It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time

by Vilanch, Bruce

• ISBN13: 9780914091929
• ISBN10: 0914091921
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-03-04
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press

Summary

“Bruce Vilanch, a storyteller without peer, has written a tell-all . . . on himself! And it’s hilarious! He’s finally coming clean and owning up to his part in creating some of the worst television of the twentieth century, and that’s saying a lot. 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 is known as a go-to comedy writer for award shows, sitcoms, and over-the-top variety specials, but he has also been responsible for quite a few of the most legendary disasters ever made.
Some of his work lives in infamy—The Star Wars Holiday Special, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, Rob Lowe dancing with Snow White at the Oscars, and The Brady Bunch Variety Hour. How did these ever seem like a good idea?
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, and forgotten in decades of working in show business, specifically the south forty acres known as comedy. It involves very famous people and people who were not very famous but should have been.
It explains to the people in the audience who say to themselves, once they have gotten their jaw off the floor, “’How did this ever get made?”
Don’t we all want to know?

 

Author Biography

Bruce Vilanch is an actor (occasionally an actress), writer (occasionally a rewriter), and comedian (occasionally for money, often for causes). He has coauthored 25 Academy Award spectacles, winning two writing Emmys in the process, and has been nominated for seven more. In addition to the Oscars, he has cowritten 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 actually put words in the mouth of Cher. He’s also a lyricist, scoring gold and platinum records for disco songs he wrote for Eartha Kitt and the Village People. And musical theatre geeks will remember him as the coauthor of the Broadway misfire called Platinum, which was revived off-Broadway for reasons that continue to mystify Bruce.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Star Wars Holiday Special: At Least We Didn’t Have Jar Jar Binks
2. The Paul Lynde Halloween Special: At Least We Had the Real Wicked Witch
3. The Brady Bunch Hour: At Least We Didn’t Have Cousin Oliver
4. The Ice Pirates: At Least the Space Herpe Didn’t Have Lines
5. Can’t Stop the Music: At Least Disco Was Already Dead
6. Platinum: At Least a Chandelier Didn’t Fall and a Helicopter Didn’t Crash
7. Three/Comedy Tonight: At Least This Didn’t Make Joe Allen’s Wall, Either
8. The Look of the Year: At Least the Sushi Was Fresh
9. The Friars Club Roast: At Least It Was a Roast and Not an Auto-da-fé
10. Charo and the Sergeant and Henne: At Least It Wasn’t the Love Boat (or We Would Have Had Charo and Carol Chinning in the Same Show)
11. Oscar! Oscar!: At Least Nobody Sued . . . Oh, Wait a Minute, Somebody Did
Coda: At Least They Were the Worst