We Got Bruce
Yes, Bruce Vilanch has thoughts on the Oscars moving to YouTube: ‘People can get up now and drop F-bombs like crazy’
By Kevin P. Sullivan
Dec. 18, 2025
Every year at Gold Derby, no single event measures up to the cultural significance of the Oscars. That’s why when the Academy announced a partnership with YouTube, moving the ceremony to the streaming platform starting in 2029, it was clear that such paradigm-shifting news required the kind of sober and solemn analysis that the moment demands.
That’s exactly why we called up Bruce Vilanch.
Few in Hollywood have as extensive a history with the Oscars as the 19-time writer on the show. Gold Derby spoke with Vilanch the day after the news of the YouTube deal broke to get his immediate reaction and reflect on how the ceremonies he worked on may have been different without network standards and practices.
Bruce Vilanch: I know! It’s kind of staggering, because it’s like saying, “Oh, by the way, the Statue of Liberty is being moved to Maryland.” What? Huh! But who’s gonna guard the harbor?
What was your initial reaction to the news?
Vilanch: It’s kind of the way of the world. When you look at who actually watches the thing, it’s an older demographic and going to YouTube will put [the Oscars] in place with an audience who probably doesn’t watch the show — unless you nominate Timothée Chalamet. So maybe you get a few million people who are interested in sleeping — I mean — his career. I don’t know if the Academy is getting the $100 million that Disney was paying them to be on ABC, but obviously they’ve gotten something. They’re not in a great bargaining position, because since I officially left the show in 2014, the ratings have plummeted. I don’t think it’s a causal. I don’t think people were tuning in to see my credit, but it’s just one of those things.
But you have to admit the correlation is pretty strong.
Vilanch: I’ll buy it. I’ll go for it.
Do you think this will make the show more accessible for audiences?
Vilanch: Certainly. And by 2029, it’ll be even easier for them. There’ll be more people figuring out how to use YouTube, which the core audience might not even have right now. But what’s really weird is, of course, that we live in the Oscar bubble out here, and this is gigantic news. But I don’t think in Dubuque, it’s gigantic news. It’s kind of like, “When do they do that again?”
Do you, Bruce Vilanch, watch YouTube on your TV?
Yeah! You kidding? First of all, I am also a sit-down comic. I do gigs. I perform a lot of benefit hosting and stuff, and there’s always somebody recording that. So periodically, somebody will say, “Do the cat joke.” And I have to go look up the cat joke, because there’s a video of me doing the cat joke somewhere, and it’s one of those jokes that you have to tell just the right way or you’ll screw it up. But yeah, sure, I have YouTube so I can see what I’m up to, and for all the other reasons. I mean, what I do on YouTube barely scratches the surface of what you can do on YouTube. I think there’s OnlyFans for that.
That requires a credit card, though.
I’m going to do one, but they first have to make an Imax version.
A lot of the speculation around what the Oscars on YouTube might look like imagines a ceremony with F-bombs. Did you feel hamstrung by standards and practices back in the day?
It was hard to feel like that because it was the way it was. It was always the way it was. There were network sensors, and there were sponsors. You knew you were going into that situation, because there was no alternative to it. With YouTube, I guess people can get up now and drop F-bombs like crazy. There won’t be a sensor sitting with a seven-second delay button in her lap, getting excited every time she gets to push it. I don’t know if YouTube is going to put some kind of disclaimer on it. I mean, do they know what they’re going to do? Talk about early days!
It’s an interesting question. Yes, the platform would in theory allow adult language, but does the Academy want to make anything other than a family show?
It’s a family show because it’s on television. You want to keep the sponsors happy, but as far as the Academy goes, they want to have the biggest possible reach. YouTube can develop standards and practices if they want. It would be controversial, but they could do it. What you won’t have is pressure from sponsors and pressure from the network as to what the content can be. I have a feeling that they are not unhappy about that at the Academy, because the networkers would always say, “Well, you have to do this, and you must do that.”
Is there a joke you remember getting rejected by ABC standards and practices?
Whoopi [Goldberg] hosting, and it was the year that Hugh Grant had a liaison with Divine Brown. Whoopi was going to say, “Divine Brown is one of the most famous people in Hollywood now. It’s a real Fellatio Alger story.” The network sensor Mrs. Futterman said, “We can’t say ‘fellatio.’ It’s on the list of words we cannot say.” We didn’t do that joke. Instead, we said, of course, “The biggest release in Hollywood this year was Hugh Grant.” That I think we got away with.
How much anxiety was there about appeal to the youth audience?
The last show I did was a tragic appeal. They partnered James Franco with Anne Hathaway, and it was a disaster. They had no chemistry. It was a blatant attempt to get younger viewers, and it backfired terribly.
I do think a significant part of loving the show over the years is — for better or worse — watching how the Academy and the producers try to adapt to the changing times. And YouTube is just the next instance of that.
I’ve written a play, actually, about the first Oscar show I did, which was produced by Alan Carr, who was very flamboyant, and it was the Rob Lowe-Snow White show. It’s called Captain Showbiz. We’re doing a stage reading of this thing in a few weeks, and I was thinking to myself, “Will any of this apply?” But I figured we have three years to run with it before the show is turned upside down. I’m already figuring out how to throw some YouTube lines in there.
Vilanch’s memoir It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time is available now.
