David Duchovny exclusive interview by Craig Ferguson in Bucky F*cking Dent paperback. 

to add to @youokay-mulder​‘s post 

(It’s not all of it, the end of the interview isn’t available if you don’t buy the book)

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Craig Ferguson : What’s it like to write a novel about men writing novels?

David Duchovny : You mean as opposed to a novel about cows writing novels? Much of the philosophy or thinking ideas standing behind or underneath this book have to do with storytelling. As is, Who is telling the story – are the telling it in a way that makes them a hero, a goat, happy, sad? The idea being that all history in a story, so the character are on a journey to discover the best, healthiest, happiest, most truthful way of telling their intermingled stories. And just coincidentally, I read a paper yesterday written by my daughter for high school that addresses this question of who controls history in Hamilton – so be on the lookout for a rap musical of Bucky F*cking Dent. It’s coming and you can’t escape it. So anyway, with all this background noise of storytelling in the book, it made sense that the two main male characters, Ted and Marty would be storytellers, novelists of sorts – frustrated, maybe, blocked, maybe; but novelists. It made sense. But the book is also about how all of us who live conscious lives, or even semi-self-conscious lives, Mariana included, have not only a right to tell the story, but something approaching a duty, a responsibility – a sacred duty, even – to make personal sense of  the lives we lead.

CF: How closely does Ted’s room in Brooklyn resemble your Childhood bedroom?

DD: Ted’s room looks nothing like mine did. I grew up in Manhattan, not Brooklyn (less space), with a brother and sister (less space still)—so I always shared a room. Didn’t go in for posters. Though for a while, we used to rip the advertising off buses back when they were cardboard—the advertising, not the buses. I remember I had a Peter Max ad on my wall that I’d pulled off a bus on Fourteenth Street. Psychedelic. The ‘70s city equivalent of big game hunting. I might’ve had a Minnesota Vikings poster too. I liked purple.

CF: You’ve said that the book’s inspiration came from overhearing a workman say “Buckyfuckingdent”, which was a new word for you because you weren’t from Boston. How much have the Yankees meant to you throughout your life? Did the original Yankee Stadium have supernatural powers?

DD: I was a big Yankee fan as a kid, but this will be hard to grasp for many: the Yankees sucked when I was a kid. I came of age right at the end of Mickey Mantle, before the great, crazy teams of the late ‘70s (one of which is in the novel), and long before the corporate behemoth Streinbrenner Yankee teams of the Jeter years. My heroes were very good players, but just shirt of the Hall of Fame – Mel Stottlemyre, Bobby Murcer. The Yankee team of my childhood never won anyting – so when I write about the way Red Sox fans felt before 2004, that’s how I felt. I grew up rooting for the losers. Even the lowly Mets won in ’69. Not my Yankees. And Mel Stottlemyre s a fantastic baseball name.

CF: Like Ted, you studied literature at an Ivy League university. Are English majors kinder, smarter, and generally better than other people? Are poets (especially Hart Crane and John Berryman) superior to fiction writers? Is Jerry Garcia superior to everyone?

DD: Yes. Yes. Yessssssss.

CF : Do you miss the 1970s version of New York City ? Why or why not?

DD: I think I miss it. It’s so long ago. It was celebrated in Patti Smith’s Just Kids, but I was really just a kid back then, so the city that I knew – broken-down, dirty, broke – was all I knew. I accepted it, didn’t want it to be better or worse, it was simply my home. And we lived on the Lower East Side, which was not a place where people were eager to live, like they are today. I would be careful of romanticizing the danger of it, but there was a sense of less structure than there is today, less hierarchy, surely less franchises. So yeah, it felt more free and it really did feel like it was wide-open and livable. Today’s New York feels more a like a New York theme park where people come to have New York-type experiences. New York is loved now in a way that perverts it, makes it an idea of New York. Back then it was just a weird, wild, slightly neglected place to be living, and that was that.

CF: When you’re a gray panther, what delusions will you want your kids to stage for you?

DD: I could always use a little rain.

CF: Illness (in children as well as parents) is a recurring thread in the novel. Do you believe the “bowling average of souls” described in chapter 18? What do you think it takes to be a survivor?

DD: I’m not sure. Everybody living has survived something. Some have a much tougher go than others. I think survival is a habit. If you’re lucky and strong, and if the tests aren’t too hard at too young age, you get good at it. It’s kind of the way sports functions for kids. Teaches them how to survive in a world where the stakes seem high but are actually zero. Or even when as adults we continue to take part in the illusion that the game means something. But it’s just a game.

CF: Marty’s career was made possible by Edward Bernays, who he says destroyed free will. Do you agree with Marty about the evils of advertising and publicity?

DD: I do agree with Marty. I think it was George Carlin who said, late in his life, that we think we have choices but we don’t, we have options. I may be misquoting Carling, but this is how I remember it.

CF: Ted and Marty have similar taste in women. Were you trying to deliver a symbolic message about the nature of love, or was this just a coincidence?

DD: That’s a coincidence. So I imagine it means more than if I’d planned it.

CF: What would your dad think of Marty Fullilove?

DD: My dad would be pretty pleased that I managed a novel. I’ve said many times, when I’ve talked about the book after its release, that Marty was nothing like my dad save for being the ace of a Puerto Rican softball team. My dad was gentle and quiet and loving. Like Marty, he was also a writer, a frustrated writer, who published his first novel at the sage of seventy-two. Which is remarkable. It’s called Coney and I recommend it.