It’s time to get to know Dustin Ingram. You may recognize him from the family-friendly superhero movie Sky High or the Nickelodeon series Unfabulous, but Ingram is all grown up now and delving into far more demanding roles. In Keith Bearden’s Meet Monica Velour, Ingram stars as Tobe, a geeky high school grad with eccentric interests, the most notable of which is an obsession with the hottest adult video actress of the 80s, Monica Velour. After finding out about an opportunity to see Monica perform live, Tobe hops in his hot dog truck and heads straight to Pinhook, Indiana. Nearly three decades past her prime, Monica is just not the same. The additional pounds and wrinkles are just too much for her fans to bear, but Tobe still looks at her as though she’s the same beautiful woman from Frankenbooty. Sadly, Monica has a hard time seeing the same.

Ingram may play the quintessential nerd quite well, but he’s certainly shed that image in reality. After the film’s premiere screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, Ingram was on hand to assist Bearden in funneling questions from the audience, a sense of confidence was clearly visible while at a festival photo shoot and, overall, his professionalism was through the roof. But, Ingram is still a 20-year-old guy just looking to have a good time and sees just that in what he’s accomplished with Monica Velour.

SY: How’d you get involved in the film?

It was just a standard audition process. I got the sides of the script from my agent, I went in and auditioned in LA and supposedly [Keith] said in a Q&A yesterday, when he was my first audition, he said he hated me, he thought I was terrible and the producer said, “You’re so picky, you’re so picky. See him again. You have to have people come to the callback.” So I came to the callback, [Keith] flew in from New York and I went in again and he said that was the one that clinched it. I have no idea what I did. All I remember is talking about grilled cheese with him the whole time. And then they flew me out to New York, and I got another callback in a room full of other oddly proportioned guys going for the same role and Kim was there for that. I remember the door slightly cracked open and I saw her for a second and I got really nervous, I made eye contact with her and I saluted her really quick.

SY: Why did you salute her?

I don’t know! I was so anxious! And I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I Howie Mandel handed Kim Cattrall. I’m never going to get this.” But I went in, read, had another callback in New York again in a big rehearsal space when we kind of walked it out, stuff like that.

SY: What was it like working with Kim for the first time? Was it intimidating?

You know, after all that stuff, after the salute and everything I was scared to death, but when I met her, all of that just totally like Alka-Seltzered into the water and became something completely different, something like pure stomach acid. Kim Cattrall is pure stomach acid. But no, she’s the sweetest thing, extremely talented, extremely sure of herself without being egotistical but then she knows herself well enough to create this amazing character.

SY: Were you familiar with Sex and the City at all?

Yeah. A lot of people think that she’s like that in real life, but it’s the exact opposite. After we would shoot on location a crowd would kind of form for her and after every day she would go over and sign every autograph and take a picture with everybody. So sweet.

SY: The funny thing is her characters in that and in this are somewhat similar in terms of their affinity for sexy things.

Yeah, but the only person who thinks she’s sexy is Tobe, my character. The whole reason they kind of fight at the bar is because she’s this old woman and they want to see young silicon beach balls instead of a real woman.

SY: Are you similar to Tobe at all?

I was 18 when we shot, I’m 20 now; before like in junior high I was a little bit like that, I was kind of awkward and geeky, got made fun of a lot and didn’t really know what was going on. But I don’t know, I get obsessed with certain things that are weird and I’m into weird movies and stuff. Actually, in his room, there were tons of toys everywhere on the shelves and everything like that and I actually had a lot of the same toys that were actually in his room, so that was kind of nostalgic for me.

SY: Do you collect anything?

I collected videogames. I am and was a big videogame nerd. I did the Pokémon card thing for a while. I just collected weird things. It’s just my collection is a bunch of different stuff, so not really, no.

SY: How was it working with Brian Dennehy?

He was a lot like my real grandpa, so we kind of connected pretty quickly there. But he, in the greatest way possible, he wanted to make every scene like this Shakespearian scene that was just full of every little emotion, everything, which is awesome. There’s a scene that got cut out of the film where we’re coming out of a VFW drunk and I’m supposed to balance him and suspend him to the car and I’m only like a 140 lbs of man, so they should have shot that scene last. [Laughs] I took some damage from that one. But he was great. He’s a super talented guy. He makes movie all the time and he will just sit with me and talk about acting.

SY: What about some of the younger cast members?

We all stayed in the same hotel and Tobe’s best friend Kenny, [Keith] made Daniel and I, the kid who plays Kenny, hang out for like the week leading up to shoot, so we would kind of become friends and we would just go to the hotel arcade the whole time. But, yeah, he made me hang out with him and Jee, the girl who plays Amanda, he didn’t let us meet ever so that it was more organic when we did and it kind of worked. But they were great. Danny, he’s a 40-year-old in a 12-year-old’s body and Jee is the funniest funniest girl in the world.

By Perri Nemiroff