Actor, writer, and comedian Robert Wuhl, the star of HBO’s hit series “Arliss” talks about sports, smokes, and his television career.
Q: When did you start smoking cigars?
A: I smoked cigarettes for many years and I quit. Then I’d smoke a cigar every now and then. I was just afraid to smoke because of the addiction. I won’t touch a cigarette but I’ll smoke cigars. The characters [I’ve played] have smoked. Especially on “Arliss.” Because the character smokes, I caught shit for it.
Q: Now since you write the show, you probably wrote that into the character so you can get cigars, and HBO can pick up the tab!
A: That’s quite true. That’s not really what happened--that’s the effect rather than the cause. I thought this guy, the character really epitomized all the big money in the 1990s, the agents. I wanted him to be one of those corporate cigar guys. I’m glad that cigars are coming back, especially the good ones. There’s a big difference. There is a definite difference when you get a really top-notch cigar. I love going to Paris because I can walk into that big humidor there and I see a wall of Cuban cigars. If you get the really good Cubans in France it’s really great. And they’re cheaper! It’s a shame. You know it’s funny, we do business with Iraq, we do business with Vietnam, Red China, Russia, all these countries we were at war with. We’re not at war with Cuba, but that’s the country we’re not going to do business with. It’s really silly. I think it’s all going to change when Castro dies. Don’t you think?
Q: They say his brother is worse.
A: But his brother doesn’t have the stigma. He might be worse with the people, but it’s not the stigma of Castro, for political reasons, I don’t think. I think you’re going to see it open up. The first thing that’s going to hit is the cigars.
Q: I really don’t know. I’ve talked to a lot of people and they say his brother is worse and he’s a military guy. A lot of people, especially the ex-patriot Cubans that live here, can’t forgive him. They still have families in jail.
A: That’s really true. The guy who plays the shoeshine guy in our show is from Miami. You know, our shoeshine guy who’s always downstairs and comes up occasionally? He was on our show the other day, the runaway Michael show? He was a kid and he ran away? We have a guy downstairs, he’s a periodic character, a friend of mine who lives down the street from me, and his family are ex-patriot Cubans. He’s from Miami. He’s a Cuban Jew. He calls himself a “Juban.” But he’s American. He says, ‘Rob you don’t understand how nuts these people are down there. You don’t understand.’
Q: You can’t even speak out against Castro.
A: You can’t talk for him either. They don’t like him a whole lot. I think even though his brother may be worse, he’s not Fidel Castro.
Q: That reminds me of a joke where the guy died and they say can anybody get up and say something nice about our dearly departed, and a hush fills the room and nobody gets up. The clergy says, certainly someone has something nice to say . . . An elderly European man stands up in the back of the room and says ‘His brother was worse!’
A: Exactly!
Q: How did you get the idea for “Arliss”?
A: Michael Tollin. He went to HBO with the idea of doing a “Spinal Tap” of sporting events. Like a Spinal Tap of Super Bowl, a Spinal Tap of Wimbledon, whatever. HBO and I had had a relationship for years and suggested I come on board to talk about the idea. I said, you know I’m really not interested in this, but what I would be interested in is, this is 1991 by the way, a six-episode miniseries, a satire of the world of sports, told through the eyes of one person. That one person should be a sports agent. A couple of influences were a BBC show called “House of Cards.” It’s about a member of Parliament who gets passed over for promotions so he systematically works up the line and destroys all these people in front of him. He would talk to the camera. So we wrote our story and it was received very well, and they wanted another one. HBO takes a long time to make decisions. They didn’t make a decision on it, and we all wound up doing other projects. We wrote about three or four other scripts and then finally in 1994 or 1995 we got the go ahead to do the pilot. The pilot went very well, and then we went ahead to series in 1995. This is our fourth year.
Q: Before that, did you start as a stand-up?
A: I started as a writer. I was a drama major in college. I always wanted to be a filmmaker. I would write jokes for local celebrities in Houston. Then I went to New York and I started writing jokes for Stiller and Meara, and Rodney Dangerfield, and doing stand-up so I could present my act. It was a way to present myself by doing stand-up comedy, and I really enjoyed it. That led to auditions and acting gigs and more stand-up and acting and writing and directing, and eventually, “Arliss.”
Q: It’s really a fun show.
A: Thank you. It’s really fun to do, a lot of hard work, but great fun.
Q: It’s a fact-paced show.
A: It’s very fast. You know it takes us five days to shoot one of those shows. The trick is to make it look seamlessly fast. Remember we’re not on network TV so we don’t have the intrusions of commercials. There’s no laugh track. I can tell a story and the story can be 22 minutes, 27 minutes. I’m not locked into that 22/30 that takes commercial breaks every 8 minutes or whatever. I can just tell my stories, use my segues when I want to use them, transitions cinematically, exploring the characters.
Q: How much of the show do you write now?
A: I’m involved in every story meeting. The way it works is, we have story meetings first. They take about a week to really break a full story. Then we assign a writer, and he goes off and writes the first draft. We then go back and go around the table and give notes. He goes back and writes a second draft. Then I’ll write a rewrite polish, and then we all jam on the final one.
Q: You’ve got to pay attention to the current sports stuff that’s happening for inspiration.
A: Sure. Whatever we come up with, we’ll pick up the paper and there will be something worse or something bigger a couple of days later. We also talk to the agents for a lot of the material. We hear stories. It comes down to story telling. It’s not just about sports. The big difference this year is we’re up 34 percent in ratings. Which is a huge jump. People are realizing it’s not just about sports, it’s about characters. Because we are the lead to “Sex in the City,” we’re getting a lot more women.
Q: A lot of people notice the actual sports celebrities that you have on the show. I guess it’s probably become pretty cool for them to be on “Arliss.”
A: I was with Glen Fry from the Eagles, two nights ago. We were doing a benefit concert for the Columbine High School in Denver. He was saying 25 years ago, the hippest thing to do if you were in a band was to get on “Saturday Night Live.” Now, if you’re an athlete, the show to be on is “Arliss.” What’s good about the athletes is it’s fun for the audience, and it gives us texture. It blurs the line a little bit more between fiction and reality. I like doing that a lot. I think people like that. It grounds it a little bit. No matter how outrageous they’re doing it, it’s still them. The trick is not to make the athletes look bad, and the way you do that is to not ask them to do something they are not capable of doing. Don’t ask them to carry a plot, don’t ask them to do an emotional scene; put them into an environment that they’re comfortable doing and just let them be themselves in the situation. We constantly rewrite on the set, too. Nothing’s locked on our show, because something will change rhythmically. We are not shooting in front of an audience. It’s a movie, so we can change stuff and re-shoot it.
Q: How often do you change the opening? I’ve noticed a few different openings.
A: First year we had a different song. We had a theme song of “Wild Nights” by Van Morrison--a great rendition by Martha Reeves. Van wouldn’t give us clearance. So at the 23rd hour we wound up with The Four Tops, “Can’t Help Myself.” We did that the first year. I didn’t think the song was quite right. It was okay, but then the second year, we changed the song to Dusty Springfield’s “I Only Want to Be with You,” which seemed better and peppier. Suddenly I’d go on stage or I’d do a talk show, and they’d play the song, and I said, ok, I better stick with this one. That song was more women-friendly. I love Dusty Springfield.
Q: What’s the percentage of men and women in your audience?
A: It’s more men, but it’s gotten a lot more women. Women were 37 percent a year ago. I bet you it’s 40 something now. I bet it’s probably 55/45 now.
Q: My wife loves the show. She thinks it’s funny.
A: It’s a great hour of television.
Q: What’s been your favorite “Arliss” show so far?
A: That’s tough to say. Do you remember the show the first year when I had an affair with an 18-year-old tennis star? It was an incredibly funny show. She dumps me for Dweezle Zappa in the end. That girl is the girl from “American Pie.” Her name is Shannon Elizabeth. I’ve had great affairs on the show. Katarina Witt, Andrea Thompson from “NYPD Blue,” Diane Farr from MTV’s “Loveline,” and this year, Cynthia Sykes, who used to be on “St. Elsewhere.”
Q: I do watch the show, and one of my favorites is where you wanted the seats.
A: The Laker seats. We shot in Staple Center. During that last shot, they were under construction, and they let us come in and shoot because they were fans of the show. What’s really funny is how many people are fans of the show. I was with Glen Fry the other night and he wants to come on the show; Hootie was on the show; Travis Tritt was on the show. Did you see the one with the Garth Brooks type of country western star who wanted to play baseball? That was Travis Tritt. Glen Fry and his band were talking about all the people who want to do it. Last year we did a show about a flashback where one of my clients was suing me. We did a take off of “Real Sports” last year. It turned out really well. What happened was we met at abusiness function and we met at a pot dealer, 20 years ago. Now there’s something I couldn’t have done unless I was on HBO. We cut to the shot of the flashback; we cut to a shot of a record album of the seeds being separated from the pod. But we needed a record album. I said, ‘What record album should we use? I said, 22 years ago? Bob Seger “Stranger in Town.” So we had to clear it! Seger wouldn’t clear it because he happened to be in drug rehab. The next one was, Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty.” Clearance people said forget it, he doesn’t allow anything on TV. I said just try. We find out because Deanne Block over at Warner Brothers, is our clearance person and a good friend of Jackson Browne who happens to be a big fan of the show! He not only let us use the cover of the album, he let us use two songs. It’s just great when you find stuff like that out. All of my friends want to come on the show now--Danny Aiello, Richard Belzer, Charles Durning, and Martin Landau.
Q: Charlie’s great. We did an interview with him.
A: He’s a great guy. I play cards with him.
Q: The weekly card game with Charlie?
A: Occasionally yeah. I think Joe (Mantegna) is, too.
Q: He told me Milton is, too.
A: Yeah, it’s a pool of about 60 people or so. It’s fun because it’s old Hollywood, new Hollywood-people think we all get together, but really you don’t.
Q: Do you think that sports agents are really that competitive over the clients?
A: Absolutely. That’s their bread and butter. They probably don’t go as far as Arliss does. Although some of them have, some of our stories are true. An interesting story is when we had Sammy Sosa on. He is great. He came on to do the promos in late April. He was hitting like 340 and he had just had three homeruns. I asked him when the rest of the homeruns are going to come, and he said don’t worry they’re going to come soon. I said being on the show is a good luck charm because we’ve been incredibly lucky for athletes. Eric Karas, the day of the show, he would hit a homerun. On the contrary, there have been two guys who stiffed us who went into slumps.
Q: That’s what they get.
A: Three couples go on a vacation together. However when they arrive at the hotel there’s been a mix up. Only two rooms have been reserved, each with a single bed. They figure what to do. They come up with a solution. The three wives will stay in one bed in one room and the three husbands will stay in the other room. Good idea. The middle of the night, however, the husband in the middle turns to the guy next to him and says, ‘You've got to let me out.’ ‘Why? Why do I have to let you out?’ ‘I gotta go see my wife.’ ‘Why do you have to go see your wife?’ ‘Because I got the biggest hard on I’ve ever had in my life.’ The guy says, ‘Okay take me with you.’ He says, ‘What? Why am I going to take you with me?’ He goes, ‘Because you’re holding on to my dick!’