BRUCE VILANCH IN PERSON! Legendary Comedy Writer for The Academy Awards

Name: BRUCE VILANCH IN PERSON! Legendary Comedy Writer for The Academy Awards
Start: 2025-03-03T19:30:00-05:00
Location: Cinema Arts Centre

Schedule

Mon, 03 Mar, 2025 at 07:30 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Cinema Arts Centre | Huntington, NY

BRUCE VILANCH IN PERSON! LEGENDARY COMEDY WRITER FOR THE ACADEMY AWARDS
with a screening of the documentary, Get Bruce!, and a discussion of his new memoir, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time
Monday, March 3rd at 7:30 PM
$52 Public with book | $46 Members with book
$28 Public film & discussion only | $22 Members film & discussion only
The Cinema Arts Centre is delighted to present, as an exclusive post-Academy Awards treat, the one and only Bruce Vilanch - the two-time Emmy Award winning Comedy Writer for 25 Academy Award spectacles. After a screening of the hilarious and touching documentary about his life and career, Get Bruce!, Bruce will help us dissect the Oscar show of the night before and discuss his new, insider memoir, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time. Tickets include the screening, interview with audience Q&A, and book signing. Copies of his new memoir, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time, are available to bundle with the film program or at the box office.
“Bruce is the name, the man, the person, who steadied the Oscars for a hundred years. The go-to genius we all relied on.” —STEVE MARTIN
“There’s no one like him. As they’ve been saying since I discovered him as a cub reporter at the Chicago Tribune, when you’re in a pinch . . . Get Bruce!” —BETTE MIDLER
Bruce Vilanch collaborated on the Academy Award shows with such top-notch hosts as Whoopi Goldberg, David Letterman and Billy Crystal – often working with them feverishly off stage between commercials to create spontaneous jokes to build on unexpected, now classic moments as the programs unfolded.
In addition to the Oscars, Bruce has co-written many Tonys, Emmys, Grammys, People’s Choice, American Comedy Awards, TV Land Awards, SAG Awards, and a ton of other pageants, roasts, tributes, and various trumped-up reasons for people to strut a red carpet. He has coauthored dozens of variety television shows and written jokes for Cher, Whoopi Goldberg and Bette Midler, Robin Williams, Lily Tomlin, Billy Crystal, Roseanne Barr, Rosie O’Donnell and Elizabeth Taylor. He’s also a lyricist, scoring gold and platinum records for disco songs he wrote for Eartha Kitt and the Village People. And of course, he played the role of Edna Turnblad in the Broadway musical Hairspray in 2005.
FILM:
Get Bruce! is a documentary tribute to Bruce Vilanch and his career, starring Shirley MacLaine, Bette Midler, Carol Burnett, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Lily Tomlin and Michael Douglas. Tracing Bruce’s life, from his childhood and writing for the Chicago Tribune to his Hollywood career, the film shows Bruce in action, including his help in preparing for Elizabeth Taylor’s 65th Birthday Party and Bill Clinton’s 50th. Others who appear include Hillary Clinton, Sigourney Weaver, Christine Baranski, Billy Crystal, Nathan Lane, Ted Danson, Patrick Swayze, Margaret Cho, Paul Reiser, Tom Bergeron, David Copperfield, Beverly D’Angelo, Lauren Bacall, Tim Curry –and of course, Bruce’s mother, Henne Vilanch. (Dir. Andrew J. Kuehn, 1999, 82 min.)
BOOK: It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time
As the go-to comedy writer for award shows, sitcoms, and major variety specials, Bruce he has also been responsible for quite a few of the worst shows ever put on television—legendary productions so bad they border on hilarious. Well, everyone has screwed up a few times, or had their work screwed up by others. It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time is a lifetime reflection of what Vilanch has experienced, learned, forgotten, dismissed, and embraced in decades of working in show business. It involves very famous people and people who were not very famous but should have been. And it explains to the person in the audience who says to himself, once he has gotten his jaw off the floor, “’How did this ever get made?” Don’t we all want to know?