Bruce Vilanch on Who Will Host Next Year’s Oscars
If you thought the ceremonies weren’t funny, don’t blame him.
By Michael Musto
published: April 27, 2011

Ever since last year, when an LCD Soundsystem song blared that I’m “no Bruce Vilanch,” I’ve been desperate to be the comic/writer—or at least to get him on the phone again.
Miraculously, that happened just the other day, when Bruce and I got a chance to discuss his writing duties for the Oscars, among other glittery controversies.

Me: Hi, Bruce. We have to talk Academy Awards, but first of all, you’re playing Queens Theatre in the Park on May 7.

Vilanch: People say, “Are you gonna do Queens jokes?” How can you do Queens jokes when you’re in Flushing? There are so many better things to say. I have an entire song called “Flushing”! [Laughs.] No, I’m gonna tell stories about my ridiculous career.

Me: Speaking of which, do you like the LCD Soundsystem song?

Vilanch: You’re the only one I was coupled with in a rock and roll lyric. It’s my cred! If I ever meet those boys, they can have me.

Me: No, you’re mine first! Tell me: What did you really think of the last Oscar telecast?

Vilanch: It all depends on how you react. There was a lot of stuff that was great. It came in really short. People are always bitching that it’s too long.

Me: But I sincerely doubt James Franco and Anne Hathaway will be back. Who will host next year’s Oscars?

Vilanch: I think there might be a revival of Billy Crystal. It was such a success. They were so happy to see him that even as we speak, they’re sending a gold wagon to his house: “Please come back!” My guess is they’ll go back to a comedian—maybe just one person, so you don’t have to worry about servicing two. I’d like not even a comic but a Renaissance person like Hugh Jackman. Or someone may surface. It’s Charlie Sheen‘s time!

Me: God help us. Who was responsible for Franco in drag on the telecast?

Vilanch: That started as a Cher impression because we were certain her Burlesque song would be nominated. To introduce Cher, there would be James Franco as Cher. Cher would tap him on the shoulder and throw him offstage. The biggest surprise was the song not being nominated! But at that point, he was jazzed about being in drag. We negotiated him down to Marilyn Monroe. The “Diamonds” dress Madonna had already popularized for another generation had the most Hollywood-icon status to it. And Sheen exploded the week before, so it was ideal to put in the one and only joke about him.

Me: That was funny. But whose idea was Hathaway singing “Flushing,” I mean “On My Own”?

Vilanch: I think she should have done a number. If she was hosting a show alone, she would have, but the two of them had to be equal. “On My Own” was not my idea. I think it was maybe Bruce Cohen‘s. We wanted Anne to sing. She wanted to turn the joke around and humiliate Hugh Jackman. When he was hosting, he had brought her up and done a bit, which of course was rehearsed. She was nominated that year for playing a sober alcoholic who goes home and slips. I can’t remember the name of the movie.

Me: Rachel Getting Sober—I mean Married.

Vilanch: Hugh’s doing all these things lately because Wolverine has been delayed.

Me: But this time, he just sat there.

Vilanch: There was not much time to rehearse, so we decided not to burden him.

Me: Well, Kirk Douglas didn’t just sit there. He hogged the stage!

Vilanch: That’s Kirk Douglas. That certainly wasn’t planned. That was him showing that he’s alive and kicking—literally kicking. I thought it was great.

Me: But it was mean to make five nominees wait and squirm.

Vilanch: Yeah, but nobody said, “Let’s put something out there that’ll make you cringe.” That’s what he wanted to do.

Me: Let’s make people cringe with some Broadway talk. What did you think of Priscilla?

Vilanch: It’s fabulous. It’s smart with heart. I’m a sucker for a dancing cupcake. I wanted to eat the cupcake and the thing that was wearing the cupcake.

Me: Should Spider-Man reopen after its hiatus?

Vilanch: No. I think they should go away and pretend it never happened. Write off the $70 million. What could they do to it besides turn it into a theme park show?

Me: In another costly matter, your thoughts on Kobe Bryant being fined?

Vilanch: If I called Kobe a nigger on national TV, I’d be out of a job and a house and I’d be targeted. We have to keep hammering that it’s unacceptable behavior. His non-apology was very insincere. He’s appealing the fine! I think he’s a spoiled brat who’s been enabled since he was a child. The irony is he was a guest star on Bette Midler’s sitcom and he was perfectly nice.

Me: How about Trump’s presidential run? Should we enable that?

Vilanch: As soon as Celebrity Apprentice is over, Trump running for president will be over. He hit upon a genius promotional scheme for himself. It will end when he has nothing to promote. I can’t believe that a guy who’s so injected in pop culture has political positions that went out with the Oscar Wilde trial!

Me: Meanwhile, I can’t believe you dated Judith Regan on Millionaire Matchmaker. Did she not get the memo?

Vilanch: It was lost in the avalanche of O.J. emails she got. It was not something Murdoch pointed out as he showed her the door. “By the way, Vilanch goes for guys.” But I think we’re the hippest couple since Cher and David Geffen.

Me: Or Cher and James Franco!

The post Who Will Host Next Year’s Oscars? Anybody’s Guess first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

HitFix Interview: Bruce Cohen and Bruce Vilanch tease the Oscars
By Daniel Fienberg
Tuesday, Feb 15, 2011

If you watch any ABC programming at all, you probably know that James Franco and Anne Hathaway are in the midst of extensive training for their gig hosting the 2011 Academy Awards on Sunday, February 27.

The youthful hosts may be doing Oscar curls and preparing for speedy bathroom breaks and potential wardrobe malfunctions, but they’re hardly the only ones preparing for the ceremony.

On Tuesday (Feb. 15), I grabbed a few minutes of phone time with the Oscar telecast’s extremely busy head writer Bruce Vilanch and with Bruce Cohen, who will be producing along with Don Mischer.

The conversation should mostly whet your appetite for the February 27 telecast on ABC, providing a hint of what to expect from the two hosts, as well as how the tone of the Oscars will differ from last month’s Ricky Gervais-hosted Golden Globes.

Click through…

HitFix: So how are you approaching the show differently with your dual hosts and your dual young hosts? How are you looking at this year’s telecast?

Bruce Cohen: We’re looking at this year’s telecast as a celebration of everything that’s new and fresh about having James and Anne hosting and Anne being the youngest Oscar host in history, James and Anne being the first male and female host, combined with taking a good look back at some of the great moments in film history and some of the great performances and some of the great moments in Oscar history. So we’re really trying to blend yesterday and today together.

Bruce Vilanch: So romantic.

Bruce Cohen: The present and the past in one extravaganza on the 27th of February.

HitFix: For Bruce Vilanch, how are you approaching writing for these two?

BV: Well, it’s in an unconventional way, because they’re not stand-up comics, so they don’t have to come out and go, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!” They have characters that they can play. They have big personalities and we write for them, but they don’t have that stand-up comic routine that other people do. So it’s going to feel different. It’s going to feel fresh and different.

BC: But they’re incredibly talented.

BV: They’re really funny people.

BC: The characters that they’ll be playing will be the two of them as Oscar hosts. So it’s not that they’re not themselves, but it’s a heightened version of themselves, because they’re both so excited about doing the show. So it’s been fun watching them create, you know, who is the James Franco that James wants to present to the world in his role as co-host of the Oscars?

HitFix: And what is the answer to that question?

BC: Suave, debonair, classic movie star with an irreverent sense of humor. Not that I would presume to speak for Mr. Franco, but being with him preparing, that’s what I would say.

BV: And he’s gotten rid of the one-arm shtick. He’s working with two arms again. Everybody he hugs will be happy to hear that.

HitFix: And what is it that Anne will be trying for?

BC: Well, Anne is a budding comic genius. Her mind works like a sketch comedy writer. You give her a line and while she’s selling that line funnier than you ever thought possible, she’s already coming up with the six other things she wants to try. So I think with Anne, she’s sort of the consummate, polished performer, but she brings this incredible energy and enthusiasm with that. So I think you’re going to see a really funny, high energy performance, but also bringing the glamor back. She’s the first full-on glamorous female movie star to host the Oscars in many, many years and the costume changes and the different designers working with her and the makeup and the hair, you’re going to see all of that too. Part of why people watch the Oscars is the dresses on the red carpet, so the fact that we have that not just with our presenters and nominees arriving in advance, but with our hostess on the show, is a whole new cool element as well.

HitFix: Bruce V. could you talk a bit about what the in-show process is going to be like? Obviously if you have a trained comedian as a host, they can adapt, to some degree, to what’s happening within the show. But these two, without that background, is that going to make more work for you during telecast itself?

BV: Yeah, well, we won’t be jumping on the opportunities to have them come out and ad-lib, unless there’s a perfect moment that allows for it, whereas a comic is always looking for a reason to comment on stuff. They don’t make that pact with the audience, either. The audience isn’t expecting that from them. So if they do, it’s because something absolutely right happened and we want to capitalize on it and we’ve had enough time during the commercial to actually come up with the something.

HitFix: Still, that has to make for a different process?

BV: Yeah. Yeah, it’s different. Certainly somebody like Billy Crystal or Whoopi is ready to say something about whatever just went before, whether it’s appropriate or not. In fact, most of the time we have to kind of stifle ourselves, because we want to say something that we said backstage and that we laughed at, but that we know once you said it on-stage, you’d probably regret having said it.

HitFix: As a last question, I’d love for you guys to talk a bit about tone and what you want the tone in the room to be, perhaps in comparison with what happened at the Golden Globes last month, but perhaps not even that. How do you want the room to feel?

BC: It’s funny, because we sort of had our dream tone set before the Globes and there certainly wasn’t anything that happened on the Globes that made us want to change our tone. That’s for sure. The Oscars is the chance every year to celebrate the movie business and remind the world what they love about movies and what they love about the Oscars. Pretty much everyone in the world, at the his point, they have their connection points to a movie they love, a song from a film that really meant something to them, these emotional or funny moments that they love and remember. Our tone is that we want to try to connect the audience. Don Mischer and I, we’re producing the show, and we have to write a letter and program that everyone reads in the theater, because they make you sit in your seats early, and you’ve got time to read it, so it’s actually something that everybody looks at. So that’s one of the things that we say in the letter, that if we can remind everyone who’s watching that one or two moments during the show when you connect with your favorite movie moment or Oscar moment and you remember why you loved these things in the first place, then we’ll be very happy campers.

HitFix: And Bruce V? Tone?

BV: The audience is different. The Golden Globes, they’re a bunch of drunks who are there having a good time for an award that doesn’t mean a whole lot and that only takes 12 people to actually win one, if they vote for you. There are only like 83 of them anyway. So there’s a whole casual atmosphere, like “We’re here for the personal appearance of it all.” So they can bring somebody on like Ricky, who basically just insults all of them and finds himself hilarious and that’s a different tone right there. This is the Oscars. This is 83 years of real tradition that mean something, as opposed to the Golden Globes, which is just a pie-throw.

The 83rd Annual Academy Awards will air on ABC on Sunday, February 27. We’ll remind you of that plenty during the next week-and-a-half, as HitFix’s pre-Oscars coverage continues to ramp up.

The post HitFix Interviews Bruce Vilanch And Bruce Cohen About The Oscars first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

Bruce Vilanch will host a special performance of Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays at Largo at the Coronet on Monday, December 6. The event will raise funds for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) and Equality California. The show, conceived and directed by Brian Shnipper, will then play a limited engagement at the theater, running Mondays, January 10 – February 7.

Standing on Ceremony is comprised of short plays that look at the institution of marriage and relationships, written by Jordan Harrison, Jeffrey Hatcher, Moisés Kaufman, Neil LaBute, Wendy McLeod, Kathy Najimy, José Rivera, Paul Rudnick, and Doug Wright. Casting will be announced shortly

At the opening event for the production, Bruce Cohen will provide comments about the first day of the AFER’s case before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the performance will be followed by a reception that will take place in the courtyard at Largo with a special surprise by Vilanch.

The post Vilanch To Host “Standing On Ceremony” Dec. 6th, 2010 first appeared on We Got Bruce!.