THE film reunites stars David Duchovny as Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson as Dana Skully. I am being driven to meet Duchovny at, I realise, an abandoned mental hospital. I get out of the van and a chill wind embraces me sending a shiver down my spine. It's all suitably creepy. I ask...
David, I'm told this building is haunted, have you seen any ghosts?
No, no I remain a skeptic although I hear some people say that they hear strange noises coming from the fourth floor.
How does it feel to be back in Mulder's skin?
It took me a couple of weeks to feel comfortable with the character.
When the series ended did you think about the movie franchise?
It was always my hope that when the series ended we could continue in the movie form.
When you read this script what was your reaction and did you have an input?
We had not talked about specific ideas, but that it would be a stand-alone thriller in the mode of Silence of the Lambs or something like that. We did not want to lean too heavily on what happened to Mulder and Skully. We wanted to re-establish the characters quickly, to make a movie that worked for people who knew nothing about the television series.
It is six years since we last saw these characters, what changes have there been?
I think the gap has been filled in an interesting manner and I think that people will be shocked and hopefully surprised at what happened in those six years.
What's your take on Mulder now?
I don't want to say sex change, perhaps that would be giving too much away. But I look good in a dress.
Seriously, what is the most important change in your character?
Well he is having a crisis; some kind of a career crisis. Definitely in an emotional sense there are things going on in his life in terms of women that could not have happened in the series, but we really didn't delve into the series. I might have to kill myself now that I have said that.
I understand that the budget for this film is $30 million; a rather low figure for a film of this caliber. Did you take a cut in your salary?
Well, we acknowledged that it was not at the height of the television show, that there was not the demand that might have been four or five years ago. We all wanted to make the best movie that we could and have all the money end up on the screen rather than in our pockets.
So we saw this almost like an audition for the movie franchise. We thought, let's make this the best that we can, let's play by Fox's (studio) rules, if this is the amount of money that they are willing to give us to make the movie, let's take what they are giving and make a great film, make it immensely successful and then we can go on and do what we want to do in the next one, so it is kind of an investment in the future of the franchise.
How has your fan base changed, do you still get fan mail and is there a generation gap?
I don't know, it's been five years. I don't know how fast the world turns but some times it seems like it turns every five minutes and yet you know human nature doesn't really change.
Whether or not we'll get the nostalgia vote or we'll get a vote from people that are discovering it again, or converted fans. I think quality always works, so that is what we are trying to focus on, make some thing good and have it stand on it's own. If you can get the old die hard fans then it has a chance.
