Where There's Smoke...: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir (24 page)

And so, at age fifty-five, I played a background character in a science fiction television pilot. At age fifty-six I was playing a recurring but minor character, and by age fifty-seven I was playing a featured character in a hit show. I was a celebrity, a star, recognized around the world.

I’ve always had a share of respect from colleagues and the public ever since I began running a theatre company at age twenty. As I fondly imagined my career developing I had hoped for an increasing degree of respect and approval. Being a celebrity is something else altogether. How do you know you are a celebrity? One day early on in the life of the show I was recognized when I walked into an electronics store. Nothing too surprising in that. It was when I could see that the salesperson was shaking with nerves and declared that he had never been this close to a movie star before that I knew my life had changed.

Am I being remiss here? I am assuming you know what
The X-Files
was. But it’s possible you are reading this memoir for the arcane detail of early Canadian theatre in the forties and fifties and you have never actually heard of
The X-Files
.

Created by Chris Carter in the early nineties,
The X-Files
was a television series centred on two FBI agents, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson), the former a believer in all things paranormal and the latter a skeptic. The X files were cases buried deep in the archives of the FBI, cases that didn’t seem to allow for normal explanations. Mulder’s task was to investigate these strange cases. Initially Scully was supposed to spy on Mulder, but she became his ally. The show looked at many of the strange things some people believe and asked the question, ‘What if that were really true?’ As the show developed, most episodes fell into one of two categories affectionately known as monster of the week or mythology. Monster of the week shows were one-offs, possibly a ghost story, vampire tale, or story of someone with weird powers. The mythology became the overarching theme of the series, a story of a pending alien invasion and a conspiracy of collaborators.

Unlike most television series,
The X-Files
never had a bible, an in-depth treatment of the whole series outlining the characters and story lines. Basically the producers and writers flew by the seat of their pants. For nine years they flew by the seat of their pants. Not only did they not have a plan, they never seemed to catch up; scripts appeared at the last minute if they appeared at all. Sometimes casting had to be done based on nothing more than a script for the teaser. The show ran so close to the wire that first AD Tom Braidwood — fans know him better as Frohike — joked that one day they would have to do a live feed on a Friday night. Terrifying to all connected to the show as that improvisation was, it allowed the writers and producers to respond to circumstance, to what was working and what was not, to the fans, and strangely, to Gillian’s pregnancy in the second season. And so the mythology story emerged, unplanned and unbidden, and with it the gradual evolution of my character, the Cigarette Smoking Man, from the murky shadows to prominence.

The show became not just a hit, but a global phenomenon. Dubbed into dozens of languages, the names
X-Files
, Mulder, and Scully became part of the lexicon. Few shows before or since have captured such worldwide attention. It seems everyone had heard of
The X-Files
— even those who never watched television. As for me, people seeing me in the street would yell from their cars, “Hey, you got a smoke?”

But to start at the beginning, my beginning on the show. It is the spring of 1993. I am running my acting school, the William Davis Centre for Actors’ Study, and about to direct the end of year production of
Picnic
. I have had a few decent acting roles in the previous few years, but mostly I have been a teacher, acting primarily to supplement my income and stimulate my teaching. I remember waiting for our second audition in the show’s tiny offices with Ken Camroux, who actually got the three-line part that I auditioned for, when Stephen Miller, a successful Canadian actor who was already cast, came out and patted us hopefuls on the head, wishing us good luck. Stevie was actually very good in the pilot episode, but that pretty well ended his career on
X-Files,
although he was to play a continuing role on
Millennium,
a later Chris Carter effort. Who knew that my career was about to begin? Or Chris Carter’s for that matter, or anyone else’s on the show.

The pilot episode, which was so successful the studio executives stood up and applauded when they saw the cut, was directed by Robert Mandel, who never did another episode. I’m sure there is a story there; I just don’t know what it is. Fans often ask me what direction I was given, what I was told about the character, what his backstory was. Truth is, I wasn’t told anything. Real truth? I don’t think they had any idea themselves. A mysterious man smoking in the background was an interesting presence; I don’t think anyone had thought further than that. As for me, I guess I made up something to inform what I was doing, but I have no idea now what it was.

Actors complain frequently about all the waiting around we do on set. I know fans think we lead a glamorous life, but the truth is film acting, better called film waiting, can be tedious. But when you are hanging around to play a character who hangs around, the waiting can seem endless. Fans of the show may remember a terrific shot at the end of the pilot where CSM (Cigarette Smoking Man) walks down a long hallway between rows and rows of shelves. It was a difficult crane shot to set up and we waited several hours before I could actually do my walk. I say “we” because that was when I first became aware of how redundant some of the structures of film production can be. For me to walk down the hallway, four of us had to wait: me, the hair person, the makeup person, and the costume person. Even though none of these items would change for the shot.

Still, as we all know the show was picked up and a season launched in the fall of 1993. But that had no apparent effect on me; I carried on running my school, teaching my classes, and auditioning for other roles. It wasn’t until February that I heard from them again and then it was for a different role altogether — well, maybe it was a different role. The character in the episode “Young at Heart” was known only as CIA Agent, but apparently they wanted me to play the role in case they should decide he was the same person as the smoking guy in the pilot — though this character didn’t smoke, in the episode at least. So I did this tiny little job still with no idea that my life was changing.

To be honest, it was a rather embarrassing piece of work. You will have to look at the episode with great care to find me, but you will find me, unlike my role in
The Dead Zone
. I do appear in “Young at Heart,” briefly in the background, frantically waving my arms. Apparently I was hoping for some information from a dying man and the director thought that if I waved my arms this need would be communicated to the viewer. Well, let’s hope it was, as a more unlikely way to try to get information from an unconscious person would be hard to imagine. When you are doing small roles to augment your income you do what you are told.

But the Smoking Man did reappear in season 1 as the Smoking Man, first in the episode “Tooms,” and then again in the final episode of the season, “The Erlenmeyer Flask.” “Tooms” marked the introduction of Mitch Pileggi as FBI Assistant Director Skinner, the hard driving and, in this first episode, quite unpleasant senior director to Mulder and Scully. Me? I was standing around in the background, you know, smoking. Who was I? What was I thinking? Who knows? Since I was primarily an acting teacher at the time I was probably thinking about how well, or not, I thought Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, and Mitch Pileggi were acting. I won’t comment on that other than to say I think we all improved greatly as the series progressed through the years.

But it is important in film acting that the characters be thinking something. If what they are thinking has something to do with the show so much the better, but it actually isn’t necessary. Some years earlier I was playing a role in
Airwolf
and the director and producers were very excited as they had brought John Ireland in as a guest star for one episode. Born in Vancouver, Ireland had been a major film and television actor going back to the fifties and was once nominated for an Academy Award (for his role in
All the King’s Men
). But by 1987 he was getting on; he would have been seventy-three, just a year older than I am as I write this, and no sooner had he arrived on set than he clutched the script supervisor, exclaiming that she had to help him with his lines. He didn’t have any more lines than the rest of us, but whatever ability he might once have had to remember lines had by now deserted him entirely. How we ever got through a scene is a mystery. He could remember nothing. I was certain the episode would be a disaster, but when I finally saw it he looked terrific. The rest of us may have looked odd, panicked as we were about whether our cue would come or not, but Ireland looked just fine, focussed and concentrated. Of course the object of his intense concentration had nothing to do with the scene at hand. Only we other actors knew he was thinking, “What the fuck is my next line?”

At any rate, I was thinking something as I hovered over Skinner’s shoulder in “Tooms,” and John Bartley lit the clouds of smoke around my face with a relish that did much to cement the character in the viewer’s mind. Not only that, I actually spoke. One line: “Yes I do.” Three or four episodes later in the season finale the final shot echoed the final shot of the pilot, as I walked down this mysterious corridor, put something mysterious in a drawer, and then walked out. Well, in truth, the shot didn’t just mirror the shot from the pilot, it was the shot from the pilot. At least the walking part; they couldn’t afford to hire a crane a second time so the scene was patched together. But it looks great and set up many questions for season 2.

Meantime, what was happening in the life of William B. Davis? Not much. I was fired by my agent and my marriage broke up.

Let’s start with the agent. When I first moved to Vancouver in 1985 to take over the Vancouver Playhouse Acting School, I signed up with Bruce Ward of the Act Four agency. I was primarily an acting teacher at the time, although I had a flurry of success as an actor in 1987, including the previously mentioned series
Airwolf
, and other projects in the years following. One day in 1993 I was sitting in the office of my new school reading my mail and there was a letter from my agent. The letter informed me that they were reorganizing the agency and they didn’t think they could do anything for me. In other words, I was fired. I was shocked. I had stood by Bruce Ward through many changes in the agency; I had stayed with him when his assistant poached many of his clients and took them to another agency; I had been loyal and professional. And he sends me what was essentially a form letter. Nothing personal, no invitation for coffee, just moving on. Well, what can I say? He sent the letter after I had done the pilot for
The X-Files
. Sometimes people make bad decisions.

I was to discover that starting an acting school was as challenging as starting a theatre company, something I had done once, vowed to never do again, did a second time, and swore that would be the last time. It may be that starting a business in any field is going to be demanding and overwhelm other aspects of one’s life. At any rate, months went by before I took any steps to find a new agent. As you can see, my acting career was not high on my agenda. Finally, I contacted Richard Lucas, an agent in Vancouver whom I had long admired, and asked him if he would like to take me on. He respected my position in the professional community, but didn’t really know what my prospects might be as an actor. Neither of us thought to notice that I had done the pilot for
The X-Files
and that might suggest some financial success down the road. Richard contacted local casting agents to get their take on me. They were all really positive, they really liked me, but as for roles? Well, only small ones. Still, Richard undertook to change their minds on that and the rest, as they say, is history.

Life on the home front was even more challenging. By this time Francine and I had been together for nearly sixteen years, Melinda was starting high school, and Rebecca was becoming increasingly serious about dancing for which she had a clear talent. We lived in a lovely house in Deep Cove, a beautiful community overlooking the water, but too far from downtown to fit well with the demands on my working life. Francine, although a stay-at-home mother, always found the demands on her life as overwhelming as I found the demands on mine. Who knows, maybe if I had been prepared to completely give up my other love our marriage would have survived. But I confess, I did continue to ski. Not as much as I would have liked, nor as much as my friends, but I did keep skiing despite the conflicts.

It’s hard to say what finally triggered the breakup, but two events stand out for me. Goodness knows what stands out for Francine. For the longest time Francine had pushed for us to go on a family cruise with her parents and sisters. I confess to always having been a little reluctant to spend valuable holiday time where no skiing was available, but eventually I agreed. At first the plan was to find a cruise leaving from Vancouver, a major hub for tourist cruises and convenient for us. But no, if we did that, Francine’s family would have to stay or at least visit our house — and it was a mess; Francine had no time to tidy it and she couldn’t let her family see the home in that state.

No, we had to do a Caribbean cruise leaving from Florida, as far away from Vancouver as you can get and still be in North America — never mind that it was summer and the heat in the Caribbean would be stifling. Adding to the challenge, for some reason we had to fly to Florida from Seattle, a three-hour drive from Vancouver; we would spend the night in a hotel near the airport and fly out early in the morning. When I hurried home after my evening class to collect the family and drive to Seattle, they had not begun to pack. It would be another two hours before we began the three-hour drive. Not to belabour the story, but by the time we finally set out on our holiday I was exhausted and, I confess, not a good companion. And while I love being on the water, I dislike shopping in general and shopping for souvenirs in particular. And shopping seemed to be a main feature of the holiday. Francine’s sisters spent a whole day shopping at one of the ports, returning with only one T-shirt but having had a wonderful day. I spent the same day reading a book in the bar of the ship, but that decision was not popular.

A few weeks later as we are winding up our annual visit to Saint’s Rest in Muskoka, I notice that Francine is packing up all the things we usually leave in the cottage for the next summer. Has a decision been made that we will never return? Finally, as we are going through the gate at the edge of the property, prompted by what I’m not sure, I blurt out that we don’t seem to have anything in common anymore. Francine’s response? “Would it help if you skied less?” How much less is less? While to me it seemed as if I had almost given up the sport completely, to Francine it must have seemed that I was constantly neglecting her and the family for the sake of some idle pastime.

As things continued to deteriorate I sought out a marriage counsellor, though to be honest, I am not sure whether by this time I was really trying to restore the relationship or whether I wanted to justify leaving it. At any rate, the first meeting with the counsellor did a pretty good job of clarifying my desire to leave. I was astonished by the venom and resentment heaped on me by Francine at that session. Shell-shocked, I was. I have never been good at being falsely accused — even if there might be a kernel of truth in the accusations.

One day as a boy in idyllic Muskoka I asked my father if I could take out the boat. It was a windy day and we had agreed before he retired for a nap that it was too windy to hazard taking the boat out of our wind-exposed boathouse. But after a time it seemed to me that the wind had died down somewhat, so I knocked on my father’s bedroom door and said the wind had let up, could I take the boat out now? He replied, somewhat sleepily, “I guess so.” And so eagerly I headed down to the boathouse, untied the boat, and started out. Well, the wind was still pretty strong and I soon decided this was a mistake and with some difficulty managed to get the boat back into the boathouse. My father was standing on the dock in a fury that I had never seen before. In a blazing temper he accused me of deliberately disobeying him. He would not hear my protestations that I had understood him to agree to my taking out the boat. To this day I thought he had said, “I guess so.” I imagine he said, “I guess not,” but I did not hear that unfamiliar expression. I heard, “I guess so.” He never relented and my relationship with him suffered for years.

For months, years likely, resentments had accrued on both sides of the marriage, but I was astonished at the degree they had for Francine. Truth to tell, dialogue between us had stopped once the children were old enough to understand us. Francine was never apart from the children, even to the extent of sharing a “family bed” with them, a bed it was thought I should share as well. As I have said, I have never been good at sharing a bed with one person, never mind three. We often talked before we had children and when Melinda was an infant, but once there was a child in the house old enough to understand us, communication stopped. Demand breastfeeding even precluded the occasional babysitter. By the time we sat down with a marriage counsellor we were worlds apart.

Francine had invested heavily in being a wife and mother, and perhaps if I had been less selfish I would have stayed with it, regardless. But I like freedom and autonomy. I love my children and hated to break up the family home, but finally I decided to put my own life first. The results were harsh: a hugely unpleasant divorce, no resolution of child custody, and partial estrangement from my children for many years.

For some time, contact with my children was limited to the occasional lunch, always with a definite time limit. And they only had to spend time with Dad; they didn’t have to talk to him. Often they brought their homework. But one day they didn’t get up to leave at the allotted time; they started to ask me questions, and a dialogue began that has, thankfully, continued to this day. We get on very well now, though separated geographically. I’m proud of them both: Melinda, a cardiologist, and Rebecca, for whom higher education was a profit centre — she had so many scholarships — who ran a dance company in Philadelphia for years and is now moving into international relations.