Assume The Position

  “It’s a documentary, it’s a comedy, it’s a reality show.”  That’s how actor/comedian Robert Wuhl describes his new HBO special, “Assume The Position With Mr. Wuhl.”  “It’s basically a monologue that’s being done in a classroom, and it’s about how pop culture becomes history.”

  Wuhl, whose acting career spans 25 years, gained national recognition though his role as Arliss Michaels, the high-powered sports super-agent on HBO’s “Arli$$.”  But now the comedian-turned-guest-lecturer is showing NYU students that there is more than one way to be a wise guy.

  “Assume The Position With Mr. Wuhl” is the most novel approach to stand-up comedy since the days of Andy Kaufman.  As Wuhl bounces around the lecture hall, he debunks the myths of American history, or what he calls “the stories that make up America, and the stories that America made up.” 

  The show’s title, aside from being a clever double entendre, refers to various positions that Wuhl assumes throughout the lecture—that today’s pop culture becomes the fodder for tomorrow’s history books, for example.  “By pop culture, I mean whoever the most popular person is at that point in time,” Wuhl said in an interview with HBO.com.  “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.”

  He begins the show by assuming the positions that history is a litany myths dictated by the pop culture icons of their time: Washington, Jefferson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, to name a few.  He explores history in terms that the students can relate to, claiming that Longfellow’s decision to follow “Evangeline” with “Paul Revere’s Ride” was like OutKast following up “Ms. Jackson” with “Hey Ya.”  He tells the story of Isreal Bissel, who rode his horse over 300 miles to warn of the British invasion—as opposed to the 16 miles that Revere rode, and he explains the role that Longfellow played in history’s telling of Revere’s noble tale.

  Wuhl simultaneously deflates the myths and extols the virtues of mythmaking.  He describes history by citing John Ford’s 1962 movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” repeating, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”  And thus, history continues to be told as a series of legends.  “I’ve always had a theory that history is basically storytelling, and the key to storytelling is who’s telling the story,” Wuhl tells HBO.com.  “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.”

  The show is receiving nothing but great reviews, and deservedly so.  It will continue to run on HBO throughout April, but there are rumors of a series spinning off of this.  Wuhl told TV.com, “I would like to do more of these.  I feel it plays to a huge cross-section.”  If HBO doesn’t pick up the ball and run with it, they will be depriving their viewers of what could be a very good thing.

-From Pulse
   April 6, 2006