Robert Wuhl

In Bull Durham (1988), Robert Wuhl’s tobacco-chewing assistant coach Larry is comfortably short of glamour. He fits Ron Shelton’s baseball comedy, with its warm interest in people making fools of themselves. We enjoyed his lack of polish; the tobacco and the brashness make him belong in this company. Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner give the film its ease, and Wuhl adds comic roughness without making a claim on their place at the centre. This is a good use of an actor who can be pushy without asking for the whole film.

Batman (1989) gives that manner a different setting in Alexander Knox, the reporter Wuhl plays for Tim Burton. His fast talk supplies a recognisable human nuisance beside Michael Keaton’s troubled stillness and the oppressive city. Wuhl ad-libbed comic lines here, which suits a character employed to keep asking questions. We still find more pleasure in the city and Danny Elfman’s music than in the comedy. It is a good, uneven film, and Wuhl’s modest contribution does not have to repair it.

These parts followed Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), where he played Robin Williams’ noisy colleague Marty Lee Dreiwitz. The casting habit is clear: Wuhl can provide an insistent comic presence alongside a larger star. Repeated casting as the noisy one can make his next contribution a little too easy to anticipate. Shelton, a collaborator across three films, gives that familiar manner congenial company in Bull Durham, where the affection for foolish people keeps the supporting comedy from becoming a string of easy targets.

Cobb (1994) cast him as sportswriter Al Stump; Arli$$ (1996–2002) gave him a continuing central role. Wuhl created, wrote and produced the programme as well as playing sports agent Arliss Michaels. Its satire of the sports business puts his familiar pushiness somewhere it can be a professional qualification, and gives him more responsibility for what the jokes are doing. For a first encounter, though, choose Bull Durham, and forgive Shelton the occasional over-written exchange.