Robert Wuhl, "Assume The Position/Arli$$/Hollywood Knights" actor: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 1 Robert Wuhl cracks me up. Always has, always will.

His HBO series, “Arli$$," about an over-ambitious Hollywood sports agent, was must-see TV in my house for years, and I’ve seen his first movie, Hollywood Knights, hundreds of times. Really, hundreds. If you haven’t seen it, buy it.

In terms of media experience, Wuhl played reporters in Batman and Cobb and a disc jockey in Good Morning, Vietnam. And when Billy Crystal hosted the Academy Awards in 1990, 1991, and 1992, Wuhl contributed a good many of Crystal’s best lines. This, I’m sure of.

It doesn’t hurt that we share a birthday, October 9th, and we’re both New Jersey natives.

This month, Wuhl returns to HBO with his second “Assume the Position” special. It’s a raucous run through history in which Professor Wuhl takes charge of a class of college students and shares “more stories that made America and the stories that America made up.”

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BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: What attracts you to history so much?

ROBERT WUHL: Well, I like storytelling. I mean, that’s basically it. I just like storytelling, and that’s all history is is storytelling. Of course,

the thing to always remember is you have to keep in mind who’s telling the story. What’s their agenda? What gain do they have? What point of view are they saying?

And I just like storytelling, so history lends itself, because it has characters in it.

ANDELMAN: When did you become skeptical of the way history is told?

WUHL: I think by nature I’m just skeptical. You know, not cynical. I don’t like the idea of being cynical, because as (Oscar) Wilde said, “A cynic knows the cost of everything but the worth of nothing.” But I am skeptical. I always want to know who’s telling the story, and I just question. And then, there was a great quote from (Paddy) Chayefsky in “The Americanization of Emily” where he said, “I don’t know what is good or bad or true. I let God worry about the truth. I only want to know the momentary facts of things.” And I think that’s a pretty good line.







ANDELMAN: How much do you read? My sense is that you must read a lot.

WUHL: I do a lot of reading. I read mostly non-fiction, obviously. The Internet is a godsend for research. But I do read; not as much as my wife. My wife reads fiction, and she reads a book a day. She used to work for Simon and Shuster, so she just devours fiction. I read nonfiction.

ANDELMAN: What have you read recently?

WUHL: What did I read recently that’s really good? You know what I just read that was terrific was Katherine Graham’s book, which was wonderful, Personal History. That was a great book. And then I just read a novel by Frank Deford, The Entitled, which was a nice read.

ANDELMAN: What made you want to get in front of a classroom of college kids and talk history? It is one thing, it seems to me, to read history and to study history, but you really put a lot on the line by getting in front of kids who have nothing to lose by challenging and heckling. But you get up there in these specials, and you just turn it on.

WUHL: I thought there was a way to do this. I just thought there was a way to make history more entertaining in front of a classroom. I’m very pro-student. The beauty of Chris Albrecht, the genius of Chris Albrecht, is that when I pitched him the idea, he said, “Okay, the one thing I know about what you’re talking about is that we have to commit to shooting it. You can’t have a script and develop it. It’s like developing a stand-up act. You just have to shoot it.” These things are pretty labor-intensive, so it takes a while, then we workshop it in the classrooms for a couple of months, and then we go and shoot it in New York.


ANDELMAN: The presentation is very stand-up style. I don’t know, I’m just going to ask you: have you done a lot of stand-up?

WUHL: Oh, sure. I started out as stand-up.

ANDELMAN: Yeah, I wasn’t sure about that. And are you doing stand-up now?

WUHL: I don’t do much of it. No. I really don’t do much of it any more. I’ll do some corporate dates, and I do a lot of hosting at charity events. Occasionally, I’ll go and do a stand-up gig but not too often.

ANDELMAN: What can a high school teacher or college history professor learn from stand-up comedy about presenting their material?

WUHL: I don’t know if they can learn anything.

ANDELMAN: Really?

WUHL: You know, I’m fortunate in that I can workshop it out, and I do have a background, and I don’t know if it’s fair to ask any other teachers to do that. That’s not their job. Remember, first and foremost, it is a piece of entertainment. It’s an HBO entertainment special, and it is a comedy special. I would always say to use context. That would be the biggest thing I would say to teachers, explain context of why and how these things happened rather than just giving names, dates, and places, because that means nothing. That, they will memorize for a test and forget the next day. If you put a face on it, understand the characters involved and what their motivations were for doing something, then that would be my only thing to say.

ANDELMAN: Who do you most admire from American history?

WUHL: Probably the common man, probably the working man.

ANDELMAN: Oh, that sounds like a Time magazine answer, Robert. “The Man of the Year is YOU.”

WUHL: It’s true, though. I admire the people who have to, as we say in the show, get through it. The people of power make decisions that affect usually not them, you know, but usually the people who work and live under them, so I really do respect the working man, the working woman, the family guy, the woman who’s keeping a family together in the obstacles of society, whether it be present-day or the past. It’s all present-day family, I mean, no matter when it takes place. History takes place in the present. It doesn’t take place in the past. That’s who I most admire. I mean, there are figures, just like any other kid, sports figures or scientific figures or stuff like that, people who accomplish. Anybody who accomplishes, gets through the workday and does their job, I’m a fan of them, the working men.







ANDELMAN: One of the things you say is that when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

WUHL: Right. That came out of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

ANDELMAN: Right. What does that mean, exactly? How would you explain that to someone who didn’t see the show.

WUHL: Well, that’s exactly what I think a lot of history is is that the stories are passed down, and then they become accepted as fact, and then people print them. They take it that way. That’s just the nature, and that one, it was pop culture, of culture. You know, when you get a story long enough, you do believe it, especially when it becomes accepted.

ANDELMAN: Robert, you make a point in both “Assume the Position” specials, the first one from a year ago and this new one: You say that your dad was a Republican, your mom a Democrat, your wife is to the left of Lenin.

WUHL: Yep.

ANDELMAN: Now, you’ve been interviewed and gone toe-to-toe with Bill O’Reilly, but is it intentionally difficult to get a fix on your politics?

WUHL: My politics are, I look at each individual issue. I think you have to take everything into consideration. Because my dad was a businessman, he had a family business, so when you do that, your view on how government affects you is different than somebody who doesn’t, and so it just gives you a different point of view. I grew up in the Northeast, in New Jersey, and I went to school down in Texas There you are exposed to a whole different culture and whole different points of view. I think that’s really good. Basically, however, in this country, social issues and stuff like that can change, but you are dealing in a capitalistic system, so the one party is the capitalist party. The other stuff I really don’t think matters a whole hell of lot. Again, social issues, individual issues, yes, but as far as other things, not that much.

ANDELMAN: You made a very strong case for Hedy Lamar’s post-Hollywood accomplishments, so I need to ask you, how will American history look back on Paris Hilton?

WUHL: Oh, God, I don’t even think about Paris Hilton. I’m probably the only person in the world. I think she won’t be remembered, basically. She’ll be a footnote, unless she creates something great. As of right now, I don’t know what the future holds.


© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Labels: Arli$$, Assume The Position, Batman, Bull Durham, Cobb, Floyd Mutrux, Fran Drescher, Hollywood Knights, Howard Stern, Lauren Graham, New Bomb Turks, Newbomb Turk, Robert Wuhl, Sandra Oh

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