It’s a Living : And the Writer Is...

How many times has this happened to you? You’re watching your favorite bad awards show and / or variety special (You know what we’re talking about here--your basic “People’s Choice Awards,” “Circus of the Stars,” “The Kennedy Center Honors Jim Varney”) and you turn to the loved one or family pet nearest you and scream out loud, “Who in the world actually writes this stuff?”

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our next guest, a man who’s written material not only for the Academy Awards, the Emmy Awards, the Grammy Awards and, in perhaps his proudest moments, “The Brady Bunch Variety Special” and the 1988 Ice Capades Special with Kirk Cameron; a man who’s about to explain why it’s not entirely his fault that so much of the alleged banter we hear on award shows is lame beyond belief. A big hand, if you will, for Bruce Vilanch.

“What happens, unfortunately, on these shows is that when famous people come out to give an award, they don’t want to just stand there, they want to be witty. They want to be perceived as being funny, charming individuals,” says Vilanch, a large man with shaggy hair, eyeglasses that have one red frame and one black one and a T-shirt that reads, “It’s Not Just a Phase.”

“And there’s often pressure from the network or the producer to give them something funny to do because they feel it will make the show more entertaining. I think that’s a mistake. But, a lot of the time, I lose the argument.”

So, because it’s his job, Vilanch--who has won two Emmys for his Oscar Award Show writing--gets stuck writing jokes for people who can’t really tell them or about whom there’s nothing really funny to say. “It’s easy when you’re writing for comedians or singers, people who are on stage every night and who really know who they are--Billy Crystal, Liza Minnelli, Shirley MacLaine. (“She not only knows who she is,” he says, “she knows who she was. “) But with actors, they often don’t have a persona of their own beyond the characters they play. And it can be deadly when you put two of them together.

“It’s one thing if it’s a pairing like Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, people who have a special relationship and who the public really feels like they know. But what do you do with, say, Mel Gibson and Darryl Hannah? ‘How’s your tail, Darryl?’ ‘Show me your Lethal Weapon, Mel.’ I mean, what do you do?”

(Speaking of Gibson, he happens to be one of the hosts--along with Whoopi Goldberg, Garry Shandling, Bette Midler, Robin Williams and Billy Crystal--of Vilanch’s latest writing assignment, the clip-filled HBO 20th anniversary special “We Don’t Believe It Ourselves,” airing Wednesday on CBS. And Vilanch managed to give Mel some pretty good lines. For instance: “I wasn’t around (when HBO began). I was in Australia studying Shakespeare and automatic weapons. Now that I’ve used both, I’m moving on to directing.”

When it comes time to write for an awards show, Vilanch is involved with a lot more than just cranking out the intro for the Best Achievement in Kissing Up to Mike Ovitz Award. No, the writer sits down early with the producers to figure out who will present what, who will appear on stage together and, sometimes, who should go on early.

“At the Emmys last year, it was the first time Roseanne has been nominated so we decided to let her do the first category and get her out of the way. Because the issue everyone was worried about was, ‘What’s she gonna do?’ So I wrote that joke for her, ‘They put me on up front in case I lose and get ugly.’ And she got a big laugh with it.”

Vilanch, who was an entertainment reporter for the Chicago Tribune before he started writing for Bette Midler in the early ‘70s, says the hardest part of his job often isn’t writing the material, it’s getting the performers to deliver it as written. And the problem, more often than not, isn’t the stars themselves. It’s “their people.”

“The trick is trying to retain as much of your original idea as possible while still serving (the star’s) persona. And in doing that, you not only have to deal with them but frequently their managers, their agents, their publicists, their ex-husbands, their hairdressers, their pet psychiatrist and their holistic gardener, whoever is on their support team.

“A lot of times the stars are much more inclined to make fun of themselves than the people who work for them. They’re always saying, ‘Oh, they’ll never do that.’ And my response is always, ‘Well, let me hear that from them.’ ”

Over the years, Vilanch has heard more than a few of his jokes crash and die and he has come to expect, at least once per show, a performer trying to save face by uttering those immortal words: “Hey, I didn’t write this stuff.”

“I’ve grown to love it when they blame me on the air,” Vilanch says, not quite convincingly. “Because it just shows how desperate they are. That they actually have to resort to that means they’re flailing.

“It’s something only an amateur would think was funny. And when the industry pros see it happen, they think, ‘That’s someone who doesn’t know how to play it. Because there is a way to gracefully bomb. And nine times out of 10 when something doesn’t work it’s because it’s not played with commitment.

“What happens is they’re scared of the material and they’re scared of who they are and they cock up some way, so it doesn’t read the way it’s supposed to. And that’s when they go to, ‘I told them this wouldn’t work.’ That’s my other favorite: ‘I’m not gonna say this. Let’s just move on.’ I love it when they do that.”

But, wait a minute, Bruce. You mean it never bothers you when they blame the writer? Never?

“Oh sometimes, I guess. I suppose I don’t get to be 275 pounds by not caring about these things. I’m sure I make it up to myself in some way.”

The HBO 20th anniversary special, “We Don’t Believe It Ourselves,” airs Wednesday at 8 p.m. on CBS.