Redditt
I’m Bruce Vilanch, the Comedy Writer Behind 25 Years of Oscars Ceremonies—AMA!
By Staff
January 30, 2025

It is I, Bruce Vilanch—comedy writer, Emmy winner, and the man responsible for countless Oscars zingers (the good, the bad, and the “what were they thinking?!”). I wrote for 25 Academy Awards ceremonies, collaborating with hosts like Whoopi Goldberg, David Letterman, and Billy Crystal. In 2000, I became the show’s head writer, steering the laughs until 2014.

Beyond the Oscars, I’ve crafted comedy for the Tonys, Grammys, and Emmys, written alongside Roger Ebert at the Chicago Tribune, and penned Bette Midler’s iconic farewell serenade to Johnny Carson—an Emmy-winning moment. I held court as a head writer (and a literal square) for four years on Hollywood Squares next to my pal Whoopi Goldberg.

I’ve also contributed to TV history in other ways—writing for Donny & Marie, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, and yes, the infamously disastrous Star Wars Holiday Special. On the bright side, I’ve written jokes for legends like Lily Tomlin, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Rosie O’Donnell, and even Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.

I’ll be online tomorrow, Thursday, January 30th, from 1 to 2:30 p.m. PST. Ask me about the Oscars, Hollywood’s best (and worst) moments, or my long, strange career. Start dropping questions now, and I’ll answer them tomorrow!

And if you want even more, check out my podcast, The Oscars…What Were They Thinking?! on Spotify, Apple, or all other platforms here.

Oh, and I’ve got a new book—It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time, which explores my adventures in comedy (and infamy). You can pre-order it now.

To read the Q & A Click Here

The post Bruce Vilanch’s AMA Subreddit Interview January 30, 2025 first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

The Oscars: What Were They Thinking?
Bruce’s Podcast: 1942 – How Green Was My Oscar?
By Mister D
January 23, 2025

On this episode of ‘The Oscars: What Were They Thinking?’ Bruce and Tex look back at the 1942 Oscars for the films of 1941 — easily one of the greatest years in movie history. And, among those great films is the film often cited as ‘the greatest film of all-time’ — the Stairway to Heaven of movies… Citizen Kane. But, did this Orson Welles masterpiece win the Oscar the year it came out? Find out — as well as hear about all the other great movies that should be on your must-see list!

To learn more about the show, go to Oscars.wtf

Please feel free to leave comments on Spotify and/or reviews on Apple. We’re always open to compliments (and criticism if it’s constructive!)

MOVIES MENTIONED

Gone with the Wind

Deep Throat

Citizen Kane

Mank

How Green was my Valley

Blossoms in the Dust

Here Comes Mr. Jordan

Hold Back the Dawn

The Little Foxes

One Foot in Heaven

Sergeant York

The Maltese Falcon

Suspicion

Spellbound

Notorious

Heaven Can Wait (1943)

Heaven Can Wait (1978)

Down to Earth (1947)

Down to Earth (2001)

The Informant

The Grapes of Wrath

Penny Serenade

None but the Lonely Heart

North by Northwest

Charade

His Girl Friday

Father Goose

Arsenic and Old Lace

Casablanca

The African Queen

The Caine Mutiny

The Roaring Twenties

Ball of Fire

The Lady Eve

The More the Merrier

The Devil and Mrs. Jones

The Devil in Miss Jones

Conflict

Shadow of a Doubt

The Great Lie

Miss Miniver

Blood and Sand

Tom, Dick and Harry

Tall, Dark and Handsome

Julia

The Razor’s Edge

Witness for the Prosecution

You’ll Never Get Rich

All American Co Ed

Las Vegas Nights

Sun Valley Serenade

Buck Privates

Blues in the Night

Riding on a Rainbow

Dumbo

Lady Be Good

Last Time I Saw Paris

The post Bruce’s Podcast: 1942 – How Green Was My Oscar? first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

Gold Derby
Short, snappy, and sincere: Experts reveal 5 keys to delivering the perfect acceptance speech
By Ray Richmond
January 3, 2025

The calendar tells us that a new year is dawning, and we know what that means: The two-month-long awards show avalanche is upon us, beginning with Sunday’s Golden Globes. And with awards come acceptance speeches. They go together like salt and pepper, ketchup and burgers, Beavis and Butt-head. Those speeches come in all shapes and sizes depending on the winner doing the accepting. They can be long, they can be short, they can be full of gratitude and meaning. They can be powerful or they can be interminable, or something in-between.

There is an undeniable finesse essential to delivering an effective and impactful acceptance speech. Yet, there is no specific playbook to learn the do’s and don’ts. That leads to speeches being wildly unpredictable. It can be 16-year-old Patty Duke uttering a simple “thank you” in 1963 while accepting her Oscar trophy as Best Supporting Actress for The Miracle Worker. It can be Greer Garson droning on for nearly six minutes after winning Best Actress in 1943 for Mrs. Miniver, inspiring the Film Academy to start placing reasonable limits (around 45 seconds) on speech length.

So we decided to offer a public service to potential winners who don’t want to be played off the stage and consulted four experts to give us their pro tips for delivering the perfect acceptance speech.

Our esteemed panelists:

— Bruce Vilanch, the comedy writer extraordinaire who served as head writer on the Academy Awards for 15 years at the beginning of the current century and is widely acknowledged to be the go-to dean of awards show scribes. Vilanch now hosts the podcast The Oscars: What Were They Thinking? and has a memoir coming out March 4 titled, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time: The Worst TV Shows in History and Other Things I Wrote.

— David Permut, a veteran film producer and a 2017 Oscar nominee for the Best Picture contender Hacksaw Ridge. He is also producer of the forthcoming feature Twinless from writer-director James Sweeney that has its world premiere at Sundance on opening night later this month.

— Madison Brodsky, an entertainment reporter, host, and content creator who has reported on various red carpets over the past decade.

— Danny Deraney, a PR executive and personality whose clients include or have included Laura Benanti, Rosanna Arquette, and Illeana Douglas.

Here are their recommendations when it comes to the art of the acceptance speech:

Keep it short and sweet

Size definitely matters. While not everyone’s concept of “short” is the same, they all agree that reading off a list of thank-yous is never a good idea.

“Brevity is definitely better,” Permut explains. “I mean, I’m in the business, but the person who isn’t in the business watching at home can’t relate to all the names being pored over. We can relate to it when they thank their higher power and their mom and dad, and maybe their fellow nominees and the director. But they should stop short of singling out their agents and lawyers and managers and other parties who may be part of their team. People watching at home just don’t care.”

“Yes, keep it short and sweet,” Brodsky echoes, “because nobody wants to sit through a five-minute laundry list. The best speeches are 60 seconds or less and are very focused. They hit all the highlights. You can thank people who truly make a difference, but add a little meaningful story to it, something quick and sweet. Instead of thanking each member of the cast and crew individually, doing a group thank-you goes a long way.”

At the same time, you don’t want to appear to be rushing through your speech.

“After winning, you’ve got to pace yourself,” Deraney says. “Be cognizant of the moment. As my French teacher in high school told me, remember how long six seconds can be and follow the six-second rule no matter the oral task. You can get a lot of things in without thanking the family tree. Give thanks but remember it’s not storytime. Be appreciative, but also remember there’s a show going on.”

Vilanch believes that too many acceptance speeches leave the audience cringing because “people tend to get very-self-indulgent once they get up there and they’ve got the world’s attention. That’s when you’re going, ‘Get off! You’re done! You’re killing yourself!’ But you can’t get mad at sound editors who work in a room by themselves and are up there sincerely thanking people who mean something to them. It’s not always so cut-and-dried, because you don’t want to crush anyone’s huge moment.”

Keep it spontaneous and unrehearsed

Vilanch recalls that the greatest example on his watch of an impromptu acceptance happened at the Oscars in 1992, when Jack Palance won Best Supporting Actor for City Slickers — and famously began doing one-armed push-ups onstage. “It helps to have someone who’s a little off to begin with,” Vilanch observes. “But yeah, the spontaneous moments are worth everything. The worst part is when they pull out a piece of paper or their phone, look down at the podium and start reading.”

One reason why the Tony Awards are “the most fun of them all” to watch, Vilanch finds, is “because these are people who do eight shows a week on a stage and know what to do when they get onstage in front of people to deliver a speech. A lot of people in the movie business have no clue because they’re not used to working with a camera. If they hit their mark, it’s a good day.”

“Prepare, but be careful not to over-rehearse,” Brodsky warns. “You should have a game plan going in so you know where your speech is going, but you still want it to feel natural and not like you memorized the entire thing. And then, end on a high note, like a really amazing funny quote or a meaningful statement, or a call to action.”

Deraney makes sure to prep his nominated clients before their awards moment “so they have a good handle on what to say. I like them to focus on how grateful they are, how wonderful it is, how much they love their fellow nominees. But it obviously has to sound real.”

Keep it gracious and genuine

For Permut’s money, it’s important always to practice humility when accepting an award bestowed by one’s peers. But the emotional angle is equally important and should never be shortchanged. “When you give a speech that’s just filled with emotions, people seeing and hearing it can feel it,” he emphasizes. “It hits people in the heart. It’s the same as when you see a great movie. It hearts you in the heart, in the soul. And it doesn’t hurt to make people laugh when making your acceptance, either. It’s all about coming across as genuine. People know when you’re being real and when you’re not.”

Sometimes, getting caught up in the moment can come back to haunt an award winner for being perhaps too real. Take, for example, the overcome Sally Field following her Oscar win for Best Actress (her second) in 1985 for Places in the Heart. What she said onstage has often been misquoted, but was actually this: “The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it. And I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me.”

“I think she regretted it for years,” Vilanch stresses, “but then Sally monetized it. She did a Visa commercial [poking fun at it] where she made a ton of money. She finally owned it and essentially said, ‘I can’t run away from this,’ because that’s what happens when you do a thing like that on the Oscars. It’s like fumbling in the Super Bowl. It stays with you forever.”

Brodsky uses the example of James Cameron‘s speech after winning the Best Director Oscar for Titanic in 1998 as how not to accept your award gracefully. The filmmaker famously held up his trophy and declared, “I’m the king of the world!” Even if it was a line of dialogue in the film, “it came across as the opposite of humble,” she says. “Good speeches start with gratitude, and to my mind that was a missed opportunity for Cameron to show how thankful he was for the project.”

Make it memorable

“Leave the audience with something to remember,” Brodsky notes, “because the last line is kind of your mic-drop moment. So make it count.”

It should be noted here that while there have been plenty of memorable acceptance speeches over the years at the Oscars, they have nothing on the Golden Globes — where the alcohol flows and lips are loosened. In 1996, for example, Brad Pitt won the film supporting actor honor for 12 Monkeys and was moved to thank the makers of the anti-diarrhea medication Kaopectate. “They’ve done a great service for their fellow man,” he noted.

Two years later, when a teary Ving Rhames won for the HBO film Don King: Only in America, he called Jack Lemmon (nominated in the same category for 12 Angry Men) up to the stage and handed him the trophy. “I feel that being an artist is about giving, and I’d like to give this to you, Mr. Lemmon. It’s yours,” Rhames said. Upon being met with a raucous standing ovation after hitting the stage, a completely discombobulated Lemmon described it as “one of the nicest, sweetest moments I’ve ever known in my life.”

And who can forget Jodie Foster’s unofficial coming-out-but-not-really speech at the Globes in 2013 while receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement honor. “I had a sudden urge to say something that I have never really been able to air in public,” Foster said, “a declaration that I’m a little nervous about.. But I’m just going to put it out there, loud and proud. … I am single. No I’m kidding but I’m not really kidding but I’m kind of kidding. … I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago back in the Stone Age, in those uh, very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family, and co-workers and then gradually proudly to everyone she actually met.” And it went on from there.

Vilanch recalls that the best line he ever heard in an acceptance speech was Charles Durning‘s in winning the 1990 Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Play for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. “He said, ‘Some of you may be right. I may not deserve this honor, but I don’t deserve arthritis, either, but I have that’,” Vilanch relates. “At the time, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. It was his get-off line. That’s what makes these awards shows great. It’s the unpredictability and the chance to hear something like that. It’s so much more interesting and memorable than thanking their agent or makeup and hair person.”

Brodsky cites Halle Berry’s win for Best Actress for Monster’s Ball — the first Black performer to win at the Oscars in that category. “She acknowledged how much bigger the moment was than just her. That made for an unforgettable speech.”

She added, “I also loved Olivia Colman’s speech after winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Favourite in 2019. It was just pure joy. She was clearly so surprised, and her speech was just so funny and real and relatable. What made it unforgettable for me  was when she gave a shout-out to little girls practicing their speeches ‘on the telly.’ That was just so very charming and inspiring to me.”

The post Vilanch, Others Reveal The Art Of The Acceptance Speech first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

We Got Bruce
Podcast: Bruce Vilanch’s 2024 HOLIDAY Movies/Oscar Special
By Mister D
December 23, 2024

In this special holiday edition of ‘The Oscars: What Were They Thinking?‘, co-hosts Adam “Tex” Davis and Bruce Vilanch dive into their favorite holiday movies and examine how many of them garnered the attention of the Oscars. The discussion starts with Adam’s Christmas cult classic ‘Just Friends and highlights various holiday-themed films like ‘It Nearly Wasn’t Christmas,’ including a clip of Bruce’s performance as a giant Elf named Philpot. Discussion includes ‘White Christmas,’ ‘A Christmas Story,’ ‘Scrooged,’ ‘Home Alone,’ ‘The Polar Express’ and ‘Die Hard.’ They also touch on the rare Hanukkah movies such as ‘Eight Crazy Nights’ and ‘An American Tail,’. Notable Oscar mentions include the heartwarming classics like ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ and modern favorites like ‘The Holdovers.’, with a detour into Siskel and Ebert’s trashing of “Silent Night, Deadly Night”.

Movies mentioned:

Just Friends

It Nearly Wasn’t Christmas

White Christmas

A Christmas Story

Gremlins

Krampus

Bad Santa

Trading Places

Silent Night, Deadly Night

Black Christmas

Die Hard

(*Deck the Halls-referenced)

Jingle All the Way

Christmas with the Kranks

It’s a Wonderful Life

Miracle on 34th Street

Holiday Land

The Night Before Christmas

Toy Tinkers

Scrooge

Scrooged

Home Alone

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Preacher’s Wife

The Bishop’s Wife

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

The Polar Express

The Holdovers

8 Crazy Nights

An American Tail

The Night Before

The post Podcast: Bruce Vilanch’s 2024 HOLIDAY Movies/Oscar Special first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

New York Post
Bruce Vilanch on writing for the Oscars — and how stars prepare to present
By Cindy Adams
Published April 8, 2024

Bruce Vilanch, king of the Oscars writers, remembers Sharon Stone flashing her essential parts in “Basic Instinct.”

He says, ” The Joke then was, ‘This year’s biggest part was Sharon Stone’s in Basic Instinct.?’ She then grimaced in the audience.

“Oscar nights, we get audience seats. Sometimes, they’re on top of the balcony. Once I asked Chris Henchy, Brooke Shields’ husband, if he wanted a pair of tickets. Brooke said, ‘No. Forget it.’ They didn’t even sit through the show.

“Often in our room we writers throw jokes at each other. Once documentary winner Michael Moore made a speech about George W. Bush. Stagehands began booing. Emcee Steve Martin then announced the stagehands were helping Michael into the trunk of his car.

“For jokes some stars need rehearsal. Jane Fonda wants a pre-reading. Johnny Depp: ‘I don’t know how to do this because there’s no real character here.’ I said, ‘Make one up.’ So he remembered being chemically altered in one picture and delivered his lines as if he was slightly oiled.

“I actually started with Bette Midler. She was then nobody but — like me — she came from New Jersey so I wound up writing for her.”

The post Bruce Vilanch on writing for the Oscars first appeared on We Got Bruce!.