The Estate may be the perfect Thanksgiving movie - in that the family in the film is more horrible than yours. In The Estate, Kathleen Turner plays Aunt Hilda, a horrible, crotchety relation who happens to be very wealthy, on her deathbed, and has no husband or children to inherit her estate. This leads to a battle between nieces and nephews Toni Collette, Anna Faris, David Duchovny, and Rosemarie DeWitt to win a place in Aunt Hilda's heart - and will.
David Duchovny stars as Richard, or "Dick," as he prefers to be known. Dick is a "truth-teller," according to Duchovny; a benign narcissist. Memorably, he spends most of the film hitting on his first cousin, Macey (Collette), trying to convince her to run off with him, that cousin sex is okay nowadays. It doesn't end well for Dick, but it ends in a lot of laughs for us, the audience.
Duchovny and I sat down to discuss The Estate, raucous comedy, and how Dick reminds him of his character Hank Moody from Californication. We talked about reuniting with Kathleen Turner (whom he worked with on Californication) and Toni Collette (with whom he starred in Connie and Carla); how Dick's wardrobe informed his character; and his creepy porno mustache: homegrown or prosthetic? I can also safely say that I have never talked about penises more in a work interview than I have in this interview.
In addition to The Estate, we spoke briefly about Duchovny's new graphic novel, Kepler. Though a prolific writer (with four novels, a novella, and countless film and television scripts to his credit), this is his first foray into graphic novels. Though we only spoke of it briefly, Duchovny talked about the difference between writing a novel and a graphic novel, and the interesting similarities it shares with writing a teleplay.