Oscar Insider Bruce Vilanch on the Gerbil Joke That Never Made It to Air and the “No Fun” Host Who Killed the Buzz
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?
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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].
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?
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?”
This story appeared in the Feb. 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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