WINNER OF TWO EMMYS for his writing, Bruce Vilanch has penned jokes for many of the funniest comics of the past century, from Bob Hope to Robin Williams. With his latest book, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time: The Worst TV Shows in History and Other Things I Wrote (Chicago Review Press), Vilanch recalls his involvement in some TV projects so dire they have become legend, including The Star Wars Holiday Special and The Brady Bunch Hour.
Many of Vilanch’s vivid anecdotes are almost surreal, and he acknowledges that most of the shows would have been forgotten had they not been granted new life on YouTube. Along with his stinging wit, Vilanch is a tremendous raconteur. His new memoir is essential reading for any retro TV enthusiast.
Reached by phone at his home in L.A., Vilanch expressed enthusiasm about being profiled in The G&LR. “It’s my go-to place to catch up on lesbian poets from another century,” he said.
Matthew Hays: People usually only want to talk about the high points and not the rest, as we know. Faye [Dunaway] doesn’t want to talk about Mommie Dearest, of course. Yet here you are. Was it cathartic to revisit these moments in your career?
Bruce Vilanch: I hadn’t forgotten them, but I thought that they were getting buried. And then the Internet came along, and we realized they were in a shallow grave. What was amusing about it was that the people who were most interested were not yet born when I committed these television acts. With brands like Star Wars and The Brady Bunch—brands that live on forever—they couldn’t really understand how anyone said yes to these things, and how anyone came up with them. So there was an eager audience, especially during Covid. I got asked a lot about it during podcasts. So I realized there was a book in it.
MH: One of the things that struck me as I read the book is that you’re an optimist and a good sport. You seemed to have a great attitude even when you were doing some pretty bad TV.
BV: You just keep going on. Back then, the ‘70s were really crazy. There was Battle of the Network Stars, where you had soap opera stars doing shot put. The Star Wars Christmas Special was no less ridiculous than many of the other things happening at the time. People rediscovered the Christmas Special online long after Star Wars had become the Scientology of the Nerds. So the show kept resurfacing, and people wondered how it happened. Many of these things were decided in clouds of smoke and were executed in even bigger clouds of smoke. If you look at the list of things that were being done at the time, they included Wayne Newton at SeaWorld doing a duet with an orca.
MH: You’re writing about the 1970s and ‘80s, and at that time, there weren’t many queer characters on TV. Yet you were working with a number of performers who were gay: Paul Lynde, Robert Reed, Rip Taylor, many of the Village People. Did it strike you as odd at the time that there were so many gay people behind the scenes, yet it was still the love that dare not speak its name?
BV: It didn’t strike me as weird because that was just the way the world was. Everyone had gay people in their family or knew gay people, but it wasn’t discussed because it had long been coded as something bad. No one wanted to ascribe that to performers they liked. So that was what the world was like. It was after Stonewall, but it took a while for it to take momentum in the larger world. I think AIDS is what finally got people into gear. We were no longer an abstraction.
MH: But were you ever in the closet?
BV: I was bisexual. I always had girlfriends because I wanted the white picket fence and children. Then at a certain point in the early ‘70s, I realized it didn’t square up with who I was, so I decided to live my honest life. I would laugh when people would say being gay was a choice. I’d say: “Yes, it’s a choice to be who you really are.” It’s a choice between living honestly or living in hiding.
MH: You’ve written for everyone: Cher, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg…. Who has been the most rewarding to work with?
BV: I’ve enjoyed working with everyone, but Bette Midler stands out. I started with her only fifty years ago, and we’re still at it. She was always my inspiration. I was in on the ground floor. When she first performed, she used to say: “I hope nobody needs an emergency comb-out because every hairdresser in town is in the audience tonight.” There were a lot of people attracted to her outsiderness. She wasn’t a conventional beauty. Part of her act’s appeal was to people who were different and felt that they could be different and still make it. There she was, defying every possible convention. She took old songs that people had discarded and turned them into something beautiful. The early fans all recognized that about her. That’s why she was such a huge success. I think for a lot of people, she set them free. She’s my north star.
MH: When I asked Joan Rivers about comedy, she said it was all about survival—thus the Jewish connection to comedy.
BV: Absolutely. I’m Jewish and gay, so I’m on the outside at two different doors. You have a unique way of looking at things because you’re not in the middle, you’re not in the immediately accepted groups. I could hide my ethnicity or my sexuality, but you don’t want to do that because it’s damaging. Joan was also a woman and faced barriers because of that.
MH: Things seem bleak in the biz right now. Things haven’t picked up since the strikes, then there were the terrible fires in California, and people are concerned about what AI will mean. Variety estimates as much as twenty percent of the TV and film workforce in Hollywood is out of work. What’s your sense of how things are?
BV: It’s in reconstruction, almost like the South after the Civil War. There are carpetbaggers everywhere. It’s a different business. More than anything else, the business models have changed. The Internet brought on the streamers and that changed everything. Netflix mastered the buy-up out front, so the residuals have changed. There are a million different attacks on how to get things done, which you would have thought might have meant more work, but it’s not working out that way. What used to be broadcasting has become narrowcasting. Audiences are fractured. Now we have a 500-channel universe and people are watching things on their watches. How do you remunerate people now? It’s a whole different thing.
MH: Did you ever say No to anything?
BV: Vanity projects. I did a couple of them, where a rich husband said, “My wife is a star and I’m going to spend money to prove it.” I did it once for Pia Zadora, but that was because she does have talent. But I got offered others and walked away.
MH: You include a chapter on your work on Can’t Stop the Music. Did you ever think you’d see the Village People performing at a Trump inauguration?
BV: It never occurred to anybody. They were quintessentially gay. That it’s morphed into this thing, like a wave, I don’t think people are listening to the lyrics, they’re just dancing. They see them not as reflective of gay culture but as reflective of American culture. What Jacques [Morali, the co-creator of the Village People,] saw when he arrived from Paris was gay people doing parodies of those roles. The first song he ever wrote for them was “Macho Man,” which was a big joke because they were obviously gay stereotypes.
MH: Lots of anxiety, anger, and sadness about what the current U.S. president is up to. What do you say to people about surviving these rough times?
BV: You have to find people who are like-minded and form a resistance. The Demo-crats are being a bit hapless right now. I’m impressed when people are cancelling their Kennedy Center engagements. He’s already trashed the Kennedy Center because nobody wants to work under his aegis. I think it’s that kind of civil disobedience that will work.
Matthew Hays teaches media studies at Marianopolis College and Concordia University and is co-editor of the “Queer Film Classics” book series.
