Stember

eveningsout

'Queen behind the scenes' is now in front of the camera

by Robert DiGiacomo

Los Angeles For Bruce Vilanch, whose snappy one-liners have been quipped as if they were their own by Bette Midler, Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg, comedy is a series of judgment calls.

Whether he's writing jokes for Crystal or Goldberg for the Academy Awards, or scripting Midler for her Emmy-winning HBO special Diva Las Vegas, Vilanch must decide what's funny and what's in poor taste.

"I have a general rule about what's funnydid people die?" said Vilanch, whose talent as a writer-for-hire for TV variety shows and individual stars is celebrated in the documentary Get Bruce! opening in September in theaters around the country.

"It's usually hard, unless it's the Titanic where it was so long ago... to make jokes about situations where people died on a grand scale," Vilanch said. "You can't make Holocaust jokes. It's an area people can't find funny. People who find it funny, you don't want to play toor I don't want to play to."

Under his ironic, yet not unsympathetic view of celebrity, it might be acceptable to poke fun at Marlon Brando's bulk, but it's not okay to go for an easy laugh over actor Robert Downey Jr.'s struggles with drug addiction.

Similarly, Vilanch's pal Liza Minnelli, who allegedly is having problems of her own with substance abuse, is off-limits, while Vice President Gore is a prime target for being dull.

So a typical Crystal/Vilanch one-liner from an Oscar telecast might go something like this: "Some of you will wake up with a statue tomorrow, and some of you won't. But the only person guaranteed to wake up with a statue is-Tipper Gore."

Making the right judgment call is what has endeared Vilanch, who is also the new Hollywood Squares head writer and an oncamera "square," to a diverse list of TV and movie personalities. Whether the shaggyhaired Vilanch is writing for Cher, Richard Pryor or Lily Tomlin, his humor has a certain sensibility some might term "gay."

"I would think it's my sensibility, but I'm sure someone would label it a gay sensibility,” Vilanch acknowledged. “If an ironic view of the world is a gay sensibility, then I'm guilty of it. And why shouldn't we have an ironic view of the world?”

Inspired by Unzipped, a behind-the-scenes documentary about designer Isaac Mizrahi, director Andrew J. Kuehn, whose credits include films about the making of the movies Annie and A Star is Born, approached Vilanch several years ago.

"He had seen Unzipped—it kind of got his juices going," Vilanch recalled. "He thought this would be fun to do about some fabulous queen behind the scenes. He got out the directory of fabulous queens behind the scenes, and got to Vbefore anyone would say yes. I thought this would be great-I thought

this is a nice birthday present.'

Once Vilanch said yes, Kuehn had to overcome several major obstacles. One was the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and

"If you're on television, it seems it doesn't matter to even the most conservative folks whether or not you're a big homo-it's all about celebrity."

Sciences, sponsor of the annual Academy Awards, which Vilanch has co-written for the last nine years.

The Academy said no to filming backstage, and gave the director a hard time over how much footage he could include from the Oscars telecast. Kuehn wanted eight minutes, the Academy said one minute; the final cut features one minute, 40 seconds.

"The behind-the-scenes world of the movies is boring and rather relaxed the behindthe-scenes business of live television is frenetic and horrifying frightful," Kuehn said, explaining his interest in capturing Vilanch at work. "Everybody's tense. You go backstage at the Oscars, and there is more tension and more fear and more sweat than if you went into Kosovo. I've never seen anything like it."

The backstage drama is what makes the Academy Awards Vilanch's favorite assignment. "The Oscars are the biggest that's the greatest show on earth. It's a show that people who don't watch television watch and people who don't go to the movies watch. It's like the Super Bowl."

"You have a gigantic audience, and it just doesn't stop because it's live-live, as opposed to tape-live, or even tape-delay," Vilanch added. "It's live, live, live. It's seen at the same time everywhere, which makes it even more intriguing because you can really screw it up and have it happen instantly everywhere on the planet."

Curbside

GET

BRUCE

Another challenge to making Get Bruce! was securing the participation of the celebrities whose inspiration-at seemingly spontaneous moments on shows like the Emmys, the Tonys, the Grammys, etc.—comes from Vilanch.

Get Bruce! features on-camera tributes from an eclectic Rolodex of stars with whom Vilanch has worked, including Elizabeth Taylor, Johnny Carson, Raquel Welch, Donnie and Marie Osmond, Steven Segal, Roseanne, Tim Curry, Margaret Cho, Lauren Bacall and Carol Burnett.

"I said going in that... I couldn't ask my friends and people I work with to come forward," Vilanch said. "If the filmmakers wanted to do that, it was fine. I would facilitate it. I would give them the numbers. I wanted to keep it professional because it wasn't my movie, and there will be life after Get Bruce! I wanted to make sure it was all handled on the up-and-up."

Kuehn, who followed Vilanch at various events over a two-year period, says that while

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some performers, notably Crystal, were initially reluctant to reveal their working habits, they all agreed to cooperate for a simple reason: Vilanch helps make them funny.

"A lot of them rely so heavily on Brucethey need him so desperately to come up with just the right line,” said Kuehn, who is president of Kaleidoscope Films, which makes the promotional trailers for films including Titanic and Saving Private Ryan. "He's got an ear that helps him understand the kinds of things they might say. He understands their characters, what they might say, and how they might say it. That's so indispensable in this town where so often people are asked do appearances that are live. They said, 'For Bruce, I'll do it"."

Now that he's on TV regularly himself, Vilanch is developing his own legion of fans. He has gained additional insight into the sometimes surreal status of being a celebrity.

"It's hysterical," Vilanch said. “My whole life has changed. It's gone from, 'You're not going to wear a T-shirt, are you?' to 'What T-shirt are you going to wear?' It's so ephemeral, and I'm old enough to know what ephemeral means. It's very strange, and so far it's very nice. I haven't encountered any ugliness yet, but I'm steeled for it."

Particularly amusing to Vilanch, who writes a regular column for the Advocate and is as openly gay as they come, is the reaction he often gets from Middle America.

If you're on television, it seems it doesn't matter to even the most conservative folks whether or not you're a big homo—it's all about celebrity.

"I get praised for being out-the gay community makes a nice, big deal about it,” Vilanch said. "Then, I go to the Salt Lake City airport and these trolley loads of Mormon senior citizens will stop their trolleys and have their pictures taken with me. I think: Do they know who I am?”

"It doesn't natter. That's the point of fame, I'm on TV. It makes me the same as the Railway Killer. We're all famous. At this point, the people who recognize me just recognize me from Squares and from being on TV. It allows them to separate it out from what I represent and what I do. Mano a mano, it's hard to work up hatred for people when you see them face to face."

Robert DiGiacomo is a Philadelphia freelance writer.

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