Spotify
Oscars: WWTT? Podcast – Welcome to an Oscars full of murder, greed, corruption, violence…
By Bruce Vilanch
April 7, 2025

Welcome Oscars: WWTT? fans to the 2003 Oscars for the films of 2002. In the US we are in post-9/11 recovery; in the Middle East the Iraq War has just begun and on the Oscar stage it’s a battle between the hit musical adaptation of Chicago VS. The Hours, Gangs of New York, The Pianist and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. So, which film about murder and/or death takes home the gold and why? And who else should have been considered? That’s what we’re here to find out as we re-examine an Academy Awards show that was equal parts razzle-dazzle and controversy — including some things that would never fly today!

MOVIES MENTIONED

Bowling for Columbine

Chicago

Gangs of New York

The Hours

The Pianist

Frida

Road to Perdition

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Adaptation

Far From Heaven

Talk to Her

About Schmidt

Catch Me if you Can

Spiderman

Oliver

Joker 2

The Aviator

Shutter Island

The Lord of the Rings

25th Hour

Minority Report

Spirited Away

Y tu mama tambien

The Quiet American

Leaving Las Vegas

One Hour Photo

Punch Drunk Love

Uncut Gems

8 Mile

Secretary

Igby Goes Down

Unfaithful

The Deer Hunter

Entrapment

About a Boy

Winged Migration

Roger & Me

Fahrenheit 9/11

The Wild Thornberrys Movie

The Lion King

A Hard Day’s Night

Cats

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

The Departed

Amelia Perez

The post Oscars WWTT? Podcast: Welcome to an Oscars full of murder, greed, corruption, violence… first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

Spotify
OWWTT? Podcast: 1951 All About Oscar
By Bruce Vilanch
March 24, 2025

Strap in, it’s going to be a bumpy Oscars! On this episode Bruce and “Tex” look back at one of the greatest years in filmmaking history, the 1951 Oscars for the films of 1950. A year which produced perhaps the greatest Oscar battle of all time: SUNSET BOULEVARD vs. ALL ABOUT EVE. Hollywood tragedy vs. Broadway deception. With double digit nominations and luminary actors, writers, and directors for each project — this was a true heavyweight showdown where it would be almost impossible to get it wrong. Yet in some cases, they may have! (I’m looking at you Best Actor Award!) This is one of our favorite episodes to record just from the sheer volume of outstanding movies and performances — some of which you may not have seen or heard of and should promptly add to your playlist! “Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my Oscar!”

MOVIES MENTIONED

All About Eve

Sunset Boulevard

The Substance

Gone with the Wind

Titanic

La La Land

Mrs. Miniver

Born Yesterday

Samson & Delilah

Annie Get Your Gun

The Asphalt Jungle

Broken Arrow

Caged

Cinderella

Father of the Bride

King Solomon’s Mines

The Third Man

Destination Moon

The Flame and the Arrow

Harvey

The Magnificent Yankee

Adam’s Rib

The Gunfighter

Cyrano de Begerac

Roxanne

Mr. 880

Village of the Damned

Phffft

It Should Happen to You

Platoon

Arsenic & Old Lace

The Solid Gold Cadillac

Chicago

Caged Heat

Of Human Bondage

My Fair Lady

Gigi

The Ghost and Ms. Muir

A Letter to Three Wives

Sleuth

No Way Out

Cleopatra

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Key Largo

The African Queen

The Maltese Falcon

Gaslight

A Star is Born

The Philadelphia Story

David Copperfield

The Chapman Report

Panic in the Streets

Bitter Rice

Mystery Street

When Willy Comes Home

The Red Danube

The Furies

Stage Fright

D.O.A.

Night and the City

Cheaper by the Dozens

The Pink Panther

The post OWWTT? Podcast: 1951 All About Oscar 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!.

Spotify
Bruce Vilanch’s Podcast: 1999 – Saving Private Oscar
By Bruce Vilanch & Tex
Feb 18, 2025

On this episode of ‘The Oscars: What Were They Thinking?’ Bruce Vilanch and “Tex” storm the beaches of one of the Academy Awards’ biggest Best Picture controversies. 

Of course we’re talking about the 1999 Oscars, for the films of 1998.  This is known as the year that changed everything thanks to a guy you may have heard of named Harvey Weinstein.  In a shocking upset, a brash, shameless, indie upstart managed to out-campaign the Hollywood elite and take home a best picture Oscar for an artsy film about love and Shakespeare. Using the test of time, many people look back at this year as a complete miscarriage of justice. But was it really? And what other controversies and unbelievable moments took place that evening? Bruce was there and is more than happy to share them with us.  What do you think?  Did Shakespeare deserve Oscar love? Or did Saving Private Ryan “Earn it?”       

MOVIES MENTIONED

From Russia With Love

Shakespeare in Love

Elizabeth

Saving Private Ryan

The African Queen

Life is Beautiful

The Thin Red Line

Armageddon

A Simple Plan

The Truman Show

Affliction

Civil Action 

Apollo 13

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

In Like Flint

Shine

Rushmore

The Big Lebowski

Rocky Horror Picture Show

A Fish Called Wanda

Gods and Monsters

Hillary and Jackie

Little Voice

Primary Colors

Mrs. Brown

Schindler’s List

Amistad

Warhorse

Lincoln

West Side Story

Munich

The Mask of Zorro

Out of Sight

The Big Chill

Mighty Joe Young

King Kong

What Dreams May Come

Pleasantville

Velvet Goldmine

Beloved

The Last Days

Dance Maker

The Farm Angola USA

Lenny Bruce:  Swear to Tell the Truth

Regret to Inform

Prince of Egypt

Patch Adams

Mulan

A Bug’s Life

The Horse Whisperer

Babe: Pig in the City

Skyfall

Barbie

Quest From Camelot

Wicked

Tango

The Grandfather

Children of Heaven

Central Station

Frankenstein

Bride of Frankenstein

American History X

Two Women

Lord of the Rings

One True Thing

Gia

Bulworth

The Best Years of our Lives

E.T.

The Day the Clown Cried

Guilty By Suspicion

On the Waterfront

Streetcar Named Desire

East of Eden

A Face in the Crowd

Splendor in the Grass

America, America

Gentleman’s Agreement

Viva Zapata

The post Bruce Vilanch’s Podcast: 1999 – Saving Private Oscar first appeared on We Got Bruce!.