Wil:
Have you seen the Curtis
Armstrong Fan Page that's out on the Internet?
Curtis: Yeah, I'd gotten a letter from that guy, from Sean,
who had gotten my address from a mutual acquaintance
in Michigan. I got this letter one day saying that he
had created a web site for me, which people had been
telling me to do for years, but I'm a complete idiot
as far as computers go. He said, "Have a look at it,
and if you hate it, I'll take it off." So I got on and
looked at it and was tremendously impressed that he'd
done all of that work for no possible reason except
that he wanted to make this little gesture, which I
thought was really nice. So I made a few corrections
and so on, and sent him some pictures that he couldn't
have gotten elsewhere, and he put them up and it's still
going. It's great.
Wil: On the site, there's some interesting information,
and I'll read directly from the site - "Curtis is a
passionate book collector, whose collection includes
P.G. Wodehouse, Washington Irving etc, etc." - I assume
that means you collect books by the authors, not the
authors themselves?
Curtis: Exactly. that would be hard.
Wil: The page also says you are a "Sherlockian in good
standing." What's that?
Curtis: That sort of comes out of the book collecting. That's
a student of the life and works of Sherlock Holmes.
Wil: I'm a big fan of those books.
Curtis: Yeah, that's where it comes from. There's
a longstanding group, formed in the thirties, based
in New York called the Baker Street Irregulars. I joined
a scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars when
I was in high school. I started collecting the books
and they're still among my favorite things to read.
I don't really collect that much anymore, mainly because
I just don't have the money or the time to devote to
it. Every time I think about buying a book, I think
about how much better that money could be spent as far
as my daughter is concerned. And because I'm looking
after her so much, I don't have as much time to read
as I used to. So I still have the books and I still
read the books, but I don't think so much in terms of
extending the collection any more. I'm thinking in terms
of, you know, college and stuff. I'll probably wind
up having to sell most of the books to pay for college.
Wil: Well, if she gets a degree in Sherlockology, you've
got all the textbooks right there.
Curtis: There you go.
Wil: What's happening in your career?
Curtis: What's happening is that I've got a new series that
is debuting this week, Saturday night at nine, called
"The
Chronicle" It's on the Sci-Fi Channel. I'm playing
a character on it that's half pig.
Wil: I think I've seen ads for this.
Curtis: Yeah, I'm sure you have, they've been doing them
around a lot.
Wil: And what's interesting is that I didn't recognize
you at all.
Curtis: Well, you don't often see me with a pig snout on.
That's possibly the reason.
Wil: How did you. how did you become half pig?
Curtis: Well, the basic idea of the show is that this is
a newspaper, The Weekly Chronicle, which is sort of
a Weekly Word News supermarket tabloid, only everything
that they report is true. And one of the people they
have working there is a guy who is half pig. At one
time he was one of their stories but they now have him
working on the newspaper. It's a lot of fun. It's an
hour-long show and there's a lot of comedy and monsters.
Wil: That sounds like an intriguing concept.
Curtis: Yeah, it's good. So that's one of the things going
on now. I've also got four movies coming out this year.
One of them is called "Viper", with Theresa Russell.
Another one is called "Gale Force" which is an action
movie with Treat Williams. Then I'm doing a cameo bit
in a movie called "Van Wilder, Party Liaison." That's
at least the title of the moment; I can't imagine they're
going to actually keep it. It was described to me as
a tribute to "Revenge of the Nerds" and has a lot of
"Revenge of the Nerds" references in it. Then the other
one is a drama called "Irish Eyes Are Crying" with Daniel
Baldwin and Wings Hauser. I play an I.R.A. killer. So
those are all going to be out sometime this year.
Wil:
I've got one final question. When they finally tallied
up the results from the recent 2000 presidential election,
did you find yourself saying, "We've got Bush!"?
Curtis: Ummm, no, because I was so horrified. I mean, frankly,
I did think that, but it was with so much horror, it
took me weeks before I could make jokes about it.
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