Duchovny's in the mood for 'Californication'

It's an old story. New York novelist writes something touching and profound that leaves the critics swooning and gasping. Then he hears the siren song of Hollywood and ditches Gotham for the Left Coast to see his vision played out on the silver screen.

Next thing you know, he's hip-deep in disappointment and Jack Daniel's, staring at a blank screen or piece of paper until he realises that he's sold his soul to a town that worships the talented then plates them up for lunch right next to the sushi.

So what's he to do? Blog, of course.

On Monday, August 13, Showtime tells just such a tale in the half-hour comedy Californication (no, nothing to do with the song and CD by the Red Hot Chili Peppers).

David Duchovny (The X-Files, House of D) is both executive producer (with series creator Tom Kapinos) and star, playing Hank Moody, whose brilliant first novel called God Hates Us All was turned into an insipid romantic comedy called A Crazy Little Thing Called Love (starring Tom and Katie).

In the aftermath of this disaster, Hank loses his girlfriend, Karen (Natascha McElhone),mother of his precocious, slightly Goth, just-about-teen daughter, Becca (Madeleine Martin).

And to top it all off, he can't write to save his life.

So the relentlessly straight-talking Hank is romancing his way across the Los Angeles basin while still nursing the hope that he can one day produce another novel and reunite his family.

In the meantime, his agent, Charlie (Evan Handler), has landed him a gig writing a weblog for Hell-Ay, a hot new online magazine.

Duchovny says, "I said (to Kapinos), 'What's the show about? It can't be about a guy having sex with different women every week. I'm not interested in doing that show.'

"And he said, 'No, it's about a guy who got it right the first time, screwed it up and is trying to get it back.' "

Californication marks Duchovny's first starring role in a TV series since The X-Files ended in 2002. It's no coincidence that he's returned on premium cable.

"It's all different now," he says. "It's just a matter of what the cable networks can do. In my mind, there's no distinction between the best work you can do and the best work you can do on television now, the most adult work you can do, the most sophisticated, mature stuff.

"Look at movies - 80 per cent of them are for children. So this is nice. It's nice to do something sophisticated."

X fans who loved Duchovny as the alien-hunting Agent Fox Mulder can see him in a whole new light, particularly in scenes between Hank and Becca.

Different versions

On this Wednesday morning on the show's sets in an industrial cul-de-sac in Culver City, California, Duchovny has just finished filming a scene with Martin, in which she is reciting a bit of a poem she chose for school.

Different versions of the scene were shot, one featuring a poem by Emily Dickinson and another featuring Robert Frost (which gets used may be a matter of how best to not have to pay rights for the quote). What the poems have in common - and why Madeleine would have chosen either of them - is that they're bleak.

Hank's worried that his daughter is losing faith in happy endings, and they talk about that.

"Once you switch out the poems," Duchovny says, "the critique has to be a little different. But to me, that's a person relating to another person, not a father relating to a daughter, in a way that I really respect.

"He's not just saying, 'Wonderful, wonderful poem'; he's telling her what he really thinks."

As to what Hank wants for Madeleine, Duchovny says, "Just to be happy. That's all any parent wants for their kid, to be happy and to be able to become an adult. That's one of the reasons he treats her the way he does.

"He's treating her like an adult, but not to the extent of rubbing her face in his lifestyle, even though some of it occasionally starts to spark off."

Speaking of Hank's freewheeling lifestyle, Charlie does try to put him back on the straight and narrow.

"In the pilot," Handler says, later in the day, "you see me attempting to be the grounding force for him, coming from a place of great moral authority.

"But very quickly, he's swimming down into a swamp of questionable activity himself. There's a lot of good, weird, kinky stuff that comes into play pretty quickly."

Handler says all these things after shooting an ER scene while wearing a shirt with a good-sized patch of fake blood on the front of it, so draw your own conclusions.

After first reading the pilot, Duchovny's wife, actress Tea Leoni, wasn't too sure about Hank's lifestyle either.

"She came back fairly negatively," Duchovny says, "not about the script so much, but the character. I said, 'I know how to play it in a way where I know I'm going to be able to do something. I see something here. I see something, and I know how to do it.'

"And she said, 'I don't know. You asked my opinion, and I'm giving it to you.' Next thing, I showed her the pilot a couple of months later, and she said, 'You're absolutely right. This is fantastic. It's great.' "

- Kate O'Hare, Zap2it