, that's cool.

David, this is... And then, by the way, he's also... He's admitting the fact that he's put out a number of records. He just finished a tour. Am I right? You just finished a tour in Europe. Yeah.

Oh, no, this was in the States, this one, but go ahead.

But last year, you were on tour in Europe. I listen to your records. By the way, your music is great. Oh, thank you. Sometimes, and I mean this with all due respect, sometimes when you see people who do multiple disciplines, they're like, I'm going to put a record out. You listen, you're like, Yeah, it's pretty good. Your records are really good. I mean, these aren't just hobby records.

Will's got very good musical taste.

I'm a music lover. Really, really good stuff.

I mean-Thank you, Will.

I love that tune, Hell or High Water. I think that's a great tune. Yeah, it's super good.

What type of... Is it rock and roll?

Yeah, I guess it's... I'd say it's rock and roll. Yeah, like '70s rock, late '60s rock.

Like Yot Rock?

Not quite like Yot Rock. I'm not very jazzy. I stay off the water.

I try to stay off the water. No, it's like indie rock in a way. I mean, sorry. Forgive me for saying that, but I'm a '90s indie rock dinosaur myself.

Well, the '90s was like the garagefication of '70s rock in my mind.

Oh, interesting.

I think '70s and '90s have a lot in common.

You're playing the guitar there and you're singing as well?

I don't play the guitar on stage because I'm self-taught on the guitar, so I have an inability to play it the same way twice, which is not very nice for my band. So I write the songs.

And do you sing them?

And I sing in my fashion.

So on stage, you have no guitar as a crush.

I have nothing to do with my hands. I think that's where you're going.

You just work the mic and the core.

You hold on to that fucking mic stand for dear life. That's what I wouldn't know what to do. It's like a life jacket.

You're like Liam Gallagher does that.

Liam is amazing because when I first started performing live, I just thought, well, I'm like the MCAP. I want people to have a good time. I'm dancing around and making a fool of myself. He's dancing. It was actually my wife said to me, You don't have to move around so much. Oh, no. Then I saw Liam Liam, and Liam is just still. He's just still. He's got his hands behind his back for the most part.

Yeah, leaning up in a way.

It's really powerful to be still.

Do you close your eyes a lot?

Sometimes. Sometimes I close my eyes and then I go, This isn't good. There could be shit happening out there that I need to keep an eye on.

Do you ever go full see you and just turn your back to the audience?

But David, I just want to say, David, you were self-taught on guitar. I think you only started playing guitar a couple of years before your first album. Is that true? True, yeah. You basically teach yourself how to play guitar for a couple of years. Then you have the audacity to be like, All right, well, I'm going to write a record. How are you... Do you know how to read and write music? How did you do...

How was that process? No, I don't know how to read and write music. But here's something that you guys might appreciate as actors. When I decided I wanted to learn guitar, I'm not 100% self I thought when I decided I wanted to learn, I was doing Californication at the time. I said to Tom Kappenose, the producer, I think Hank Moody should learn how to play guitar. So I could get the free lessons.

That's amazing.

The intelligence permeates everything you do.

I know. He's playing four-dimensional chess, if that's a thing.

Also with singing, I'm not like Sean. I'm not that a singer.

I'm not either. Which is sad.

Yes, you are. How dare you. It's been a journey to try and put over the song because I can hear melodies that I can't necessarily sing, which is weird. I never thought that was a possibility.

Well, I Just really quick, sometimes the best singers are the, quote, untrained singing because you don't think about it. You're not in your head about it.

David, we had Michael Steip, our friend from R. E. M. On here a while ago, and he was talking about that. Wonderful song. He was so good. That first record that he made when he was down in Athens, Georgia, with those guys, Radio Free Europe, I think, was their first single. He was talking about... He basically was singing gibberish, and he didn't know how to sing. Do you remember that guy? He was talking. He was like, I just winged it because he didn't know what... He taught himself how to... He got better as he- I think the correct term is wung. He wung it. He wung it. Sorry, Jason.

I don't mean to embarrass you. I'm so sorry.

Stickler. He got a master's in English from a school bus.

Hey, Sean. Hey. Yeah.

Okay. That really, speaking of music, struck a chord with you.

Now, David, I don't read, and I'm not proud to say that.

You strike me as a reader, though. I'm surprised to hear that. I appreciate that.

He reads scripts, he doesn't read it. A lot of this is the glasses.

It's just the glasses.

But to be an English major and to say you want to be a writer and you are a writer and to be a writer and to be a professional. It sounds like a lot of reading, a lot of sitting down with nothing else going on. There's total silence in the house. Maybe this is a little bit of classical music or something. Nothing with lyrics because that'll distract you. No, exactly right. But like... Will, I wanted to ask you about this, too, at times, and then I just said, Fuck it, I don't want to talk to Will. How do you do How do you just say, Of all the things I could be doing, I would rather just sit in this chair and shut out the world and stare at this stack of paper and go left to right, top to bottom, word after word after word after word.

I'm not reading Hebrew at all. That's what you're saying.

I wish my parents, for all the good that they did, I wish they had somehow tricked me into really loving that process because there's so much that I'm missing.

Are you talking about writing or reading?

Reading. Writing, yeah. Writing, I've got. But it's the reading that's... I don't know.

Have you ever loved reading a novel or reading films? I have.

I backed into a couple of those, but it wasn't by choice. I do not read for pleasure.

All the jokes That's what I'm saying. The J. B. That I make about you not reading, I will say of the handful that I mentioned that you have read, you've always said you really enjoyed reading them. That's what's surprising to me. I'm like, Well, why don't you double- It is the time allotment.

It is the decision to go sit in a chair in a quiet corner of a house and shut everything out and do that. There's so much discipline that I have for other things, but I just don't have it for reading. I'm so envious of that.

Yeah.

I think it really just comes from my parents, I think. On my mother's side, she was from a small town in Scotland. And the only way to advance for her family, which were generations of... I did that Finding your Roots show. I found out that I come from a long line of fishmongers. Oh, yeah.

Wow.

That's wild. So the only way out of the fishmongering business, in fact, one of my ancestors' occupation was widow of Fishmonger.

I didn't even know that was a job.

I was like, How does that pay? How does that pay? Not well, is my guess.

Well, you need the person to die, first of all. You need to be included Put it in the will.

And so the only way out of that place in society was education for my mother. So my mother was the first woman, first person in her family, and a woman in the 1940s to go to college. And so she was very much just somebody who believed in the power of education and of reading and writing as a social climbing tool.

Also, is the appeal of reading sometime like the pure escapism of... Because I do remember this one book I really enjoyed reading. I was once on a job that I didn't enjoy. I didn't like where I was. I was on location somewhere, and I was lonely. It was great to just... I was dying to get back into the book any chance I could because it would travel me from where I was.

That feeling is amazing.

Well, it used to be... I think the place of books has been taken by TV and movies, that escape. But before there was that technology, this was what you had.

People used to read books on set, I think, way back in the day. But, JB, I would say that you, as somebody who travels a lot, you're on planes a lot. It's such a great time to get that escape where you're not watching-Can I send you one of my books?

Yes, please. I'll send you one of my books for a plane ride. It's baseball contingent. Is it? It's near baseball. It's It's called Bucky Fucking Dent. I made a movie of it. Nice. I made a movie of it. But I want you to read the book. I'll send you the book.

Now, that sounds like non-conviction.

No, it's fiction. Is it? It just uses that moment in time as a. Okay.

Then does that make you a big Yankee fan?

I am a big Yankee fan, and I heard what you said earlier.

You got a big day today. Big day today.

So David, all of this to say- My father's family, His father wrote for The Forward, which was the only Yiddish daily newspaper in America, the longest running one.

And he wrote in a Dekensian way. He wrote Cliffhangers for the paper. He wrote stories about Little Nell or whatever, somebody being tied to the train tracks, that a thing. And my father, his entire life, my father had to work a nine to five job, but he always said he was a novelist. He always said he was a novelist. And at the age of 73, two years before he died, he published his first novel. So he was a hot young novelist at the age of 73. So I'm coming out of that history of respect for the word, respect for the efficacy of the word, respect for education. Just it was all... That was part of my growing up. That was part of my foundation.

And we will be right back.

I couldn't find I need a bin. Someone else will pick it up. Had to drop it. It's hardly rubbish. Just a cigarette boy.

Where was I supposed to put it?

It's not like I was going to carry it all the way home. Sure it's filled for the seagulls. It's not like it's my job.

No more rubbish excuses. With 3,500 city little bins, there's no excuse not to bin it. We're doing our part. Are you doing yours?

Together, let's keep Dublin clean.

A message from Dublin City Council. And now back to the show.

That's funny, David. My dad also, who worked forever, but he's been retired for a while, but since COVID, has written two novels.

Amazing.

And he wrote his last one and came out when he was 86. He's just written it last year. Oh, my God.

What is the name of it and where can purchasers find it?

Yeah, well, his latest is The Monmouth Manifesto, which is an interesting novel. It's historical fiction, if I love that.

This is about when caterpillars change into-No, it's about the American Revolution in a way Monmouth County, New Jersey is the reference said about loyalists going to Canada based on one of my ancestors and about really at the heart of the revolution. I was just trying to do a moth joke.

Okay, sorry. You didn't want to get into it.

Not really. This is why you're Canadian.

Let the readers buy it and discover it.

What's his name?

My dad's name is James Arnett. You sure? Yeah. Emerson James Arnett, if you will. E. J.

My dad wrote me off.

Oh, no, Sean. That Joe.

Sean. Sean, do it.

It would be funny if it wasn't so true. He wrote me off.

All right. He wrote a goodbye note. He wrote, See you. That's where bye came from, by the way. It came from Sean's dad. Bye. Wait, David. I do want to... You graduate, you go to Princeton.

I want to stick with Sean.

I know. We've done a lot. Anytime you have a question on Sean, please interrupt me. But you decide and you're studying English lit, and you get a master's. Then what's the moment you go like, All right, I'm going to put this down for a second. I'm going to dip my toe. What was your first acting job, and why did it come about?

I was at Yale. I was getting my PhD or so I thought. And Yale is famous for its drama school, and they have a lot of productions going on all the time. So I decided I was going to start trying to take classes over at the drama Department, and they were very loose about it. They would just let me walk in and do writing classes because I thought, maybe I'm going to write plays because the idea of writing novels or poems seems so very lonely to me. And I was 22, 23 years old, and I was just sitting in a room. All day long alone trying to write. It's like, this is fucked up. This is not.

I like people. Not as romantic as you thought it was going to be.

No, but I like collaborating. I like... So I thought, okay, I'll write plays, and that way at least I'll get out to the world. And so I met all these actors, and they're always looking for bodies because there's so many productions going on around in Yale. And they said, Hey, come and do this thing, this Arthur Schnitzler play we're doing, which name escapes me. But you can play the Count de la Trimue or something. I had one or two lines, and I liked it. It wasn't like, Oh, this is a revelation. In fact, I thought, Oh, I'm comfortable. And I was so comfortable in between the first and the second performances, I smoked a joint.

How'd the second one go? Yeah.

Not so good. That's really funny. I was so cocky. I was like, I got this. And then I was like, Oh, I don't have anything. Why are people looking at me.

Did you then sign up for acting classes?

I started taking classes in New York with a woman named Marsha Haufrecht, who taught Strasberg method. She was associated with the actor's studio. That was wonderful because She was completely supportive. It was all about the interior world, all the things that are so difficult to work on when you're actually a working actor.

But were you thinking about it in terms of informing your playwriting? Was that part of it?

Yes, that's what I was telling myself.

It wasn't like, this is going to be my future occupation.

No, I thought, if I'm going to write plays, I should probably know what it's like to say whatever lines I'm going to write, see if they're sayable up on stage. That was my approach. Then at some point, I was just like, I played sports my whole life, and I liked the team aspect of acting and of making things. I liked the high wire, put up or shut up feeling of it.

Did it ever frustrate you that it didn't hold the same academic rigor? No. Because it is not, with all respect to our colleagues that are actors, it doesn't have this high-brow, sophisticated reputation that a playwright would-No.

It's just a different game. It's just a different game. It's like baseball and basketball, whatever. I look at life as a series of games or setups, and this was just another game. I knew it had different rules, and I knew that That I would have to examine different strengths in order to- Probably less constraints, too, than writing because it is such a different discipline.

It probably started exercising a different muscle creatively that you're like, Oh, this feels good.

Yes, it was the emotional aspect of my life, which had been neglected because I was in academia, which doesn't really prize being volatile.

So the emotional side of it and the teamwork side of it is being satisfied. But do you feel like this fucking academic superhero that you have inside of you has been satisfied, has been utilized properly in your life thus far?

Yes. Now that I when I Started writing novels about 10 years ago now. I go on Goodreads and I'll read people's suggestions.

Oh, you will?

I stupidly, yeah. But I will be accused of showing off my learning when in fact, I don't write with any books around. It's all in my head. If I'm quoting something or if I'm referencing another great work of literature, it's coming from my head. It's coming from my memory. That's crazy. That's amazing. So I'm not doing it just to show off, but it's part of me. And I really feel like I finally joined in the conversation with these people that I grew up reading and loving and feeling like this is the conversation I want to be involved with. I'm sure you guys have had this as actors where you're like, okay, now I'm in conversation with the people that I want to be in conversation with. Yeah, that's true.

And then what about... Sorry, Shani, did you ever end up writing any plays or any screenplays? Have you married the two? Yeah.

In fact, the novel writing came out of not being able to make a screenplay. Bucky Fucking Dent, I wrote as a screenplay probably in 2005 or 2006. Then I couldn't get it made. Usually, my soul goes towards more independent stories. Bucky, I couldn't make. I got close, I got close, I got close.

Then I finally did.

Then I was like, I'm going to write it as a novel, and then I made it as a movie.

You flipped it. You went the other way. You read a screenplay.

Because Will always talks about it. It's IP now because now you're The book is IP, so they love that, right?

I don't know if they love that.

Reverse engineering. I mean, no, Hollywood loves that. Was it a book first? Then we'll make it.

I'll just say that as a director, writing the novel of the screenplay was the best preparation I could have done as a director because I just knew. I'm not suggesting that you have to do that next time you direct, guys. No. I'm just saying for me, that worked.

Is there a genre that you like writing more of than not?

Oh, I mean, I'm just of the... I guess I go back to the movies when I started acting, like James Brooks, just these movies that can live in a real, in terms of a dearment, Sobing, but also laughing. Yeah, great.

David O'Russell stuff.

Yeah.

Just like real emotional stuff.

Emotional, but fucking funny. Flips back and forth. Yeah. So that's always the balance that I'm looking As an actor, too, it's always the balance I'm looking for. That's where I live.

What ended up... To go back to my interview, what ended up becoming the first professional acting gig that you had, that you went up for and you got?

Professional is a funny word.

Well, that you got a paycheck that you had to fill out a W4 or whatever.

Well, I'll tell you about two. The first one I got paid for, and then there's the first one I did, which was even better. But the first one I got paid for, I believe, was a Michelo beer commercial.

Wow.

And I got on set and the guy told me, Okay, you're at the bar here. The guy, the director said, You're at the bar here. That guy. Yeah, that guy, some guy said, you're at the bar. I said, okay, this guy says I'm at the bar. And you run into an old professor of yours and you guys have a conversation, and you're happy to see him. And I was so fucking tight. I was so nervous. I'm 26 years old. I mean, I'm not young, young. I had staked my life on this path. I wasn't going to get my PhD. I wasn't going to be a professor. I just thought, okay, I'm going to do this thing and I'm going to be good at it. Now I get on set and I'm like, I'm just tight.

Because you feel like you needed to do so much?

I just didn't know. I didn't know it was going to be so fucking tight.

I know exactly what you mean, man.

I know exactly what- You needed that joint.

It wasn't like, Oh, I'm in the right place. It was like, No, I'm in the wrong place.

The cameras pointed at you. What? The boom guy comes in.

I can't lie on the ground and go, Ha.

There's pretzels there, and I toss one up, catch it in my mouth.

The director's like, I love that. I love that. Oh, no. And I just remember, again, that was my lifeline. And I was like, so I did it for 10 minutes. And then I just remember the director going, okay with the pretzels. We got the pretzels.

I thought you were going to say you could never get it in your mouth again.

No, that I could do. So that was the first paying job was Michelob. The first job that I remember was my acting class went and my acting class put on a night of one acts. And I decided to adapt this Charles Bukowski short story called The Copulating Mermade of Venice, California. Sure. Sure. As one does.

Sean's always referencing that.

It's a painting Sean has.

I just call it Mermade. Yeah.

Yeah. So in this story, these two guys, unemployed guys, watch the hearse unload at the Venice Morg. This is not a true geographical thing, but they can see it from the beach, and they know the timing of it. They know when the guys are going to come around. They know when the body is going to be unattended, and they're going to steal a body. So they do. They steal a body. And here's where it's Bukowski, and it's like the logic fails you. But they open it up, and it's a beautiful woman, and I decide I'm going to have sex with her. And then I'm so ashamed of myself that I force my buddy to have sex with her. And then, are you sure you have this on your wall, Sean? I'm not sure. No, no, no.

It's how I did it.

You should see the poster.

It's bizarre.

So then I said, what are we going to do with the body? I don't know. I swim her out to the ocean to get rid of the body. And then I come back and I say, she wasn't dead. She turned into a mermaid. She was beautiful. She swam away. So it It's this beautiful, not beautiful, it's this gross, horrible necrophilia, and then coupled with this high romantic, it's just Bukowski. So we decided we're going to do it. And I asked the class, which of the women in the class is going to be the corpse? And everybody's like, Yeah, it'll be me. It'll be me. But then when the time comes to do it, nobody shows to be the corpse, and we're stuck. And we had been the place where we were making these plays was a... It was an S&M dodging. Sure. Well, of course.

They're not used during the day.

No, they're not used during the day. And we got to use it for two nights. By cleaning up, we had to clean up. That was a whole other different story. Yeah. But there was the madame there was named Magda, and she heard that we didn't have a body. So she said, Why don't you use one of my blow-up dolls?

Oh, my God.

This is how things happen. They're at Yale. Oh, she. Yeah, right. And I'm thinking, maybe I should have stayed at Yale.

Yeah.

So I had always put up a bulwark on front of the stage to lay a body down so nobody could see the body. They couldn't see what was going on when I was supposedly making love to this body. I had this blow-up doll, and I hadn't been able to rehearse with her. Sure, she wasn't available.

She didn't know her lines or anything.

As I was copulating with her, her arms and legs started flying out because she's only made of air. The audience sees this.

Like a used car lot, the things that you did.

I'm trying to do this most intense scene, young actor. I'm really like, I'm fucking edgy. The audience is laughing and laughing. And so in between performances, I went to Paragon. I hope you know it. It's a sporting good story.

Sure, very well.

I got four ankle weights, and I weighed down her wrists and her ankles. So the next time, she didn't She didn't have as much moved.

But you still had the squaky.

The other part of it was when I walked through the audience and I put a pail of water off stage where I was going to go because I swim around. I got to be wet. And so I walk through the audience, and I'm sure the audience is like, oh, my God, this is the worst thing I've ever seen. And I'm thinking, yeah, that's right. I'm an edgy motherfucker. And I go around the corner and I realize it's totally quiet. There's no door. They can just hear me sponging myself down. They can just hear me.

Oh, my God.

That was my first play.

How long did it last?

It was two nights.

Okay, great.

Two full nights.

You do the Bukowski, where you're, as you describe, making love to an inflatable doll in an SNM Dungeon. You do the Michelo- You threw away a PhD at Yale for this.

Threw That's what I hear my mother saying.

Yeah, your parents must have at this point, they're beaming with pride. But then what's the first... Because I'm leading up to X-Files, so I want to get into X-Files a little bit. We'd be remiss if we didn't get into X-Files because I was a fan of X-Files, and I watched it. Yeah, exactly. You get that, and that leads to what? Because what was the first film you did?

An old girlfriend of mine whose name is Maggie Wheeler. There. That's her married name. She's a terrific actress.

She was on Friends quite a lot. First and last, okay.

She's on Friends. She was Janice on Friends. Oh, yeah. Chandler's-yeah.

Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So Maggie was doing this film with Henry Jaglem, who just passed last week. And Henry's this maverick independent filmmaker. Yeah. And Maggie was going to be one of the three stars of this film called New Year's Day. And she asked Henry, Can you David's acting now. Can you see if you can put him in? So Henry did. I had a couple of scenes in the movie, and they were notable enough to get me going here in LA and get an agent. At that point, it wasn't like get your sag card. It was like, how do I get film on myself? How do I show people that I'm not a vampire and I don't disappear when I'm on my phone?

Well, people didn't have phones, and you couldn't put shit on YouTube the way kids can now and create their own stuff.

So it was really It was one long scene in New Year's Day that really opened it up for me in LA. Then I auditioned forever here and didn't get tons of stuff and would get-So you moved to LA.

Feedback. You moved to LA to do it, to go all in. Exactly.

What were you doing to pay the bills while you were swinging and missing?

I was doing commercials. I would get commercials.

So no waiting tables, no bartending, no typical- I bartended.

I catered.

Where'd Where did you live when you were here in LA?

I lived on fourth Street in Santa Monica. I got a sublet there. Oh, way down there. I had an efficiency apartment, which means it didn't have a kitchen, which means I did my dishes in the shower when I had my shower.

David.

Yeah. Wow. Dishwashing liquid is pretty good.

Wait, fourth and what? I lived on Ocean Park in second for years.

fourth between California and Washington. Yeah. Right by the stairs. That was my gym. I'd go to the stairs.

I catered, too. I catered for a wedding at Anthony Edwards house when I just moved here. I was like, Oh, my God, it's the guy from ER, and I'm in his kitchen.

It was so wild. Then you were shooting pretty much next door to him when you guys were doing Will & Grace, right?

That's right. It was crazy.

Oh, my God. Shani, you did a lot of commercials, too, back then. I remember.

Tons, yeah. It's the only way to pay the bills.

We talked about, remember you had those commercials that you were doing, when Will & Grace was on, some of them came out. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Isn't that where?

Yeah.

That was wild. I had two commercials, two on the Super Bowl in 1998.

What were they?

One was a Bud Light commercial.

I did a bud light commercial.

Oh, Really? When?

'87, '88.

Well, you did Miller Light and Bud Light.

Yeah.

Michelob.

Look at you. No, Michelob.

I did Michelob and Bud Light. I was all over the beers. I was king of beers.

Wait, so, David, when did you... Because Because I'm a big sci-fi nerd.

Yeah, so X-Files. That's what you're getting to, right, Johnny? How did X-Files come about?

I know you're sick of talking about it. I know you are.

And forgive us. We're just fans.

I didn't ask. But I'm ready to listen.

Jason read the books.

It was just an audition. I remember at that point, I was not wanting to do television. At that point, there was a real divide between television actors and movie actors, which has been erased in the past few years or the past 20 years. It was really, I'm not a TV actor. That was my sense.

Who was your North Star in film? Who did you want to be?

Well, I didn't want to be Brando, but he was my North Star. Got you.

Did you ever write any of the X-Files?

Yeah, I did. You did? I run and directed two or three of them. One of them is a baseball one, Jason. I can't believe we haven't made this.

I know.

We'll be right back.

Nordian in two stage era, galosh to Nassuntun, aheron, I couldn't find a bin. Someone else will pick it up. Had to drop it. It's hardly rubbish. Just a cigarette, boy.

Where was I supposed to put it?

It's not like I was going to carry it all the way home. Sure it's filled for the seagulls. It's not like it's my job.

No more No rubbish excuses. With 3,500 city little bins, there's no excuse not to bin it. We're doing our part. Are you doing yours?

Together, let's keep Dublin clean.

A message from Dublin City Council. And now back to the show.

Wait, so you get this gig and you sign the five-year or seven-year standard thing before you go in and you test. So you know that if you get this, you're stuck with something that you're not really excited about, then you get it.

Are you excited when you get it because of that? Yeah.

Well, you're not excited to think it's going to go forever, which is a blessing when it does. But You get competitive. You're just like, if I'm going to do it, I want it to win. I want it to go.

You do the pilot, you want it to get picked up. Yeah, sure.

Every step of the way.

Then it gets well received and you're like, well, all right.

Can I just stop for Tracy? Can I just say, so the testing process, so you don't know, Jason just alluded to, and David knows, we all know. It used to be, I don't know if it still is the way, but what would happen is you'd go in for a show, whether it's X-Files or Will & Grace or whatever it is, and you get the audition, and you'd go through, and Then you'd get a call back and you'd read for producers. Then what they do is they take for any given role, they might have three or four people who they decide that they're going to, as they call it, bring to the network. That means they're select pick, three or four people for each role. Before you go and do this final audition, usually in a conference room, something in an office building, the most uninspiring place you can imagine. Before you do that for a day or two before your agents in the show negotiate your contract, a five-year contract, and you sign it before you go in for the final audition. In the lobby.

Right before you walked in.

So they got you. So you're broke, and then your agent goes, Here's your contract. We've agreed you're going to You get $25,000 an episode for the next five years.

It's a lottery ticket.

Yeah, and you're like, Oh, my God, I'm so broke, and I'm going to get $25,000 an episode for the next five years. And you're doing the math, and you're like, And then I'm going to buy it. I'm going to buy a new car.

And if you weren't nervous before, you're petrified now.

And you sign it. It's huge. Then once you sign it, they take the signed, executed contract.

So that you have no leverage if they give you the job. You've already signed your real.

You go in and you then audition for all the execs at the network, and then you're waiting, and they decide whether or not you got the part. So nerve- They have you so over the barrel, you never realize you're never not over the barrel in that process. It's really uninspiring. It's a very specific thing to get good at that, to be able to block that part of it out, to then go and deliver at the final moment. You're-turture. Yeah, you're fighting out of a hole, right?

What if after that, David was like, It was an offer. But anyway.

It It wasn't an offer.

David, your process is you're a little conflicted about doing a TV series, but you wanted to... It's a great paycheck. You go in, you sign the contract, you do the test, and then you do the pilot. Now they've got the extra Executed thing. Then the network, sorry, again for Tracy. Then they decide from all their pilots what shows are going to make it on the air next year. You're waiting for a month or two for that. Then they go, great. Your show is happening. You're in it, and we've got you for five years. Then what happens a lot is you go, oh, my God, this is so great. I'm going to make $20,000 or $25,000 an episode. Then two years in, if you're lucky enough that it's going, you're like, hey, man, I deserve way more than $25,000.

I got to get out of here. I got to stay available for all the feature opportunities I think are out there waiting for.

David, so you know that process, right? You're there and you're doing XFiles, and you guys come out of the gate pretty hot. It's a hit. Am I right or wrong?

It's a hit on Fox. If you can remember that far back, Fox was really not a real network at that point.

It just started.

It was like '93 when you guys- '93.

They didn't have programming across the board all day long, really. They had married with children, and I can't remember. They had made-Simpsons. 90210.

Tracey Allman.

Yeah, that's right. But they were really the Upstart Network.

They didn't have a big drama like you guys.

No, not at all. We didn't need to get huge numbers to be a hit for Fox. Fox, which was nice because Fox wasn't even in all the homes.

Who was running Fox at the time when you guys were there? Do you remember?

Who was running it?

Garth Anciar.

Who?

Was it Garth Anciar? He was at NBC, I think.

Yeah, he was one of the starters of Fox.

Yeah, I can't How do you remember that name, Jay.

Or was it WB?

He didn't want me for a gig, and I had to re-audition. You ready for this? For my buddy Michael Malley's show, we did the pilot. I get the pilot, we do it, we shoot it. It gets picked up to series, and then he didn't want me. I had to go back-Sandy Grushow. Two months later.

It might have been Sandy.

I had to go back two months later and re-audition for a part and do a scene in a conference room, a scene holding up pages that I had already filmed that existed on film. Terrible. That's crazy. That's crazy. In a conference room in Burbank. That's crazy. I'm like, Wait, you don't need to see me do this in the room.

Do you remember what year that was, Will?

1999.

That's when I first met you. I met you at the Upfronts.

Yeah, that year. That's right.

All the Upfronts. Did you get it, Will?

I did, actually. Yeah, again. Well done. I got it again.

You imitated yourself and got it done.

What a fucking victory. I think I counted. I think I had a thousand beers that night.

That's not enough. That's not enough for that.

David, were you a sci-fi fan when you got it? No. Are you now? Not at all. No.

Wow. How about that? No, not really.

You get X-Files, you go up to Vancouver, you guys start doing it. It's a hit for Fox, and then it really starts to... When's the moment you can feel that it's have pushed through to the general-Probably like the third year, just globally.

It felt just huge.

It was a global hit.

Yeah, massive.

How did you like relocating up into Vancouver for so long?

Well, I loved it at first because I didn't really have any roots in Los Angeles. I had come here to try to get work.

The blow-up doll wasn't going to start crying. I mean, they can perform a lot of duties, but tears are not one.

I'm not going to speak for her.

Jesus Christ. But I will tell you before- So I hear.

This is what I hear.

This is what I hear. Oh, my God.

I don't know how you guys feel about Vancouver, but it's a beautiful part of the world. It's beautiful.

It's never been. You've never been? I've never been. I want to go so bad.

How is that possible?

It's the greatest.

It's so beautiful.

I loved it. And, yeah, I didn't mind being out of LA at all. I just love being up there. And in a way, we got to just focus on doing the work. There wasn't any LA around us. There wasn't any... Whatever heat that was happening, we were cut off from in a really good way. And in many ways, it was my education as an actor, having to go to work every damn day for 14 hours. I mean, these were really long days. And I really taught myself how to act.

How soon into the run of it and the success of it did you start thinking, All right, good here, ready to move on and maybe parlay some of this into what did you have your eyes on? Was it still features?

Yeah, I mean, that was really... I had that bias that was baked in from a young age. The TV shows that I watched when I was a kid, it was quantitative It's relatively different, the acting in it. It's not the way now.

But I just remember you had very much a movie style of acting. In other words, you're very subtle.

Well, that's how I would not get... That's why I didn't get... I would audition and not get any roles in television. I would say, he's a movie star. And I was like, well, fuck, I don't have a pot to piss in either. So can you get... Good that you didn't change. Can I please play Puppet Man. Can I get that part? David, I want to ask you about time management because you're a musician.

You literally write novels, which is amazing. You act, you do some other stuff. I'm sure you haven't mentioned. How do you... Do some other stuff. How do you manage all of that on a daily basis or weekly or monthly, whatever? Do you pick a priority that you focus on or do you splice it?

Whatever is in front of me is what I'll Songwriting can happen at any time. Pick up a guitar. But with writing a novel, everything has to stop, and I have to work on that for a few months. I write really fast, but it's an intense experience of eight-hour days doing that. And then, of course, I can't write when I'm acting. I can't write when I'm directing.

Do you have a goal in your mind that is louder than all the other goals and that then informs how you allocate your time?

That's probably the problem that I have is I don't really have a goal except to satisfy some itch.

And that's a daily itch, not a weekly or a monthly?

No, it's a lifelong a thing. It's just, for instance, I want to make a series out of one of the novels that I've written, and that's really my greatest ambition at this point. But there's also a movie I'm shooting in February that I wrote, but I'm not directing. I'm just acting in.

You've got a new series airing now. I think we're in November. Oh, Malice. Yeah.

Oh, really? Hey, thanks for not having me on the live show.

I mean, dude, that's for movie stars, bro.

I'm pretty good on my feet. Yeah, Malice. It's an Amazon comes out. I'm not sure, November third or something like that.

What's it called again?

Malice. Malice. Malice. Okay. Yeah, it's coming in November on Amazon. By the way, David, we'll get you a seating one of the... We have these new stage seats that we're going to do on the last show.

I heard. I was listening. I was listening.

Yeah. If I was to wonder this, we've had people on who have been part of something that really struck a cord culturally, the piece is, as Sean would say, IP, but part of XFile is obviously over a number of years, has this intense following, and I was one of the followers. I used to watch it religiously back in the '90s. When I saw the film, I saw the first film. I didn't see the second film. The first one was a big hit. Is there That thing when you run into people who are big fans of it, do you ever feel a responsibility, weirdly? I'm just like a responsibility as the caretaker of that thing of X-Files. I don't want to say there's a burden, but you're the guy, you're the front facing face person of the X-Files.

Do you feel that. Yeah.

Well, of course, there was a time when I wanted to leave it behind and reinvent myself. But then over the years, you begin to respect the power of the show and the size of the show and the meaning that it has for people. At first, when you're younger, you think, oh, it's not because of me, but it's personal. And then you realize it's not personal. It's just that this thing has a place in people's lives, and I represent that to them. I'm an asshole if I don't respect that.

I say that all the time. I But David's an asshole? No kidding. You do say it a lot. I do say that all the time. I said it before on here where you become famous for playing a certain role or in a movie or whatever it is, and then you spend several years trying to distance yourself that because you want to be able to play all these things. In doing so, you alienate the fans that made you, because they are in love with you because of the thing that you just said, that you made them feel. You're doing It's a disservice. I always say that I'm an asshole if I don't embrace the character Jack from Will & Grace and what it did for so many people.

I'm sorry, what character is that?

Exactly. You're also depriving yourself the treat that you deserve, which is like how lucky, how rare it is to be a part of something that holds a spot for people. That's exactly right.

It is rare. You get old enough to appreciate that you got to do something that was great, that did a cord with people.

When you're young, you don't think like that. It takes a few years to go, Oh, I need to appreciate that more.

No, it's funny. I read somebody. I made the mistake, David, of reading a comment a while ago. Somebody is saying, he thinks that he doesn't That he should have had more of a thing or whatever about me. I was like, No, motherfucker, I'm so grateful for any time that I was able to do anything that even anybody liked for a moment. What a joke. Yeah.

I'm a guy I don't even have my high school diploma. The fact that I'm still willing to stop rags. I don't think I deserve.

The world doesn't owe me a living. We're so lucky that we've been able to do this at all. It's so not the way I think about it.

Now, I'd like to ask a question that Sean's too shy to ask. Did you ever learn anything doing the X files? Here we go. It gives you any confidence that we are not alone.

Sean promises not to tell anybody if you could just tell.

It's just us four talking.

I never learned anything, no. But I have the same sense as when I went into it, which is it seems to me that the impossibility would be that we are the only sentient life. There's just too many galaxies, too many planets, too many Goldilocks planets. So the odds to me are slanted way in favor of the existence of extraterrestrials, whether or not... We haven't advanced technologically enough to reach out to them.

And they They might be all around us, and we just don't have the technology to see it.

They don't want us to... I always look at it when you see all these things, these congressional hearings and stuff about pilots who run into these shapes or things that are moving in ways that we can't understand. I always think, Oh, we're so dumb. We think that we need to connect.

They're like, No, you guys-We're good. We're good.

We're good. We're watching you. We're just watching you guys.

We don't want to have anything to do with you.

Just tripping over yourselves like a bunch of ding-dongs.

We I had a guy on once. I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something that was really interesting that makes a lot of sense to me, that perhaps they are all around us in a way that we can't see just like our cell phone service or radio waves from television with. It's just flying all around. You don't see any of the ones and zeros or whatever the hell it is that fly around that make our phones. They could be all in that stuff.

Yeah, they live in the space between the space.

Yeah. The dark matter. The dark matter. I used to say this thing with... Are you aware of the phenomenon of a ship of wolves? Do you remember that from the Middle Ages?

It was a great Robert Plant song. Is that?

Is it? It could be. But the idea was that they would take their deviance and criminals, their incorrigible criminals, and they'd put them on a ship. They didn't have space for them. They just put them on a ship out to sea.

Floating Australia.

Sometimes you'd encounter a ship of wolves, and it wasn't a fun thing, right? Right. Well, they weren't armed. They shouldn't be armed.

No, they made sure they were armed.

But my theory about because so much of alien abduction testimony has to do with being probed anally and having their teeth drilled. My theory was that alien civilizations were putting their deviants and dentists on a ship. Oh, I see. Okay, very good. Sending it out into the galaxy, and somehow they've come in.

We can cut this. But why are aliens so obsessed with anal?

Why would you want to cut that?

I don't want to get any comments from an alien.

David, what do you do? If you're not reading and you're not writing and you're not writing music and writing screenplays and doing all this stuff, what is... This is the Sean question. What What are you doing? Is there anything you do in your downtime that you're like, what's your guilty pleasure?

We'd be surprised to learn.

What do you do in the space between the space? Is it gardening?

Nice.

Anything dumb that you do? You go like, Oh, man, I'd be embarrassed if people knew I did this stupid thing.

I don't really. I'm so bad with hobbies. I really should have a hobby. Not one. It's really a problem. Well, you have...

You do 25,000 things.

It's really a problem. Are you playing basketball? You're playing golf? Are you cross country skiing?

I wish I was playing basketball. No, now I feel bad. I do this as a hobby.

When people like me, when dummies like me are watching television, you're reading, so you're not watching any like-No, I watch TV.

I'm watching Black Rabbit. Come on. Oh, yeah.

Black Rabbit. Black Rabbit, airing now on Netflix, starring Jason and Jules La. What about- Production from aggregate films brings you Black Rabbit.

It's not like you're not watching below deck or anything like that.

No, but I do watch a Love Island. Sure. Oh, you do. But then I realized, 45 hours.

I mean, it's not like a 15-hour season.

No. Somehow they make 45 fucking hours out of that nonsense.

You get stuck in there.

But so you watch baseball. Is there another... Is that your number one sport to watch?

Basketball is probably not my name. Basketball.

I hear the Lakers are going to be good this year.

It could be. Okay.

Who's your team? Knicks?

The Knicks.

Now, you're not in New York. Where do you live?

I live in LA.

Okay. Why the next?

Because I grew up in New York.

Were you not awake when we started the podcast?

Well, there was some doll fucking and stuff like that. That just put you in a state that is not your unit. He figured that was just an hourly thing that you were doing in New York.

That blow-up doll really stayed with you.

How are we going to side-text you?

This is terrible. I'm just glad he's not alive.

What if the next time we watch Jason on TV at the Dodgers game, he's sitting next to a blow-up doll?

He was the other day with an X-Files T-shirt.

Wait, David, I have an idea for you. Okay. Come on. Because you write novels and you're not a sci-fi thing, you want to sell a lot of copies of something. Bucky Funk, Fucking Dent was baseball adjacent. Do whatever you do brilliantly and just make a little sci-fi adjacent thing. Just a little bit, right?

Well, that episode of the X-Files that I wrote and directed that I want Jason to watch because it's called the Unnatural, and it's a baseball. Oh, I like that. All right. So you'll have to... I did that.

Wilford Brimley, do a cameo in that?

No, but Wilford Brimley. M. M. Walsh.

Wow.

That's Wilford Brimley adjacent. I love M. M. Walsh, by the way, just as a quick aside.

I love that guy. Yeah, he was fantastic.

Did he give you a $2 bill? He didn't. No. He He does that with a lot of... Or did. I had one.

Then we just made David feel bad again.

This is before $2 bills were being made.

It's not hard to make you feel bad. But he replaced an actor who got ill. So he had short notice, and it was a lot of dialog. His character was really the exposition man in this episode. And at one point, he turned to me because I only think he had a couple of days with the script, It was great. He got, and he said, This isn't writing, it's typing. I was like, Well, I did the typing. Thanks a lot. And at one point, he fucked up. It was so great. Instead of calling me Agent Mulder, He called me Agent MacGyver. How did you keep it in? I kept it in. There you go. Did you really? Oh, yeah. It was too good.

That's great. That guy was so good. I just remember, what was the one he did with Michael Keaton? Not Simple? No. The Great Cleaning Sober. He was also in Fletch. Is that right? He was the doctor in Fletch. That's great. He was a fantastic guy. David, you're fantastic. You're fantastic, David. We've gone over. We rarely go over. We've gone over with you because we love talking to you. Malice is out. Amazon Prime. We would be remiss if we didn't mention that again. Can I plug Black Rabbit again?

Should I do that? Please.

Yeah, please. What service is that on? We had a great chance to.

Where do we find that? Very, very nice of you to share some of your time with us, sir.

Yeah, I'm so glad we did this. I'm so glad. What a joy. Thank you for coming on.

I love your show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. You guys are great.

Thank you for coming on. Thank you, David.

Actor, writer, screenwriter, novelist, academic, musician, and all around great guy. David Ducampany. Thank you so much, David, for your time. Thank you. It's been a joy having you.

Thank you.

Thank you, David.

Thanks, David. All right, bye. Bye, bud. Double D. Double D comes to the Smartless Studio, I guess, is what this is. Yeah.

Welcome to the Smartless Studio.

Yeah.

Smartless is shot in front of a live studio audience.

He's real slick and cool.

He's just always smart. When you're smart, you're confident. He's very confident.

I didn't know half that stuff. That's amazing.

Because you're not smart. You're not smart. I'm not cool.

I It is true. I mean, it is true. When you think about it, he graduated head of his class in high school, and then he goes to Princeton, then he goes to Yale, and he gets a master's in English literature, and then he starts to work on his PhD. While he's working on his PhD, he's like, it's a Michelob spot. I want to go there. I'm going to go start doing some acting classes just to see how that is.

Yeah, I mean.

Could you imagine being his parents? You're like, Oh, boy, baby, we hit the lotto. Look at this kid. We can't wait to brag about this with our friend, blah, blah, blah. Then they go see his first job. That Come on, let's go see. And he's fucking this goddamn inflatable.

Yeah. Well, I mean, there's nothing more disappointing than just going, I want to be an actor. You're like, Christ.

All right. Maybe he's good. Hopefully, he's good. And then they go see his banging this doll. I know. No. But he He did it on his feet. He did. You know?

Boy, did he ever. Did he ever. He laid on his feet a few times. Yeah, he's such a... We didn't even get into Californication. He's just done so much.

God, dang. He did some movies, too.

He did a bunch of movies, and he's just-He's got this new A new show.

A new show called Malice.

Malice.

What do you think it's about?

What do I think-What do you think Malice is about?

Is it about a guy's girlfriend, and her name is Alice, and it's M-Alice.

Oh, Alice?

Yeah. No, this is my Alice. This is my Alice.

This is my Alice.

Yeah. Maybe it's about that.

It could be. Why don't we tune in?

Just to throw everybody off.

Why don't we two-in? Yeah.

Well, Bennett suggests this. I'm calling... Jason, you said he landed on his feet. Maybe Maybe on his biopartite sesamoids. What?

Sesamoids, which is- What is it? The symptoms and treatment options are from the Melbourne podiatrist. No.

You're not going to take Bipartite?

No. Okay. All right. By the way, have you seen the new- Here it comes. Have you seen the new show? By chance?

No, we're not taking that. How are you doing that? How are you overuling with that? With just like a...

I tried to tee you guys up with, what do you think Malice is about? I thought maybe one of you ding-dongs had a bio.

I thought you maybe said, is it a biopic?

About a guy's girlfriend named Malice.

Whose whistle was that? Who did the whistle? That's great. That's really good.

Oh, we got to start adding the whistle. Yeah. Smart.

Smart. Smart.

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Smartless is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Rob Armjarff, Bennett Barbeco, and Michael Grandeterry.

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