Writer, producer and director Scot Armstrong, also co-host of the “Bear Down” podcast with fellow Chicago native Matt Walsh (“Veep”), is a bigger Jay Cutler fan than many Chicagoans.
“I’m in the camp that Cutler got the shaft,” said Armstrong, who trained here at iO Theatre and Second City and continues to perform improv at the Los Angeles outpost of the Upright Citizens Brigade. “He definitely had some terrible interceptions, but I feel like he had more potential than the team gave him the chance for. I never thought he never had a very good offensive line around him.”
Armstrong noted that the former Bears quarterback “never got a DUI, he never punched his girlfriend in the face, he never got arrested, he never did lame commercials. He just was a socially awkward guy. Chicago wanted to love him, but he never let them, because he’s an intensely private guy.”
Reacting to Cutler’s recent signing by the Miami Dolphins, Armstrong quipped, “I’m going to start picking Dolphin receivers for my fantasy league team.”
Since relocating to L.A., he’s worked as a writer on films including “Road Trip,” “Old School” and “The Hangover Part II,” but he returns to the Chicago area often to visit family. “I love going back,” he said. “The house I grew up in Wheaton is now owned by my sister, so when I go to visit her, I stay in the room I grew up in. It’s the guest room now. She’s got two kids and they play in the same backyard I grew up playing in. That’s pretty great.”
These days he’s a producer and “show-runner” on “Dice,” inspired by the life of comedian Andrew Dice Clay and beginning its second season Sunday on Showtime.
He was skeptical about the idea, Armstrong said, until meeting Dice. “He had all these crazy stories from his real life, plus he proved he was willing to be vulnerable and show himself as the guy who was down on his luck. His career was in the [toilet]. He was a guy who, in many ways, had been forgotten. He was in debt, broke, divorced a bunch of times, and now just living in the suburbs of Las Vegas trying to get his career back on track.
“I thought there was a lot here that was funny and could work. I immediately connected with the way Dice talks. His voice is so unique. Nobody talks like he does. He’s very proud, always trying to be gangster in the way he talks and presents himself. He’s the kind of character you could never invent in a fictional world, because you would never believe it! But this is actually him.”
Along with Dice playing a fictional version of himself on the series, Armstrong loves having the chance to create fictionalized personas of other well-known actors who will be seen on the show this second season — including David Arquette, Ron Livingston, Michael Imperioli, Mickey Rourke and James Woods. “Getting those guys to come on was terrific. We were very lucky to get them.”
