David Duchovny heads to a meeting in Beverly Hills on march 27, 2008:

David Duchovny with his daughter, Madelaine West, dropping by the shoe repair shop to pick up a pair of cowboy boots on march 29, 2008:

David is back home in LA after wrapping the new X-Files movie in Vancouver and was seen yesterday, march 19, at his gym, in Brentwood.

Creator Chris Carter, star David Duchovny thank city after secret-filled, three-month shoot
Glen Schaefer, The Province
Published: Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Goodbye, and thanks for all the aliens.

The cast and crew of the still-untitled X-Files feature film sequel wrapped up work in Vancouver with a press conference yesterday, a brief lifting of a curtain of secrecy that the production has maintained through three months of filming.

"We've had lots of paparazzi," said writer-director Chris Carter. "In Langley a couple of days ago a black SUV pulled up on the side of the road and there was a long lens pointed at us."

The next day, pictures of stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, locked in a full-on kiss as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, appeared on Internet fansites alongside breathless speculation about the characters' are-they-or-aren't-they romance.

"We staged that," Duchovny told reporters at the Sutton Place Hotel, where media were informed Anderson would not attend due to illness.

"It's been a two-way street," says Carter of the prying eyes. "To tell you the truth, I would like to make the movie secretly and put it out there on July 25, have everybody get a gift they could open."

Duchovny finished work late the night before and was catching a plane to Los Angeles yesterday. The rest of the crew were to finish by week's end. The movie is a stand-alone story unconnected to the series' ongoing conspiracy thread, but beyond that they're not saying much.

"We're not doing an exercise in nostalgia to appeal to the fans of the show," said co-writer and producer Frank Spotnitz. "We saw this as an opportunity to introduce the characters to people who may have been too young . . . It has a reason for being, even if there'd never been a television show before."

Carter said their secrecy extended to the fluorescent-pink signs film productions use to direct crew to locations. Their signs read "Done One Productions."

The original series filmed for five years in Vancouver starting in 1993 and became a big hit for the Fox network, in turn boosting Vancouver's filmmaking profile.

"It would please me to no end to think that we were helpful to Vancouver, because this was the perfect city to film this particular show in," Duchovny said. "When we came here, we barely knew what we were doing, and as we got better, the crews grew with us."

The show moved production to Los Angeles after the fifth season and continued there for four more years. A 1998 feature film also shot in L.A.

But cast and crew kept their ties to Vancouver - Carter still has a home in the city and Duchovny has filmed two movies here since The X-Files headed south.

Co-writer Spotnitz said the new script was written specifically for locations in Vancouver and Pemberton, where they filmed for three weeks. As with the series, the B.C. locations stand in for places in the U.S. The producers showed reporters a trailer for the new movie with Anderson, Duchovny and shaggy co-star Billy Connolly searching a snowy field with dogs and sticks for some unspecified monster.

The new story picks up with the main characters in real time, six years after the events of the series. Duchovny, who left the series the year before it wrapped, said he always wanted The X-Files to become a feature franchise.

"This is a great, flawed, questing hero - there's always more stories for that person to be involved in," said the actor, who now stars in another TV series, the dysfunctional-sex comedy Californication.

He brought his children with actress wife Tea Leoni to stay in Whistler during this latest working trip.

"I do consider Vancouver one of the three cities I've lived in in my my life," Duchovny said. "It is a home away from home."

Thanks to http://www.canada.com

MARSHA LEDERMAN
Globe and Mail Update
March 12, 2008 at 7:54 PM EDT

VANCOUVER — David Duchovny says the controversy over remarks he made about Vancouver was a “newspaper-generated false non-existent controversy” – and that the idea for criticizing the city on Late Night with Conan O'Brien came from the talk show, not him.

Mr. Duchovny addressed the controversy – now more than a decade old – at a news conference held in Vancouver Wednesday afternoon. It was called so producers of the coming X-Files movie could “express their gratitude” to the city, where production on the film is just wrapping, and where the series was shot for five years in the 1990s – before Mr. Duchovny famously lobbied to have the production moved to Los Angeles.

“It was really a tempest in a teapot,” Mr. Duchovny, dressed in a blue sweatshirt and ripped tan jeans, told reporters.

“I love this city. I love coming back here. I always loved this city. That was the unfortunate part; [it] was kind of a misrepresentation of my feelings about the city.”

Mr. Duchovny says in fact he considers Vancouver “a home away from home” – and that he has fantasized at times about what his life would have been like had he stayed here permanently.

“I've always thought it would be a great place to raise the kids.”

In 1997, Mr. Duchovny made headlines locally after going on Mr. O'Brien's show and criticizing Vancouver's weather.

“Vancouver is a very nice place if you like 400 inches of rainfall a day,” he said.

But Wednesday, Mr. Duchovny said Mr. O'Brien's producers approached him with the idea of poking fun at Canada. They suggested that after he made his comments about Vancouver, they would cut to the audience and show a Mountie, a hockey player and a bear dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs.

“To me, a bear crying is funny,” he said Wednesday.

Mr. Duchovny finished shooting the X-Files film Wednesday morning and stopped by the news conference on his way to the airport to return home. Co-star Gillian Anderson, who was supposed to be there, cancelled due to illness.

Producers have been trying to keep details of the second X-Files film (title TBA) hush-hush, using a false name for the production in an attempt to fool the paparazzi (it didn't always work) and referring to Agent Fox Mulder in the script and call sheets as “Larry” – the name of a producer's dog.

Still, some minor plot points were revealed Wednesday: the film will not centre around the alien conspiracy that the series (and the first movie) were focused on and instead will be more of a stand-alone story. The characters will be six years on from when the series ended (as in reality). And Pemberton, B.C., the city north of Whistler where the film shot for three weeks, will stand in for a city in the north-eastern U.S.

When asked about photos of the shoot circulating online that show Mulder and Scully kissing, Mr. Duchovny said the writers have always described the film – and the whole series – as a love story, whether chaste or sexual. “That's half the show.”

X-Files creator Chris Carter and screenplay co-writer Frank Spotnitz said they owe a lot to Vancouver - to the crews who grew up with the show, and to the city's physical beauty.

“Vancouver gave the show its original look, which I would call moody,” said Mr. Carter, who still maintains a home here. “I think that was one of the secrets to our success - not so secret, as it turns out.”

Tea Leoni on her second visit to Vietnam as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. She's trying to raise money for children with dissabilities, including those affected by agent orange.

Video made during Press Conference in Hanoi, Vietnam on March 6, 2008:

Tea Leoni, visiting Vietnam as a UNICEF ambassador, is pictured during a press conference in Hanoi on March 6, 2008 to kick off a campaign to raise awareness about the plight of children suffering disabilities linked to Agent Orange.

Arriving in Vietnam on March 3, Tea Leoni visited some orphanages and Agent Orange child victims in the central city of Da Nang on March 4-5. On March 6, she met with Vietnamese journalist and paid visit to some charity centres in Hanoi.

This is the second visit to Vietnam by Tea Leoni as UNICEF’s goodwill ambassador. The first visit was in 2005 to promote the Global Campaign for Children and AIDS.

Anthony Pantaleoni, a New York lawyer and Leoni's father, was also one of the key members of UNICEF America and an active member of AIDS Action, a prominent non-governmental organisation.

HANOI (AFP) — Hollywood star Tea Leoni, visiting Vietnam as a UNICEF ambassador, on Thursday kicked off a campaign to raise awareness about the plight of children suffering disabilities linked to Agent Orange.

Leoni this week visited families and health centres with children suffering birth defects linked to dioxin, the highly toxic chemical in the defoliant that the US military used here during the Vietnam war.

"The (US) public, I think, is not aware of some of the specific dioxin issues," the 42-year-old star of "Deep Impact" and "Jurassic Park 3" told reporters at the end of her five-day visit.

"I think there is great compassion from the US and its citizens (and a desire) to want to bridge whatever gap there may be remaining from our time here," said Leoni.

"As a mother, it is a very intense experience to visit with another mother and see her caring for children who are so in need of support and care."

The UNICEF United States Fund aims to raise two million dollars this year and up to five million dollars in coming years to help Vietnamese children with dioxin-linked and other disabilities, said the group's president Caryl Stern.

US forces sprayed about 80 million litres of Agent Orange and other herbicides on south and central Vietnam to deprive opposing forces of forest cover and food crops.

Washington has rejected responsibility for the millions of people Vietnam says have suffered direct or second-generation disabilities due to Agent Orange. US officials point to a lack of mutually agreed data.

"I'm not a scientist, I'm not a medical professional, and it has not been proven or disproven to me," said Stern.

"What I see in front of me are children who are disabled in a disproportionate number in the areas where dioxin is at those higher levels."

US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said this week: "We realise this is a difficult issue... We will continue to work closely with Vietnamese authorities, the international authorities, and continue to contribute."

The United States has funded efforts to clean up a dioxin "hot spot," the Danang airport, while Congress last May set aside three million dollars for environmental remediation of dioxin storage sites and for health programmes.

A US court last month rejected a case brought against US chemical companies that manufactured Agent Orange and other defoliants.

UNICEF country chief Jesper Morch said the Vietnam government last year asked the United Nations to help address the environmental and health impacts.

The money raised in the new awareness drive, with help from the Ford Foundation, will help collate data and boost services for tens of thousands of disabled children, linked to Agent Orange or not, Morch said.

Pointing at the current shortage of services, skills and equipment for families and teachers in the developing country, Morch said, "You have teachers working with deaf and mute children who don't know sign language."

In the central city of Danang, he said, "of 64 communes, there is only one commune that has even the semblance of an adequate rehabilitation centre, with trained physiotherapists and the tools and equipment disabled children need."