Episode 1602 - Bruce Vilanch
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All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucksters? What the fuck nicks? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast. Welcome to it.

It's that time of year. I hope you're holding up. I hope everything's coming together. I hope you're getting into the mode, locked into the rhythm, locked into the vibe. If you have a family, I hope all the gifts are coming together. I hope you're fortifying your brain and buttressing yourself for what's to come. I hope you've got your lies in order to keep everybody happy.

I don't know. I don't pay much attention to it. You know, I don't have kids and I don't, you know, I don't know when Hanukkah starts. That's this week too. I'm a bad Jew, but a Jew nonetheless. And I don't really know why I don't register it other than like, why is everything so quiet? Yeah.

Why is everything so slow? What's happening out there? Why am I not... What is going on? Is everyone okay? How come no one's texting me or calling me or including me in the thing? But that's happening on all levels right now. I don't know if it's my brain or if it's real, but...

I don't know what happens during this time. This is a weird few weeks, the sort of Christmas to New Year's, even just post Thanksgiving. I don't, it gets me into a zone. I don't know if it's pensive or thoughtful or depressed. Now I'm going to go with pensive and thoughtful, which at times can feel like depression, depending on what you're being pensive and thoughtful about. But everything just sort of changes and slows down and

And the air feels heavy. The weight of the atmosphere kind of feels heavy. But I like it. There's a poetry to it all. And I'm going to go out and sit in New Mexico and feel that. Be pensive and thoughtful. But not depressed. I'm going to reframe that. It's not depression, goddammit. Today on the show is Bruce Valanche.

I guess he's best known as a comedy writer. He's specifically the guy who was the head writer for the Academy Awards. He was on Hollywood Squares a lot. He wrote for dozens of comedians and singers and variety shows. But I just remember him seemingly throughout my entire life as just this haircut and glasses guy.

It's very specific. It doesn't change. He had them when he was here, but it was just it's a haircut specific and glasses. I don't know what you would call the haircut. It's sort of a mop top blonde and usually wears very colorful glasses. But he's a very funny guy in a very old school way. And he's been around a lot of years and he had a lot of great stories about the evolution of.

From, you know, writing for club entertainers and then into variety shows and then into writing for comics and writing for the Oscars. Old time stuff. And it's great. I love talking to these guys because it's a different time. It was a different time when show business and comedy was innately Jewish in its rhythm and in its practitioners. And now it's hard to find a Jew around. You know, I don't know where they're all going.

But the entire sort of spectrum of comedy has gotten more diverse and eclectic and interesting. But it just seems as show business contracts, so does the sort of rhythm of the Jews of yore. My 2025 tour kicks off in Sacramento, California at the Crest Theater on Friday, January 10th. I'm at the Napa Theater.

Uptown Theater on Saturday, January 11th. Fort Collins, Colorado. Lincoln Center Performance Hall on Friday, January 17th. Boulder, Colorado at the Boulder Theater on Saturday, January 16th. Santa Barbara, California. The Lobero Theater on Thursday, January 30th. San Luis Obispo at the Fremont Center on Friday, January 31st. Monterey, California at the Golden State Theater on Saturday, February 1st.

And then I'm coming to Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, Illinois, and Michigan. Going to be adding some dates in the Northeast as I head into recording a special. You can go to WTFpod.com slash tour for all my dates and links to tickets. Yes. So I'm just trying to... I'm coming down, man. I have to frame things...

I don't know if you have that issue, but if I have a little bit of free time, I'm going to think I'm not doing enough or I'm not good at what I'm doing or that I'm over or that I'm not creative anymore. I have a full list of things I go to that I can use as bats to beat the shit out of myself when I have any sort of downtime. But the truth of the matter is this last year,

I just have to see it in terms of whatever my goals were or whatever I wanted to do or saw in my life at some point that I would like to do and acknowledge what has happened, what went on this year. I had to put my tour on hold a while back because

Because I did some acting and I wanted to do acting and it was important to me to sort of figure out whether that's something I want to do with my life, whether I enjoy it, whether I'm good at it and whatnot. It's creative and it's something that, you know, I was curious about. So this year, it just seems that I was doing that. And it's not that comedy took a backseat or just was that I wasn't doing it. I was, but I wasn't doing it compulsively and constantly like I always do.

But I was doing this other thing. And I just got back from New York after shooting that part in the Bruce Springsteen movie. I got to say, it was really kind of great having a bit of an in with the boss because I interviewed him to sort of come out of the set. And if I felt like it or if I felt like it was okay to sit down next to Bruce Springsteen and chit-chat. I want to say again, again,

what an amazing experience that was because you look at the, the scope of that guy's work as an artist and he is a real artist and to just hang out with him as a person, as an older person and, you know, just kind of be in that, be in the light. The dark light of Bruce Springsteen was quite, was quite something. So the meat, the,

I look, I feel okay. You know, I feel all right. The vegan thing has been going on almost two years. And I don't know. I saw some real on Instagram of some Armenian ghost kitchen that was doing some sort of brisket that looked like some kind of Armenian pastrami. Sure enough, it was some form of fucking barbecue that was going to make me start thinking, man, that's going to be what I eat when I eat the meat. But I pulled back from it.

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Happy holidays. And I'm excited to share this conversation with you. Bruce Valanche has a new podcast called Oscars. What were they thinking? Which you can get on all podcast platforms. He's a real deal. Funny guy, comedy writer, a lot of experience, a lot of stories. This is me talking to Bruce Valanche. Well, how are you adapting to the world? Ha ha ha ha!

How's the slow adaptation? I got rid of my fins. But it gets to a point, right, where you just sort of like, you live the life you live and fuck it. That's exactly right. There's nothing else you can do. I mean, I would try, but try to keep up. I mean, you know, like everybody else, hello, Portugal. Yes. All of my seven, you know, figure friends are going to Portugal. Are they? Yeah.

No, a few. I mean, but that started a while back. That started in New York. Right, that was the you can buy your way in business. Yeah, right. I mean, I thought about that. Not that I necessarily have the money, but I mean, I don't know anyone in fucking Portugal. I don't speak the language. I don't even know what they eat there. Exactly right. So the amount of loneliness available for me in Portugal is, you know, relative to the amount of discomfort I'll feel in authoritarianism. And I'll take our TV stations. Exactly. I'll take the streaming. Most of the people I know in Portugal live online. Exactly.

Is that true? Oh, yeah. What else are they going to do? They don't know. Well, they don't speak Portuguese. Right. And they're expats, but it's not like Paris in the 20s, I don't think. No. I mean, they're probably up in a via. Yeah, right. And they're sitting in a room. Well, they wind up going to the Algarve and Porto and places where the tourists go. Yeah. A lot of California people move to Porto.

Right. Like in 16. Well, that sounds like a nice week. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, I'm interested. I'm staying here and fighting the fight for whatever that means, whatever that's worth. What does that mean to you? Well, you know, I mean, I'm a gay activist, I suppose. I mean, I'm a gay icon, so I might as well be an activist. Sure.

And it's on you to do that. Well, yeah. It's your responsibility. There has to be a loyal opposition and there has to be a resistance. And so, you know, I'm happy to be a part of it. Isn't that interesting, though, that, you know, there are certain groups, I guess you would call them marginalized groups, that have built their entire communities on resistance. So the idea of locking into a more active resistance is, you would think, muscle memory. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's always when...

When religion gets involved, you know, when a government is being motivated by religion, it's always bad for people who aren't religious. Right. Yeah. Which is, of course, the whole idea of America was religious people created a place for people who were not religious as well as people who are. The people that are were always kind of full-on whack jobs. Exactly. Exactly.

But do you sense like, you know, when you were coming over, you know, I'm 61. So somehow or another, your head...

Has been familiar to me my entire life. Wow. One place or the other. You know, mostly on television. Of course. That's what I tell people. I don't know you personally. Hollywood Squares. I was to the left of Whoopi, if that's possible. Which version of Hollywood Squares? The Whoopi version. The iteration of the late 90s. From like 96 to 2002. Tom Bergeron was the host. I just remember Paul Lynn in that square from when I was a kid. It just seemed...

I guess what I want to talk to you about, it seemed like when I was a kid, and I don't know if it was relative to me being a kid, that show business was a fun little town. The young people seemed to know each other. And these guys, the people that you saw in show business, even on the roasts then, they all seemed to live around the corner from each other. And we all knew who they were. That's true. It was a much smaller universe. Yeah. And I remember seeing some of the shows you wrote for, like what, Sonny and Cher? Yeah.

Yeah. And, like, did you write for Tony Orlando? No. No, that was the one? That was the one I did. I was doing another show that summer that Fred Silverman, who ran CBS at the time, he ran all three networks at one point. Wow. Individually. I was hoping he'd take over PBS to see what he would do there. Yeah.

Make education fun? He believed in the group host format. Yeah. Donny and Marie, Sonny and Cher, Tony Orlando and I came out here with Manhattan Transfer. And we did a summer series. And Tony Orlando was across the hall. The Manhattan Transfer. That's what got you to L.A.? That got me to L.A. Okay, so let's go back then. So where did you grow up?

Patterson, New Jersey. I know Patterson. You do? Sure. I grew up in, my grandmother lived in Pompton Lakes. Oh, that's right. Yes. It was very rural when I was growing up. Yeah, yeah. One of the first of the suburbs. Right. That's where my mother came from. So my grandmother would go to Patterson for some specific Jewish something. Yeah. I don't remember what. A lot. Yeah, there was a place, maybe fish. My bar mitzvah, maybe. It could have been. Temple Emanuel. Yeah.

But Patterson's got good history. William Carlos Williams, a couple boxers, right? You know, it...

Even then, I mean, we kept saying to ourselves, it's dying on the vine. Yeah. It was called the Silk City. It was a textile center. Yeah. And it got much cheaper in the South to make silk. Yeah. But I remember growing up that there were still some textile factories and they would dump dye in the Passaic River. Yeah. And we used to say anything you catch there is a rainbow trout. That was the first comedy bit. They looked like pride fish. Yeah. They looked like. Yeah.

Whose joke was that? Your dad's? Your mom's? That was my very own. Really? Yeah. That was the first joke? They didn't joke about such things. No. No, but they did have a great set. My mother was a showgirl monke. She really wanted to be a performer. What, like a rockette? Yeah. No, she didn't have the legs for that. She was a little too short. But she wanted to, she just loved to perform. And she married a doctor instead. And my father, of course, optometrist. What kind of doctor?

Oh, that's one of the easier ones. Well, because he would have been an ophthalmologist, but he couldn't afford medical school. But his parents were optometrists, which is bizarre. His mother was the only female optometrist or the first female optometrist. In New Jersey. In New Jersey? Yes, the Optometric Association gave her a ribbon or something way back. It seems like a very practical...

level of doctoring. Yeah. And I worked in his office and that's where I got my affinity for glasses. I'm wearing red glasses now but they have no prescription in them. You don't even need glasses. I had cataract surgery so when you get cataract surgery they put lenses in. No, with lenses and they say which eye would you like for distance and which for close up and I said just give me the distance because I wear glasses anyway. I'll get reading glasses.

So it worked out? Yeah, it's worked out great. But I started my love of all that at my father's office when the crazy frames would come in. Sure, sure. We called them the fat lady frames. Yeah, yeah. They're kind of like Dem Edna. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love those. And I would take them home and he would say...

Which patient took... Why are these missing? I don't know. I think it was Mrs. Shapiro. I think that she decided she needed sunglasses for the shore. Have you noticed that aging Jewish men, as they age, their glasses get bigger? Yeah. It's very weird. Easier to find. This is my theory.

As they're grappling around the nightstand. Big, big hunker Aristotle Onassis glasses. It's got to be the size of an anchor. I know, exactly. When I first came out, Irving Lazar, who was a big agent. I remember him. Swifty. Swifty. It was known for these gigantic glasses. Yeah. And now everyone, I found myself buying a pair. I'm like, am I at that age now? Is this the turn that you take? These aren't them.

No, no. You're like your Tom Cruise aviators. Yeah, these are aviators. But the other ones I got are just bulky horn rooms, and it's not quite right yet. I got to wait a couple of years. I think. I think. But, you know, when you're white and pasty-faced, red glasses really make your face pop. No, no. They work for you. So your mom wants to—is she performing? Do you go to the city? Do you see Broadway shows? She would do a lot of benefits. Yes, we would see every Broadway show. My father put money in musicals. He loved musicals.

Into Broadway musicals as an investment? As an investment. Oh, wow. He was the tired businessman who loved to go and watch The Clowns, Euromastel, and Phil Silvers, and Bert Lahr, and people like that. And I, of course, that's where I got it. I mean, looking at all of them. You got to see all those guys. Yeah, I got to see them all live on Broadway, and I thought, gee, this is what I want to do. Where does Groucho factor in?

Well, Groucho was on television. Right. So he was... He seemed like a... Because we were... The Marx Brothers movies, that was earlier. But with You Bet Your Life, right? He was on You Bet Your Life. And he was so quick? So quick. I mean, hysterical. Did you ever meet that guy? Yeah, I met him later in life. Yeah. When he was slower. And he was with Erin Fleming, who earned every dime. Yeah. The woman who you wound up with who sued the estate, whatever. But he was...

He was sour by the time I met him. He wasn't the kind of the groucho, the flicking cigar and dancing around. Sour because of age? I think so. Age and whatever else. Diminishing relevance? Yeah, and whatever hadn't happened that he wanted to have happen.

I don't know exactly what that was. I don't know for some people that it's ever going to happen, even when they have everything. Yeah. It's crazy, right? It's a mindset. What else could he want? What? Fucking Groucho Marx. Exactly. And you had Dick Cavett at his feet. Yeah. He could do Dick Cavett all the time. Yeah. But I guess when they ran the carnival, they don't want to be suddenly relegated to the sideshow. Sure. Right.

Right. So when do you start working in show business? I was a child actor. I was never a child star. We'd be having this conversation in rehab. Yeah, right. I did summer stock, a lot of summer stock. I went to a camp that was run by Ted Mack.

who was the Simon Cowell of his day. It was Ted Mack's original amateur hour. Was that in Jersey? It was New York. He had inherited it from a guy named Major Bowes, who did a radio show. And he brought amateurs on. He's famous for rejecting Elvis because Elvis was too dirty.

And Anne Margaret, who I worked with for years as a friend, was on the show. And she lost to a woman who played Lady of Spain on a leaf. Well, there you go. The crowd wants one. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

That used to be a thing. Yeah. But he was a big deal, Ted Mack. It was a big television show. And he ran this camp because he couldn't have kids and he wanted to be surrounded by children. And it was like fame in the Berkshires. Yeah. And so I was a child actor and he farmed us out. We did commercials. We did summer stock, different places. So he was the manager as well, basically? No, a mentor. Okay. So you had another agent. Right, exactly. Another agent. But, you know, I never really made a...

made a living at it, but my parents enabled it because they saw I was happy when I was doing it. So they said, let him go perform. Yeah. Their only concern was that I couldn't make a living. They kept saying, you need something to fall back on. And they said, why don't you be a... And I started writing for the high school newspaper. Okay. And that was working out well. And they said...

Oh, that's great. You could work for a newspaper. Sure. Newspapers will never die. Yeah, ever. Oh, no. You know, they just, Kreskin is gone and so are newspapers. It took a while. Yeah, it took a while.

So you studied journalism? So I studied journalism and theater at the Ohio State University. Ohio State. Yes. Okay. Buckeyes. Yeah. How was that for you? I loved it. It was great. It was a five-year, you know, everybody was in a stay out of Vietnam program. You know, it was not. I'm 77 years old, and I'm here to tell you that

you know, I mean, Bill Clinton got away. They all found a way. Dan Quayle found a way. George Bush found a way. Yeah. Trump found a way. Nobody wanted to go. Yeah. Nobody, yes, private heel spurs. Nobody wanted to go. And that's a whole other show. But, so I was there for five years and got two degrees in the, in the,

Theater and journalism. What was that like? So what? 68 through 70? I was there 65 to 70. In fact, my graduation in 70 was canceled because we tried to burn down the ROTC building.

Wow. No, I didn't because I was the editor of the school paper, The Lantern. Sure. You were there with a pad. I was there, exactly right, being fair and balanced. So that's why the graduation was canceled. It was canceled, and Walter Cronkite got a kill fee. And when I got to meet him later on in life, I told him, he said, yeah, I was hoping there'd be more riots that spring. Exactly.

I wouldn't have to work. But did you feel at that time, like, were you involved with comedy in any way? Was there things coming through the campus? Yeah, I was acting there and I was writing a column for the paper before I was the editor. That was...

But was like Krasner around doing The Realist and that kind of stuff? Yes, he was. They were in San Francisco. Yeah. Right. And you were aware of that stuff? Yes, absolutely. Because it seemed like there was a time like, you know, post Lenny Bruce where comedians, not unlike the rest of the country, were starting to adapt to...

to the new world of free thinking. That's right. When it was really free thinking. We always, there was a humor magazine called The Sundial. Yeah. And I wasn't, I was on the lantern. I couldn't be on The Sundial. They were arch enemies. But The Sundial was edited by a guy we call Jovial Bob, Jovial Bob Stein. Yeah. Who became R.L. Stein.

Of Goosebumps. What was that? Goosebumps is a children's series of books that have become movies. Yeah, okay. And he's like phenomenally rich from this thing. Yeah. Obviously, I took the wrong path. You seem to do all right. But he and he had a girlfriend named Springfield Rifle. Her real name was Phyllis Rifle, of course. Yeah, yeah. So it was that time. The tone of the thing. So the hippie thing was happening. Yeah.

The hippie thing was, yes. We were coming out of beatnik and into hippie. Yeah, yeah. So that was the transition, 65. Yeah, right. When Dylan went acoustic. Sure. When Dylan went electric, I mean. So by the time you graduate and come back to New York, it's a different city. Actually, I went right to Chicago. I got a job on the Chicago Tribune, of all places. Okay. Which was a really conservative newspaper, but.

They liked my style. I used to say I was the first person in the history of the Tribune to ask Yom Kippur off, and they had to look it up. So I felt I had made my mark. Yeah.

But I was there. You liked Chicago? I loved it. I still love it. Did you go, were you out looking at the Second City people or close? I lived next door to Second City in a place called Piper's Alley, which was like a hippie mini mall. And Second City was there and the Belushi brothers and the Murray brothers. Sure. And John Candy. They were all kids.

Yeah, we were all around the same age. Was Del Close around? Del was directing. Yeah, at Second City. At Second City. Before he branched off. That's right. Yeah, he had several side hustles as well. Yeah. Yeah, and he was like the bridge between Compass Players, which was Nichols and May.

Shelly Berman. Shelly Berman and those guys. But they were down in Hyde Park. A little older generation. We were in the old town. Right, so it was a generational difference. It was, and Del was kind of the bridge because he had come from that and was directing these new kids. Did you get involved with it? I wanted to, but the paper wouldn't let me. They said that you have to choose, and I thought,

I'm staying with the paper. I was happy doing what I was doing at the paper. But you'd go down there and watch? I would go next door all the time to see the thing. I just didn't trust myself, I guess, because, you know, I was... I had...

out of child acting because I wasn't childlike. Yeah. I looked 40 and I had a deep voice and I was heavy and I was always getting, auditioning opposite people who were authentically those things. Yeah. I was a kid. Yeah. So I didn't trust myself as an actor. Okay. And so I was happy to be on the paper covering and I would do commercials and I started doing a routine every night at a club called Punchinello's

where I'd go on like at 11 o'clock and do the news of the day. Oh, okay. It was like a piano bar, and people who were in shows in Chicago would hang out there. Stars. People at road companies. There were also a lot of people who would come to promote things, and I was always interviewing them. That was my gig at the Trib.

Oh, yeah. So I got to know Alana. Were you doing sort of like one-liners? Yeah. For the news? Yeah. I was doing one-liners for the news, yes. And just generally telling stories. And you got good laughs? I did. Oh, yeah. I had fun. And I played Mr. Kelly's, which was the... That's the place. I did. I opened. I opened for Lana Cantrell at Mr. Kelly's.

And I had a great time. But I also, I didn't think that was exactly what I wanted to do either. And what had happened was I met Bette Midler. Okay. Well, wait, Mr. Kelly's, though, like, were you, as a reporter, did you have to go watch all those shows? Yes. Did you go see, like, Dreesen and those guys? I did. Tom. Tom Dreesen and Tim Reed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tim and Tom. Yeah, absolutely. And everybody came through there. I just went to, I was in Chicago doing a show last year, and there's a big exhibit there.

Mr. Kelly's. Well, one of the kids of the original owners did a documentary, which I'm in. Oh, that's okay. Which is all about, called Live at Mr. Kelly's. And he's kind of been promoting the legend, the lore. But see, like to me-

you know, what you come out of, like, you know, I can't be nostalgic for it because, you know, I didn't live in it. Right. But it just seemed like it was an entirely different vibe and it has to be not just generational but just how there was something special about things, I think, then. I agree. I think there was a certain kind of sophistication that Hugh Hefner marketed. Oh, yes. Came out of Chicago. Yeah. He was a marketer in Chicago. Sure. Playboy was a marketing ploy. Yeah. And it, it,

there were people who were actually living that life. But, of course, everybody then tried to emulate that. But it was a lot smarter when you were actually in the middle of it. But it did come out of all of that. But that whole nightclub scene has gone away. Yeah, no, it's all... And also there was a time where that kind of like urban intellectual kind of held court, you know, everywhere. Yeah, I know. I mean, yeah, where Bob Newhart... Sure. Yeah.

And just Dick Cavett. There was a time where there was a full range of, it just show business was so, it just seems smaller and more exciting. It was. It was smaller and more exciting. Yeah, I mean, you could go into it clinically. I mean, multinationals came in and bought the

the big studios and the television networks. But then cable came in and then the internet came in. Everything spread out. And apps and the universe got gigantic. And reality television. Yeah, but then... Making stars out of people who were on a date. Right. But the ability for, I think culturally, whether you liked it or not, you had three options. Yeah.

Right on TV, yeah. Sure. So there was an intimacy to that. If you didn't see it, okay, fine, but most people did. Right. You know what I mean? So there was a communal element to it. Right. Now you don't know what the fuck anyone's watching or even how to get it on your phone. It's true. I mean, if they draw 3 million people to a show, they consider it a hit. Yeah, and back in the day, what was it, like 25 million? Yeah, I mean, 17 minimum to stay on the air. You had to get like- See, that's a big difference. At least-

If you could get a third, a 33, then you were like a boffo. Over 30 was a boffo smash. Yeah. But in order to stay on, you had to get, I think it was at least 17, a rating of 17, which is, I don't know,

I don't know how many million people that represents. It's all fragmented now. So when do you, so you moved back, you moved to New York? No, I went to Chicago from Columbus, Ohio. But you met, where'd you meet Bette? I met Bette in Chicago. She was doing, she'd been on Broadway doing Fiddler on the Roof and she would go down the street to the improv and Bud Friedman ran the improv. In New York. In New York. On 44th. Oh, that's right. And next to Dyke Lumber, which was the sort, no end of inappropriate jokes. Yeah.

Did she bring her dyke lumber? I mean, it was that kind of era. And she would get up, and she was the only singer. She would get up and sing, and occasionally she would say something. And he called me and said, I've got her a booking at Kelly's.

Who called you Bud? I knew Bud because Bud represented Freddie Prinze. Yeah. And I had gotten to know, Freddie had come to Chicago, to Kelly's, and I had gone to see him. He opened for Jonah Jones, who was a jazz musician, and that crowd was not interested in Freddie Prinze at all. What did you think of him? I thought he was wonderful. He was a Hungarian Puerto Rican. He was a Hungarican. Yeah.

And I thought his viewpoint was brilliant and fresh. And I wrote about him. Yeah. And it was like the only good review he got, I think. And Bud called me and said, listen, if you like Freddie, you're going to love this girl. And that was before Freddie went to L.A., probably.

That was before Freddie, right before he went to LA. And I will tell you the story. He bombed at Kelly's. Yeah. And then he went to LA and he got Chico and the Man almost immediately. And then Mitzi took him in. And a year later, he was a huge star. Yeah. And he came back to Kelly's as a headliner. Yeah. Fuck you. And he went out, did the same exact thing.

word for word, he had done the year before, and they screamed and cheered. Sure. Because they had come to see the star of Chico and the man who they already loved. Right. And he came back, and the first thing he said to me when he came off stage was, you're the only one who knows what I did. Ha ha ha!

Why not? So I loved him from that point. His death was so tragic. I mean, he was obviously demons. The demons will get you. Bud asked me to go look at Bette. And Bette opened for Jackie Vernon. I love Jackie Vernon. He's wonderful. He was one of the first guys I saw as a kid that made me want to do it. My parents took me to see Jackie Vernon when I was like 11 in Albuquerque at the Hilton Hotel Lounge.

Yes. It changed my life. Right. It's true. He was so deadpan and perfect. With the clicker. That's what I'd show. When I was a kid, I was unwanted. Now I'm wanted in 13 states.

I mean, one thing after another. But she was a little too rocky for his crowd. In fact, they built her a rocky songstress, Bette Midler. Yes, that's how she was built. What does rocky mean? Well, she sang some rock and roll. What I loved about her was her musical taste ran the whole gambit. She sang every period. She sang rock and roll. She sang standards. Yeah.

And she took stuff that was throwaway, like Do You Want to Dance, which was a little boppy jitterbug. Do you, do you, do you want to dance? And she turned it into this erotic thing.

song of longing. And of course, you know that she wasn't talking about dancing when she asked if you want to dance, baby. And I thought this is amazing because she took all of these things. I mean, she was at the head of the whole nostalgia thing that took the Andrews sisters numbers, which were wonderful, but they were considered throwaway music. Is that part of the Manhattan transfer thing too? Transfer...

exactly in her wake. In fact, she had a dresser, Fayette Hauser, who was a fabulous woman who was the only female cockhead in San Francisco. Yeah. And her brother, Tim Hauser, started the group and she kept hondling Bette to go see them and Bette went to see them and loved them and she got Ahmaud Erdogan to come down who was running Atlantic Records, her label. Sure. And he got them a record deal and then her manager...

got Fred Silverman to see them and put them on television. And that's how you got to LA. That was how I got to LA. But with Bette, I mean, did you sort of focus, like, what was the relationship? Well, she said, I wrote a column about her and she said, that's a very funny column, you're a funny writer. And I said, well, you should talk more on stage. And she said, you got any lines? And...

So all the stuff was local jokes, you know, about Mayor Daley and stuff happening in Chicago that week. And it became kind of a hallmark. I started writing for her whenever she would tour. I would go out with her. I was a television critic at that point. And I would call the other TV critics who I'd met on junkets. And I'd say, what's happening in Cincinnati that we can make fun of? And so she'd come in armed with this local material. And the audience would kind of go,

What the... How does she know that? Because this was not... We were not living in the internet. Exactly right. You had to get local news guys to tell you what was up. Exactly right. So that became one of the things that she became famous for. And a lot of people heard. And they began calling me and asking me to work for them. So I was writing for a whole bunch of people by the time I came out here for the transfer. So you cut your teeth on...

on doing topical humor for Bette Midler, who, to me in my mind, because I don't know the story that you just told me, was always just a firecracker of jokes. Oh, well, yeah, but she...

When she first had, she had her hairdresser, Bill Hennessy, who was Mr. Gerard at the Bergdorf's, and he wrote for her. And then I started writing for her, and she said, Bud Friedman said to me one day, he said, you know, when she came in,

And when she started, you know, she could only only her hairdresser was writing for her. And now she's really famous. And everybody who writes for her is basically a hairdresser. Now, did you was that the extent of your relationship with Bud?

No, we were friendly for years. I mean, he moved out here and opened the club, and I would go out there now and again, and we recorded a comedy album called Mud Will Be Flung Tonight that Bette did in the early 80s. How'd that do? It did okay. I mean, it's a funny album, and Mark Shaman wrote some songs for it with Jerry Blatt, who was another long-gone, unfortunately, collaborator.

And it did fine. But, you know, this was, it was kind of a bookmark. Her husband, she'd just gotten married. Her husband said, because no movies were happening. Yeah. So he said, why don't you do what you do? What's great? Do comedy. So we did the comedy. And at that point, the Jews bought Disney. Yeah. Michael Eisner came in with Jeffrey Katzenberg. And they brought her in and they put a movie together with three people who couldn't get arrested. Richard Dreyfuss, Nick Nolte, and Bette. It was down and out in Beverly Hills.

And it was a huge hit, and suddenly she was a movie star again. Mazursky. Yeah. Yeah. Great movie. Mazursky and Tucker. A very funny movie. So, okay, so then you get set up with the Manhattan Transfer. Yeah. And then that becomes... So this is like sort of a heightened...

What's the word? Cabaret show, right? The transfer. Wouldn't it be that, wouldn't that be the sort of umbrella of what that kind of, didn't she kind of take cabaret to a different place? Oh, I believe she did. Yeah. And that sort of established that kind of banter of songs and piano and what the Manhattan Transfer. The transfer TV show, uh,

ideally, I think what Fred Silverman was thinking was that it would be, they would host and have guests and do sketches and all that kind of stuff. But we had no money.

Were they that kind of talent? No, they were not. They were not sketch performers. Some of them weren't even, they were studio musicians. I mean, they were great, but they weren't great live performers. But they became in the course of their, you know, they realized that they had to give the audience everything.

So, but we didn't have any money, so we would bring on one comic that we could get for cheap. Always. Always. And we only did four episodes of it. Who were the comics? David Brenner. Sure. They were all new. Gabe Kaplan. Yeah, sure, yeah. And...

Steve Landisberg. Oh, yeah. And then the fifth one, we said we have to have somebody whose name is recognizable. So Professor Irwin Corey. So all Jews. All Jews. We always had Carl Ballantyne, but that was an extra special thing. It just kind of... Oh, I remember him. And they said...

how about another other music acts and yeah we didn't have any money so we got Bob Marley and the Wailers wow I know they floated into the studio I bet they did that must have been like scared the shit out of the network sensor I mean it must have been amazing though it was because they'd never been on television before and the rawness of it must have been just stunning especially in contrast to the transfer yeah but I mean it gives you some idea of what they're they had the same kind of eclecticism that Bette has and

Yeah. They did music... And in fact, if you look at the transfer catalog, I defy you to find any group that's done...

The diversity of music that they gave them. They had a Brazilian album. They had a Vocalese album. It's interpretive. They had a set way of approaching music so they could do anything. Four-part harmony, of course, is the foundation. But they were unafraid. They had started as a kind of nostalgia act.

And then they became a jazz act. And then they had a huge hit with a cover of Chanson d'Amour, which was a big song in the 50s that made them stars all over the world. So when you came out here with them, that began your relationship with the big time show business? Yes, as it were. Because you produced a show. Well, no, I wrote. You just wrote it. I just wrote it with a producer. Joel Silver was one of the writers on the show, believe it or not. Yeah, yeah.

And then I was out here. I'd always said if I had an agent and a job, I would come out here. And I had both, so I came out. And I started writing Variety Television. It was, of course, the last gasp of Variety Television because cable came in. Is that what did it? Yeah. Because I think that there's been some weird nostalgic attempts to...

at Variety. And I think it's going to happen again. I think my friend Nate Bargatze is doing a Christmas special. Well, there are the one-offs that people can do. But it was really a set thing. I mean, Flip Wilson. We used to watch Flip Wilson. I know. But two things happened. One was that cable came in. Yeah. And you could, if you wanted to see a performer, you could see them 24-7. If you wanted to see Madonna, she was on 24-7. Right. And

But in addition to that, SNL came on. Right. And what they could get away with on Saturday nights at 11.30, 10.30 Central. Yeah. Was so much more than you could do in any, between 8 and 11. Well, that was almost like he blew up the form. Exactly. Right. Because everything suddenly seemed square. Right. Because the stuff that was considered hip, I mean. Even in the 70s. The Burnett sketches. Sure. The hip ones and all of that stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

But there was an attempt. It was kind of in the shade, thrown into the shade by that because it was audacious. But I guess what it was is that whatever happened in the 60s was sort of appropriated by show business by kind of doing their version of it with Sonny and Cher or Tony Orlando or Flip Wilson even. Because Carol Burnett was kind of old school, so they're still making references like Laugh-In used to. Well, Smothers Brothers were at the top of the food chain. That's right, but that's the late 60s, right? Right, exactly.

So now we're already like a little further into it. And even the hip interpretation of what the kids want is dead. That's right. And then Saturday Night Live comes.

So where do you go from Manhattan? What are your first gigs? Well, those shows, the Variety TV series and shows got replaced by award shows, tributes, pageants. But you wrote, which Variety shows did you write for? Donna and Marie. How was that? I used to say it was like falling into a vat of stewardesses, but we don't use that term anymore. Yeah.

Everybody was just so nice. They were just nice. They were nice and they were devout Mormons. Were they all Mormons? Were you surrounded by Mormons? No, they were surrounded by Jews. I mean, you know, variety television was engineered by Jews. Yeah. And so they had to put up with us, you know. I remember them being cute and able to do comedy. No? Oh, yeah. They were adorable. The two of them were great. And they had timing and all of that kind of stuff. But, I mean, they were...

The parameters were very narrow because they were Mormons and Marie was a kid. She was underage when we started. And so there were things that they just couldn't refer to or say or do more than any other show. Yeah. Because I also wrote the Brady Bunch Variety Hour. Yeah.

That seems wild. That was incredible. As time goes on, it turns out the Brady Bunch was kind of a pretty wild bunch of people. The onion layers are being peeled back. Yeah, over time. I mean, I...

When I go on podcasts, they ask me about... Because they're all on YouTube, the Brady Bunch. Sure, yeah. And they say... And my other Star Wars holiday special, I wrote that. And the Paul Lind Halloween special. And they say, how did these happen? Yeah. Kids ask me these things. And so I've written a book. It's called... About how they... I wrote the worst TV shows in history. It's called... It seemed like a bad idea at the time. It did. It is. On pre-order at Amazon, dropping March 4th. There you go. So I had to plug it in. But the Brady Bunch Variety Hour gets...

unbelievably discerning dissection in that book. Yeah. But they were, I think... Were they considered the worst TV shows ever? Oh, it's on lists. Oh, yeah. Somebody put that on the list. The Star Wars one was... Oh, yeah. Those are all on... Everybody's top ten of the worst. Those three show up. But when you go into it, you go in in earnest, don't you? Oh, absolutely. Look, you know, we didn't know...

It was Fred Silverman's idea, and I believe he wanted the Partridge family, who were on their show an actual performing family. Weren't they about done by then? They were both kind of done. They shared an hour on Friday night together.

And Shirley Jones didn't want to do a variety series. And David Cassidy, who was the breakout star, didn't want to do one. And so Fred turned to the Brady Bunch because the Brady kids had an act, which they took around to state fairs and things like that. Oh, they did? Yeah.

They did well enough. Singing act? Yeah, singing. Yeah. I mean, they weren't great, but... Yeah. They were the Brady Bunch. Yeah, but when he got Florence to say yes, Florence Henderson, the mother, was raising four children, and she wanted to stay at home in L.A. But she was also a known quantity. She was a real talent. A real talent, a Broadway talent, and a Vegas star, and she could really sing and dance and do...

sketches. Yeah. Robert Reed, the dad, was a serious actor who had taken, I think, the show because he was not getting the career he wanted. Yeah. And this was going to be a nice payday. Sure. And I don't think any of them thought the show would last forever.

as long as it did initially, or that it would go on into eternity. Yeah. And, I mean, it's had like six or seven different iterations already. It's crazy. And then the stage show that happened in Chicago. Oh, the parody of it. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, and then the two movies. The parody was the straight scripts. I know. Just play them. Yeah. Exactly. The movies were almost like that. They were parody movies, but they were kind of written straight.

but with a wink. What was Alice's story? She was a pretty good joke teller. And B. Davis was. She was a sidekick. She had been, had a show with Robert Cummings who was a big movie star called Love That Bob. Yeah. And she played Schultze, his sidekick who was man hungry and wacky. So she had a history. So she had that. And

when Carol Burnett did Once Upon a Mattress on Broadway, when she left, Anne Bee took over. Oh, okay. That makes sense. So she, I mean, she was, she could do it all. And, but then she became Alice the maid who died.

It was kind of like she was in some kind of a harness. She could come in, she could do one line and pop her eyes and go out. But she was great fun. But what about Paul Lynn? Paul was... Albert Brooks told me a story about Paul Lynn that was just too funny. It was like his first moment

in show business, and he was on the set at NBC or CBS probably, and he ran into Paul Lynn. He was a kid, Albert was, and Paul Lynn is like, don't you just want to lay in bed and eat yourself to death someday? Just sort of like this very dark... Oh, yeah, he was. He was extremely dark. He was very charming on one drink, and then on two drinks, he was the Nazi high command. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. You mucky lowlife. You know, and of course I was gay. And so he was, so we bonded over that. I was the gay one he could come to. Yeah. With things. Yeah. Like when Kiss was on the Halloween special. Yeah. And he came to the rehearsal. Yeah. And Gene Simmons was, you know, in makeup and came over. Yeah. And went up to him and sucked his tongue out. Yeah. And pulled him. He said, I want to meet him. Yeah.

So I said to Gene, Paul would like to meet you in his dressing room. And Gene said, it was the tongue, wasn't it? Yeah, he said, yeah, it gets him all the time.

Yeah, well, Gene's funny. Oh, he's great. Yeah, he is. So, wait, Dan, you worked with who else? Lily Tomlin as well? I worked with Lily. I worked with Flip, George Carlin. When you say that, this is not for the Oscars. These are for when they're putting shows together? These are their TV shows and their live acts. So you would get called and say, like, I need punch-up. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, punch-up. And some of them would like, you know, Joan Rivers would say, I need 10 minutes on breast cancer or whatever it was.

She didn't do that. Yeah. I mean, I need 10 minutes on this and I pay seven bucks a joke. Yeah. She paid more than that, but I do have a check from her for $7. You do? Yes, I framed it. Framed it. Of course, years ago. So that was sort of a thing. So like, you know, just from the experience of putting together these...

with these shows with different talents and being a joke writer, you were sort of able to get the voice of people. Yes. Well, that's what you have to do. It's due diligence. I mean, you really have to... I admire people, I mean, screenwriters who come up with the characters and write...

in those voices, especially when they do, you know, when they actually find individual voices for characters. That's a great skill. I was handed these people, and I always say that it's kind of like Bob Mackie, you know, would not put Cher in the same dress he would put Lizzo. Right. I mean, these are two different body types. Sure. And although he has a certain style, he's obviously not going to give them the same kind of thing.

So that was what it was with this. I mean, you have to, I used to say, you know, Shakespeare wrote the comedy of errors and Titus Andronicus. Sure. But he never, you know, they say, well, you're comparing yourself to Shakespeare. And I would say he never had to do a two spot for Donny and Marie. Right.

As far as we know. As far as we know. But when you write for somebody that does long-form stuff, like working with Lily Tomlin or something. Well, with Lily, it was all to character. Okay. There was a guy named Rod Warren who is no longer with us who used to write a lot of Lily's observational stuff. Things like, I went to the store and I bought a wastebasket.

And they put it in the paper bag and I took it home and took the paper bag out and put it in the wastebasket. Yeah. That which is a classic. Sure. And especially the way Lily delivers it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think it's going to go someplace else. So Lily as Lily at that time, even when she wasn't doing characters, was in herself a character. That was her stage character. Yeah. And then she would branch off into the characters. Right.

after Rod died, Jane Wagner, her wife, took over that and also Jane wrote a bunch of the characters and I didn't create any characters but I wrote for Ernestine and I wrote for Edith Ann. And you just get a call when they're doing a TV show? Yeah. Could you come in? Could you come in? And,

We did a lot of benefits, I have to say. Ernestine was like the queen of benefits. Yeah. Especially like AIDS benefits, political fundraisers. Ernestine was the operator? The telephone operator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One ringy dingy. Yeah, yeah. You know, we laugh about, does that make any sense anymore? Yeah. Because she used to dial...

The actual rotary dial with her finger. It was already a kind of nostalgia character. Exactly right. Yeah, there was something about that. That's interesting. And, of course, the phone company at the time was omnipotent. Yeah. And now they broke them all up. And who uses them? I don't even have a landline. I remember it was a big deal not to have a landline.

I just had a landline because it was old guy stuff. You're like, well, you got to have a landline. What if you need to call the police? I know. Exactly. And now it's all. Well, I kept the landline because in the earthquake, everything, the power went out, everything went. But the landlines, the word somehow stayed. So I thought that was and that was 19 what? Ninety two. With the big one. The Northridge. Yeah. Yeah. I was in town that night. I was at the Sunset Tower Hotel for some reason when it happened. It's kind of crazy. It was a very funny moment, though.

because I was there for a junket for something, Comedy Central something. So I'm in the hotel. The earthquake happens in the middle of the night. And I met some guy. I met the guy.

Earlier that night, a lot of show business was staying there. I met the guy who was one of the co-creators of Beavis and Butthead. Oh, wow. And we're all standing outside. The earthquake happened. You're watching power stations blow up. And we're all standing around a car, a Lexus, because we could get the radio on. It was the only way we could get news. And I'm just standing there with this guy, John, I think his name was, who was the creator of Beavis and Butthead. He's looking out over the...

You know, the earthquake damaged Horizon. He goes, I can't help but think this is somehow my fault.

For what? Unleashing Beavis and Mudhead on the world. That's right. That was my judge who wrote that, but he must have produced it. So when you write for, like, well, Billy's got to be easy, right? Oh, Billy was, we did all these Oscar shows. And that's when he started, that's how you started the Oscar stuff? Yeah, no, the first Oscar show had no host. Right. And it was the notorious Snow White, Rob Lowe show.

And that was a guy named Alan Carr producing it. When was that? What year was that? That was 89. That was my first one as an actual writer. And I was the writer. We brought in Hilde Parks, who wrote the Tony shows. But, of course, it's a huge task for one person. But there was no host. So, because they had had...

I don't even remember how that worked. It was just a voice of God thing? It was. Or just stars walking out? Yeah, a bunch of, well, there was an opening number and then Lily came out and took it to commercial, I think. And then Tom Selleck came out and welcomed people and introduced the first category. But before you do that, like, just tell me a little bit about when it says like, so you were a joke writer for hire, right?

Yeah. Basically. Why? Why? Yes. And so when somebody like, cause it's some of your credits, they say like Roseanne. Yeah. So you would write for Roseanne when she was less crazy. Right. We did, uh, her standup act and, uh,

on a couple of specials. You were there with her from the beginning? No, close to. Her husband was writing for her a lot back then, the first husband. Yeah. Who she came up with. Yeah. And we met early on and I wrote some stuff then and then

Because you could understand the delivery system. Exactly right. Yeah. And then, of course, she became a big star off the TV series. Yeah. And other people, there were a lot of people writing the show and they were involved with her. And then that marriage broke up and she married Tom Arnold and it went on. It went on. It got crazier and crazier. Right. I would still do...

She would do lots, again, benefits. She loved to do benefits. So there was a list of people, like I don't know who would be on it, where you might just get a call like, you got anything on this? Can you give me five minutes on this? And you were the guy. I was. I was not the only guy, but I was a guy. Yeah. And who were some of the people that leaned on you the most for jokes?

Wow, what a good question. I'm trying to remember because it hasn't happened in so long. Robin, Robin Williams, we used to sit down in a room and just come up with stuff. Just when he was doing comedy shows. He was doing comedy stuff, yeah. And Whoopi. Yeah. And Billy and Bette. Yeah. And they were in the movie that was, Harvey Weinstein made a movie about me 20 years ago, never laid a hand on.

Oh, I'm sorry. Hashtag why not me. But it's called Get Bruce. You can Netflix and chill. And they're the four principals. But Nathan Lane. Yeah. Later on, Shirley MacLaine. Paul Reiser a few times. What was Reiser looking for? Because he's kind of long form. Just joke. Actually, he hosted the Emmys one year. And I came in and did that with him. And I think...

He may have done the Golden Globes. I can't remember. What a treat, man. Because, like, as a stand-up, I don't, like, you know, occasionally people, friends will give me a tag. Yeah. But, you know, the one time that I actually did a show where I had joke writers to deliver jokes, it was kind of, it's kind of encouraging to know, like, well, I can, I know how to deliver a joke. Right. I didn't have to sweat over this one. Right. You just do it. Sure. It must be nice. Yeah.

I think a lot of people have people helping them cop to it. What happens generally is they start out, nobody's interested in them, and they write all their own material. Yeah. And then they happen. Yeah. And once they happen, they get involved in what Joni Mitchell called the star-making machinery. And also it took them a decade to write that material. Right. And to generate new stuff, they don't have the time...

Or the inclination, really, to try and do it. And that's when they bring in collaborators. Right. And, you know, it becomes a thing. It goes on for even Rodney. I wrote for Rodney. Everyone wrote for Rodney. Yeah, I know. Exactly. That's the thing. That's one reason why he had a comedy club. Yeah. Yeah. And people like, yeah, there were guys who, like, I remember when I was a doorman at the comedy store, Jimmy Walker had a thing on the bulletin board. I'll pay you $50. Wow. Right? Just give them jokes. Yep.

I think, yeah, I mean, there used to be people, they'd solicit for jokes for The Tonight Show. Like from, you could send in jokes. You could send in jokes, exactly right. And they'd just pay you. That's true. Good racket. Carson used to have 18 jokes he had to have.

For every monologue. On his desk for the monologue. He didn't do 18. I don't think the monologue was that long, but. It was longer than you remember. Yeah, exactly. They were all longer than you remember. I watched the sort of DVDs of Dick Cavett shows. I'm like, wow, this is a slog. Yeah. As brilliant as that guy was, you know, he wasn't playing to the audience. No, not at all.

A lot of them weren't. They were playing to each other. It was kind of interesting. That was funny, yeah. The amount of dead air on shows that we kind of understand as mythic. Right, yeah. I mean, you watch some Carsons, you're like, oh my God, when's this going to pick up? I know, but he always, he had savers. Yeah. You know, he always had savers and he had Ed going, you are correct, sir. Yeah.

And when all else failed, he could do a gay joke about Doc. Right. About whatever Doc was wearing. Was wearing, sure. Doc was late tonight. He was in a rear-ender on Selma. Did you sit down with Rodney and write? Yeah. What year? It was later. I mean, it was... Oh, what do you got for me? It was after he was a movie star. Yeah, yeah. Ooh, I forget. It was in the 80s. Before he was on medicine? Yeah.

I think he was always on medicine. Yeah. But toward the end, I mean, we did a, I think the last thing I did with him was one of the American comedy awards. I wrote all of those with George Slaughter and other guys. Yeah. And we, um, he came in cause he was getting an award. Yeah. He came in and George wanted to show him the clip he was going to do and all of that. Yeah. Uh,

So George had an office on Beverly Boulevard and had a parking lot in the back with a gate. And you had to ring the bell at the gate and rang the bell. And George's assistant called and said, I think this is Rodney because it's in like an old Cadillac. And Rodney,

So, and we watched on the- The video? The video. I mean, the ring phone, you know, the back door. And he pulled up and he parked and he got out of the car and he was wearing a Beverly Hilton Hotel bathrobe. Yeah, yeah. Probably carrying his own drink. Shower slippers and carrying a drink. And came in and sat with the bathrobe that would like fall open at the desk and right, you go, that's good. That's a killer. That's a beauty. That's a, you know.

Yeah, I tell you I like that one. I like that one. But the thing I loved about Rodney was my favorite thing about comedians is...

The biggest laughs for me were not the jokes. It was just the attitude. He would come on, he would say, I'm all right now, but yesterday I was in bad shape. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right away. Right away. It was like, whatever else. Oh, I was in bad shape. My wife was fat. Oh, she's fat. Yeah, yeah. Okay, what's coming next? I was already laughing. I just think, I mean, everyone knows Rodney, but as a comic, he's just, I don't think he gets put up there as one of the best enough.

Because I really think he was one of the best. He was like the whole package. Right. And there were moments, some of the greatest moments watching him on Carson is when he runs out of chokes and you realize he's incapable of talking. That's right. He's not Rickles. No. You know, he's not going to. Like, you know, once he's out, he's like, he can't talk because he's so fucking depressed. That's right. Exactly.

Actually, you don't want to know about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was unbelievable. You don't want to know. Yeah, well, Rickles on the other side of that, half the time, Rickles wasn't funny. It was just the momentum. Yeah, right, exactly. You get caught up in it. Did you work with Carson at all? I gave him jokes. At the very beginning, I sold him a couple of jokes. And then... What, when he moved out here, you mean? Yeah. When he first moved out here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how does the relationship with the Oscars start?

Alan Carr, well, I bet had been on as a presenter and other people I worked with, and I'd written some stuff for them under the table. But then Alan asked me to write the show. So I came on in 89, and I wrote that show, which became legendary because of the Rob Lowe Snow White thing.

dance number at the time. I don't remember it. What happened? Well, he opened the show with a 20-minute number set at the Coconut Grove with all old Hollywood stars around. And Snow White was visiting Hollywood. He imported a number from San Francisco from a show called Beach Blanket Babylon.

Yeah, an ex of mine used to work at Beach Bike with the hats. The hats. And so it was kind of a disastrous... It seemed like a bad idea at the time, but that didn't stop Alan. Yeah. And...

and the rest of the show was kind of interesting, but that it was in the great pantheon of bad Oscar numbers. You know, it was, it ranked high, but I mean, there were other ridiculous, the year before Terry Gar was on an airplane wing flying down to Rio. It was really strange. Yeah. But what, what cemented its relation, it's a, it's a,

notoriety was two weeks after the show. Yeah. Oh, Disney sued because for the use of Snow White, which was, of course, they had no leg to stand up in the Academy caved and said, okay, we'll cut it out of the archive. Yeah. So that was to make one guy at Disney happy. Yeah. Um,

but two weeks after that, the Rob Lowe sex tape surface. Oh, right. Uh, where he had, he and a friend were at a convention, the convention, the Dukakis convention. Yeah. Right. And the video and the video. And of course you have to remember that this was back in the day when there were, uh, you know, a VHS. Yeah. And, uh, there was no internet and nobody was sharing anything. So it became a highly prized thing and people would have parties all over town, get looking at bootleg things. And,

And he has completely owned it in the time since he was the, he said I was the poster child for bad behavior. Yeah. And he owns it to this day. Yeah. But it cemented the show's reputation as being a classic disaster. That and the fact that a lot of the people that Alan couldn't put on the show because the network didn't want them were big stars and they wrote a letter saying,

After Disney sued, they wrote a letter saying, well, we have to have a quality control meeting about this. This can't happen again. Really? Yeah, so they brought in Gil Cates to produce it, and he wound up producing the next 17 shows, I think. And you worked for him? Yes, and he brought in Billy to host it. Billy had hosted four Grammy shows. And you had worked with him before? Yeah. And so in terms of writing it, do you put a staff together? Yeah.

Yeah, well, what happened, the producer puts the staff together, but when there's a host, there are kind of two staffs. The host generally has people who work with them. If they are doing a daily talk show, as many of them are, they bring their entire talk show staff over. And, of course, that puts a big dent in the budget. So they can't hire...

too many other people to write the rest of the show. Because I've known guys who, you know, my peers who like, you know, get pulled in to write for the week or two before. That's because people get dissatisfied with what the writers for the rest of the hostess has written. So they bring in comics. And they bring in, yeah, they bring in people.

Yes, I brought in. My last official Oscar show was 10 years ago. Who was the host? Get involved. The legendary Anne Hathaway, James Franco show. That turned out to be a disaster, right? It was a bigger disaster, but I didn't write about it in this book because maybe in the next book. Why? Because nobody asked me about it.

It hasn't shown up on YouTube and had the kind of life. Well, I mean, it seemed like, you know, I felt bad for her because I love her. Yeah, she's wonderful. And it just seemed like he wasn't willing. He wasn't game. She's a precision instrument and he wasn't playing along with her. And he's apologized to me a million times since.

He said he was nominated that year for the movie where he gnaws his arm off. Yeah. And he knew he was going to lose to Colin Firth for playing the stuttering King George. Yeah, right. And he said, I decided, do I want to sit in the audience and wait to lose or do I want to do something else? And when they came and they said, you want to co-host it? I said, yes, I'll do it. And he said, it was a mistake. And he didn't really know how to do that. He didn't. It was not in his comfort zone. And he brought in some writers who had

no idea what to do with it. And, uh, they were young people who worked for Judd Apatow. I, you know, um, it's just, yeah, but it was a bad idea from the beginning. I mean, there, there was no chemistry between those two. I mean, it was, it was a blatant attempt to youth the show up.

Well, it's like because she's so amazing, like it could have, you know, if you would have gotten somebody that had chops, it would have been great. Yeah. But the number of people who are offered the show and turn it down is legion. To host it. Yeah. If you're famous enough and rich enough, you don't need to host that show. You only can get in your own way. If you do well, they'll go, nice job. If you mess up, the stink will sit on you forever. Right.

That's interesting, isn't it? So you have to be built of really, like Letterman, built of really strong stuff. Yeah. I mean, I grew to appreciate the fact that if we're going to honor show business, then get the guys that love it.

Yeah. You know, for what it's like, I mean, that's why Billy was good. Yeah, exactly. I think you're absolutely right. Even Steve Martin, who is an oddball, is a movie star, but he loves what he does. He loves the community. Yeah. And he can comment on it. He's not,

a mean-spirited comic coming on and making jokes. Yeah, and also, like, again, you know, as time went on and, you know, some of the older generation aged out, the sense of kind of community dissipated.

Right. With the Oscars. You know, like there was a time where, you know, when you still had like, you know, Nicholson sitting there or even older guys, you know, with Jimmy Stewart or whoever. Right. Were around. Exactly. You kind of felt there was a history to the thing and that there was a community to the thing. And now, like, I don't even know who the fuck's there, but maybe it's just because I'm old. It started happening years ago when the independents began taking over. Right. And the movies that were nominated-

were not necessarily popular movies, but they were movies that people who make movies liked. Yeah.

And that still holds true. But now, since the Academy has widened the voting pool and has included lots of diverse people who were never involved before, and lots of, like, not Hollywood-centric people. Yeah. I mean, you would never have gotten movies like Parasite and everything everywhere all over your face. Yeah. Twelve Years a Slave and Moonlight. You would never have gotten those movies nominated, much less win, right?

because the Academy voting body was not interested in that kind of picture. Well, I guess that's a double-edged sword in that that kind of evolution is necessary. Yeah. And inclusiveness is necessary, and those movies are great movies, but I guess it speaks more to the diminishing weight of the Hollywood community. Exactly. And, you know, what are you going to do? They don't all know each other, and...

I mean, sometimes they vote. I don't know. The lady who won for playing the grandmother in Minari, I don't think she's not seen around town with Joan Collins. She's not part of any old Hollywood set. Well, that's over. I guess it's not bad that it's over, but I guess because I'm of an age where there's some part of me that misses that. But I'm also, I am impressed when they award people

you know, off-to-the-side movies that are truly amazing. Yeah. And I think the death of the Hollywood picture is not horrible necessarily. Right. Well, but it's alive and well. I mean, last year, Barbenheimer. Yes. You know, gigantic. Sure. And this year, they're going to have Wicked and Gladiator. Yeah. I don't know what else. Sure. And then people will complain. I mean, the idea is popular movies that also...

The movie makers are appreciating and would make themselves. They do come along. But it also speaks to the community of voters. Thank God they expanded it because it was like a bunch of old Jews and a lot of out-of-work people. Yes, that's true. And they would just vote on familiarity. Like, oh, I know that person. I didn't see the thing, but I like her. I like her. Yeah, that's it. Right.

So when did, like, in looking back at the Oscars, who was your favorite host when you were working there? Well, it's very impolitic to say. I mean, I got the biggest take out of Steve because, Steve Martin, because he's so strange. I mean, I did four shows with Whoopi, who's the greatest. Yeah. And we had fun. I did, like, eight shows with Billy, who's phenomenal. Yeah. I love them all. So it's hard to pick out a favorite. Sure. Did you work on Comic Relief with them? Yes, I did. Yeah. Fifteen of them. Yeah. Yeah.

And Robin was, he was something. Oh, Robin was spectacular. You know, oddly, I feel like Kimmel did an okay job. I thought he did great, but I thought he grew into it. I thought, I mean, he was at ease after the first one, and he's not mean-spirited. No. I mean, I just think he- He takes it to the edge, but he's not mean- He takes it to the edge, but that's his shtick, and they know it. No one feels attacked.

Part of the reason is because they've all been on his show. Sure. That's great. Yeah. But, but also it's very funny that, you know, you got to know it's good to know the people. Yeah, exactly. When did you become like active in terms of, uh, uh, gay activism? Uh, when it was, because it seems like you were never, you know, not out. I was, I was, I was not a professional homosexual. I was a homosexual professional. Yeah. And, uh,

But as AIDS probably was what did it. Everyone, I think. I was always interested. I was always kind of involved. But, you know, it's a movement that used to eat its young. Yeah. You know, I mean, they would out anybody because they were... How dare you not be out? Yeah. And I always thought, who needs some miserable queen, you know, who didn't want to come out? Let them come out when they're ready to come out. Yeah. But...

What AIDS did was it was a fight for survival. Yeah. And the government wasn't giving any money. And in show business, you can raise money by doing a show. So we did shows. Yeah. And as I say, it's how I became familiar with all the major diseases. Yeah. Because if you do my benefit, I will do your benefit. So I knew all about them. But that was the beginning of that. And, you know, when the community got galvanized to save its life, that brought...

a renewed interest in becoming first-class citizens because A's showed how much we weren't. And, of course, that led to marriage equality because the only way we could really... That's something that, I mean, is kind of basic. And once the Supreme Court said yes 10 years ago, we were in the mainstream fabric. And I helped...

Had that happened, I'm concerned that it doesn't get dismantled like Roe v. Wade. It's important that we are vigilant and stay on the case. Well, yeah. Well, it seems that at least culturally there's a fight for life again. Yeah. As a community. As a community, yeah. But I'm being optimistic. I don't see somebody saying to Pete Buttigieg that his marriage doesn't exist anymore.

I mean, when you're in high levels of office already, I mean, even though he will not be in January, but...

It seems to me that more people know gay couples who are married than ever did before. Yeah. And when you look at polls, they don't disapprove of it. Yeah. So it is strictly a fundamentalist right-wing dark side quasi-religious fanaticism that is fueling that. Yeah. And they have traction now.

They have traction. Yeah. So you wrote the book. That's coming out. And then you're doing a podcast. You're going to be among the Yammerers. And if you are heard in the UK...

I wrote a musical with Dolly Parton. Was that Platon? It's called Here You Come Again. No, it's now on. It's on in London right now at the Riverside Studios. Okay. It's about a, it happened during COVID. Yeah. It's about a 40-year-old gay comic who's never happened working as a waiter at Caroline's in New York.

COVID happens, the club closes, and he has to quarantine in the attic of his parents' home in Longview, Texas, where he has an intimate relationship with his imaginary friend, Dolly Parton. Okay.

She steps out of a poster. An actress named Trisha Payluccio, who's brilliant, plays Dolly. And in the course of one night, she sets him straight. So it's called Here You Come Again, How Dolly Saved My Life in 12 Easy Songs. Oh. And we did five regional productions here. And then we toured the UK for six months.

And now we're in London. It's a hit? It's a hit, yeah. We paid off. The UK actually recouped. Wow. Which is, you know, quite something. And you wrote all the songs? Dolly wrote all the songs. It's all her catalog. Yeah. And I co-wrote it with our director, Gabriel Barry, and our star, Tricia. That seems to be a pretty good model for...

If someone's got a big catalog and you can wrap a show around it. It's great. I mean, she actually has been inspired not by us but by all the other musical star shows. She's working on her own catalog show. Who, Dolly? Dolly is, which will be about a year from now. She can deliver a joke. It was called Hello, I'm Dolly. But now it's called Dolly, an original musical. But she's looking for a Dolly. I mean, I think she wants to create a star. She's funny. She's funny.

Oh, Dolly is very funny. Yeah. Oh, she's a star. She's not going to be in it. I mean, but have you worked with her? Oh yeah. I worked with her years ago and then I, uh, I worked on a legendary flop TV show called Dolly. It was a big ABC Sunday night variety show, which I did not include in the book.

For obvious reasons. It sounds like you got another book. Could be. Let's see. What other musicals have you been involved in? Do you love it? I had a musical called Platinum, which is in the book, along with Ice Pirates, which I'm in, which is another thing that kids ask me about constantly. I can't stop the music. Why did they ask you about it? Because they think it's terrible? Yeah.

No, actually, they love it. It's become a cult movie, but it's because it's kind of like... It was like before Spaceballs, but it was like a...

a kind of action movie parody. Yeah. It's an uncomfortable parody of things because it's also asking you to like it for real, but the whole thing is very tongue-in-cheek. And it was, one of the reasons that it gets seen a lot was it was Angelica Houston's second movie. Okay. And she won an Oscar for her third, and so they began showing all of her catalog, which amounted to three movies. Yeah.

And Ted Turner loved the Ice Pirates. So cable was beginning, and he put it on all of his cable stations constantly. And to this day, Angelica says, what do I do to get it? I can't get rid of it. Somebody will come in there 20 years old. The first thing they'll say to me is, what was it like being an Amazon in the Ice Pirates? She said, I've had a career. What are they carrying on? That's what makes the impact. That's what makes the impression. And the podcast is called what?

The Oscars, what were they thinking? And I did it with an academician named Adam Davis, who's not an academician, makes him sound boring. He's very funny. And we go, we pick a year and we go through the year and explain why things won. His basic premise is nobody remembers how green was my valley. Yeah. But it beat Citizen Kane.

And that's what we talk about. How did that kind of stuff happen? Movies that have no legs walked away with trophies and movies that are iconic and will live through the centuries are overlooked. Well, what's the general, what's the consensus? How did that happen? Well, because of Hearst, because Hearst,

didn't allow Citizen Kane to get the press. Well, that was that one case. But generally speaking, why do these movies... Well, there's a different situation. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, generally speaking, doesn't really apply. That's, I guess, what the show is about. Yeah. Is that every case is kind of different. Well, that sounds interesting. So it's a series. It's not an ongoing thing. I think we've recorded three of them, and we're going to do a bunch more. And we've chosen random years. Yeah. Some years where not even I was alive. Yeah. We go...

We go through. Oh, great. Yeah. Well, it was great talking to you, Bruce. What a treat. Thank you. Thank you. I am a fan. There you go. That was great. Bette Midler. Huh? How often do we get to talk about Bette Midler? So Bruce's new podcast is called Oscars. What were they thinking? It's everywhere. You can get podcasts. Hang out for a minute, folks.

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Hey, if you want some holiday-themed WTF material, you can listen to episode 875, The Shows of Christmas Past. That's a compilation episode of some holiday moments from the early years of the show. Thanks for coming. This is going to be the Christmas show. So let's pretend like it's Christmas, shall we? Let's take a minute. Hmm. Hmm.

Let's talk to the people that are listening to this. This show is going to go up on the 24th. So it's the day before Christmas. So let's assume there are people maybe traveling home. All right, they're on the plane by themselves, freaking out because they have fucking family to deal with. They're going back to a home that's uncomfortable, filled with abuse and pain. So let's just talk to them. All right, keep it together.

All right, don't let them in. Keep them out. Remember, they're the ones that wired you. They can get into the box. Keep them out of the box. I don't usually tell people to lie, but this is a good time to start lying. Pretend that everything is okay. Sure, your mom will see through it, but fuck her. Just ride it out. All right, tell them you have things going on that you don't. Don't let them see the insecurity, and don't let your father hit you. All right, just...

Just hold on. Keep hold of the ship. Stay steady and good luck and Merry Christmas. Again, that's episode 875.

The shows of Christmas past. To subscribe to WTF Plus so you can get every episode of WTF ad-free, go to the link in the episode description and go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus. And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by Acast. This guitar piece took me a long time, oddly, to put together. And I don't love the sound. I'm insisting on going straight in, but it doesn't give me the sustain I want. I don't know why I don't just...

Surrender to the pedals. Surrender to the pedals. But I do understand more why Jimmy Page sounds like he sounds like. If you go straight into a Fender Champ, it's going to be clunky. I didn't do that. It's not into a Champ. This was into, well, this was into a Deluxe. Doesn't matter. Look, I'm just talking the minor guitar nerd shit that I know from my experience. Here, let me just play this. ♪

Boomer lives. Monkey and Lafonda. Cat angels everywhere.