Some nude scenes are meant to be sexy. Others are meant to be funny.
David Duchovny took the latter approach in his latest movie, “Reverse the Curse,” which he wrote and directed. The 63-year-old actor stars in the film as an ailing Red Sox fan whose condition worsens every time his beloved baseball team loses. When his adult son moves back home to take care of him, he manufactures a fake winning streak to keep his dad’s spirits high.
In one scene in the film, Duchovny and his co-star Logan Marshall-Green are changing in a men’s locker room. Naked, Duchovny’s character asks his son, “Are you uptight naked in front of your father?” After seeing his bare bottom half, Duchovny hugs him and says, “That’s a perfectly respectable prick you’ve got there, son.”
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In an interview with Salon, Duchovny explained that it was important for his character to be nude and to talk about what it looks like to have an aging body.
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“You can turn it into humor. You can look at horrific things with a sense of humor, and the humor comes from the fact that it’s going to happen to all of us,” Duchovny said. “It’s not like some people age and some people don’t, some people die and some people don’t.”
He continued, “If I’ve got one of my main characters — me — showing his his naked body to his son and saying, ‘It looks like a dead sparrow where my cock should be,’ I find that funny. I think we can laugh at that, and then hug it out. And he comments on his son’s penis in a way that’s funny. I’m laughing and I’m also moved in a way.”
Despite being the star of the raunchy comedy “Californication,” Duchovny said years ago that he never gets used to seeing himself naked on screen. “I just think it’s embarrassing to be naked in front of a lot of people,” he said back in 2008. “I guess I’m a bit prudish in a way. I wish I wasn’t — I wish I could let my freak flag fly a little more.”
Perhaps things have changed in the years since “Reverse the Curse,” which Duchovny wrote as a screenplay more than a decade ago. He couldn’t get the movie made, so he published the story as a novel in 2016 under the title “Bucky F*cking Dent.” He was finally able to turn it into a film in 2023, when it premiered at Tribeca Festival under the same title as the novel. The movie was released in June by Vertical and is now available to watch on Amazon Prime Video.
Variety chief film critic Owen Gleiberman gave “Reverse the Curse” a positive review, writing that the film features the “finest acting” of Duchovny’s career, and “ambles along with a sweet-and-sour vitality that’s funny and pleasing.”