Revenge of the Nerd

by Curtis Armstrong

  The last day of filming was focused primarily on Bert and Agnes’s wedding, the ceremony being performed, for some reason, by Dr. Timothy Leary. At one point, the legendary acid guru said to me absolutely out of the blue, “You know, there are three results of long-term hallucinogenic use. One is long-term memory loss. Another is short-term memory gain!”

  There was a pause as he gazed into the middle distance. Finally, I said, “And what’s the third?”

  “Oh,” he said. “I don’t remember.”

  Meanwhile, another amateur video was being made, which had been in the works for some time. It was called “What Does the End of Moonlighting Mean to Me.” Everyone connected to the show was asked the titular question and had come up with their answers. But this sequence would be the last chance they would have of getting responses from Bruce and Cybill, who would be moving on to shoot their final scene together, which no one was looking forward to. Cybill had already given her response. Bruce had been putting them off for days. Now, as he arrived on the scene, when he was asked on-camera what the end of Moonlighting meant to him, he mouthed his answer: “Blow me.”

  The final scene shot with Bruce and Cybill was in keeping with the whole. Shot in a church, the elegiac tone required the two actors to look at each other, but they were past that. They finally shared a reluctant glance—which the editors had to artificially slow down to give the impression that they were looking into each other’s eyes. Cue the montage of clips of happier days and the Ray Charles recording of “We’ll Be Together Again.”

  * * *

  The cast and crew of Moonlighting gathered the following week at the fabled Coconut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel in Hollywood for a wrap party. It was quite a night. The nightclub itself, legendary for decades as a glamorous watering hole for the Hollywood elite, was on the verge of being closed. Within a few years, the entire hotel would be history. But for this one night, the place actually resembled its former self, which is more than I could say for me. I was desolate at the loss of the show, glumly facing an uncertain future as an actor at the start of a new decade. I spent most of the night drinking with the crew and doing lines with ubiquitous eighties scenester Rodney Bingenheimer.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the crowd, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Bruce.

  “Hey, Bruce!”

  “Curt-eye!” Bruce said, with his familiar sideways smirk. I wasn’t really sure what to say to him, as most of the season he’d had little to say to me or anyone else unless it was absolutely necessary. But now, here he was: the last night before parting, probably forever, and he was reaching out. He put his arm around my shoulder and started to walk me across the dance floor.

  “Well, it’s been some year,” he said, gazing off into the partying throng. “Hasn’t all been good. We’ve had some challenges, too. It’s a roller coaster, sometimes, you know? Good times and bad. But, hey, the work was good, good for all of us and I’ll never forget it…”

  He turned to me, gave me a quick smile. “See ya sometime. Good luck.” And then he disappeared into the crowd. I allowed myself a moment of amazed reflection. Bruce was clearly at the start of an amazing career and whatever he had done or not done during the last few years, I did appreciate that he had taken the time to seek me out, among all these people, for a final, private word.

  And then, there was a roar of applause and I turned to see Bruce there on the bandstand, waving to the crowd. Then he stepped up to the microphone.

  “Hey,” he said. “Well, it’s been some year. Hasn’t all been good. We’ve had some challenges, too. It’s a roller coaster sometimes, you know? Good times and bad…”

  I went off in search of another drink. I had just played my last scene with Bruce Willis.

  REVENGE OF THE NERDS II: NERDS IN PARADISE

  FT. LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA, 1988

  Toward the end of my first season on Moonlighting, I started hearing rumors about a sequel to Revenge of the Nerds. This was something that had come up from time to time as the first film had become more popular thanks to repeated showings on cable and following its release on home video. Bobby Carradine had been a strong proponent of the idea, as the film’s star and a man who expected to have a piece of any nerd property to come. I’d get calls from Bobby every time there would be a new flurry of speculation in the trades. I was always supportive of the idea, though obviously, Moonlighting was my prime concern. Viola had become a character that the producers liked to write for and I was going to do nothing to endanger my position on the show. Anthony Edwards, in the meantime, had become a desirable commodity thanks to Top Gun, which had made Tom Cruise one of the biggest stars in the world at the time. Luring him back to a nerd sequel—for nerd money—was going to take some doing. But Bobby was convinced all it would take was a little pressure from him and Tony would come around. Sadly, Bobby’s boundless optimism about the prospect of future nerd projects would often end in disappointment.

  For a while, it was a moot point. As long as the current administration at 20th Century Fox held sway that would never happen. Fox still considered Revenge of the Nerds a misstep and, in addition, had implemented a strict studio-wide no-sequel rule as part of their new “quality control” policy. As far as quality control went, it was successful in eliminating sequels but it didn’t stop them from continuing to release plenty of inferior product. But it was “original” inferior product, so that was okay.

  Suddenly, everything changed, starting with the administration at the studio. Leonard Goldberg came in and the no-sequel policy went out. According to Bobby Carradine, a sequel to Revenge of the Nerds was the first project green-lighted by the studio. Goldberg allegedly claimed a sequel to Revenge of the Nerds was “a no-brainer.”

  Truer words were never spoken.

  * * *

  We were receiving updates on Nerds II almost on a daily basis, and none of the news was good. Jeff Kanew had gone on the record as saying that he couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to do a sequel to the film. “It’s done,” he said at the time. “The nerds won. What are you going to do? Have them win again?” It seems that at least when it came to the nerds, Jeff’s integrity always ran counter to his own best interests, since in Hollywood the whole idea of a sequel was to have them win again.

  But it isn’t clear that the studio ever considered Jeff to direct the film. Joe Roth, a director with no more experience under his belt than Jeff had in 1984, had been selected to helm the film. He was an insider with the new studio heads and had a reputation for being an “efficient” filmmaker. What he didn’t have was much of a sense of humor, which is kind of essential when you’re directing a comedy, even a sequel.

  The script was given to Dan Guntzelman and Steve Marshall, a writing team then best known for the television show Growing Pains. I have no idea how much time they were given to knock out the Nerds II script, but it wasn’t enough. There was really no indication from reading it whether they had even seen the original film.

  I hated the script. Some of it may have had to do with working on Moonlighting, which boasted some of the best writers of the day. I did remind myself that I had also hated the original script of Revenge of the Nerds and that had turned out all right. But I had a nagging suspicion that lightning wouldn’t strike twice when it came to a potential Nerd franchise. In addition, the shooting schedule would mean my missing the season finale of our current season of Moonlighting and the premiere episode of the next one. Bobby was on the phone daily, begging me to do the picture. Without Anthony, who, unsurprisingly, was still holding out, it was more important than ever that I be in the film. He was genuinely concerned that the whole project would collapse if I weren’t on board.

  But I turned it down. Even the prospect of a summer playing with nerds and doing it for more money than I’d ever been offered for a film wasn’t enough for me to take it. Twentieth came back with another offer: more money. I turned it down again. My agent nearly wept with frustration, but I was adamant.

  The
n I got a call from the agency. The executive in charge of production at 20th Century Fox wanted to meet with me.

  We were shooting Moonlighting on Stage 20, which was directly across from the old executive office building at Fox. I was going to be filming all day, I said, and the only time I would have would be my lunch hour. “They will accommodate you,” she said. “You must take this meeting.”

  I am afraid that this executive’s name is lost in the mists of time. I’m sorry not to know it, because he gave me one of my first really great Hollywood lessons, as well as a good story.

  I went to his office and sat for a while in his waiting room. He was on the phone behind a closed door and he was not happy. He was screaming at someone about something, and whoever was on the other end of the line would’ve needed a hollow chisel to get a word in edgewise. Every once in a while I’d catch his assistant’s eye. She gave me nothing. Her face was utterly expressionless.

  Finally, I heard the phone slam down and the door to the office was flung open.

  “Curtis!” he said, his arms spread wide, an easy smile on his face. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Come on in!”

  Seated opposite him, he faced me and leaned forward. He gave me a confidential, sympathetic shake of the head.

  “Curtis. Curtis. What’s the problem? Why don’t you want to do our movie?”

  I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. “Well, you know, I’m a regular on Moonlighting now—”

  He cut me off. “I know. I know Glen.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, the schedule—” He cut me off again.

  “We can fix that. Come on, tell me. What’s the problem?” He leaned forward, his eyes widening. “Is it the money? Is it not enough money?”

  “Oh, no!” I assured him, like an idiot. “No, no, no! No, the money is fine!” (My agent hadn’t shown up for this meeting, obviously.)

  “Well, then,” he said, brow furrowed and eyes full of baffled concern, “what’s the problem? Please tell me. I mean, if you’re not doing it I think I deserve to know why.”

  The conversation was starting to take a weirdly personal tone, as if I’d just told this guy we should start seeing other people.

  “Well, okay,” I said finally. “It’s the script. It’s a kind of … a script … problem.”

  “What do you mean,” he asked, “a script problem?”

  “Well,” I said, “the problem is it’s just a terrible script. It should be better.

  “And … it isn’t. It’s really not very good and I just feel like not … doing it.” It could’ve been more artfully expressed but I considered myself lucky at that point to have gotten anything out at all.

  “Wait!” he said. “Wait!” He spoke carefully, as though making his way through a jungle thicket without stepping in a nest of vipers or something. “You think … you think were going to be shooting”—he held up a copy of Nerds II—“this script?”

  “Well, yeah,” I confessed. “That’s the script they sent me. I guess I thought that was the script they were shooting.”

  He smiled. He shook his head. Relief seemed to flood the room like sunshine after a storm. His expression spoke volumes. It’s going to be okay, his expression said. Just a little misunderstanding, but everything is going to be okay.

  “Curtis,” he said, “we’re not going to be shooting this script!”

  “You’re not?”

  “NO!” he said, with a kind of disbelieving laugh. “Do you think we’re crazy? We’ve just been through this with Whoopi’s movie!” (Whoopi Goldberg’s Burglar had just escaped into theaters and everyone was in the process of assigning blame for the catastrophe.) “We learned our lesson! We’re not shooting … this!” His disgust was almost beyond words. He tossed the script on his desk.

  “We are bringing in someone to do a rewrite. I shouldn’t tell you this…” He paused for a moment as if wondering whether he could chance telling me whatever it was. I watched him give himself permission.

  “We’re bringing in a script doctor. And would you like to know who it is we’re bringing in?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re bringing in Larry Gelbart.”

  For those who don’t know, Larry Gelbart was creator of the legendary television show M*A*S*H, the coauthor of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and was widely regarded as the greatest script doctor since Neil Simon. In Hollywood in the eighties, Elaine May was his closest competitor.

  I was flabbergasted. “Larry Gelbart is rewriting Nerds II?” I gasped.

  He nodded solemnly. “That’s how much we care. Now what do you say? Will you do the picture?”

  “Hell, yes,” I exclaimed. “I’m in!!!”

  Needless to say, as I was shortly to discover, Larry Gelbart never rewrote a word of Revenge of the Nerds II. Nor was he ever approached to rewrite it. By the time we reached Ft. Lauderdale the script’s obvious shortcomings necessitated immediate work, so a young writer—now extremely successful—was flown down to write whatever he could to save it. I can’t imagine what they paid him, but compared to Gelbart’s asking price, it would’ve been a deal. Robert Carradine, Tim Busfield and I visited him once to talk about the script and it was terrifying. He hadn’t showered or slept since his arrival, and was pretty much living on room service and raw nerves. He was babbling incoherently, grinding his teeth and pacing around his room. The curtains were drawn and the place looked like an animal lived in it. Periodically one of us would knock on his door just to make sure he was still alive. One day he had just disappeared.

  In the days leading up to filming, there were some other truly disturbing developments regarding Nerds II that gave me reason for concern.

  To begin with, Anthony Edwards’s Gilbert was nowhere to be seen. Anthony later told me that he had asked to read the script and been told that no one was reading the script until the deal was done. The producers claimed that Anthony had asked for too much money. Anthony, who didn’t need a Nerds sequel at that point in his life, passed. Apparently, the powers that be just shrugged. The truth was, they said later, they didn’t really feel they needed Tony in the film. According to them, Gilbert wasn’t that funny a character anyway, and they would just give the other nerds more to do to compensate. This showed a total lack of understanding of what had made the original film work to start with. It was the chemistry between Bobby’s balls-out nerd and Anthony’s more gentle, sensitive character that gave the film the grounding it needed for all the broad comedy to work. The other nerds, Booger included, worked precisely because they weren’t overused.

  But that brought up another problem. Not only was Gilbert not in the film, Takashi wasn’t either. Brian Tochi had been cast in the highly successful Police Academy series at Warner Bros., and Fox suddenly got cold feet about featuring the same actor in the Nerds sequel. I was finding myself increasingly concerned about doing a sequel with two of our characters missing in action.

  There was another problem in the casting as well, in this case having to do with Julie Montgomery.

  When Julie read the script of Nerds II, her heart sank. The writers, in order to free Lewis from a domestic relationship with Betty Childs and open up possibilities of hot young college students in Ft. Lauderdale, had included a scene at the beginning of the picture in which Betty is shown fucking an Alpha Beta. And Julie, to her credit, would have none of it.

  “They sent me the script,” Julie told me in 2016, “and I was aghast. Very upset. They had me in a hotel room with some jock—it wasn’t Stan Gable—just some jock. But I was cheating on Lewis! It was upsetting because Betty was my character. She had fallen in love with Lewis and that was a big deal. This treated that like Lewis was a one-night stand or something. So I said no. As stupid as that sounds, I said no.

  “Then,” she added, “there was a conversation with Joe Roth and he said ‘No, don’t worry, we’re going to rewrite it when you get to Florida.’”

  I had reconciled myself to the idea that Julie was not going to be a
part of the second film and frankly thought she was going to be well out of it, when Joe Roth showed up at my door one night, asking a favor.

  “So,” he said, awkwardly. “Julie Montgomery.”

  He left it there, waiting for me to take the bait.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “You know she’s decided not to do the picture,” he said. I nodded.

  “I need a favor,” Joe said. “I—understand you have a … kind of relationship with her?”

  “We’re friends,” I said, already knowing where this was going.

  “Yeah, but you’re good friends?”

  “We are friends,” I repeated.

  “I’d like you to give her a call. She has a problem with the script. Something about her character.” His eyes started rolling, but he caught them in the nick of time. “Just call her and tell her what your experience has been. Tell her she can trust us.”

  I made the call, but I put his message in my own words. Julie stayed clear of Nerds II and never regretted it.

  Revenge of the Nerds II was, I suspect, the last time Joe Roth was forced to do a movie he didn’t believe in. He was in the inner circle of the new regime at Fox and it wasn’t long after Nerds II was released that he was promoted to head of production—and it wasn’t because he’d shot a classic film. We all suspected this had been an assignment. At that point, Joe had more experience as a producer than a director and it may have been felt that he needed a little more set experience before moving up the ladder at the studio.