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The man behind "Arlis$" was Mr. Stand Up long before he was double-talking Shaq and getting showered by tickertape in the Canyon of Heroes. Now he's ready to return to the mike and assume certain positions, and in the process he might just be the funniest social studies teacher you'll ever meet...
HBO:
So give us a little background on your show - what is "Assume the Position with Mr. Wuhl" about, exactly?
Robert Wuhl:
It's basically a monologue that's being done in a classroom, and it's about how pop culture becomes history. By pop culture, I mean whoever the most popular person is at that point in time. People say that life shouldn't be a popularity contest, but life is a popularity contest. And it doesn't make a difference if it's 2005 or 1805. Whoever the most popular person is at that time, they're going to have a lot of weight, whether they're being elected, whether they're being read, whether they're being sought out, whether we emulate them. And what they say and do is going to affect a bunch of other people because the media is printing it and people are listening to them. And that's just the way life is. It doesn't change.
Human behavior doesn't change over the years. People are still doing stuff for the same reasons they did it years ago, which is basically "My God's better than your God." Or "How much is in it for me and uh who's got the hots for you." That's basically where history comes from, those few things.
HBO:
What was the genesis behind presenting this in a classroom setting and not a comedy venue?
Robert Wuhl:
It was an experiment. [HBO President] Chris Albrecht and I got to talking about how when we were growing up, there was a show called Sunrise Semester. It was on at seven o'clock in the morning and it was a classroom. And we both liked it - we both liked to learn. I think there's a great thirst for knowledge in society today. I think the younger generations really want to learn. I don't think they want to be bored. I think they want to learn by telling a story that incorporates, encompasses something that they can use practically. Something they can relate to. And I think you can learn and you can entertain at the same time. You try to make it as palatable to people today to make them understand it in their terms. It's like when you hear 10,000 people were killed at an event, you say, well that's a big number. But if you get to know one person and they're killed, that puts a face on it. Well, that's what I try to do with history. So we're gonna kill 10,000 people. [CHUCKLES] No. I try to make it fun by telling stories and making people understand how pop culture throughout history becomes history.
HBO:
So you're both performing and you're teaching. It's kind of like a hybrid?
Robert Wuhl:
It's an interesting process because I don't know if I'm actually teaching or if I'm doing a monologue or a one man show, so I call it a docucomadality show. It's a documentary, it's a comedy, it's a reality show. But in a sense I really think that it can redefine the variety show.
I first started putting this together in a comedy club, and then tried it out on students in classrooms - realizing that those are two entirely different audiences. When it comes to a comedy club, first of all, people are drunk; second of all, it's an older audience. Now, when you do this in front of students, which is much more exciting to me, you have to be really honest with them. They're looking to you for the truth. They're looking to you for something interesting. You've got to keep their interest going and that's tough, so you better tell them interesting stories. And they have an amazing bullshit detector. So don't bullshit them.
Teachers are the most under-recognized, under-appreciated, underpaid people, and yet everybody will say the future of our children is education. But look who's on the low rung -- the teachers.
HBO:
How did you get started delivering this to students?
Robert Wuhl:
I started out by workshopping this at UCLA and USC, just gathering material and telling stories and trying to get students to give me their lunch hour -- so I'd hand out pizza to them. I'd get four of five students. Sometimes only one would show up. Then we decided to come to New York because I love the diversity there.
HBO:
How did you find the reaction in a big lecture hall?
Robert Wuhl:
Oh it was great, it was terrific. It takes a minute or two for them to get where you're going, because you're changing rhythms on them and you're doing something different. What is he talking about? Why are we here? And part of the charm was seeing the diversity of all these different people, and watching as they all start to get it at the same time. Suddenly they're all laughing at your jokes and they're with you, and they're grasping a concept that they never thought of before -- because it wasn't presented to them like this, so they didn't hear it before.
HBO:
How do you go about presenting the material, and what sorts of concepts are behind it?
Robert Wuhl:
I've always had a theory that history is basically storytelling, and the key to storytelling is who's telling the story. That's why in the days of the Indians and the free plains, every time that the Calvary won a battle, the press said it was a great military victory. But if the Indians won, it was a massacre. Who's telling the story? That's what it came down to. So I try and tell stories and raise these questions.
HBO:
Can you think of anyone from history who got a bad lot, or did the good work but didn't get their due?
Robert Wuhl:
Oh, there's a lot of them. That's a question I was always asking when I was doing the research for this show. I would ask historians, who deserves better?
Well I don't know if he deserves better, but Benedict Arnold is an interesting story. If you think of his life in terms of today's corporate world, he was basically passed over for promotion about four times. He gets shot in battle and gives up his leg, and then a guy gets promoted over him. And after about the fourth or fifth time, you'd start to say, who else is offering what? I've done all this work for you, I'm not getting the gig here and it doesn't look like you're going to win. So I'm going to go to the other side. Everybody thinks he was hung. He wasn't, he wound up living the life over in Great Britain, and his wife had a lot to do with that. So Benedict Arnold, although there's no way around the fact that he was a traitor, I understand him.
Now, on the other side, you go to England, and George Washington is considered a traitor. Here's an English guy, he's working for the English, and he does a 180. So again, who's telling the story?
Another great story is Marty Glickman, who was a really great radio and TV announcer. But a lot of people don't know that he was on the famous Olympic relay team that went to Berlin in 1936. They pulled him off of the relay team presumably because Jesse Owens had won the day before, and Hitler had been insulted by having a black man win. There was no way they wanted to have a Jew beat them now. That story is a fascinating story. And he went on to become as great a sports announcer as there ever was.
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Watch a Preview
Exclusive preview of Assume the Position with Mr. Wuhl.
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Mr. Wuhl's Quiz
How much history do you really know? Test your knowledge here.
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