We’ve all got a little Booger in us. Curtis Armstrong played the brash, disgusting horndog with an unfortunate nickname in the 1984 comedy classic Revenge of the Nerds, and practically stole the whole movie in the process. With the film’s 30th anniversary upon us, and a new Revenge of the Nerds Blu-ray on the shelves, it was absolutely necessary to reflect on the deeper meaning of the gross-out comedy with one of the film’s stars, and determine once and for all what Booger really means to both the film and its still-relevant message of acceptance and equality.
Since we had him on the phone, we also took the opportunity to talk Revenge of the Nerds II, Revenge of the Nerds III, his memorable “Savage” Steve Holland movies and his remarkable dramatic turn in Taylor Hackford’s Oscar-winning Ray Charles biopic Ray, which celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2004.
CraveOnline: Booger was kind of my hero.
Curtis Armstrong: Really?
Yeah, I’m not sure what that says about me.
Well…
I think it has something to do with the discipline he showed in Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise. The way he tried to better himself.
[Laughs.] That’s not how I would have phrased it, but I’m glad to hear you say that. “The discipline.” Well, yeah, he’s definitely an interesting character.
Was that character all on the page?
No, it was barely on the page at all originally, in the original script for Revenge of the Nerds. It was an odd thing. There were some things that were kind of unfinished in the original script, and one of them was Booger. Booger was really just there for shock value, pretty much, so there were a few lines that made it into movie, like the “douchebag” line – “[I thought I was looking at] my mother’s old douchebag, but that’s in Ohio” – and you know, “We’ve got bush.” Those kinds of lines, because that’s all he really was. He was not a “nerd” in any way, shape or form really.
The purpose of Booger being in the movie, if you really look at it, really is the fact that the other nerds accept him unconditionally. You know what I’m saying? If you accept someone into your social circle without the slightest hesitation, and the guy has no social skills, he picks his nose, he belches, he’s scratching himself, he’s a horndog… He’s the antithesis of those other nerds. And yet he’s an outsider too, so they accept him. So I think Booger had less to do, if you really look at it, he had less to do with nerds, [or] being a nerd himself, than what the movie was trying to say in the long run, which is about acceptance and about tolerance and all that kind of thing.
That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about Booger.
Well, I have to come up with something, don’t I? [Laughs.] No, I’m telling you the truth. I know it seems weird, because it’s not what anyone thinks when they see the movie. When they see the movie it’s a guy who belches and picks his nose and says “we’ve got bush” and that kind of thing, because that’s what that is. But I also have to say that we worked on this script a lot. That was your question, about what was on the page, and Robert [Carradine] and Anthony [Edwards], they were the ones – although the idea of the pep rally was there, and there were speeches there – it was the two of them coming up with their own coming out speeches, basically as nerds, that made it so powerful, and made it last as a movie.
So these things, although it’s hard to imagine in a movie as extreme and odd and kind of gross as Revenge of the Nerds is sometimes, there was another element to it and it was a deliberate one.
I do think that that comes across. At the end, this is one of the few movies that ever earns the right to use the song “We Are the Champions.”
That’s for sure! You’re right. [Laughs.] Yeah, no one would dare do that now. Actually, I’ll go one step further. It’s one of the few movies that earns sentiment. It’s one of the areas where movies these days, which are gross out movies for lack of a better word, in the same sort of genre as Revenge of the Nerds… They will force sentiment into these movies out of necessity, because the gross out side of movies now is so much worse than it was in our day.
But if they’re looking at a movie like Revenge of the Nerds, trying to learn from it and trying to figure out, “I wanna make a movie like that,” the sort of enlightened sentiment that comes out of that movie is something that a lot of people try to get… and none of them get it. It always goes to too far. What happened with Revenge of the Nerds was, that sentiment – the acceptance and Queen playing “We Are the Champions” – came organically out of the story that everybody had worked very hard to present, and it was right, the way it came out. But it’s harder to do that than you would imagine.
Revenge of the Nerds also benefits from the real sense of oppression that you don’t see in comedies of its ilk now. Where they’re kind of losers, but no one’s really making their lives miserable for it.
Yeah, that’s true. They did things like the burning “nerd” sign on the lawn, and letting the pigs into our party, all the stuff that they did. These were all metaphors. A lot of this, these are all metaphoric things that they put into the movie. They were talking about anti-Semitism, they were talking about racism. Throwing rocks through the window, “Nerds get out,” it’s hard to talk about it because you wind up sounding way too self-important when you start comparing Revenge of the Nerds to the Civil Rights Movement, because, you know, people lost their lives in the Civil Rights Movement. We were making a stupid movie. But nevertheless, the Civil Rights Movement had an effect on the people who wrote the movie and who directed the movie and who acted in the movie. So we were all really conscious of what the message was that they were trying to send.
You talked a bit about the pep rally. That’s a lot of people’s favorite scene. Can you tell me a bit about that? Was it heavily rehearsed? Were there other versions of it originally?
I don’t think so. It’s hard for me to remember now, but I don’t think there was anything different about it except there had been in the script, at one point, a scene with Stan Gable where it is revealed that he was a closeted nerd. There was a scene that took place in his room where he was sitting. He’s normally just this jerk jock, and he’s doing his homework and he’s having trouble with his eyes, and he goes over and takes the eyeglasses out of a drawer and slips them on and they’re just like Lewis’s. And then Ogre comes in and Gable [has] to whip them off and hide them so they won’t know that he’s a closeted nerd.
When you look at him, Ted McGinley, in the pep rally scene it’s a strange expression on his face, and I think that it’s a leftover from that scene. What I have always gotten from that moment was that he’s thinking, “I should go and join them.” But he doesn’t do it.
Didn’t they play with that a bit in Revenge of the Nerds III?
Yes, we did. We went back to it. We went back to it but unfortunately it was out of the context of the original movie, so yes… That was the one where I break him down on the stand, when I’m a lawyer – Booger became a lawyer or something – and he was fantastic in that. That was the one thing I remember about that movie, Nerds III, is how great Ted was. Really good actor. Really good actor.
What do you remember about Revenge of the Nerds II, if you have a particular memory that you come back to? It seemed like a very different production.
Oh yeah, it was very different. There had been a several years gap and there was a new leadership at 20th Century Fox and they just basically, I think, wanted to get out a sequel. By that time Nerds had become more popular because of having been on cable and so on, and it was beginning to get a reputation, and they thought, “Well, we can do this cheaply.” So they had really kind of a shitty script and sent us all to Florida to basically remake the first movie, only we had to do it without Anthony Edwards and without Ted McGinley and without Julie Montgomery. [Laughs.] We did the best we could with what we had, but it was not one of my favorite experiences.
I actually have a lot of affection for it. I’m sorry it wasn’t a great experience.
Oh, well, it certainly works for people. I felt like it was something that with some care could have been a lot better.
The other movies of yours from that era that I’m a big fan of were Savage Steve Holland’s movies. Were those as crazy on set as they come across on-screen, or was it just another movie?
Oh no, it was never “just another movie” working with Savage. It was always fun. To this day I continue to work with him because I just love being around him on a set. He makes a set really almost too much fun, and sometimes the project works and sometimes it doesn’t, but I’m enormously proud and fond of both of those movies, Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer. They were really, really wonderful experiences.
Is there any chance you’re going to be working with him again on Multiplexing?
Oh, the new one! You know what, I’ve been up in Vancouver all this time. I was up there and saw that somebody had tweeted that he was working on it. I knew that he was trying to get something going but I had not heard that it was actually going. I only got back a couple days ago but I want to get in touch with him and find out what’s happening with it, but I’m just so thrilled. I don’t know anything about it. I think the last time I had talked to him he said something about it originally having been kind of like the third movie in the trilogy, of what he’d always intended to be the trilogy, which he did two of but never did the third. But I’m not positive about that.
Fair enough. I also just wanted to say that I marveled at your performance in Ray. You really seemed to transform yourself in that one.
Oh, thanks. Thank you.
That was a hell of a thing. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Well, the only reason… It was actually cast by the same woman, Nancy Klopper, who had done Risky Business. She brought me in on it. But I think Taylor Hackford would never have hired me if he had any idea what my career has been. I think only hired me because he had no idea who I was, and I came in and I read really well. I came in actually to read for a different role, and I was reading and I thought it was going really well but he seemed to be elsewhere while I was reading. And then as soon as I finished reading he said, “Would you read another part?” And I went, “okay,” and he gave me the sides for Ahmet Ertegun. I went out into the hall and went over them while someone else was in there, and then I went in and read them, and it was almost immediate. All he did was say, “Will you be willing to shave your head?” And I said, “Yes,” and that was it. I went to New Orleans and had my head shaved and did Ahmet.
Do you remember the other role that you were reading for?
Yeah, it was the role Richard Schiff played. Oh, I cannot believe… I have all these records right here! What’s his name? He’s the producer, the guy he works with.
Oh, that’s going to bug me too. I’m looking it up.
I’m blanking on the character he played.
Richard Schiff played him? Hang on…
Yeah.
Jerry Wexler?
Jerry Wexler! Thank you, yes. Jerry Wexler. My mind’s gone. Yes, I went in to read for his part, and then wound up getting Ahmet. That was funny actually because Richard was bald so he had to wear a wig, and I had a full head of hair and I had to shave, so there you are.
A lot of people know you from Revenge of the Nerds, but is there any film of yours that you want Booger fans to seek out? A favorite film of yours that doesn’t get as much attention as you’d like?
Sure, the one that I always mention because I am very fond of it – I have emotional reasons why I’m fond of it – is a movie called Route 30. It was a little independent movie made in Pennsylvania a few years ago. A group of us had been working a theater there in those days. We all wound up doing this movie, and it to me is one of my favorite movies… maybe my favorite movie ever. It’s the kind of movie… I don’t usually watch my films, but that’s one that I can sit down and actually enjoy. And it’s not even because of my performance, it’s just because I love the movie.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
