David Wild

David Wild jet-setted to London in 1983 in order to keep tabs on his then girlfriend studying at Oxford, but what he discovered was a rich literary and music scene that would help launch his future career. Indulging in the British music scene, David skipped class to go to record stores and attended almost the entire Elvis Costello Punch the Clock Tour of England. With a passion for music and writing, David landed his first job as an on-the-road journalist writing reviews for shows in London for college newspapers. With this foundation, David went on to work for Esquire and Rolling Stone, where he remains a Contributing Editor. Today, David primarily writes for television, working with celebrities and writing for awards shows including The GRAMMYs, The Emmy Awards, The CMAs, and The Academy Awards. In addition to being a two-time Emmy nominee, David has authored numerous New York Times Best-Selling books and has contributed to CNN’s Emmy-winning series, The Sixties, The Seventies, and The Eighties. Read on to find out how studying abroad helped lay the foundation for David’s career and why getting out of his comfort zone continues to be one of the most valuable lessons he learned in London.

IES Abroad: As a student at Cornell University, what motivated you to study abroad and why did you choose London?

David Wild: My college girlfriend got into Oxford for the year. I didn’t know that she was going to get in, and I thought, “She is very attractive. I had better go to England.” It was really self-preservation. Secondarily, there was the desire to have the educational experience of being abroad: a) I’m a music fanatic and wanted to spend more time in London, and b) it was as close as I could get to Oxford without having applied there. It’s true, I spent a lot of time going back and forth between Oxford and London. But I remember I studied Dickens, and I remember also studying Shakespeare, because occasionally my then girlfriend would get busy so I would spend a weekend at Stratford-upon-Avon seeing Shakespeare. All around, it was a very good literary experience for me.

IES Abroad: Did you have an 'ah ha' moment during study abroad that critically changed the way you think?

DW: Relatively-speaking, I think I was probably an intellectually curious, smart kid, but I had absolutely no living skills whatsoever. I was a spoiled kid who had gone to prep school and didn’t necessarily know how to live in any other way that wasn’t a regimented, organized world. So when I got there, it was totally different. I have very strong memories of the living situation. A lot of it, for me, was having to get my own apartment. I have vague memories that maybe some of the others lived together in groups, but I lived by myself the whole time. I remember my first apartment in Earl’s Court area. The bathroom was in the hall, which was an educational experience with a bunch of strange people. And I remember, it was obviously pre-cell phone, just trying to get the coins to make a phone call home from a train station. I ended up making a British friend and living in his house eventually. But I had to find my own apartment and get my own utilities at the outset, and considering the British system, that was crazy. I grew up a lot during that time in London because I had to, because I literally didn’t know how to do anything.

Beyond that, I remember the classes on Dickens were great. I think we read the entire body of Dickens’ work. I learned a lot and enjoyed it. But in my mind, it’s all mixed up, the classes and the sneaking out to record stores and going to concerts. I think I managed to ditch enough classes to go on the entire Elvis Costello Punch the Clock Tour of England. That was one of the highlights, and I told Elvis that when I got to know him. I went to like fourteen straight gigs that semester. I was also there for the Everly Brothers Reunion at the Royal Albert Hall. So, a lot of my memories, the reading and the music, are mixed up, and that’s the way it is with me and life.

IES Abroad: Did studying in London impact your career, particularly early on as you got started writing for Esquire and then moved over to Rolling Stone?

DW: Definitely. In fact, I was reviewing for some sort of conglomerate of college papers. I was sending my reviews of shows in London then, and so it was my first experience as a roving, globe-trotting journalist. I reviewed a lot of shows for a number of college papers, and I got real experience being a writer on the road, a journalist up for hire. I’m sure it helped. I think it made me feel more comfortable anywhere I was thrown. Now, I’m mainly a TV writer for all these event shows. Like last night I was working with Justin Timberlake. Today, I am meeting with a movie star, and I have to write something for a TV show for him this weekend. That’s mainly what I do now. But for the first fifteen years of my career, I was mainly a journalist. Even what I do now – I write the GRAMMYs – it involves being thrown into situations, finding a way to be comfortable, and making others comfortable. That is the sort of thing I learned a lot about back in those days, just getting out of your comfort zone. To me, that’s what it was. I guess I wasn’t an idiot, but my comfort zone was very limited. I had been coddled to a certain degree, which was great for me, it was a nice supportive environment, but at least the way I experienced study abroad, definitely living on my own, I had to do a lot of growing up at that point.

IES Abroad: What has been one of your most fulfilling assignments? 

DW: On CNN’s The Eighties series, the music show is coming up. It is interesting because I did think about being in England then. When Tom Hanks and his company Playtone asked me to be involved in The Sixties, I was like, “Guys, you’ve got to get me to the Seventies.” Just age-wise, I don’t remember the sixties. Then we got to the seventies, and I was much more in my comfort zone because that was my high school years. But the eighties, the early eighties, I experienced in London. I remember seeing Wham! on TV early on, and I remember one of my favorite groups of all time, The Smiths, I remember very vividly seeing them early on. I caught the post-funk, post New Wave British music scene because I happened to be there and saw as many shows as I could.

But the most fulfilling assignments are those when you can reach a little bit outside yourself. For example, being the head writer for the Tribute to Heroes telethon after 9/11, that was a big experience. I have been a part of a number of those events that have raised millions of dollars for important causes. I actually sort of came into TV doing that, and then gradually realized that I cannot not get paid all the time. I volunteered my time for the Emmy nominations, and now everyone asks me to do all their charity events. And I was like, “Guys, if I am going to become a writer, I have to take some shows where I get paid.” And that stuff comes up, like this morning at 7am I got a call from the publicist of one of the biggest actors in the world, and because they had seen me last night at this event helping Justin Timberlake, they said, “Can you help X today?” They said, “This actor worked with you, but you probably don’t remember when,” and I realized that it was at an event 10-15 years ago. But all these charity events end up living on because you generate not just a lot of money but a lot of goodwill in the world.

IES Abroad: Despite being Jewish, in 2001, you were awarded the Muslim Public Policy Award with Cat Stevens, and in 2015, you wrote for Pope Francis’s Mass event at Madison Square Garden. In what ways has your work transcended religious barriers?

DW: In truth, religion has never come up in any of those circumstances. In the case of the Muslim Public Policy Award, it was for a documentary when Yusuf (Cat Stevens) decided to return to public life to a certain extent. I was the interviewer because we talked music and spiritual journeys and everything. We are still in touch. We tweeted to each other a few days ago, and we have always remained in touch. We actually did those interviews in London. I remember in-between interviews, at one point, I snuck over to try to find some of my old London apartments. And in the case of the Pope, well, I have fallen into this very weird world where people need to speak at any sort of gathering, and they often need someone to help in different ways. I was writing jokes for Justin Timberlake at the same time that I was working Martin Sheen’s kick-off to the Pope’s Mass in Madison Square Garden. I started out as a journalist. You start out and sort of explore your own voice. But then I found out that if I have a gift, it is that I can listen to people or know people’s persona and then write to their voice. That is the feedback that I get for why people hire me, that I’m a good listener. I try to capture the way someone is good. I remember years ago, I went to speak at Berkeley, and I had just written a Christmas special for Christina Aguilera, and someone asked, “How can you write the Christmas stuff?” and I was like, “Irving Berlin wrote White Christmas.” I remember almost everyone on that Christmas special was Jewish. Religion has never been a big issue for me. It is really about helping people, and you work with different people in different ways.

IES Abroad: What excites you the most about your work?

DW: I like the range of it. It gets incredibly complicated to balance everything and never knowing what’s coming next. Everything gets complicated, but I do like the range of it. I go on one of the big comedy podcasts nearly every week, The Adam Carolla Show, and the reason I do things like that or go on a lot of TV shows is that I like the idea of keeping stuff agile, in terms of jokes or having a point of view. In TV, that has served me well. My first year with LL Cool J doing The GRAMMYs, the first year he hosted, Whitney Houston died the night before. He was friends with her, the executive producer was friends with her, I knew her a little bit, but we had already come in that day, rehearsed the show, done the monologue, done all this stuff and were fixed. He called me at 5pm and said, “David, tell me we are locked and loaded because I’m going to go to bed to prepare for tomorrow.” About 20 minutes later, we got word that she had died, and I had to call him and say, “We’re unlocked, and we’re are unloaded.” I had to write a whole new open, and I needed to get it to him. And that actually had another religious moment. He loved the new open, and he called me and said, “I love it, but I think we need to write in a prayer.” I was like, “Wow, I don’t particularly write a lot of prayers,” but we did it. We made it sort of secular and as universally welcoming as possible, and it ended up being perfect.

I think that’s what I’ve learned – I learned it in London, I’ve tried to continue to learn it ever since, I probably learned it going away to prep school a little bit, and definitely going away to college in general – to try to listen to other points of view and then pull it together and incorporate it into whatever you are doing. In that instance, a lot of people, the network and others, they said, “Tell him no prayer.” But what I have learned, like working with Yusef and Islam and doing the documentary, I think at least at a professional level, is that I’m good at trying to hear other points of view and take what’s best of them. And that is probably a lot of what international study is about – it’s finding out what you think is foreign is actually just part of a bigger picture that you should take a good look at.

IES Abroad: What’s next? Do you have any upcoming projects that you can tell us about?

DW: Nothing in particular to brag about. A lot of these things are annual, like the CMAs or The GRAMMYs. Then there are books that I do when there is time, when the spirit moves me. Some of that is writing, like working with Brad Paisley on his book that we co-authored, and writing with CeeLo for his book. I did a book on my own called The Showrunners about TV. I’ve written a few books about TV shows, like the Seinfeld book. I did some Friends books that became very popular because the cast went on Oprah and promoted it the day the show ended. I’m just a writer. It’s funny, when The Sixties started on CNN, they called me and said, “What do you want for your description because we don’t know whether to put best-selling author or journalist or television writer.” This comes up a lot. There’s people that know me from having been on TV. There’s people that know me from being on the podcast. And there’s people that have no idea, I just sound familiar. So, when they asked what to call me in The Sixties, I said, “Just call me ‘Writer’.” Because that’s really what it mostly comes down to. And I was very happy because in the British Invasion episode, I think Tom Hanks and I were the first two speakers. His name came up with “Actor” and mine said “Writer – David Wild”, and I thought, “I like that. I’m in excellent company there.”    

IES Abroad: Why do you feel studying abroad is important for today’s students?

DW: The world has gotten a lot smaller in certain ways, the connections have gotten a lot more complicated in certain ways, and the world had gotten a lot scarier, or at least we are more aware of what is going on. But none of that precludes the fact that we are better off knowing more about each other. We are better when we connect with one another, when we actually know something based on personal experience as opposed to reading someone’s version of history or life. It is invaluable. It’s a big world, and so eventually, people should experience some of it.