Can’t Stop the Vilanch: Legendary Comedy Writer Spills on the Creation of His Career’s Guiltiest Pleasures

On Fri. Jan. 20, 1961, CBS aired the first and only episode of a new game show, “You’re in the Picture.” A week later, the ill-fated show’s host, Jackie Gleason, in an extraordinary post-mortem, explained to viewers “how it was possible for a group of trained people to put on so big a flop.” Show business, he said, “is a very strange and intangible endeavor.”

Few know this better than Bruce Vilanch, His estimable credits across an almost 50-year career include some of the most confounding and cringe-worthy specials in TV history. To name a few: “The Star Wars Holiday Special”; the so-called “Snow White” Oscar telecast; “The Brady Bunch Hour”; the basic cable perennial “The Ice Pirates” and the Village People disco musical “Can’t Stop the Music”.

Hollywood convention dictates that any one of these would be a career killer, but you can’t stop the Vilanch. Despite the “Snow White” debacle, he went on to co-write 25 Oscar telecasts, along with other prestige awards shows such as the Emmys, the Tonys and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has contributed material to such iconic entertainers as Cher and Bette Midler. He was the subject of a documentary, “Get Bruce.”

But thanks to the Internet, his career curiosities refuse to die. In answer to the eternal questions, “How did that get made?”  Vilanch has written a wonderful book, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time, in which he chronicles the genesis and execution of these misbegotten projects.

Vilanch, a former Chicago Tribune reporter and second string film critic, spoke with ebert.com about a career that subverts the show business maxim, “You’re only as good as your last picture.”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” he laughed during our phone interview.

Sure, we can laugh now at the “Star Wars Holiday Special,“ but you note in the book that, for the time (1978), it was not all that crazy an idea. Variety specials of the era tended to latch onto what was big in the zeitgeist, and nothing was bigger than the first “Star Wars.” Of course, add Bea Arthur and Harvey Korman, and things get weird.

There was a level of absurdity that was accepted at the time. I mean, “Wayne Newton at SeaWorld,” and “Cole Porter in Paris” which featured Connie Stevens, who is not remembered for her renditions of Cole Porter tunes.

What was that first day in the writer’s room like? Did you all sit around the table and go, ‘What have we signed up for?’

In this case, we were sitting around a room with George Lucas himself explaining to us his conception of the show. We sat there with faces falling in dismay as we realized he had sold the network a show that starred Wookiees who could not sing, dance, or speak any known language. And they barely could barely move in their costumes.

We were being handed this concept of an original musical with stars who were non-musical. So, we knew right away we would have to import a whole lot of guest stars to do the singing, the dancing, and the talking while the Wookiees lumbered around looking like Yorkshire Terriers on steroids.  That was a very bizarre meeting. And as it went on, I recall, George got quieter and quieter because he began to realize that his team was not exactly on board with him.

Have you ever been to a Star Wars convention?

That’s a very good question. No, I have not. I went to Comic-Con once, but a Star Wars convention would be scary. I think I might get mugged.

Last year marked the 35^th anniversary of the so-called “Snow White Oscars” Producer Allan Carr was given the directive to shake up the Academy Awards. Which he did! Rob Lowe and Snow White singing “Proud Mary”; what could go wrong?

 Many things went wrong. There was a lot of misbegotten stuff in that opening number. The audience was already taken aback by Snow White dancing down the aisle and interacting with big movie stars who had no idea what was going on. Then Allan, who was in love with Golden Age movie stars, bussed them in from Palm Springs and Woodland Hills for the Coconut Grove nightclub set on stage. But they were not as golden as they had been, and the audience was kind of shocked at the shape some of them were in. So, it wasn’t fun watching them.

 But ultimately, it was no worse than any of the other Oscar numbers that had been done for years. The year before they had Terri Garr on an airplane wing with the Rockettes doing “Flying Down to Rio.” The only difference is that Rio never sued, unlike Disney, who claimed we had infringed on their copyright. But what really ensured the number’s place in history was Rob Lowe’s sex tape, which came out a couple of weeks later. And every time they mentioned Rob Lowe, it would be [intoning] “Rob Lowe, most recently, seen dancing with Snow White at the Academy Awards…”

Let’s go back: Why did you want to revisit these cataclysmic series of events?

Well, I was on podcasts during COVID, when everybody was on lockdown. They were all with hosts who were who were not yet born when these shows were done but had encountered them all on YouTube. And they saw my name [in the credits] and they said, “Dude, how did this disaster happen? Who said yes to this, and have they paid their debt to society? “I thought there is a book in this: how I co-wrote wrote the worst shows ever, and how they have survived, and I have survived.

The projects you write about may have been bad ideas, but they weren’t YOUR ideas. I hesitate to think how much worse these would have been without you.

What can we say?  They come to you with an idea, and you think, “Well, that’s terrible. How much are they paying? Oh, well, maybe I can find a way to make this thing work.”

This is for RogerEbert.com. Roger gave the documentary about you a good review, in which he wrote fondly about your friendship. Do you have a favorite story or memory of Roger?

I do, actually. It was at the Venice Film Festival. We had lunch together with [playwright] Tennessee Williams, who was drinking up a storm. Later, he got into a water ferry to leave town, and as he was pulling away, someone from the hotel came running down the dock yelling, “Senor Williams, your bill.” And Tennessee Williams yelled back, “I have no intention of paying that bill. I did not have a good time.” Roger and I lived off that one for a long time. He was a good friend. I loved him.

I remember when they screened “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” for the Chicago film critic community. It was a little screening room on Chicago Avenue. Roger was sitting in the back. When it finished and the lights came on, there was silence. And then Mike Royko got up, turned around and said, “Roger, go to your room.”

I was unexpectedly moved by the last line of the book about saying yes to things even if they seem to be a bad idea at the time.

You have to keep the adventure going. If you don’t say yes, you’ll never know what happens.

Moving on to a good idea, you were paired with Marc Shaiman to write the parody song, “You Made Me Watch You,” for Bette Midler that she sang on the penultimate “Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson. One of the great moments. You won an Emmy for it.

We spent an evening in Marc’s house working up that bit. And I was in the studio watching. I was standing with Robin Williams’ manager, huddled together under the bleachers. It was astonishing to see because it was a cultural moment; the last “Tonight Show” with guests. Everything just went so beautifully. You get this unbelievable feeling when something actually works. If I’m at the theater and I something falls together exactly the way it should have, and it’s having an effect on the audience, I tear up because I know how hard it is to get to that.