Bruce Vilanch Quotations

Generally with the Oscars or the Emmys there isn't much you can do until the nominations are announced. Then you know what kind of year you're dealing with - what's been overlooked, what the issues are.

I mean, I've sold all these scripts and nothing's been made. Studios have closed, stars have died. I had a director find Jesus. And the pictures just don't get made.

When AIDS hit, lots of people banded together to take care of each other and do what the government wasn't doing. When you grow up Jewish, as I have, you learn that everybody hates you, no one's going to help you, and you have to take care of yourself. That's a great maxim to the gay community, and we took it to heart; we took care of our own.

I've written about 15 screenplays and they all sold - they were all sold on pitches.

It's really live television, the way God meant it to be.

I've learned that most of gay America is coupled up, or looking to be. No wonder gay marriage has such traction. So many of us are already in it, so of course we want the legal benefits.

I mean, when I started out I was billing per hour, like a shrink because you would sit with somebody and work. But most of it, if it's for a live show it's usually a buy-out. A flat fee.

My assistant says I'm an eBay auction waiting to happen. I have a very large collection of T-shirts... about 4,000 now. Maybe I'll pillage it someday. I have resisted the offers to do a line of T-shirts.

I've got more chins than a San Francisco phonebook.

I have one rave 'New York Times' review framed next to a flop 'Los Angeles Times' review. And it's for the same show. These people watched the same show. That's what happens. They love it, they hate it.

It's the biggest party in the world, and you have to keep the whole thing percolating, which is difficult because a lot of awards most people don't care about.

Eddie Izzard is absolutely brilliant. I would love to write something for him.

What makes me laugh? Richard Nixon always made me laugh.

I think I intimidate hecklers because I weigh more than most of them.

Musicals have clearly gotten more physical. You never saw Ethel Merman doing step aerobics.

Of course I adored and wanted to be Catwoman. That goes without saying.

As I'm always fond of telling hosts at the Oscars who are doing it for their first time, for everybody who wins, there are four people who don't. As the evening wears on, the room fills up with losers, and then they are bitter.

Every single line on the Oscar show is negotiated. Unless you've been there, you have no idea how it is put together. It's like nothing else on earth. I'm writing a book about it, but I have to throw in my sexual escapades to make sure it sells.

For years, I was compared to Wookiees, especially after I did the 'Star Wars Holiday Special.' I have some photos of me with a few of the Wookiees on the set, and it's hard to tell us apart.

I write screenplays that don't get made and pilots that don't get picked up, and I re-write other people's movies, and those are all different kinds of fees.

My skirt fell off on stage during a performance of Hairspray on Broadway, revealing my fat suit over my own natural fat suit. I turned to the audience and said, 'Now you know why I spent six years in a square.'

The Oscars are about the dynamics of that moment, of that season. It reflects what's been going on in the world every year through the movies. And a lot of times, what's popular at the movies is popular because of what's going on in the world at that moment.

They make a humongous profit, but the people that work on the shows don't get paid a lot because they're working on the Oscars show. It's the biggest show in the world.

I mean, people who watch Jon Stewart's show every night don't think he went far enough, because he couldn't do what he does on his show every night, because it's a different job. The same thing with Chris Rock. He can't come out and do a tossed-salad routine, the way he does on his HBO shows, because this is the Academy Awards.

I have one rave New York Times review framed next to a flop Los Angeles Times review. And it's for the same show. These people watched the same show. That's what happens. They love it, they hate it.

I think probably the best example was the year Jack Palance dropped down and gave us push-ups when he accepted his award for supporting actor. Then we got to throw away a lot of the script because we just did Jack Palance jokes, because it was just too delicious, watching this old man carry on like that.

I mean, if they're doing a television show every night like Jon Stewart, or Ellen, or David Letterman, then they have their bunch of people who are sitting on a payroll someplace, who are coming up with material every day of the week. Those are the people who wind up doing the bulk of the work for them when they host the thing, because that's their team.

Now what's important is that they have an attitude. Everybody has a look, but not everybody has cultivated what their stage persona is. And so when you're dealing with actors, it just makes it more difficult, because you have to help them come up with one. You know, Johnny Depp has no Johnny Depp character when he's onstage. You haven't seen An Evening With Johnny Depp at Carnegie Hall.

To be gay and out of shape is almost as much of a stigma as just being gay used to be.

You know, you have to do homework. You listen to who they are, what they do. I also compare it to designing clothes for people. If somebody brings in Tilda Swinton, you're not going to give her the same dress you'd give Gabourey Sidibe. Everybody looks different in a different line, a different color. The same thing with the way people speak.

We're shaking up a format, which I think is always a good thing. The thing about [2011 Oscar hosts] James [Franco] and Anne [Hathaway] is, they've both hosted Saturday Night Live, and they both did a good job at it. So they are accustomed to working with short rehearsal time, and live, lots of pressure, rewrites, things like that. They can make quick changes, which is very advantageous, and they're skilled comedians.

I like that we don't have to come out the first 10 minutes and score, you know, with joke, joke, joke. We can open it in a more novel way and keep playing different pranks as we go through the thing.

I do a lot of screen re-writing.

It is something I'm still sticking to. I'm still working out, and I'm still on Zone food. I'm still losing weight.

Who knew we had all this O.C.D. in the world? Well actually, I suppose it's pretty obvious. It explains Sudoku, doesn't it?

I've never had to write a spec script.

Sometimes there are people you can't make jokes about because the situation is embarrassing, especially if they're going to be there. It's just cruel.

It's over. Once you see they've got a list, people have already stopped listening.

They want to have a big movie star in that role. I'm sure a lot of other people were considered. He wouldn't be anybody's first thought. People forget that he has musical-comedy chops. He comes from musical theater, from Broadway. That's where he began, and so he has a sense of that style. It certainly is a great big acting leap for him. It's going to be interesting to see how he does it.