Transcript of David on the NBC Sports Show – April 25/17

greeneyes0526:

For those who sent me messages, here ya go!  🙂

Note 1: I shortened the questions.

Note 2: Is it just me or does this guy not know how to pronounce DuchoVny?

Q: Are you doing what you went to school to do?

D: Well those programs are not really Fine Arts programs, they’re not writing programs. It’s more like studying to become an academic or a professor and teach literature rather than write it so I don’t know if it’s exactly what I set out to do as a career path, but it certainly was in the ballpark.

Q: How long did it take you to write this book?

D: Well I wrote it as a screenplay over 10 years ago and it kinda has been languishing in a drawer and I decided, after I wrote a novel called Holy Cow a couple of years ago, I realized that I could do it, that I could sustain a novel. That I could write like I thought that I might be able to. I always loved the story and I hadn’t been able to make the movie so I turned it into a novel in about six months probably. The funny thing there’s interest again in making it as a movie so it might turn into that in the end.

Q: Basically asks him if he went with Holy Cow first (which David already said!).

D: They were both ideas that I had conceived of as movies because that’s the business that I’m in. I hadn’t thought of myself as a novelist so Holy Cow was an animated film idea that I had and I decided to do that one first because it felt kind of liberating to kinda write for a younger audience. I felt like I wasn’t being that serious or maybe I might escape some harsh judgement. You know with the fact that I was writing in a genre that might not be taken as seriously as literature and then the Bucky effin Dent was always one of the favorite stories that I have ever come up with. I had the screenplay in a drawer not the novel. Turning anything into a novel from another form is not as simple as it might seem so it did take a while and it grew and it became somewhat different story in the transformation from screenplay to novel.

Q: What did you like so much about making this story?

D: Well you bring up the point. It is set in ‘78 and the charade that Ted the son is able to do for Marty the father which is kind of create this news bubble around him where if the Sox lose they can fake a newspaper or he’s got some tapes on VCR of the Sox winning that he can fool his father. Now obviously in today’s world that would be an impossibility, but when I started to actually think about the nuts and bolts of how and if this guy would be able to fool his father, luckily for me 1978 was the first year that VCRs came out on the market so Ted has a prototype of the VCR and when the Sox lose he’s able to put in a different tape of the Sox winning so that’s how he tries to save his father. But obviously at some point the dad figures out what’s going on and his health deteriorates. There’s a couple of reversals and turns that gets them to the playoff game and the final out and Bucky effin Dent hitting that fateful home run.

Q: How do you feel about what people have said about your work?

D: That particular book was reviewed very well so you know I tend to not read reviews of acting or anything that I do. I prefer not to read reviews, but in the book world it’s kind of a smaller publicity world than obviously movies or television so it’s really review driven so I was interested in reviews hoping that I would get some good reviews so that we could then alert some other people that it was getting good reviews, etc. So I was happy. I was happy that people seem to get what I was trying to do and they were moved by it. My intention in writing the screenplay first and then the novel was to… you really write an old-fashioned book or movie to where you’re moved to laughter and tears. I think that’s the story that I set out to write.

Q: Which one do you do best of the three? (Act, sing or write)

D: I don’t know. I’ve certainly acted longer, or I’ve probably written longer than any of it. But you know, they all come with different sets of challenges. I’d say with music that I’m probably the least developed of any of those things, but then again that brings with it the excitement of learning new things, of being a beginner so I don’t know what I’m best at. I think I enjoy doing them all.

Q: This guy’s got no problems. He’s made it. His life is complete. Am I wrong?

D: Well I mean, it depends, you know. In many ways life is complete but I just- I don’t wanna see it that way. I just see it as, you know, those were like seasons as an athlete, a job that I had. We had a good year, a bad year. But to me life is really about trying the new things and it’s not something about proving myself, but really enjoying myself and continuing to express myself. I also have a family so that completes my life in a completely different way. I’m grateful for the successes I’ve had and yet it’s still fun to try new things and even failure can be a great teacher.

Q: What do you want people to take away from the book.

D: I’d like them to laugh out loud and I’d like them to cry at certain points. I’d like them to have an experience.  Baseball is like… My own son is gonna be a better player than I ever was. He’s got a rocket for an arm. He’s a pitcher. It’s a way to talk about other things, it’s a way to talk about stuff, but communicate and spend time. It’s just kind of a wordless… it’s a long game. It’s a game of silences and it’s a game of lulls. It’s not action-packed. It’s like bursts of action. So there’s a lot of time to talk in between. Even like when I was in high-school, and this was before call-waiting even, this was like when you monopolized your one telephone line, I remember watching a ballgame with a buddy of mine, him on one phone in his apartment in New York and me in my apartment, two hours on the phone mostly silent just watching the game and making the occasional comment. With baseball you can do that.