“Dan Vs.” Curtis Armstrong: Character actor talks about his latest role

When actors become known for a certain role, it’s not uncommon for them to subsequently go out of their way to show how different the character is from their real personality. Take Curtis Armstrong, who pretty much owned the wild-man sidekick role in 1980s teen movies like Risky Business, Better Off Dead and, of course, as Booger in Revenge of the Nerds. But it’s not long into a conversation with Armstrong when it becomes readily apparent that the well-spoken, thoughtful actor is indeed nothing like the slovenly belch factory he made famous.

In his latest role, however, Armstrong can’t help but recognize some similarities. As the title character in The Hub’s animated comedy Dan Vs., Armstrong plays a quick-tempered misanthrope who declares war on the things that annoy him, whether it be fancy restaurants, art, George Washington, or New Mexico. Dan’s reactions may be exaggerated, and delivered at a constant fevered pitch, but Armstrong says many of the things that trigger Dan’s rage also irk him. In the case of this Saturday night’s episode, which will be the last new episode for awhile, it’s a group of pushy child entrepreneurs.

In “The Lemonade Stand Gang,” a group of kids take over Dan’s parking spot with their lemonade business, and proceed to bully him and anyone else who stands in their way. Armstrong spoke with us about his affinity for Dan Vs., the joy of Elizabethan curses, and living down Booger:

This episode is a little refreshing,  because Dan actually has a legitimate gripe this time.

Yeah, he usually doesn’t really have a legitimate beef, although what I found interesting was when I first started doing it … as the scripts kept coming, I saw more and more that a lot of the things that really make Dan angry are the same things that make me angry. More and more I began to think, “My God, this is totally my life.” When I do get angry, it tends to be about things like technology, or golf [for an episode he was working on the day of our interview], or traffic or any of these things that just keep coming.

So it’s pretty easy to tap into the anger part then. What about the energy level? Dan is in an almost perpetual state of manic anger.

Well, it’s a challenge, but I’m very lucky. I trained my voice, when I was studying to be an actor. I don’t ever have a problem with it. I’m able to keep it at a fairly high level without doing any damage to it. I’m very fortunate that I’ve learned to use it properly. But there’s another element there, too, which is happening more and more, and that’s finding the places in the story where he’s not angry. It’s helpful just to have those moments where he’s not screaming at Chris or Elise or the world, to have him in a fairly normal tone of voice so that you would see him and not have any idea that he was such an idiot. Those moments are valuable, and we tend to search for them throughout every script. Where are the areas where Dan can sound like a human being? We always try to grab onto those so it’s not the same thing all the time.

How did Dan Vs. come to you? Is it the case now where people bring you projects, or did you seek this out?

Sometimes they bring them to me. But this particular one, they were recording people and I saw this script and it was really funny. … I did the regular sort of audition recording of it, and then they had me in to do it again, and that was it. They offered it to me. So it was pretty standard. It was definitely one I worked for.

What about the show made you want to work so hard to get it?

It’s a couple of things. The fact that it is a character that just makes me laugh. People who are that angry all the time just make me laugh. There’s no other way to respond to them. Although you would never know it, there are definitely elements to Dan that ring true for me. That’s not the only reason. The other reason is I’m working with two other actors — Dave Foley and Paget Brewster — who are just fun. I mean, it’s really so much fun when we can arrange it for the three of us to record at the same time because they’re so delightful and we laugh a great deal. So that process is very nice. And the scripts are really funny. Here at The Hub, they’re always on a bit of a tight wire, because on the one hand you could take this idea of Dan Vs. and you could have it be [on] Adult Swim by writing it just a little bit to the left. They have to do that balance all the time of keeping the heart of what it is, and keeping that anger and that edginess going, without it being offensive to families, which is after all what The Hub is basically for. It was really interesting to me as we were leading up to the unveiling of The Hub of realizing that they were doing so many of these family-based shows. This never felt like a family show to me. It’s only when I saw it that [I noticed] you don’t actually see explicit violence or sex and the language is impeccable. If they need something to get people’s attention I’ve noticed they tend to go to archaic forms, like Elizabethan curses. It somehow works well with Dan because it sounds like errant nonsense, but at the same time they actually were good, solid curses in their day, but no one recognizes them as such anymore so we get to use them.

It also adds to that bit of pompousness in his character.

I don’t know where somebody like Dan would have found Elizabethan curses. Maybe he found a book on a bus or something: 500 Top Elizabethan Curses To Confuse Your Friends. It does seem out of his bailiwick. But somehow he’s absorbed them and uses them, and it’s really fun. It’s been interesting watching that balance of the edginess and the family friendly thing and having it really work.

Do you feel enough ownership of the character to be able to chime in with the writers, maybe when you feel a line could use some tweaking?

I am just terrible at that. I could, I suppose, but these are really, really, really good writers. It never feels that much like I should sit there and go, “You know, I don’t think Dan would yell that.” One of my things is, because I started in the theater, I was raised with the idea that you’re handed a script and you have to do what you can with it to make it work. If you’re handed a Shaw play, you’re not going to say, “You know, I think this is overwritten. Could I mess with this a little?” You wouldn’t do that. When I got into films and later into television, and it’s been a bit of a curse in some regards, I have a tendency to instinctively try to make everything work. Even in shows not well-written I tend to just sort of focus on how to make what’s there work rather than impose my own opinions on it. With Dan Vs. it’s not an issue that ever comes up. Oddly enough, once or twice there have been times when we’ve been at the table read and, because I have a lot of words and I have to say them very fast and very loud, I sometimes mess up. Something will come out of my mouth by mistake, which they will then put in because it sounds like Dan. But it’s not quite what they wrote. It’s never intended, it just comes out that way. That’s the extent of my contribution is making gaffes at the table read and having them be funny enough that they use them.

Have you noticed the show starting to grow a fan base?

I have started getting people talking to me about it. In fact, I was just at a place maybe two months ago and this young, maybe 16-year-old girl and her mother came up to me. They were hardcore Dan Vs. fans. I think the mother knew I had done other things, but the daughter knew me really from Dan. The daughter had Dan yelling as her ringtone. Things have started happening that way. I’ve started getting fan mail mentioning it. I’ve gone to a couple of signing events and people are talking about it, and they’re starting to show up with Dan pictures to sign. Things are definitely starting to pick up in the Dan Vs. world.

What do the fans tell you they love about the show?

One of the things that people love about Dan is that he’s pure id. He has no filter. He expresses anger about the stupidest things in the world. In a civilized society — and I’m stretching that to include America at the moment — there is for most people some kind of line that they won’t usually cross. They can  be irritated by something, and they can be frustrated by something and angered by something, but they usually won’t actually start screaming at people willy-nilly. Dan is not conflicted about it at all. He feels that he is absolutely right, and these people and companies and states and countries that he perceives have offended him in some way are all fair game. He doesn’t think twice about plotting revenge, which usually involves blowing up things. It’s odd because the job that I’d had that had probably the most impact over the long stretch of time was as Booger in Revenge of the Nerds, and a lot of it feels very similar. Booger wasn’t a particularly angry person, but he was another one of those characters who doesn’t understand social cues for the life of him. He doesn’t care what he wears, what he looks like, how often he bathes, what he eats, none of that matters to him. All he wants to do is be left alone and not be bothered by people, and to be accepted by those he wants to be accepted by. It’s sort of a similar role in some ways and I think it’s part of the thing that makes him appealing to other people. It’s that idea of, “Gee, I wish I could go to my bank and do that.” Or, “I wish I could go to Arizona and, you know, blow it up.” Or whatever it is. That’s where I think a lot of his appeal lies, is just we wish we could do this.

So there’s Dan, who’s presumably in his 20s, and you also do the voice of a kid on American Dad. But yet it’s still recognizably your voice. Have you been pegged as a guy who can pull off a youthful voice?

I don’t know what it is. With American Dad, they had come to me, just because that character is really based on … I mean, the character’s name is Snot. They didn’t go to Sir Richard Attenborough. They knew what my voice sounded like, and they wanted me because of that Revenge of the Nerds character. But it was the same thing here, I went in there and asked, “What do you want with the voice?” “Just you. We just want you.” I’m not a voice actor the way that a lot of people are voice actors. I’m working on a different show now over at Nickelodeon, which isn’t on the air yet. I’ve been working on that for as long as this. It’s got a fairly large cast and most of them are real serious voice actors, those amazing people who can just sit there and have five or six different voices come out of their heads. I have never been that. I’ve pretty much always done a variation on my own voice, which is very recognizable. With Dan, it’s just heightened me.

When you get really well-known for a role, and it’s one you did for just a few weeks many years ago, is it hard for you to feel a connection with it? It must be surreal that fans still bring up Revenge of the Nerds nearly 30 years later.

You’re right, it wasn’t a big section of my life, and the first movie was [made in] 11 weeks in Arizona. None of us had the slightest inkling that people would still be watching that show and talking about it. It just seemed so improbable. There was no video, there was no cable really, which is where those kinds of movies find their life, if they find it at all. I don’t expect to have a connection to a character. Whatever character you’re doing, you do it as long as you do it and then you walk away. You don’t take it home with you. I’m not one of those people. I don’t turn into Booger, or thank God, Dan. I tend to turn off when I go home. I never had a connection to a character, even Booger. I mean, it was fun doing the movies, but I had no particular connection to the character. In fact, he’s very unlike me in every regard. It’s interesting that these movies still have this effect on people after all these years, and I’m glad. I’ve gotten work as a result of a movie I did over a quarter-century ago, which is pretty amazing when you think about it.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about how the film industry is changing, with the middle ground between summer blockbusters and micro-budget indies shrinking. Having been in the business as long as you have, how bad is it?

I think it has made things more difficult. This all becomes very subjective, obviously people on a certain level aren’t affected by it because A-list people tend to work no matter when. On the other hand, character people like me who’ve been around a long time, we pretty much tend to keep going, too. I’ve been able to keep afloat. But I know a lot of actors, people that I’ve known for many years who have been out here in L.A., who have packed it in. They’re my age, or maybe just a few years younger, who felt they couldn’t make it anymore. They’ve gone off and gotten teaching jobs in other cities, and gotten out of the business altogether. So it’s definitely gotten difficult. The money that was there in the ’80s is definitely not there for people like me. But I was never used to that anyway. Even at my peak, I was not making the kind of money people are making now, even in this climate. It’s a different thing when you’re working smaller movies and so on, which I’ve done my whole career. The big budget movie is a bit of an anomaly for me. I tend to do more low to middle-budget movies in general. And I love that. Even the studio movies that I’ve made over the years have been movies that didn’t cost $200 million to make. They were just good stories, and good movies, and people liked them or they didn’t. And that’s been my career.

Photo: (Dan Vs.) Courtesy of The Hub