Where There’s Smoke ...
Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
One of the most iconic villains in the history of television, the enigmatic Cigarette Smoking Man fascinated legions of fans of the 1990s’ hit TV series, The X-Files. Best known as “Cancerman,” he was voted Television’s Favourite Villain by the readers of TV Guide. The man behind the villain, William B. Davis, is a Canadian actor and director, whose revelations in this memoir will entertain and intrigue the millions of X-Files aficionados worldwide.
But there is more to Davis’s story than just The X-Files.
Davis’s extensive acting experience began when he was a child in Ontario in the 1950s, and grew to encompass radio, theatre, film, and television. At the University of Toronto, where he graduated with a degree in philosophy, he turned his hand to directing, a move that took him to theatre school in Britain and a directing career. There, he reconnected with his undergraduate colleague, Donald Sutherland, and worked at the National Theatre, with such notables as Sir Laurence Olivier, Dame Maggie Smith, and Albert Finney.
Those who love the theatre will delight in his recollections of the Straw Hat Players in Ontario or the trials and tribulations of an artistic director of repertory theatre in Dundee, Scotland, or his valiant attempt to create a theatre in Quebec devoted to the Canadian repertoire. Those who love history will relive with Davis those “golden years” of Canadian radio drama and theatre, not to mention enjoying an inside look at the National Theatre School of Canada where he directed the English Acting Program in the ’60s. Those who love a bit of scandalous gossip will not be disappointed.
Written in an easy conversational style, this memoir truly is “The Musings of the Cigarette Smoking Man” – as William B. Davis reflects on his loves, his losses, his hopes, his fears, and his accomplishments in this unique and engaging autobiography.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A professional actor from age 12, Davis, now 73, is best known in the U.S. for his role as the "Cigarette Smoking Man" (or CSM, or "Cancer Man"), a villainous alien-conspirator in the television show The X Files, one of the touchstones of 1990s pop culture. But what audiences didn't know was that the Canadian-born Davis was bringing a lifetime of theater experience to his role. In this amiable if overlong memoir, Davis spends most of his time describing a career spent "being close to the American theatre in the fifties, living in Britain in the first half of the sixties... and being in Canada in the late sixties and early seventies," including fascinating encounters with such theater legends as Albert Finney, Maggie Smith, Peter Schaffer, and Kenneth Tynan. He also presents a vivid portrait of the developments and often disarray in Canadian theater education during the same period. Davis doesn't really discuss The X-Files until the book's last quarter, although he provides a nice backstage look at the episodes in which he starred. His most notable observation is that series creator Chris Carter and his producers and writers as suspected by hardcore fans "flew by the seat of their pants" in developing a conspiracy mythology "so convoluted" that Davis is "still trying to grasp it years later."
