A Look at Emory’s Quirky “Doc Hollywood” | The Emory Wheel

“And then,

for some reason or another, it just dawned on me one day.

Whether they laughed at me or with me, it makes no difference.  
I... 
am making them happy.”

TAO~g(Neil Shulman)d~OG



A Look at Emory’s Quirky “Doc Hollywood” | The Emory Wheel: Because he has made his money through film, Shulman doesn’t have to focus on making a living. He currently takes a modest $15,000 yearly Emory salary to participate in sporadic activities like guest lecturing rather than leading a structured course.

For Shulman, the parts of his life that excite him the most aren’t the ones that involve money from movies or being famous (he has a Wikipedia and an Internet Movie Database page), but are the ones that involve “being entrepreneurial from a social standpoint.”

That seems to be a consistent pattern with this man: until students actually engage in a conversation with Shulman, it is easy for them to make judgments. On the way to the meeting with the medical student, some students walking just stared at Shulman.

He knows he looks strange. He doesn’t care.

His appearance, clumsiness and habit of chatting with strangers aren’t the only ways he defies social norms. He is a 67-year-old man married to a 38-year-old Canadian ex-clown — his first wife — with a 6-year-old son.

Shulman’s wife, Zoe Haugo, says her husband’s quirkiness was what initially attracted her to him a decade ago when they first met at a fundraiser for a community clinic in Canada.

Over the years, Haugo has realized that, even though they are very different in many ways (Haugo would not call herself outgoing), both of them like to have fun.

And their home reflects that: it is covered with every imaginable color, filled with quirky, large art (much of it created by their son, Myles Shulman) and has a large wall of books.

This life, she says, is due to Shulman’s genuineness, tenacity and playfulness.

“My overall philosophy is that we all won the lottery,” Shulman says. “That one sperm hitting that one egg gave you the dash of life. I think that we all should just help each other have a long, happy, healthy dash.”