mplayer question

[Vortek, Eater of Souls!]

Hello all,
I'm trying to get mplayer working, as in actually displaying video.
although I direct the video to null when I'm watching videos, it'd be
nice to be able to display the video when I have sighted friends over.
mplayer itself works fine, I'm having trouble with the x server.
I run the startx program, and get dumped to a graphics console, when I
switch back to my text console I get a message something like the
following:
AUDIT: Mon Aug 4 17:55:54 2003: 8133 X: Client 5 rejected from local
host

then when I try and start mplayer, it, of course, says it couldn't open
the x11 display.
If anyone could help me out with this, I'd appriciate it.
Thanks.

Jim