The Point Radio: Long Live THE NERDS

The new season of KING OF THE NERDS is here from TBS, which gave us the chance to catch up with show creator and host, Curtis Armstrong who talks about the challenges in getting “good nerds” and how the whole idea came from a film that was a bit less than a movie blockbuster. Plus this weekend, Ben Barnes portrays Sam Adams in the three night mini series SONS OF LIBERTY and tells us what surprising facts he learned from the script.

On Monday, we head backstage to the set of USA Network’s SUITS with series star, Patrick Adams. Be sure to follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Transcript

The Point Radio. Hey, it's Mike Roth. This weekend, the Rebels become heroes on Sons of Liberty, a new action miniseries on the History Channel. And right at the center of it is actor Ben Barnes, who talks about the parts of history

he was surprised to learn. Plus, King of the Nerds is back for a third season, and Curtis Armstrong is here to talk about what a long, strange trip that has been. Let's get to the point. This is the point.

The point radio. Get the point. Radio. Get the point. Radio.

The King of the Nerds is back on TBS for a third season, and that gave me a chance to sit down with co-creator and host, Curtis Armstrong. We talked a little bit about the origin of the whole nerd franchise, starting with that first movie that, you know, really wasn't a blockbuster. Not at all, no.

I mean, you know, we, the nerds, 20th Century Fox, when they greenlit the movie, had done it under one administration. And then we went and filmed it in Tucson. While we were gone, that administration left, and a new one came in, and the new one hated it.

And so when the film was done, they tried to bury it. They just released it like in the third week of August and thought that's the end of that. And it actually made some money. It was then years, three years or something before we did the sequel, because that new administration had put a ban on the sequels.

They refused to do them. That administration left, and the new administration came in and said, sure, we're going to do sequels and we'll start with Revenge of the Nerd. That was how Revenge of the Nerds came about. And it was a lovely experience.

We really enjoyed it. Everything was great, but never thought, ever, that it would have a life. But we also didn't have the technology, you know. I mean, it was the beginning of cable, it was the beginning of VHS. But where that was going to go, we didn't know.

We figured once it ran in a theater, you might catch it on a light show, and that was it. Funny how reputations began. In the movie, Curtis wasn't even a nerd. I don't think I was a nerd. I never considered Booker to be a nerd.

I thought all the rest of them were nerds. I thought Booker was a, I mean, there's nothing about him that's a nerd. Think about it. He's nerdy about the guy. He doesn't read comic books, he doesn't play with the computers, he doesn't do games, he

doesn't do anything. He picks his nose and says rude things. The guy's a sociopath. And you figure he stinks. I mean, he's horrible.

And yet, these nerds, because we're all in the same boat, we all got thrown out of our dorm together by a greater evil. And so they just say, well, you're with us. They don't even question it. Nobody would want to live with that person.

But they love him. Or they don't love him, they just accept him without question. And I think that that says much more about the nerds than Booker does. So along with his partner Robert Garradine, are they both happy with how things have grown? Yes, I guess I am.

I mean, I wanted it to be a success, and Bobby and I really had, we put a lot into trying to put it together and trying to sell it to people. But you never know about those things. And the other thing that we didn't know about was when we got a company involved, which was 5×5 Media, involved in it.

And you never know from the time they greenlight it to the time you actually do it, whether it's going to be even remotely like your idea was. And then when you sell it to a network, you don't know whether the network is going to go for the way you want to do it. And it gets tweaked and changed and it winds up being unrecognizable.

And with 5×5 Media and Electas and TBS, by pure luck, we wound up with people who love it as much as we do and have supported it. And it's remarkable. Obviously, everybody has to rethink their expectations when it comes to sizes of audience. The kinds of audiences from the 80s watching TV don't exist anymore.

I mean, it's astonishing how audiences have changed. So we get the audience that we get and we're glad to have them. For the show, is it hard to get the right makes of contestants? Do they start out looking to cover all the aspects of geek culture all at once? We don't do it that way until the end.

We don't set out with quotas. We don't say we want four pop cultures and three neuroscientists and three PhDs and a Partridge in a Paratri. We narrow people down from the hundreds down to about 30, which gets us into the ballpark. And then we start whittling them out from there.

And then we get down to about 15. And we at that point, we have our cast with some extras because we always lose people for one reason or another. And then it becomes basically sitting down and putting people's pictures out and saying, because you're also looking, you're not just looking for brains and gaming and cosplay and

all of that kind of stuff. We're also looking for humor and ideally a good heart. And so it then becomes, well, what are these people going to be like in a house? Because you're going to wind up with five of them at least in a house midway through that have been there from the beginning.

And after the first few weeks, the first few ones that are gone, then you have to start thinking, well, who's going to want to watch the show? Are these people going to want to spend time with these people? So that part of it also enters into it. There are a lot of factors.

Then they have to go through psych exams and physical exams and all of that thing. So sometimes you'll lose somebody through that. So it's complicated and it takes a long time. But does this process always work? You know, sometimes it's not even that easy because sometimes we'll look at a contestant

and think this one's really going to pop and they don't or vice versa. The thing about reality is we take it kind of seriously and honestly not a lot of shows do. But we take our reality show concept, reality very seriously. We don't manipulate beyond asking questions.

We have the reality which is them in the house, the challenges and then the interviews. And the interviews are the only area where we can do any kind of, well, don't you think such and such, such and such possibly leading them somewhere to find an answer to something? Because sometimes there's another problem. You get some people in there, you think they're going to be really forthcoming and they clam

up. Then you have to draw them out. So it's hard to, without changing where it's going, it's sort of like the, what do they call it in Star Trek, the primary directive. You can go to the planet but you can't screw anything up.

And that's sort of the way we look at the nerds. The new season of King of the Nerds every Friday with new episodes on TBS. The fight, radio. The fight is at the end of the weekend with all the latest in pop culture. Warner Brothers has found their Supergirl.

She's Melissa Benoist who you know from Glee and also from the Oscar nominated film Whiplash. Next step, an hour long pilot but that's just a mere formality. The Supergirl series has already got a commitment from the CW to be on the fall schedule. In more casting news, Sophie Turner from Game of Thrones has picked up the role of Jean Grey in X-Men Apocalypse along with Sophie Alexandra's ship will pick up the role of

Storm Tye Sheridan, Will B Cyclops, all in the film that takes place a decade after the X-Men Days of Future Past movie. Adventure Time fans got a boost this week with the release of the Adventure Time Game Wizard app. It's available on Google Play, Amazon and the App Store as well.

It gives you the ability to draw your own video games with the Adventure Time show characters. Most everybody we know will be talking about the Super Bowl ads, the commercials that we all want to see and especially the day after when you may have missed something or want to see something another time. NBC Sports Digital is using Tumblr this year to help host the Super Bowl TV ads.

They'll be available immediately after the game and they'll stream some 11 hours of other Super Bowl content as well on their special NBC Sports Live extra site. Meanwhile if you want to get ahead of the curve we've got the guy who put some of the ads together and a guide to which ones you really don't want to miss this year. We'll talk to him right here on Friday.

Actor Jesse Eisenberg is adopting his short stories Bream Gives Me Hiccups as a half hour comedy project for Amazon. It tells the story of a 9 year old restaurant critic who always brings along his alcoholic mother and friend on the job. No word yet on whether it will be an Amazon pilot or go right to series.

Fox is placed in order for 4 new pilots and include Frankenstein, Rosewood, 48 hours until Bundy and a revamped Luther. The hit BBC series will also bring along with it Idris Alba and the original series creator Neil Cross. Marvel has announced another layer of branding for their Secret Wars promotion.

This time it's called Last Days and these particular stories will follow certain Marvel heroes in the last hours as the countdown to the destruction of the Marvel universe as we know it continues. These will also tie into the major Secret Wars titles as well. There will be more information on this available but keep in mind Secret Wars does start with

Marvel in May. Simon Pegg has been tapped to write the screenplay for the third Star Trek movie. He's working on a project with Doug Jung who also did the TV cop drama Dark Blue. The change occurred to replace Roberto Orsi who dropped out not only as co-writer but also as director of the third Star Trek film.

The directing job will be handled by Justin Lin from Fast and Furious. If you were betting on J.B. Gyllenhaal to step in for Tom Hardy in the Suicide Squad movie, well you bet wrong. Gyllenhaal has said he will not do the project and that leaves Suicide Squad without a lead even though it's still headed to theaters according to Warner Brothers in August of

2016. The point! The point! You know actor Ben Barnes from the Narnia films but now he's traded that in for a different kind of action in the highly anticipated mini series Sons of Liberty on the History

Channel. I asked Ben what the show was about. Sons of Liberty is a three part mini series on the History Channel about the build up to the American Revolution and the American War of Independence so it covers the time period where we meet Sam Adams and John Adams and Paul Vere and George Washington and Ben

Franklin and John Hancock and all these great men who are responsible for this country being the three countries that it is today and you know seeing them from their beginnings and the build up to them kind of becoming this fantastic team which kind of work together in many different ways in the build up to the founding of the Declaration of Independence but it's kind of the fun version of events with the bar fights left in it with all the

blood, sweat and tears that were included in that kind of fight and that journey along the way. So to keep it interesting is there more fiction than fact in the storytelling here? I don't know if you need fiction to keep particular decades you know kind of interesting I mean you know we tried to keep all the main facts and events obviously kind of in order and

with the right personnel involved and everything but you know the personal conversations weren't obviously all kind of recorded or anything so there's a little bit of license to kind of tell the story kind of dramatically in a really kind of fun you know exciting way that you know I'm being chased across the rooftops of Boston in the opening sequence because you know I've defaulted on other people's taxes as a tax collector and you

know in a bit of kind of Robin Hood kind of way and so yeah we're definitely telling the badass version. As you read through the scripts were there any historical facts that surprised him? I think it's easier for us to be a bit this way round to be in Britain kind of you know more centrally located in terms of the world map to spread out and open the sort of sounds

out you know I don't think it's as far as I can do much in dialect speak but I think it's easier for us but also you know I grew up watching American shows and American movies and so it's kind of more in our sort of everyday than it is the other way around I think but I love accents, I love the musicality of different accents, I love how it can automatically change how a person comes across from the moment that they speak and so you know the voice is always

the thing that I kind of start with in building a character. As you can hear Ben's not necessarily American born so I was curious about how his mastering of dialects is helping to act in portfolio. I think it's easier for us to be a bit this way round to be in Britain kind of you know more centrally located in terms of the world map to spread out and open the sort of sounds

out you know I don't think it's as far as I can do much in dialect speak but I think it's easier for us but also you know I grew up watching American shows and American movies and so it's kind of more in our sort of everyday than it is the other way around I think but I love accents, I love the musicality of different accents, I love how it can automatically change how a person comes across from the moment that they speak and so you know the voices

always the thing that I kind of start with in building a character. Ben's next big project is the movie Seven Son, headed to theaters in February and I ask him if you really enjoyed the sword and action role. Well a little bit of both it was certainly something that I always watched you know the kid I read the Zarnia books when I was eight and then when I was 25 I got cast in those movies and I love that you know the world of fantasy and the

aesthetic of it and you know the imagery you know I love all that and so to be kind of involved in telling those kind of stories it's really thrilling to me but they're not something I particularly choose above other types of storytelling it's just that happens to be the stuff that that comes to me but Seven Son was a particular thrill for me because I got to work with Jeff Bridges who is one of my heroes reacting and acting icon obviously and to have every scene

that I did be with someone of his magnitude was a real thrill and Julianne Moore as well as a fantastically glamorous evil witch so there's lots of you know that's a really fun that's a really fun. Seven Son opens in theaters on February 6 but right now see Ben in Sons of Liberty, a three-night miniseries rolling this weekend on the History Channel. Get more details at history.com That does it for the podcast we're back on Monday and we'll be looking at suits. Yeah the USA series

is back with a handful of episodes to wind up the season and here's some pretty big ones and series star Patrick J Adams is here to give us a sneak peek. Catch that and more on websites like ComicMix.com, michaeldavisworld.com, hegivethepointradio.com and of course in the iTunes podcast directory. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook under the point radio and then be right back here in a few days. Get the point radio dot com

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