Film, Pop Culture

Meeting David Duchovny Reminded Me of What A X-Files Nerd I Was

Last Friday I met David Duchovny.

I have no photographic evidence of this because I met him while he was shooting a scene in his boxer briefs.

There was a lot of hubbub surrounding me meeting David Duchovny from my family and friends. They remembered what a hopeless, pathetic X-files nerd I was between the ages of 10-19. My Dad’s girlfriend, who works on Californication, told me to have my mother ship out any X-files paraphernalia and David would gladly sign them when I met him. My Mom would have happily obliged if I asked her. In fact, she spent most of the week leading up to me meeting David Duchovny telling everyone in our hometown.

As a 28 year-old who previously worked for celebrities, I would never in a million years walk up to David Duchovny with my Australia edition of the Rolling Stone that features he and Gillian Anderson in bed together or my Agent Mulder action figure from Fight the Future and ask him to sign it. That is not a freak flag I want to freely wave to the world anymore- especially at David Duchovny.

I don’t have a large story surrounding my meeting with David Duchovny other than that he walked up and introduced himself to me and he’s a very nice man. He’s also quite handsome in real life. I got to sit next to the director and watch Hank and Runkle converse at Runkle’s pad. The rest of the cast and crew are extremely nice and welcoming. Actually, having been used to working on sets where there was a lot of ego and drama, this production seemed void of it. The rumor is Duchovny is very down to Earth and chill.

Meeting David Duchovny got me thinking a lot about my former life as an X-files nerd. It took up a third of my life. Nine years of drooling over poorly written fan fiction. Nine years of hunting down magazines from all over the world that have the slightest mention of Mulder or Scully. Nine years of holding my breath one hour a week out of hopes that Mulder and Scully would finally suck face. I forced my friends to call me “Spooky” and to reenact episodes in the schoolyard. I was a very unforgiving and unapologetic X-files nerd, maybe even teetering on aggressive. These are all memories I like to forget, but luckily my Mom made a scrapbook to remind me.

The only solace I’ve received through the years is knowing that there are respectable adults who were once like me. I’ve met a lot of them and I got some of them to share their stories with me:

Were you an X-files nerd too?

Adrienne Breaux- writer at Apartment Therapy and 2Modern

Let me explain what a “shipper” is. The formal definition will say something about folks who enjoy the romantic chemistry between two characters in a television show more than say, the overarching mythology or plot. But that’s a weak, watered down version of that word. A real shipper is someone who sleeps, breathes and eats the will they/won’t they relationship of two protagonists in a fictional television show. Tuning in loyally every week to a new episode for scenes with two beloved and usually good-looking characters simply ISN’T ENOUGH.

Back in the day (late nineties) when the X-Files took a fierce hold on my psyche and my fantasies, we didn’t have behind-the-scenes extras and special apps for our smart phones that were an acceptable fix for TV addicts. Hell, we didn’t even have YouTube and the ability to watch poorly edited together segments of every side glance, arm touch or kiss while Sixpence None The Richer’s “Kiss Me” played. There was only one way to satiate the desire to spend more moments absorbing any and every trace of delicious innuendo and teasing between two characters: fan fiction. Yes, I used to read entirely-too-explicit-for-my-age X-Files fan fiction at one point in my youth. And occasionally, just for laughs, or when I miss Mulder and Scully’s banter too much, I still do.

The definitive place on the Internet for X-Files fan fiction (in my opinion): the still updated, easy-to-search fluky.gossamer.org.

 

Emily Louise Church- writer at Without Obsession

The X-Files. Where to start with a programme that was such an integral part of my childhood? My earliest memory of the show was watching it with my dad, a somewhat hardcore fan, probably even more passionate than me. The first episode I can ever recall was ‘Terms of Endearment’ starring the one and only Bruce Campbell as a demon desperate for a human baby. Though mildly terrifying viewing at such a young age, I quickly became an X-Files nerd, and I even planned out my career as a top FBI agent. It’s hard to put in to words how much I adore The X-Files, how much it touched my younger self and stayed with my, now fully grown, adult self. To this day, I still watch the show whenever I’m looking for my fix of spookily supernatural shenanigans or just a heavy dose of wanton sexual tension. So to Chris Carter, thank you for enriching my life, and to David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, thank you for bringing to life two of the most complex and entertaining characters ever to grace the small screen.

 

CJ Morgan- DJ at KLBJ 93.7

Friday nights at my house meant one thing: The X Files. After I finished watching the latest episode, I would head outside to re-enact what I had just seen on TV.  The bushes were a Russian forest, the cellar was a secret government base and my clubhouse turned into the Lone Gunman’s trailer. Lurking around every corner was the Smoking man, Krycek or the oil-eyed alien hybrids. On one particular night, I turned my two-story clubhouse into a submarine using ladders, life jackets, old Christmas lights and nine volt batteries to simulate the eerie red lighting. When friends would sleep over, we’d spend most of our time outside on patrol for government agents or searching the night sky for signs of life.

 

Jordan Cooper- musician & writer, creator of Write a Song About Me

My parents are finally moving out of the house that I lived in for about 20 years of my life. I came over to take care of some of my old things that had been gathering dust in my childhood room. It’s not surprising that about half of these things related to X-Files. Books of X-Files trading cards I obsessively collected, old Entertainment Weekly’s with X-Files articles in them, Unauthorized guides, the X-Files soundtrack (“Songs in the Key of X”), X-Files comics (which were really quite good!), including issue #4, where my young mind was blown by seeing my own fan letter printed in the back. However these things were never part of my “past”, because they are still very much part of my present. Not long ago I attended an X-Files viewing party (the only kind of party I’d feel comfortable at, no doubt), where I brought a new $50 flashlight to shine on the screen any time Mulder or Scully pulled out theirs. I created a new X-Files party game! I love X-Files, and I Want To Believe that everyone else does, too.

 

 

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13 Comments

  • Reply Jenny May 16, 2012 at 3:29 pm

    Ah, the face in your FBI badge is SO badass, and I LOVE that the content of your X-files “newspaper” had some tiny, stylistic traces of the way you write today.

    My “X-Files” was the band Bush and Gavin Rossdale. I still don’t know what to do with all those Japanese imports of “Comedown.”

  • Reply Brulula May 16, 2012 at 4:26 pm

    You were always such an interesting kid whose interests were wide and varied. It defininately kept me on my toes and we got to explore new territorys together. That was fun!

  • Reply Lucy May 16, 2012 at 5:12 pm

    Cutest thing ever! And I relate so much to this post!

  • Reply E. May 16, 2012 at 7:06 pm

    Thanks for sharing your story! I was an X-Files nerd back in the day as well. Wasn’t on the message boards or anything back then since I was rather young at the time, but I did enjoy staying up to see Moose and Squirrel banter and kick butt.

  • Reply Stephanie May 16, 2012 at 8:54 pm

    I was a little too young for the X-Files, being only 2 when the show started.
    I’ve been meaning to go and watch the show on Hulu, though.

  • Reply Pascale May 16, 2012 at 9:18 pm

    Thaaaaaank youuuuu for this!

    I was the only X-Files fan of my age that I knew, so I could only take solace in the internet (ohhh the good ole days!) and re-watching episodes on VHS.

    I remember crying when the show moved from Friday to Sunday night because it was a school night, and I was afraid that my mother wouldn’t let me watch it anymore. I think my genuine depression was enough to convince her to let me stay up.

    I also cut my hair when I was in the 7th grade to look more like Scully. Never told my mother why I wanted it cut and was then horrified when it looked nothing like her hair.

    The whole drama about Chris Carter wanting to end the show after the 5th season was so devastating, I was gutted until I heard about the show being renewed for another season.

    I too have a giant box of old newspaper and magazine clippings in my parents’ basement. I still have the Christmas cards my Yahoo message board members sent each other… read/wrote inordinate amounts of fanfic, most of which were indeed age-inappropriate… and spent too much time making X-Files websites of photos and sound clips, joining web rings and the like on geocities. I used to sneak downstairs to watch the reruns at 5am despite having them all on VHS. Later when I got my own 13″ tv in my room, I set the timer to turn the tv on at 2am when another set of reruns played…

    All to say, that it’s so nice to think about those days, god knows I haven’t in a while!

    Thank you!

  • Reply Mandy May 16, 2012 at 10:23 pm

    This is so sweet. I liked X-Files, but my sister was the crazy fan in the family. I think she would not be nearly as cool as you were when meeting David Duchovny.

    This all reminds me of that Bree Sharp “David Duchovny” song. So great.

  • Reply Allison May 16, 2012 at 11:27 pm

    I loved the X-Files too – every Sunday night 🙂 I used to brag that it was filmed in Vancouver all the time, until they moved it to LA.

    I’m just going to have to watch my Cali DVDs to see Hank Moody in his underwear. You’re just teasing me too much!

  • Reply Marta May 17, 2012 at 10:24 am

    Thanks for sharing these stories!
    They are basically my life as well and t’s great to see how X Files touched all of us in different (but also very similar) ways!

  • Reply Theresa May 19, 2012 at 9:20 pm

    I seriously forgot what an X-Files nerd I was before reading this. My friends would probably relate the most to this post, because they were the only ones to appreciate just how obsessed I was; at the time, I had no idea. Haha. The only thing that makes me sad is the idea that I don’t have a show worthy of such an obsession right now.

  • Reply nekogirl May 22, 2012 at 3:37 am

    Mulder: “Hey Scully, do you believe in the afterlife?”
    Scully: “I’d settle for a life in this one.”
    Episode: “Shadows”

    I too was a Phile or Philer. Some prefer the later nickname. I belonged to X-net and the Philer chat room. When icq first hit the internet, chat rooms became safe havens for those of us who just needed more than an hour each week of Mulder & Skully. The internet and more so chat rooms were where you got your fan fiction fix in the mid to late 90’s.

    This is still and will probably always be my favorite show (obessions) of all time. I am currently in Season 5 of rewatching the show. I’ve been through the entire series so many times I’ve lost count now.

    I found this quote:
    “Fans of The X-Files wasted no time in coining their own nickname: ‘X-Philes,’ the ‘phile’ derived from the Greek word philos, meaning ‘to love’. . . . few shows have prompted the sort of emphatic viewer response as The X-Files has in such a relatively short time period. Indeed, as with any cultural phenomenon, fan reaction to the series has become as much a part of The X-Files story as the show itself, from the conventions that have sprung up around the country to the hours of chat about the series whipping around each week on the Internet.” (Lowry in 1995)

    I have Mulder’s poster from his office in my office at home. It reminds me to keep looking for answers. I’m also a paranormal investigator, so I suppose my childhood obsession poured over into my adulthood and became a real life more then just a hobby sort of situation. Trust No One, I Want To Believe, The Truth Is Out There – all good advise.

    • Reply hipstercrite May 22, 2012 at 7:16 pm

      Thanks for commenting! I need to rewatch the show too. I also need a “Truth is Out There Poster”! Where did you get it?

  • Reply Delusions of Grandeur 2013: What Are Your Big Dreams for the New Year? December 31, 2012 at 12:21 pm

    […] with someone I love and fart in front of,  got a pet cat!…which died two weeks later, met David Duchovny…in his boxer shorts! and had my adopted grandfather move into a home for folks with […]

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