When you’re talking comedy greats today, Judy Gold is truly worthy of her last name. Whether it was as writer and producer of the Rosie O’Donnell show, starring in two acclaimed Off Broadway one-woman shows (“The Judy Show — My Life as a Sitcom” and “25 Questions for a Jewish Mother”) or just the nearly 25 years she has been doing standup, the comedian delivers a gold-medal performance at every turn.

On Jan. 27, Gold will be teaming with fellow NSFW (not safe for work) comedian Bruce Vilanch for a show at the Ridgefield Playhouse titled “Big and Small.” Gold spoke with us about her upcoming show and getting her start in standup.

Keith Loria: Preview a little of what we can expect from you on the night.

Judy Gold: I’ll be ranting and going off on how much I hate everyone, which seems to be the theme of my act now. It’s going to be a really fun night.

KL: How do you and Bruce complement each other on stage?

JG: I love doing this show. Bruce is like a joke machine. He has worked with everyone and he knows stuff about all of them. It’s really fun to hear about Hollywood from someone who has made other people look funny for so long. We are so different. He tells these incredible stories about Hollywood, and I’m just me. I think we really complement each other and are funny in different ways. We’ve known each other for years.

KL: With such different styles, why did you think the pairing would work?

JG: We’re both gay, both Jews and both large! We’re both from New Jersey and were both very close with our mothers. There’s just a kinship. We just had an immediate connection.

KL: How did you know that comedy was something you wanted to do with your life?

JG: I knew I would never be happy if I didn’t follow my dream. Yet, I come from the most conservative family when it comes to risk taking. My father was a tax attorney, my mother a secretary, my sister is in insurance and my brother is a CPA. To them, my dream was crazy.

KL: You came up through the comedy ranks alongside notable comics like Ray Romano and Wanda Sykes. What was it like back then?

JG: It’s like we were all in the same platoon. We share this bond that can never be broken. When I was on the road in the ’80s and early ’90s, we wrote all day and then we hung out all night. We were each other’s family and standup became so important to me.

KL: How has Donald Trump becoming president changed your act this past year?

JG: It is like the orange elephant in the room all the time. It’s on everyone’s mind all the time. I remember the days when I would watch Jeopardy! but now I have to have MSNBC on every night. It’s turned into a dangerous reality show. My relationships with some people have changed and my audiences have changed. He just brings out the worst of people.

KL: You host a successful blog — Kill Me Now with Judy Gold. What do you enjoy about that experience?

JG: I find people really interesting and I want to know what makes people tick and what makes them different. To be in this horrible show business, you have to be ill in some way because it’s such a crap shoot. I really love finding out the stuff they don’t normally talk about.

The post Judy Gold Discusses Partnering Up With Bruce Vilanch (For Comedy, Folks, Geesh!) And Other Topics first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

A new show has been created but it is struggling to get noticed by Hollywood. “Silver Foxes is a sitcom that is patterned after the long running and beloved “Golden Girls.” It is a reboot of the show and the rumor is that George Takei is set to star in it. The creators of the show are disappointed because their work is not getting the attention that they had hoped for. So far, nobody has picked the series up. Here is a little more about the show and the reasons why it would be great for television.

The creators

Stan Zimmerman and James Berg and the screenwriters responsible for bringing the concept to script form. The series takes place in Palm Springs, California and it is about four older men who are gay, living together. It definitely has taken its’ inspiration from “The Golden Girls,” but it is not a spinoff. Zimmerman disclosed that he and Berg are experiencing a total shutout from Hollywood. Zimmerman is the writer for several episodes of “Roseanne,” “The Gilmore Girls,” and the movie “A Very Brady Sequel.” He believes that there is a degree of homophobia and ageism involved in the block.

Proposed cast members

Should the series be granted the opportunity to air, it will Star the famous George Takei, Todd Sherry, Bruce Vilanch and Leslie Jordan as the four main characters. The cast was assembled in 2016 and here a year later, there is no move to make the show a reality.

Why the show should air

The show would be funny

We could all use some great humor. Why can’t we as entertained by four guys as we were by four women? The answer is, that we could. It would be a lot like a double dose of “The Odd Couple.” While there are serious legal battles going on to protect the rights of LGBTQ people, The show would be a timely addition to the lineup of favorites. Who knows…perhaps it would be a bit hit that would give a network’s ratings a good healthy lift.

Takei’s thinking on the matter

George has shared the fact that he is frustrated over the hold placed on “Silver Foxes.” He hit the nail on the head when he discussed the show as a “commentary on contemporary life.” It could represent a challenge for networks that have a large homophobic viewing audience. Producers are having a rough time making the decision to take the project under their wings.

Will the show fade into obscurity?

Zimmerman is optimistic about the chances that the show will eventually get air time. If all else fails, he may resort to a streaming service. There are plenty of fans who would appreciate the show and it sounds like something that would draw a huge audience. We’re all hoping that there will be a change in Hollywood and that they’ll at least give the series its’ shot.

The post Why The Show “Silver Foxes” Would Be Great For Television first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

The gay, male reboot of “Golden Girls” has hit a roadblock.

George Takei, Leslie Jordan, Bruce Vilanch and Todd Sherry had already done a table read as the core four. Daniele Gaither and Cheri Oteri also read for the lesbian neighbors. Zimmerman told Fox News a Betty White guest appearance was also planned.

However, Zimmerman says homophobia has kept the show from being developed.

“Unfortunately, we cannot get one network executive to read it,” Zimmerman told Fox News. “Or even a producer to pass it to them. We have found ageism and homophobia alive and well in Hollywood.

They plan to continue shopping the series around to networks and hope a streaming service will pick up the show.

“Hopefully a groundswell of support from the viewing public will get an outlet like Hulu or Amazon to make it,” Zimmerman says.

The post Gay, male ‘Golden Girls’ reboot delayed by ‘ageism,’ ‘homophobia’ in Hollywood first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

Bruce Vilanch was toiling away in a perfectly adequate newspaper job in Chicago when Bette Midler came to town. She wasn’t quite famous at that point — an appearance on Broadway and some bathhouse concerts were her credits — but Bruce went to check out her show. Afterwards, he wrote a glowing review, and she called to thank him.

“You should talk more,” he told her.

“You got any good lines?” she asked. He did, and she hired him.

Forty years later, Bruce’s work has touched just about everyone in America. He’s written some of the most famous variety shows ever broadcast, crafted jokes for the Oscars and Emmys and Tonys for decades, and has appeared on everything from RuPaul’s Drag Race to Hollywood Squares to The Simpsons.

I interviewed Bruce Vilanch on my podcast The Sewers of Paris, where every week I talk to gay men about the entertainment that changed their lives. For Bruce, an important early influence were big movie and stage extravaganzas like The Greatest Show on Earth and a Carol Channing flop called The Vamp.

“I taught myself to read with the movie ads,” he recalled. He was obsessed with showbiz from an early age, though his parents tried to steer him toward more reliable work as a doctor or lawyer. They’d take him to films set in courtrooms and point out that attorneys get to perform; but he knew he needed a different kind of limelight.

“I used to have a routine in a hula skirt that was embarrassing to everyone,” he said. “I would have taken a job on the hood of your car, jiggling as you drove.”

An adventurous aunt told him stories of the world and accompanied him on trips into Manhattan. He attempted a career on stage, but discovered that his look and his skills were a little too idiosyncratic. So he went into journalism, and that’s where he had his big break when he wrote about Bette Midler.

“She found the beauty in trash,” he said of her at the time. She’d come out on stage looking a little disheveled and unpredictable, though “the talent was there.” Audiences loved it, particularly when she was on tour and told jokes about local landmarks and figures. The secret of those jokes was that Bruce would leverage his journalism connections to write them, calling colleagues at local papers to find out what the big scandals were before Bette arrived in town.

Eventually, he made his way to Los Angeles, where he’d get his start writing variety shows for Cher, the Brady Bunch, and the Manhattan Transfer. When he could, he’d slip sly queer references into the shows, though they always had to be coded.

“Did you feel exasperated that you couldn’t say gay?” I asked him during our chat.

“It was challenging,” he replied. “It wasn’t frustrating because it hadn’t been done. … That was a couple years off.”

Nevertheless, he still delighted in the sly gay references he was able to place in shows like Hollywood Squares. “It was ‘inside,’ we called it,” he said. “The ones who get it will laugh and the ones who don’t will say ‘what was that?’”

It’s a vastly different world now, of course. But the freedom that gay writers and comedians now have on television is only possible because of pioneers like Bruce.

Listen to the full interview with Bruce below or at SewersOfParis.com.

The post TV Writer Bruce Vilanch Tells Us How He Slipped Sly Gay Jokes Past the Censors first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

When Tom Atwood decided to launch himself into fine art photography, it was mostly because he wanted to see a different image of gay men. Until not long ago, most photographic images of gay men fell into one of two categories: a display of the ravages of AIDS or a paean to the idealized, sexualized beauty of the masculine form (usually nude or in advanced stages of undress).

Atwood’s new book, “Kings & Queens in Their Castles,” offers an alternative view. His style, the photographer says, is a studied melange of portraiture and architectural photography.

“I try to challenge my subjects by showing as much of their environment as possible in the frame of the camera,” he says. “I also use a wide-angle lens and a wide depth of field so that both the subject and the background are in focus.”

Atwood, 45, a self-proclaimed autodidact, has no formal background in photography or art history. His approach was honed through trial and error and a passion for his subject matter.

“I started out photographing gay people at home because I am gay and knew a lot of gay people,” he says. “And I think a lot of gay men especially have a flair for design and live in some really playful places.”

Atwood’s subjects in “Kings & Queens” include more than 160 members of the LGBT community. They’re urban and rural, famous and anonymous, beautiful and plain, extraordinary and decidedly ordinary. His work, displaying an intimacy sometimes bordering on voyeurism, captures LGBT men and women in the process of living their private lives.

Some of today’s tumultuous social movements rely on a fair amount of identity politics. This book isn’t about that. Says Atwood: “I thought it would be interesting to photograph this group of people just in everyday moments since, for most people, their sexuality is a part of who they are, but it’s not the predominant part of who they are.”

Here are six of the book’s compelling stories:

When Atwood arrived at Don Lemon’s Harlem home, the CNN anchor was getting ready to walk his dog. “He’s very friendly, very easygoing, very approachable,” Atwood says. “I realized he’s just a really a social person that’s part of a neighborhood.” He shot Lemon sitting on a skateboard on his balcony, his neighborhood as a backdrop. “I really wanted to shoot people in their everyday environment and show what their private lives are like rather than focus on their public images.”

Atwood photographed the women in the garden of their Jericho, Vt., home. Holly Taylor, a self-declared “compost maven,” and Alison Bechdel, a cartoonist and the author of the Broadway musical “Fun Home,” live in the woods. “I love this photo,” says Atwood, himself a Vermonter. “I think it really shows a real Vermont sensibility in a number of ways. They’ve got a garden. They chop their own wood. They heat their house with wood.”

Considered a pioneer in the transgender and gay communities, Mother Flawless Sabrina ran a national drag pageant enterprise between 1959 and 1969 that put on shows across the country, culminating with an extravaganza in New York. The 77-year-old lives on Manhattan’s Upper East Side surrounded by a bevy of quirky possessions: a 1980s-era telephone with giant buttons, wigs strewn about, jewelry draped on an ornate desk. “She’s a female impersonator, which I guess is a little different from a drag queen, but don’t ask me the difference because I’m not sure I know,” Atwood says.

The former governor of New Jersey will always be famous for the 2004 news conference in which he publicly came out of the closet, his pained wife by his side. “My truth is that I am a gay American,” he declared. Today McGreevey is a Prius-driving resident of Plainfield, N.J., where Atwood photographed him, clad in shorts and a hoodie, pruning ivy in front of his house. “He did go through some difficult times,” Atwood says, “but he seems to be still happy and proud and willing to share his life through this book.”

Loyal viewers of the television game show “Hollywood Squares” will surely recognize the unruly mop of comedian Bruce Vilanch, whom Atwood photographed ferrying groceries back to his West Hollywood apartment. “I think this is a fun shot because Los Angeles has a lot of outdoor/indoor living spaces,” Atwood says, and Vilanch’s apartment building has hallways that are outside rather than inside.

“I don’t think it’s that common to keep barn animals in Los Angeles,” Atwood says of the menagerie of pets that share the home of film director Randal Kleiser. “It was an otherwise suburban ranch house.” Kleiser, known for such films as “Grease” and “Big Top Pee-wee,” enjoys a spectacular view of the L.A. skyline from his swimming pool. “I like that there’s this strong light from the side in this picture and you can see a lot in both the foreground and background,” the photographer says. (Can you find BOTH horses?)

The post ‘Kings & Queens in Their Castles’ is an intimate look at LGBT lives first appeared on We Got Bruce!.