Check it Out: “Kierkegaard or Californication? (with David Duchovny)”

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I know. It's so nice to see you.

Nice to see you, too. You know, I want to tell you, we had lunch a number of years ago. And do you remember we met Steve Martin? Yes. Because you left early.

What?

He really wants to know you.

I just had a minor heart attack.

Exactly. I thought. I wanted to let you know.

Well, thank you so much.

He did not want to talk to me at all about anything. He just wanted to know that I knew Samantha B.

What in the heavenly stars. I have to cut this piece out of whatever we put out, because I can't handle it. Compliments make me sweat. And that's because I'm Canadian.

Is it the Canadian thing?

I think it is. You're not allowed to accept them.

Well, because, you know, as soon as you accept a compliment, you will be destroyed. The tall poppy syndrome.

It's tall poppy syndrome. You can't ever do it. When you are Canadian and you buy something and someone goes, I love your Czech blazer. You have to go, I got it for $4.. I just want to let you know, I picked it up off the floor by a garbage bin and I washed it.

Okay.

Is that, even though you're a very famous actor, I primarily think of you as a writer. Does that feel?

I like that.

I thought so. Because I just feel like I've read all your books. Yeah. And they've been in my life. Yeah, but they're great.

Thank you. And you were nice enough to blurb Truly Like Lightning for me, which was wonderful.

It was a joy. Anyway, that's just a nugget.

I probably think of myself that way. I wondered. That would have been, my dad was a writer. I don't know if you know that. he published his first novel when he was 75..

I did know that. He was 75..

Hot young writer and then he died. He died at 76.. But he got it out there.

I checked that box. I had to do it. Now it's fine.

He gave new meaning to checking the box. Yeah, he did. And he was, yeah, it was like part of my family's lore, because when my parents split up, the story that we were told, the story that my father was telling was that he had these three young kids in a small apartment in New York. I grew up on 11th Street and Second Avenue and I guess three bedroom, three kids, two adults, you know.

He was like, actually, the whole part about finding myself was kind of made up. Like, I'm going to find myself like, well, with someone else.

So that when he published his novel in 75 or like, oh, OK, you got it.

We're all just a box of crayons. Just I don't know what I mean by that. We're just all many shades of our personalities, like across the board. Nobody is. I had this read this article recently.

Yeah.

And it's like so controversial because in there, they're just like a have a super fucked up personal life. And I was like, you know what? I don't know why people have to have heroes. Like. people can't be all things.

That's mature and very Canadian of you. I don't think it's. I don't think it's very American. Americans like their heroes, I think. I don't know.

You don't have to be magical in your life. Like you can't have. no one has everything together all the time. No one has has ever been all things to all people. It is literally like Mother Teresa was a flawed human being.

And kind of into into, like PR. I think Mother Teresa was kind of into PR. She liked her image and she kept it.

She was fierce about it.

So good for her.

The original flawed person.

She was. She was the original PR. Just a nightmare.

She was a nightmare in the Hamptons.

Have you seen Mother Teresa's rider?

She makes us take all the color off the M&Ms. Just a big blank bowl of white M&Ms. It takes us all day to scrub them.

That's right. We're going to hell.

To hell. Okay. So, okay. My podcast is about choice. And I feel like we've already talked about some quality.

Terrible.

Are you? You dither forever?

No. I simply make a choice that has nothing to do with my feelings or research. Oh my God. Because.

What do you mean?

Because I. Well, I read. When I was in high school, I was studying the existentialists.

Okay.

Sure. I went to collegiate.

Okay.

In your neighborhood there.

In my. Which is now just condos.

Used to be in the neighborhood. Yeah, I know. Well, they kicked them out of the school. They did. And I had to move.

You just do it. So, like. Are you a perpetual. I have to go back to a restaurant menu right now. Are you a perpetual bad orderer?

Sweetbreads. No, because. I mean, if we want to stick with the restaurant thing. I'm a pretty.

Right. This is just grain. These are grains.

I'm just at the pump. I'm just at the pump right now.

Just strap on the food bag. I don't care. Is it oats? I am.

I don't know. I'm like a horse.

It all tastes medium.

Or a pig. Just shovel it in here. If nobody minds.

Eat the scraps. I'll just eat the rinds.

I will eat the scraps.

I'll just eat the corn cobs without the kernels.

My girlfriend is, so. She's always making fun of me. because I will not heat anything up. Like. I will.

You know what. She's right to make fun of you. She's not wrong. That's pretty funny.

I remember when I was a kid. We'd get Chinese takeout from Jade Mountain on 12th Street and 2nd Avenue. I'm not giving a plug because I can't be there anymore. I'd just be totally surprised if they were. But Jade Mountain.

I just get a fork and knife. And I start with a corner. A corner piece.

I just make. I make do. It starts to melt. Ultimately as I'm eating it. Which is okay.

The congeal just releases a little bit. And then you're like oh, now it looks like. It doesn't matter.

The aspic.

It's just going down the hatch. You're like down the hatch.

It's all going in the same place.

See in three minutes.

My stomach doesn't care if it's heated up or not. It just says give me fuel.

We'll be right back with David Duchovny after this.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Life can be pretty chaotic. One thing that keeps me grounded is therapy. It's been a key part of my routine. Helping me manage the roller coaster of daily life.

Is there something that you can look at like that, you know, that even a very impulsive choice that you made in your life, that you think just like, really significantly changed it, even if it's a small thing, even if it's something small?

Oh, well, I'm looking at a guitar across the room here. And what I did was I wanted to learn how to play guitar. And I was shooting Californication at the time. So I'm being half my mother and half my father. I'm always looking for a bit of an angle.

Can I tell you a secret that I've never told? I don't think I've ever told anyone this. I do the exact same thing. You do? I do.

You harbored this secret.

A secret. I was ashamed. And I definitely pretended that I knew how to ride a bike. How do you do that? I was like, I don't feel like biking today.

Oh, she's watching the Tour de France. She loves it. She loves the Tour de France.

She loves cycling. I probably had cycling shorts, but just didn't.

Were you making, did you spend that money? because you thought, as I thought, was it the same kind of thinking?

Exactly, precisely the same. I was like, I can't. I don't want to. First, I don't want to be on an embarrassing bike. And secondly, I will only learn how to do this if it is so, if it fills me with self-loathing that I spent this much money on something and never used it.

So you were falling down in some random parking lot, just falling and falling? Or did you put training wheels on?

No, I didn't. I think I just went. I was old enough to go. I was old enough to think. I think that the trick is I have to learn how to balance.

The guitar saying, I'm such a beautiful guitar. And you, look at you. You. You won't even touch me. You won't even touch me.

You don't deserve me. No, you're touring. You play like crazy.

Yeah, that guitar. I still have that guitar. Sure.

That's amazing.

But I think. Do you enjoy biking now? Do you enjoy it?

Yeah, I do. You do? It's very natural. It's very.

I love it. Did you or your husband teach your kids how to ride the bike? There's the question.

We just had more. Like we had a life that supported bike riding. Do you know what I mean? Like? we went to vacation with our friends and their kids were on bikes.

I had. Oh, I had, funny times with both my kids, with bicycles. Yeah. Yeah. The first one, my daughter.

Oh, it's so beautiful.

That big lawn. Yeah. So I got into my head like teach them on the downhill, because then you don't have to.

Oh, where the highway is at the bottom.

That's.

Oh. Oh.

I realized that about five seconds too late. You know, it's like she's riding. She's riding right into traffic, you know. I kind of. I kind of.

She probably took a knee. She was like.

I feel that. I feel safe with you, dad.

This is very bad advice. And that was when she first looked at you and went. Oh, you have. Hmm. You know, when your children look at you and go.

You're just a person.

You're just a regular old. You don't have all the answers, do you? You tricked me.

Yeah. And my son, he was doing the scooter everywhere. Not in Malibu, but in the summer place. And it was, it was bothering me. Okay.

Like only a seven-year-old, can scooters out of the picture.

Father.

And you're like, you're going to be fine in life. You got this.

If you can speak like that.

Yeah. I love that. You know, I talked to a bunch of people recently who were like child actors, you know, and I think your daughter, you know, your daughter's an actor.

She is. Yeah. But not a child actor. She started when she was about 19 or 20.. Okay.

Okay. And like, it's, it's, it's funny to me. It's always funny to me when people know what they want to do.

Yeah.

Like so early in life. Cause I was so lost for so long, but you were, you were in the PhD program at Yale.

Well, this, I mean, if we're, if we're hewing closely to your format and, and with your original question about how do I make decisions? Well, look, I have never made a decision. I, I never, I, I think they still think I'm in graduate school at Yale. I never, I never. actually, I think they're waiting on finish.

Did you take her on set and stuff?

Like. did she see it or she was just like, I'm sure I did, but it was not something, it's just, it's not something we were pushing. Yeah, it is in her. Yeah. And she, and she's also very different from a performance wise, both, both me and her mom.

I think it's so cool when our children are just so much better than us.

It's like the goal. It's just like, how did you do that? I saw her first play and I was like, cause. she said she, she was, it was hard for her to like. come out to us as an actor, you know?

Really? Why did you think that you would, why did she think you would resist?

Cause we, neither of us, neither of her parents, are like, hi diddly dee, an actor's life for me. You know, we're not, and we're not like. we don't love Hollywood and whatever, whatever. Yeah.

I don't understand it.

No, I would always talk up and here's, here's talking about my podcast. I would always talk about my failures. You know, I, I, I wanted my kids and I don't know if it had any effect, but I wanted them to know I was always miserable. I made, I made that, none of this, you know, this, if you looked at it from the outside, or their friends were saying, Oh man, your life must be amazing or whatever. It's not, it never is.

you'll have moments of when you, everything's clicking, but for the short, they're short and you have to like, hold onto the victories because the failures are so constant.

Yeah. But, but you know, if we can, and again, that's kind of what I'm doing on the podcast is like, we can embrace that in each other. And you know, what I, what I, what I have felt and you know, I know you're coming from this world too, is like to watch what's happened politically in this country over the last eight years. And to watch a man who is basing his entire.

Did your children hear the message that failure is very, failure is very important in building character?

Yeah. I mean, I hope so. I mean, unfortunately, if I say it, it doesn't go in, you know, it's something they, they have to learn it for themselves, you know, right. And they have to fail themselves. And that's the hardest thing as a parent is to, to not go, you know, like as they're falling, you know, not break their fall.

Like intervene if they're going down the lawn at Pepperdine, if they try to get in front of the bike, but that's high stakes.

Exactly. If it's just falling on the bike on a lawn,

Got to do it. Did you, have you always been into, I am also, I share your intrigue. I love to hear about people when people are, have been, I love to hear about like occasions when people have been presenting a very happy self, but inside there was a lot of turmoil. It makes me feel better about all the times that I've experienced that where you were like, it's great. And inside you're like, I'm dead.

Yeah. I don't, I don't know what it is. I mean, you know,

And all. you just apply some leeches to the forehead and that cured it obviously. And then you would die at 35..

Exactly. There was a lot, there was a lot to be melancholic about back then. You only had a few years and there was the, and there's the plague and no one's bathing. And can you imagine the smells back then?

The smells. What constituted like everything, smelled bad. Therefore, what smelled really bad. Like if you lived in Elizabethan times and you were like, that stinks. I wonder how bad it had to be.

And I think they all shaved their heads because of lice and they wore these nasty old wigs that would of course get head sweat all over the, we don't need to go here.

We know we do because there was a lice outbreak at my kids public school.

Oh, there was. Yeah.

And I was thought about Elizabethan times and how they would put honey at like along the wig line or at their waist to catch the bugs. Like a sticky, like sticky fly tape, so that the lice wouldn't crawl down across their face when they were talking, chit chatting.

And that at the waist is for the pubes? Is that what you're saying?

I guess, so. I don't know if any of this is true. I may be spreading misinformation about the clean, fresh people of the Elizabethan era, but I think they put sticky stuff around just to avoid, like just to trap.

I can give you a few lines of Robbie Burns to allow us the, you know, he's, he's my mother being Scottish. How we sleek it. timidest beastie. What a panics in they breech. No, that's to a mouse.

Oh, my God. Well,

it's a panty peeler.

I love it. I love it. Panty peeler.

That's going back to my California occasion days. I never knew that line, but Hank Moody liked to say that.

Pretty poetry about lice is a panty, a panty upper. It keeps your, you know, to keep them on and make them bigger.

It's a panty sealer.

Hold that thought more with David Duchovny after one more break.

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So what was the inciting when you were approached to do this? Or you were like, I want to do a podcast. I want to talk about people's fail. I'm intrigued by this. Do you think of something in your own life?

Well, for me it was, there was particular things, and, and I speak about them, I think sometimes on it, but for me, it was more of this pervasive, just the feeling, just like a general feeling, of failing, in the sense of going from inspiration to execution. There was always this high of, Oh my God, I've got this inspiration for whatever it is, a character or book. And now I'm off on this road to make it real, put it in a form that I can share with other people. And, and immediately, I mean, there's just never a direct translation. We have to go through words.

So we're not, not necessarily the, the feeling of failure from like what throwing out the first pitch at a Dodgers game. It can certainly be that. I mean, it could be that that's, yeah. That's just so public, but also like the mini failure that just like the feeling of failure.

Yeah. When you could even, even take it back to like original sin or something, you know, there's just like, why, what is that feeling? What, what is the,

Yeah. That's never true.

Knock you on your ass.

When people say that, I feel like it's, or maybe it is true, but I feel like there's a much longer process of like, although we don't, I like what you're doing. I think it's really important because, as we were alluding to, there's a real hesitance to talk about hardship and failure here. Everybody wants to talk about winners. It's hard to talk. It's hard to speak honestly.

Right. Well, yeah. People say, what, what are you doing? talking about this? You know, like easy for you to talk about these failures, because generally you have had a happy ending.

I, I like that. I think about shame a lot too. And like, just kind of throwing off the yoke of shame is very difficult. It can be very difficult. That's a really hard one for people.

It's also, you're in the public eye, you know? So it just seems multiplied when, when that's happening or,

well, also because people want to reach out and they want to put shame on you, you know, like very actively want you, want you to feel ashamed or they want to like share their own feeling of shame with you and really spread it around.

You have to be very,

you have to be pretty careful with your own heart and your mind. Try to stay strong, but you're going to feel it. It goes in.

You just have to. It's such a hard feeling. It's a hard feeling to deal with. I mean, guilt is one thing, I guess, but shame is another.

Shame is another. Shame is another.

Shame is more of like a, it's like your being. Guilt is over. Maybe something you did, something you said is an action that you can maybe apologize for, seek forgiveness, atone for whatever. But shame is more like you are bad.

You are just overall bad. Look at you repeating these choices. Like what? Look at you with these patterns.

Did you even think about what you were going to order for dinner? How shameful.

How shameful. How shameful. You just sitting in a cold room, eating a brick of lo mein.

I've done it. I can see it.

I think it's very convenient.

It is convenient.

You just slice it into little quadrants.

Yeah. A cube. A cube for.

Nutrition cubes.

In my lunchbox. There's a cube.

Why did you, tell me about why you decided to start directing. I feel like that is. That is next level organization. Next level decision making.

Oh, no. No. See, here's the great thing about directing is.

Tell me.

Yeah. I feel like you'll have to direct at some point very soon. Like tomorrow. We'll get into that when you come on my podcast.

Yes.

Before I directed my first film, 20 years ago or whatever, I read a book by Walter Murch, who was a brilliant editor. He edited all those 70s movies that you love. And he became a director himself. But he said, because when I was prepping this movie, like you just said, I was thinking, I've got to make a million decisions. This is not my best strength here.

Now I understand. Now I comprehend.

And everybody working on the film has got a puck that they want to put in the goal. Like production, designer, actors, the writer. And it's just my job to go, good idea, pass. Bad idea, stop. I'm protecting the health of the movie.

I think that's good. So you're more a curator of other people's thoughts and ideas.

If you hire correctly. If you have the balls to hire people that are better than you at those things that you do.

I like to surround myself with people who are much better than me at everything. Do you do that?

I want to, you know.

Are you good at knowing what you don't know and being willing to admit it?

Oh yeah.

That's good.

Yeah, I don't mind being wrong. I can be wrong.

I read that you consider yourself a lazy vegetarian. Are you still a lazy vegetarian? You read a book. You read Diet for a New America in college and it changed your life.

Yeah, it did.

How did it change your life? Because I just talked to Nick Offerman and we talked all about where food comes from.

Well, that was it.

I'm so curious.

It was the suffering of the animals that really got to me. Right. I look around at the world and I see it as dog-eat-dog. It's clear to me that most life goes on by ingesting other life, whether it's plant or animal. Obviously, that's the way it goes.

She talked about it openly.

We can't look at her stuff, because all I see is the blood coming out of her mouth.

She constantly smelled like sausage.

I'm sure of it.

And I don't think that's too far-fetched. I think it's a possibility.

I do think people would become more sweet-smelling in the future. Never mind. I retract that statement. They won't.

Yeah.

And I've met so many of them who are like, I only eat meat. I only eat hard sausages once every two days. Like they're just so, their world is so like, I work constantly for 27 hours. Then I take a sausage break. Then I sleep for four days.

You're a bear.

You're just a gross.

I think, you know, it's just hard to, it's hard to brood on the suffering of the world. I mean, there's enough suffering of humans and we as humans tend to think we give such.

Right.

It's paralyzing.

It's so much grief. So you just carve out your little slice of it.

We're going to win. We're going to win. Hooray!

Okay. Before. Okay.

What.

You do literally do so many different artistic things. We've talked about your impulsiveness. Yeah. And how there's no like 10 year plan. And how really could there be?

See, I don't know. I'm really bad at hobbies. I'm just super. I feel bad about that. I feel guilty about not having a hobby.

You've had to cut your sleeves off your shirt. You're working out so much.

I'm so big. I'm like the Hulk. I'm like the Hulk.

I would just have laughed so hard if you were like, I'm just really into competitive bodybuilding now. I had to get all new shirts.

I am. And it's not even the muscles that I like. It's more of the color that I get, that deep orange.

Well, that's why you have a high quality girlfriend. She comes with the roller brush. Yeah. Paints you orange and glosses you.

Make me shiny.

Make you shiny. Don't drink water for three days and then you just go flex on a stage. That's a sport. In Bulgaria or wherever. It's a sport.

Yeah.

Okay. I'm so thankful that you said yes to me and that you talked to me today.

I'll say yes to you anytime, anywhere. And I want to just plug one thing. Oh, please. My movie that I directed, Bucky fucking Dent, from my novel, is coming out in June. And it's a small, independent film.

Okay. We need to go see Bucky fucking Dent. You know what? We need to, just like, writ large, need to support independent cinema, because it's critical. There's just too many conglomerates making content.

I mean, it's smaller scale, but it's like the ideas can be big in a small movie. And that's what I think we've kind of forgotten, that we think these movies have to look so big in order to be big.

I wish they would just take the budget of one. I mean, a lot of people are saying this now, but I do have felt it forever. Take the budget of one superhero movie and make 50 independent movies.

Yeah. Yeah. If the head of Warner Brothers did that, that would be a real interesting move, wouldn't it?

It would be a very interesting move. It would be the correct move. It's like building... People crave stories. They don't crave movies written by eight different people and an AI bot.

I agree.

Thank you so much. Bucky, fucking Dent. All right.

Yeah, there you go.

This was awesome. Have a great day.

Nice to see you again.

So nice. Always a pleasure.

I'm Sam Smith, and welcome to the Pink House. I love being in the Pink House with you. Join me as I talk to my friends and some amazing queer icons about their idea of home, like Elliot Page, Joel Kim Booster, and Gloria Estefan. Music was always my escape. It was my happy place.

Get ready to dive into some of the funniest podcasts around with Lemonada Media's comedy lineup. You can enjoy Choice Words with Samantha Bee as she laughs along with guests while they talk about their sometimes questionable life decisions. Or listen in as Sarah Silverman answers unpredictable voicemails from her fans on the Sarah Silverman podcast. And don't miss Threedom, where Scott Aukerman, Paula Tompkins, and Lauren Lapkus hang out, tell stories about each other, and see who can make the other two laugh the most. And the best part?