By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
When you’re a television director, it’s always a pleasant surprise when you learn that one of your stars is naturally awesome at doing their own stunts. This is something that The X-Files director R.W. Goodwin discovered when shooting his spooky show’s Season 1 finale, “The Erlenmeyer Flask.” One scene involved Fox Mulder jumping a fence and running down the alley, and as David Duchovny performed this stunt, Goodwin discovered that the leading actor was too fast for the cameras to keep up with.
David Duchovny Was Too Good At Stunts
Goodwin is a veteran director, and he had a simple plan to shoot this scene…specifically, by having a cameraman riding on a vehicle in order to keep up with the actor. In this case, though, David Duchovny was so fast while performing the stunt that the cameraman and his ride just couldn’t keep up. As Goodwin later described, “I had a golf cart to start with and he just passed that like, you know, a bolt of lightning.”
If you’re a more casual fan of The X-Files, you might be surprised to hear that David Duchovny did this stunt himself. However, the actor often preferred to do his own stunts when possible, telling Rolling Stone in 1995 that “if you’re going to shoot it and I’m going to be doing it, at least see that it’s me.” He didn’t do this for the sake of his ego but for the sake of his fans, saying ,“If it’s the real actor” doing these stunts, “it’s usually more exciting than shooting a double.”
When recording the commentary for “The Erlenmeyer Flask,” R.W. Goodwin said that David Duchovny might have had a double, but only for the first part of this stunt. “I think we possibly used stuntmen in one big wide shot going over the fence but, for the most part, this was all David and the problem we had here was keeping up with him.” The director solved this problem personally by upgrading his ride: “Ultimately, I ended up having to be on a regular pick-up truck that could travel up to fifty miles an hour just in order to keep up with him.”
Part of what helped David Duchovny perform this stunt was his height: at six feet tall, the actor’s long legs make it easy for him to run fast, but they also made him often tower over costar Gillian Anderson, who stands 5’3”. To make the characters look closer in height, Anderson often had to stand on a box that was dubbed ‘the Gilly Board” in reference to her first name. Speaking of references, the first X-Files film referenced the height difference by having Mulder joke to Scully that he always insisted on driving because “I was just never sure your little feet could reach the pedals.”
By the time that movie was being filmed, The X-Files cast and crew was very familiar with David Duchovny’s speed and how he would sometimes shamelessly switch to running shoes to make stunts look more realistic. Fans also began to notice those running shoes and were particularly amused by the fact that poor Gillian Anderson had to do all her running in heels. Those shoes were something a necessary evil, though, because the actor couldn’t stand on her box all the time, and high heels helped her look a bit closer in height to Duchovny when they were talking next to each other.
David Duchovny’s speed and general athletic abilities were well-known after a few years, but they took everyone by surprise while filming the Season 1 finale. Hilariously, this resulted in the director having to put the camera on a pick-up truck just to keep up with the actor. Fortunately, the stunt worked fabulously, and Duchovny doing his own running scenes and other major stunts soon became a staple of the series.
