Bruce Vilanch is a writer, comedian, actor, stripper and would-be adult film star (only if you have an IMAX screen). He won two Emmys for co-writing the Billy Crystal Oscar shows and lost a half-dozen more for other things. For four years he was a Hollywood Square, just to the left of Whoopi, if that’s possible. He starred on Broadway as Edna Turnblad, plus-sized housewife, in the musical HAIRSPRAY and toured with it for a year, including a few months at the Pantages in Hollywood. He has been committing television since the 70s, writing some of the most notorious flops in the industry’s long
list of same, which he just chronicled in his book IT SEEMED LIKE A BAD IDEA AT THE TIME, available everywhere books are still sold. There is a documentary about his life and work GET BRUCE, available for you to Netflix and chill. He’s looking forward to meeting you all, as the only thing he’s ever done that’s remotely Rotary is to put a chicken on a spit.

Bruce will also have copies of his new book for sale and be happy to autograph them for you at our event!

Bruce will be joined in a “fireside chat” by longtime friend and colleague Shelly Goldstein. Shelly is a writer-actor-singer-comic who has written for every genre of TV, film and stage. Her one-woman music & comedy shows play throughout the US and UK. She wrote the Emmy-winning PBS musical special, CHICAGO VOICES & Sheryl Lee Ralph’s DIVAS SIMPLY
SINGING on ABC.

Most recently, she co-wrote the CW’s 2025 series SHERLOCK & DAUGHTER, starring David Thewlis. Her play, MAGNIFICENT MILLICENT debuted in the West End in 2024.

She has written for such performers as Stephen Colbert, Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, Jay Leno, Larry Wilmore, Sharon Stone, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tiffany Haddish, Yoko Ono & many others.

Shelly has also won the New Yorker’s iconic Cartoon Caption Contest.

Dress Code
The City Club maintains a dress code.

Attire can certainly elevate or diminish the experience of others. They consider ball caps or beanies, tank tops, flip flops, distressed denim, shorts, team athletic attire, and t-shirts with no jacket as too casual for City Club LA. Their staff takes pride in their appearance, so they ask their members and their guests to respect their dress code at all times.

Friday, May 16, 2025 | 12:00 – 1:30 PM
Register In Person | Zoom Registration

The post Bruce Vilanch To Speak At Rotary Club Los Angeles & Sign Books first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

Los Angeles Times
Bruce Vilanch has written ‘some of the biggest disasters’ on TV. He’s embracing his legacy
By Chris Vogner
March 5, 2025

Bruce Vilanch has written ‘some of the biggest disasters’ on TV. He’s embracing his legacy

On the Shelf

It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time
By Bruce Vilanch
Chicago Review Press: 256 pages, $29

Remember that Snow White-Rob Lowe debacle at the 1989 Oscars? How about the galactically bizarre 1978 “Star Wars Holiday Special”? Or the 1980 Village People disco bomb “Can’t Stop the Music”?

Bruce Vilanch had a hand in all of the above, and lived to kiss and tell — and now write about it. His new book, “It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time,” details his involvement in some of the most gloriously awful moments in the history of entertainment. Never the shy or retiring type, Vilanch is happy to embrace his legacy (which is easier to do when you’ve also won two Emmys and written for 25 Oscar telecasts).

“These were some of the biggest disasters, but everybody has disasters,” he told The Times in a recent interview. “It wasn’t like they said, ‘Oh, this is s—. Let’s get Vilanch.’ It’s just the luck of the draw. It’s just the way things turned out.”

Vilanch, now a snarky and youthful 76, comes across as a big, caustically friendly and wonderfully gay Muppet. He’s successful enough to have been the subject of an excellent documentary about the craft of comedy (1999’s “Get Bruce,” featuring Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg and Nathan Lane, among others), and he’s seasoned enough to know where plenty of bodies are buried.

And yes, he helped write some serious stinkers.

Some of this can be attributed to the era when he made his showbiz bones. The ’70s was the decade of the prime-time TV special, usually built around a middling star and featuring talent from the airing network. (Synergy. It’s been around for a minute.) The specials were a blatant attempt to offer something for everyone, in a precable epoch defined by broadcasting, as opposed to today’s narrowcasting.

“Many of these things were made in a cloud of smoke,” Vilanch said. “It was also just a crazy period when it was a three- or four-channel universe, so you could get away with a whole lot of stuff because a lot of people were coming home and watching television at a certain hour. People actually sat down in the living room. They only do that now for a few events, either a football game or Nikki Glaser roasting a football player.”

Such were the circumstances that gave us “The Star Wars Holiday Special.” George Lucas’ space adventure — there was only the one at the time — was red-hot. As Vilanch writes, “Either someone at CBS, or someone at ILM, or someone in the IRA, or someone on the IRT — depends on which version you’ve heard — suggested producing some sort of ‘Star Wars’ spectacle for TV to keep the franchise bubbling on the burner of public awareness until the second installment was released.”

The results, which aired Nov. 17, 1978, were not spectacular, but they were spectacularly strange. I could sense this even as a “Star Wars”-besotted 8-year-old. The story, such as it is, involves Chewbacca’s mission to return to his home planet of Kashyyyk to celebrate Life Day. The major cast members were on hand. So were CBS mainstays including Art Carney, Bea Arthur and Harvey Korman, all of whom stopped in to do wacky bits.

“We were doing the thing on a hand-painted set pulled together from other things,” Vilanch said. “We didn’t go to London for six months to shoot this thing. It was crazy. We had hand-me-down aliens that we had to get at the outlet store. Anybody who was interested in ‘Star Wars’ would look at it and go, ‘What is this?’

“And then it disappeared. We thought we could put it in a shallow grave and nobody would really find it.”

Enter: the internet, where all shallow graves are eventually dug up. As Vilanch recalled, “When I started doing podcasts during COVID, people way younger than I am would say, ‘“The Star Wars Holiday Special,” how did that happen? Who said yes? And have they paid their debt to society?’”

Vilanch writes of the “keyboard warriors” who track him down when they discover he was among the parties responsible for such trainwrecks. They also want to know about the 1989 Oscars, which kicked off with the spectacle of Snow White, played by the relatively anonymous Eileen Bowman, interacting with stars in the audience wearing a collective look of “What on Earth is happening right now?” This led into a duet with Lowe on a Hollywood-themed version of “Proud Mary.”

The response was less than enthusiastic. But Vilanch was essentially an innocent bystander, even as a writer on the show. The bit was the brainchild of producer Allan Carr, who also hired (and fired) Vilanch on “Can’t Stop the Music” (and, it should be noted, also produced the massive 1978 blockbuster “Grease”). The Oscars debacle effectively ended Carr’s career. He died in 1999.

“They had delivered the show to Allan as a savior because the ratings had been going down, and there was some fresh blood at the Academy,” Vilanch said. “His mandate was, ‘Make it different, make it young, make it unusual.’ So they were trying not to second-guess him. And that proved to be fatal.” Vilanch still has a soft spot for his late friend, and is currently working on a theater piece about him.

That telecast didn’t slow Vilanch’s roll. He reigned for many years as the wisecracking center square on “Hollywood Squares,” a space once occupied by Paul Lynde, for whom Vilanch wrote another special featured in the book, 1976’s “The Paul Lynde Halloween Special.” A game of Six Degrees of Bruce Vilanch would include Bette Midler, Billy Crystal, Steven Tyler, Roseanne Barr and a long list of others. The guy knows, and has written for, a lot of people.

“When you do the Oscars you meet the stars who are just guesting on the show, and they’re all marching through your office with their publicists and their spouses and their holistic pet psychiatrists and all the other people in their entourage,” he said. “So you do meet a lot of people and I love that.”

He helped serve up a lot of turkeys. And now he gets to gobble.

The post Bruce Vilanch has written ‘some of the biggest disasters’ on TV. He’s embracing his legacy first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

The Hollywood Reporter
Oscar Insider Bruce Vilanch on the Gerbil Joke That Never Made It to Air and the “No Fun” Host Who Killed the Buzz
By Maer Roshan
Feb 26, 2025

The legendary joke doctor, and author of a new tell-all memoir, has a few helpful tips for this year’s emcee, Conan O’Brien (and some cautionary tales).

Bruce Vilanch is a walking oxymoron: a legendary ghostwriter best known for feeding one-liners to hosts and presenters at the Academy Awards, Grammys, Emmys and Tonys. He’s worked on the Oscars off and on since 1989, the year of the infamous Rob Lowe-Snow White … whatever the hell that was. The title of the 77-year-old’s new tell-all, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time (out March 4 from Chicago Review Press), refers to that and other TV trainwrecks he’s been affiliated with. But if you’re going to blame him for, say, The Star Wars Holiday Special or The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, then you should credit him for all the genuinely hilarious Oscar night quips you never realized were his. Ahead of the 97th Academy Awards, Vilanch offers his unvarnished opinion of past hosts and reveals the best joke he ever had to cut.

The Oscars are interesting in the sense that they have this dual function. On one hand, it’s like an insider ceremony that Hollywood takes very seriously, and then it’s a show that has to reach a mass audience. As a writer, how do you navigate that tension?

With a shrimp fork. It’s very difficult because you realize that while everybody in the house is familiar with everything, people at home are going, “The Brutalist, what’s that? A wrestling picture?” But to answer your question, you try to make it work for the house because if the house is enjoying it, that spirit is seen by people at home watching it, and they kind of get into the fact that it’s working. And even though they may not know every reference that’s being made, there will be enough. You have to calibrate.

What’s the single most important advice you’ve given an Oscar night host?

I always tell hosts to frontload the show — because for everybody who wins, there are four people who don’t. And as the evening wears on, the room fills up with losers, and they’re not listening to you. They are texting, firing their agent, firing their dentist, whoever. So you’re not going to get the laughs you got. And many times, the camera will cut to where Eddie Murphy was sitting and it’s now a lovely lady from Pacoima who bought a dress from TJ Maxx that she got for the occasion. You better do the strong stuff up front, because you’re probably not going to build as the show goes on.

What makes a great Oscar host, beyond the ability to deliver a joke?

Well, what Jo Koy proved at the [2024] Golden Globes is you have to be a big star. Because if you’re going to make fun of big stars, they have to feel as if you’re on their level. There’s a very short list of people who can do that. Generally, nobody wants to do it.

Is there any upside to hosting an awards show anymore?

They’re still out there. Hey, if you’re Nikki Glaser [host of the 2025 Globes], there’s a great upside. And she wasn’t mean. She calibrated her stuff. Her act is very dirty and she was being a nice girl, but she had a little edge to it. I don’t know if that would’ve worked on the Oscars necessarily, because while it’s the same crowd, there’s more pomp and ceremony to the thing.

Who would you say was the worst Oscar host that you had to work with?

Who was the worst? Well, I had a problem with Ellen [DeGeneres], but that’s because she was … I think she was scared.

It seems you weren’t the only one to have had a hard time working with Ellen.

Yeah. I had no idea. She isolated herself a lot, and it was not fun. And I like her. I’ve known her for years. And she always was fun. But I think the burden of everything that happened to her changed her. I think that she was a little risk-averse, even though she was now on her own talk show and everything about her was out and the public loved her. I think she was very protective and wanted her people around her and that was it. So that was the only one that was really [difficult].

The writer flanked by Patrick Swayze (left) and Oscar telecast producer Allan Carr in 1989. Bei/Shutterstock
And did that make the show worse, in your opinion?

No, because she’s terrific. It just made it a less fun experience for us writers. That’s all. The same thing with the Franco-Hathaway show, which was a bad idea. And James kind of panicked and went to Judd Apatow, and Judd brought in four writers from his school of writers who had never done anything like this. And also, he had no persona. So what were they writing to? I mean, Pineapple Express? And then Anne, sensing that there was all this attention on him, brought in a writer of her own who was terrific. So the atmosphere was not wonderful.

We’re in the Trump years again. As a writer for the Oscars, how careful do you have to be about playing to the political sensibilities of the Hollywood audience and the audience at home?

Trump himself declared the Oscars as a war zone: Meryl Streep is an overrated actress, Robert De Niro is an overrated actor, and all these people who don’t like him … So I think, at this point, it doesn’t matter anymore, and I think people will speak their mind. I don’t think the Academy is a terribly Trumpy operation, by and large. Especially since it’s become more international and less Hollywood-centric.

As a writer, do you want those surprise political moments in the show or do you want to just stay away from them?

Well, as a writer, I love them, but I’m not out there doing them. So it really does come down to who is out there doing them. Some years ago when we invaded Iraq, Michael Moore won the documentary award for Bowling for Columbine. He came up and he started doing an anti-George Bush speech, and some stagehands began booing him and people in the audience began booing him. And he got off. Steve Martin was hosting. And there was a commercial. We’re in the back throwing jokes at each other for three minutes, then Steve came out and said, “I think it’s wonderful the stagehands are backstage helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his car.” Kind of deflated the whole idea of: See, this is what happens when you get political. And it was also a nice jibe at the people who opposed him. So, of course, I love it.

Is there a joke that you really want to tell that was never allowed, one where you feel like, “Damn, I wish I had gotten that on”?

Richard Gere was in the audience one year and we had a joke. It was after the whole Richard Gere whisper campaign. So the joke that Billy Crystal was going to say was, “Richard Gere is going to present later on. He was originally going to present with Fievel, the mouse from An American Tail, but Fievel backed out.” And it was coming up. The director gets the script right before the broadcast of those things, and so he has one of his 14 cameramen creep up the aisle to Richard. And when that happens, you know that you are somehow going to be referred to. You could see the panic on Richard’s face because he thought [Billy’s] going to make a joke. And of course, at that point, what would you make a joke about with Richard?

Vilanch wrote for frequent Oscar host Billy Crystal, seen riding off the 1991 show Reed Saxon/AP Photo
And Billy said, “Look … We have to cut the joke. Look at him. He’s going to have a heart attack.” He said, “I can’t do that to him.” And we cut the joke. Billy has an innate sense of fairness. I mean, it wasn’t the first time. We would come up with outrageous stuff and he would say, “I might do that on a Letterman shot, but I’m not going to do that on the Oscars.” I mean, he really had a sense of occasion and his own personal sense that he’s a righteous guy.

Are people ever warned that they’re going to be made fun of?

No. No. Elizabeth Taylor was the rare exception. And it was because it was a joke about her personal life. Billy was introducing Al Pacino, and he said, “This is Al Pacino’s eighth nomination, and he’s never won. He has heard more people cry out another man’s name than anybody except Larry Fortensky” [Taylor’s seventh husband]. And we all love this joke. And [longtime Oscar telecast director] Gil Cates says, “It’s hysterical. You have to call Elizabeth because it’s a sex joke about her.” Well, anyway, so he called her and he told her the joke and she said, “Who’s Larry Fortensky?”

The post Bruce Vilanch & The Gerbil Joke That Never Made It On Air On Oscars first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

Cracked
Ellen DeGeneres Was the Most Difficult Oscar Host for the Award Show’s Writers
By JM McNab
Feb 26, 2025

A number of mega-star comedians have hosted the Oscars over the course of its long history — from Bob Hope, to Whoopi Goldberg, to the anti-comedy performance artist known as “James Franco.”

One famous name who’s not likely to be back hosting the Academy Awards any time soon is Ellen DeGeneres, who, to be fair, gave us one of the most memorable Oscar moments of all-time: the star-studded selfie, which may or may not have been “cursed.”

Since Ellen has subsequently experienced a tidal-wave of bad publicity concerning her behind-the-scenes behavior, which seemingly led to the cancellation of her talk show and inspired a self-pitying stand-up special, one more bad story probably won’t make a difference. But according to longtime Oscars joke writer Bruce Vilanch, DeGeneres was the most difficult host to work with.

Vilanch had pleasant encounters with Ellen in the past, but that changed by the time she accepted the Academy’s offer to host. “She was a lot of fun before she came out, and before she was bearing this responsibility of a movement on her shoulders,” Vilanch, a “gay icon” himself, argued. “My only bad experience with her was at the Oscars, where she just was not interested in input from anybody but her own people,” the Get Bruce star recalled.

While it’s not uncommon for Oscar hosts to bring their own comedy writers along with them, the relationship between DeGeneres and the show’s existing crew became so strained that, per Vilanch, the producer of the Oscars, Laura Ziskin, rang her up and issued an ultimatum. When one of Ellen’s assistants asked what the call was about, Ziskin replied, “It’s about, if she still wants to host the Oscars, she should call me back, because otherwise she can walk away.”

Keep in mind, this was back when celebrities actually wanted to host the Oscars.

“Two minutes later, Ellen called back,” Vilanch said. Although even then, she wasn’t open to the writers’ input on the material.

David Letterman similarly brought his own people with him and clashed with Vilanch and his writers over the direction of the show, although things didn’t get quite as heated. “There was a negotiation about stuff that we thought probably wouldn’t work. Some of that got cut, some of it went on the air anyway,” Vilanch explained.

In Letterman’s defense, he did find a way to shade the Academy for neglecting to nominate the acclaimed Hoop Dreams for Best Documentary during his Top Ten list.

The post According To Bruce Vilanch, Ellen Degeneres Was The Most Difficult Oscar Host first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble The Grove welcomes Bruce Vilanch to discuss IT SEEMED LIKE A BAD IDEA AT THE TIME
By Staff
Feb 27, 2025

Bruce Vilanch talks IT SEEMED LIKE A BAD IDEA AT THE TIME at B&N The Grove

Barnes & Noble The Grove welcomes Bruce Vilanch to discuss IT SEEMED LIKE A BAD IDEA AT THE TIME on March 6th at 7:00 PM!

35.31 USD

Get Ticket

Date and time

• Mar 06, 2025 19:00 – 20:00

Location

Barnes & Noble The Grove, 189 The Grove Drive, Los Angeles, CA

About this event

Join Barnes & Noble – The Grove at Farmers Market on March 6, 2025, as we welcome Bruce Vilanch to discuss IT SEEMED LIKE A BAD IDEA AT THE TIME.

“Bruce Vilanch, a storyteller without peer, has written a tell-all . . . on himself! And it’s hilarious! He’s finally coming clean and owning up to his part in creating some of the worst television of the twentieth century, and that’s saying a lot. There’s no one like him. As they’ve been saying since I discovered him as a cub reporter at the Chicago Tribune, when you’re in a pinch . . . Get Bruce!” —BETTE MIDLER

To make this event safe and enjoyable for all attendees, please read the below guidelines ahead of buying a ticket, so you know what to expect on the day. To avoid disappointment, we must stress that there will be no access to the event for non-ticketholders.

TICKET INFORMATION

**A ticket includes:

Solo Book Admission – $31.74 (Admission + one pre-signed copy of IT SEEMED LIKE A BAD IDEA AT THE TIME): **LIMITED QUANTITY AVAILABLE**: A ticket PER PERSON includes:

• One pre-signed copy of IT SEEMED LIKE A BAD IDEA AT THE TIME.
• Admission to the event space for the discussion and signing with Bruce Vilanch.

For Seated Tickets: Limited quantity is available and will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis. Purchase of a ticket guarantees entrance to the event for the discussion and photo-op. However, this ticket may not necessarily guarantee a seat at the event, as later arrivals may be placed in a line behind the seated audience.

If you need any special assistance, please email our Event Director at crm2089@bn.com.

For Standing Room-Only Tickets: Purchase of a ticket guarantees entrance to the event for the discussion and photo-op. Ticket Holders will be granted a standing view from behind the seated audience — some views may be more limited/obstructed than others.

Ticket Holders will be admitted into the event beginning at 6:00 PM on the day of the event. Check-in will be at the third-floor customer service desk. Please have a copy of your ticket available (either printed out or on your phone) for check-in.

GUIDELINES

• This is a discussion and photo-op event. Books will be pre-signed.
• No memorabilia or backlist will be signed at this event.
• Photos will be taken by a BN Bookseller on the Ticket Holder’s phone/camera.
• No large bags will be permitted into the event.
• Barnes & Noble may cancel this event at any time with or without notice to the ticket holders.

ADDITIONAL GUIDELINES

• Some outside queuing may be required, so please come dressed appropriately for all weather.
• The exact time at which the event ends will be determined on the day.
• To avoid disappointment, we strongly advise you to arrive on time for the event. Late arrivals may not have the opportunity to enter the event space.
• Due to health and safety and space limitations, those without a ticket will not be permitted to join the queue.
• All event guidelines are subject to change.
• If you have any additional questions, you can call the store directly at 323-525-0270.

Please note that Eventbrite is the only authorized dealer for this event. Each person must have a ticket to enter.

Refunds:

Attendees can receive refunds up to 1 day before your event start date.

If you are unable to attend the event, Barnes & Noble – The Grove will hold your book for seven days after the event. Please contact the store to arrange your pickup.

Event guidelines are subject to change.

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The post Barnes & Noble The Grove welcomes Bruce Vilanch to discuss IT SEEMED LIKE A BAD IDEA AT THE TIME first appeared on We Got Bruce!.