Mr. Robert WuhlComedian/Actor/Writer/Filmmaker/Raconteur/Historian
Hollywood, CA, USA
April 25, 2006
Dear Mr. Wuhl,
Last night I had the privilege of catching your HBO special "Assume The Position." Your informative and amusing piece of revisionist history is up there with the best of Carlin and Miller; it’s highbrow didacticism that can still make you blow beer out your nose. I have been a fan of your work for some time, but this latest foray came as a total surprise to me. A totally pleasant surprise, I might add. I laughed, I learned, and I gained a new appreciation for your talents.
I admit that I have not seen your every film appearance, but I attribute that sad truth to the fact that you appear so rarely above the title. For instance: in order to see your performance in Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, I would have to fast-forward through the bland histrionics of Timothy "I Flew Airplanes For NBC And Now I'm A Gambling-Junkie-Punching-Bag On The Sopranos" Daly and Sean "No Need For Lengthy Nicknames, You Get The Picture" Young. I caught about thirty seconds of this film during a high school job projecting movies at a local multiplex, but they were regrettably not your thirty seconds as "Man With Lighter." I’m sure your cameo was brilliant in spite of its brevity. At the same time, it would be no overstatement to tell you I would have gnawed off my own thumbs to get out of that theater, had said thumbs been inextricably lodged in one of our hundreds of folding seats (deathtraps, incidentally) during a screening. An unlikely scenario, perhaps, but that's the kind of grotesque extreme such films force me to envision.
(I had a similar psychoallergic reaction to Crash, but my girlfriend was enjoying it and I was making amends for one thing or another. I should have just bought her flowers. As it was, I suffered a protracted recurrence of nightmares (bludgeoning and smothering) in addition to a sweaty, screaming, full-blown panic attack in downtown traffic following an Oscars party this spring. There was also the acute sense of free-floating paranoia I experienced while passing a Benetton store in Slovenia, but that's an experience I'd rather not examine in any great detail. We had broken up by then, the girl and I--but Crash was not your fault. You weren't anywhere near it. I digress. Back to the topic at hand.)
Your HBO special was a deft blend of comedy and historical analysis, a retelling of the myths we have come to accept and an explanation of what you termed “The Liberty Valance Effect.” As the man said, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." How very true. Hence: Columbus and Queen Izzy and no mention of the globe; hence: Paul Revere and not Israel Bissell, your "Jewish vacuum cleaner salesman"; hence: Jimmy Stewart getting fat (metaphorically speaking) on John Wayne's dime. History is pop culture, and pop culture has a selective and malleable appreciation of fact. Fiction sells tickets and ad time and newspapers, and truth rarely even rides in the back of the truck. Kudos to you, sir, for ushering this truth to the foreground of our society’s ongoing cultural debate.
Oh, and the way you manage to enlighten both your television audience AND a live classroom brimming with Impressionable Youth, educating and entertaining while still working blue? Bravo, Mr. Wuhl. I bow in awe.
It also happens that I recently revisited, by unrelated coincidence, your brilliant performances in Batman, Bull Durham, and Good Morning, Vietnam. Your fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-or-seventh-bananas (respectively) oozed your distinctive brand of charm, a quality born of endearing self-deprecation and good-natured, quick-witted impertinence. And let me also take a moment to applaud your slow-mo spit-take during Tim Robbins' naked-on-the-mound dream sequence in Ron Shelton's film. I have a feeling Costner would have asked for another take (and probably blown it, too), but you displayed a keen, instinctive awareness that the imperfection of the globule's arc only made the shot funnier. You showed us in that moment the difference between movie stars and real actors.
On that note I will mention "Arli$$" briefly, if only to defend it against some of its snarkiest critics, who continue to knock both you and the series in low, unsolicited blows. You played the lead among an ensemble of quirky sports agents, and perhaps the role followed too quickly on the heels of an overrated Tom Cruise vehicle called Jerry Maguire. Cruise pandered to his audiences' gullible inner romantics. He told us we completed him, we believed it, and even Oscar nearly swooned in starstruck bedazzlement. You, sir, received no such reaction to your demonstration of craft, which you starred in, executive-produced, and also (at points) wrote and directed. Perhaps the lack of consideration on the part of some naysayers could be due to the fact that they were unprepared for your clever, acerbic satire of sports and entertainment. Maybe they wanted more of Cruise's puppydog/pit-bull stare and last-minute declarations of "I Fucked Up But I'm Reasonably Certain At This Point That I Love You." Or perhaps it was due to a general unwillingness (theirs) to accept your ability to carry a thirty-minute pay-cable sitcom, though you did so for seven seasons. Allow me to explain this latter possibility by way of analogy:
I once read somewhere that moths gravitate suicidally toward bulbs and flames because of an optical illusion. Hovering in interrupted darkness, it seems they perceive a light's surrounding glow to be indicative of there being a greater darkness on the other side. Thus, in a mistaken, doomed drive to find the deepest precincts of the night, they unwittingly frizzle-fry themselves in the attempt to get there. I will assume the position that your critics wanted you to remain in that greater darkness beyond the glow of the superstars. In the throes of their conscious or unconscious starfucking, however--which starfucking, as you point out, is "American as apple pie"--they must admit the lure of the darkness beyond. It is there, paradoxically, where your performances shine the brightest. Maybe your critics prefer you to be further down in the cast listings, where your name is a subtle reassurance of quality, and from which position you can single-handedly redeem a shoddy picture without ever appearing obtrusive. Those performances remain, if you will, the honey mustard on the turkey sandwich of many a film--a graceful, understated accent that makes the more celebrated ingredients seem more flavorful, while never overpowering the way Dijon can.
Which is not to suggest that you should avoid the spotlight. On the contrary, there might very well be time and room in the Hollywood pantheon for a Wuhl to stand alongside the great leading men of-a-certain-age. It will, of course, take the right project. Here's hoping you find it. Bill Murray managed to recalibrate his career trajectory while pushing fifty, and Anthony Hopkins was fifty-four when The Silence of the Lambs took him from "respected actor" to Legitimate Movie Star. And keep in mind: the great Orson Welles was doing unmitigated trash by the time he was your age, eventually taking paychecks for frozen-peas commercials and voicing a Transformer in a full-length cartoon. Hollywood is a funny place, Mr. Wuhl, as I'm sure you know. There is time enough under the sun.
In the meantime, keep doing what you're doing. And do more of it, for chrissakes. You do it well. Your natural charisma may be an acquired taste for some, but The Great Unwashed rarely embrace anything but ersatz talents straightaway. Keep working your niche, Mr. Wuhl. Keep working your niche, and everything else will follow.
With sincerest admiration,
Nathan Gordon
Fan
