Tony Maietta:
Hello. I'm film historian Tony Maietta.

Brad Shreve:
And I'm Brad Shreve, who's just a guy who likes movies.

Tony Maietta:
We discuss movies and television from Hollywood's golden age. We go behind the scenes and share our opinions too.

Brad Shreve:
And of course, being the average guy, my opinions are the ones that matter.

Tony Maietta:
As does your self delusion. Welcome to Going Hollywood.

Well, this is a big day here on Going Hollywood, Brad. Don't you think so?

Brad Shreve:
I do think so, because the individual that we have as a guest today is an award winner. But there's an award that is even bigger that they don't realize, and that is their novel was the first audiobook. I made it all the way through without falling asleep. It was so engaging.

Tony Maietta:
Yes, yes, he is. He's a writer. He's a comedy writer. He's won a slew of awards, including two Emmys. He's a songwriter, an actor. He's worked with everyone from. I believe I have this right from Abba to Zamora. So Ben Midler, Cher, David Letterman, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Bob Hope, Lucy.

Tony Maietta:
Hello. He's been on Broadway, played himself on the Simpsons, and last but not least, for four years, he was the center square on Hollywood Square. So it's almost too much for our humble little show. But he's here with us today. I'm so excited. Please, everybody, welcome the fabulous Bruce Valanch. Welcome, Bruce.

Bruce Vilanch:
Actually, it wasn't four years. It was a little while. For four years, I was on Hollywood Squares up in the squares, to the left of Whoopi, if that's possible.

Tony Maietta:
Oh, my God, I already screwed up.

Bruce Vilanch:
It doesn't matter. I mean, it could have been illegal information or something like that, but I was on Radness six years. But after she left, they made me the center square briefly, and then Ellen came in, so.

Tony Maietta:
Oh, ruins everything.

Brad Shreve:
I remember that period. It was only good when Bruce was in the center square.

Bruce Vilanch:
Well, no, it was funny when moving was. I was the head writer then, too, so.

Tony Maietta:
Well, regardless of the square, we are so happy that you're with us. Thank you so much for taking time. We want to discuss so many things, not the least of which is your wonderful memoir. As Brad mentioned, it seemed like a bad idea at the time, which I believe is coming out in paperback. Is that right, Bruce?

Bruce Vilanch:
It is out now in paperback. Yes, indeed.

Tony Maietta:
Fabulous audio Audience on audio on audible. I listened to it. Brad listened to it.

Bruce Vilanch:
More people listen to it than read it because I think they enjoy listening to me when they're stuck in traffic.

Tony Maietta:
Well, it's just fun to listen to you if you're in the car with us.

Bruce Vilanch:
I mean, yeah, here I am.

Tony Maietta:
But one of the reasons we wanted to have you on besides talking about your fabulous memoir is we want to talk about what you talk about in your memoir. But we're also. Brad and I are starting this new series of the summer, kind of like for lack Of a better title. Bad Movies We Love or Bad Movies that. That we just love to watch.

Bruce Vilanch:
Guilty Pleasure.

Brad Shreve:
There you go.

Tony Maietta:
Yes, Guilty Pleasures. And we had to start with the King of them all, which is, of course, Can't Stop the Music. Oh, yeah. So I would love to talk to you about it, but I know that Brad, you know, as Brad said, he read your entire memoir just recently. Like, how recently, Brad?

Brad Shreve:
This past week, walking back and forth to the beach a couple of days.

Tony Maietta:
It's amazing. It's amazing. What I love about the memoir, Bruce, is the fact that you pull no punches, which I'm not surprised about. Yeah, tell the people a little bit about the structure of the memoir and what it seemed like a bad idea

Bruce Vilanch:
at the time is it arose during COVID from podcasts, like when everybody was on lockdown at home. There were all these people starting podcasts and, you know, I was locked down at home too. So I was on them talking about my fabulous career and they were all asked me about these pieces of shit that I did before they were born, you know, and they had encountered them on YouTube and on the Internet. And they were things like the Star Wars Holiday Special and the Paul Lynde Halloween Special and the Brady Bunch Variety Hour and the Rob Lowe Oscars. A whole bunch of these things that were disastrous pretty much at the time. And how did they know about this? Well, it was on the Internet and of course they wanted to know how these things happened, who said yes, and have they paid their debt to society. As I was doing these, I thought to myself, well, this is kind of a half assed memoir. How I wrote the worst television shows in history and a few other things and survived.

Bruce Vilanch:
Because I'd been at the point in my life where I thought I could do a memoir now. But everybody does a memoir. I didn't want it to be like anybody else's. And so I thought, well, nobody's going to admit to all of this crap. So that was how it formed. And the title came to me right away. It seemed like a bad idea at the time. That's always the first thing to think of.

Bruce Vilanch:
But then they told you how much you would be paid and suddenly it was an interesting idea and you just do it. Yeah, let's do it. So that's how the book evolved. And I'm amazed to find out that, I mean, now it's. Of course it's drawn more people to those erstwhile pieces of shit that are still on YouTube except the star Wars Holiday Special. And none of this stuff has gone away. I mean, one of the reasons that I led the book with Star wars and the Brady Bunch is they are two franchises that you can't kill. There have been 800 iterations of each of them.

Bruce Vilanch:
So while I'm talking about stuff that happened in the Paleozoic period, they are all current. You know, they're still dishing it out, and so. And that kind of gets people into the thing, but that's how it all happened. And, I mean, nobody's criminal in these things. It's just that everybody is working, you know, working for the money and knowing that this may or may not work out. And as I always say, a lot were done in the 70s. And when people tell you they remember the 70s, they weren't there.

Tony Maietta:
Exactly.

Bruce Vilanch:
Most of these things were concocted in clouds of smoke.

Brad Shreve:
And in the past, were studios and executives willing to take bigger risks, or Was this a 70s thing?

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah. Yes to both. I mean, in the 70s, even the major studios were courting independence because the studio system had broken up. But always, executives are always afraid. You have to find the executive who's willing to make a leap. And so some of these things were considered nothing could go wrong kind of thing. Star wars, great. Oh, it's hot.

Tony Maietta:
Brady Bunch.

Bruce Vilanch:
Whoa.

Tony Maietta:
Terrific.

Bruce Vilanch:
They've been a hit, you know. So it was a bit more freewheeling then, because major corporations hadn't taken over, and multinationals were not the thing. They weren't. Nobody in China was getting mad because you were making a movie about them.

Tony Maietta:
Well, you know, we talk about a lot of classic TV on this podcast, and certainly the Brady Bunch Variety hour, I think, qualifies as that. I knew it has a special place in Brad's heart. Definitely wanted to talk to you about that.

Bruce Vilanch:
I'm glad you're here.

Brad Shreve:
Well, I will tell you, when I moved to Los Angeles, you know, you get over the celebrity thing is very, very quickly. I mean, you're like, oh, look. Look at the way he's looking at that man. I think the rumors are true. Or he's shorter than I thought. You know, the typical things. But I was never really gaga. But I will.

Brad Shreve:
I lived in Studio City, and I went for a walk around the neighborhood for the first time. And I'm taking a few steps, and I turn the corner, and there, right in front of me, just a few doors down from me, is the Brady Bunch house. And I stood there in awe. It was bigger than any celebrity I'd ever seen. And I love the Brady Bunch. I still call it the Brady Bunch Variety Hour. Now, I know it changed to just the hour, but I remember it being deliciously awful at the time.

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah. Oh, it was absolutely. It was crazy. And years later, when they made the Brady Movies, which were parodies of the Brady Bunch show, Nick at Night. Well, Paramount owned the original Brady Bunch and they put on Nick at Night. They ran re ran the Variety Hour, all nine episodes of it. And I remember very late one night somebody called me and said, dude, I'm watching this thing on TV and there's this guy dressed as Carmen Miranda doing a number with all these kids and it's the dad from the Brady Bunch and your name is on it, dude. What happened? You know?

Tony Maietta:
Well, you talk about how in your book, you talk about how Robert Reid was just so ornery during the making of that and then later on you saw him on Broadway and he actually looked back on it fondly. Yes.

Bruce Vilanch:
I was stunned. And everything I hear about it said, well, Robert really had a good time. I thought he was having a miserable time for so many reasons. I mean, he was having a miserable time, but he was also. He had appointed himself as a surrogate parent to all the kids back when they were doing the series. Cause some of the parents viewed the kids as revenue streams. And he didn't like the way they were treating them. And so he kind of stepped in.

Bruce Vilanch:
And one of the reasons he never came out was he was always afraid that they would say, oh, the Brady dad is actually a predator, you know, and that they could use that against him if it came to it. But I mean, he had a million reasons for not coming out back then. Especially if he wanted to be a leading man, which he was. You couldn't be gay. And a lot of other reasons. Himself in his own life, living in Pasadena with his mother. This was not conducive to being open and authentic. But he was a great guy.

Bruce Vilanch:
He was having a struggle. And also, as I say in the book, nobody told them that it was going to be a singing, dancing, variety show. They thought it was going to be an hour long version of the Brady Bunch.

Tony Maietta:
That astounds me.

Bruce Vilanch:
And they showed up and they said, no, you're going to have to learn all these numbers and we'll shoot them on Friday. And there's an audience and an audience. What? I mean, the kids had an act that they toured, like at state fairs and stuff. So they knew what it was like to work with an audience. But the only person who was unfazed was Florence, because this was Florence's life. Was on Broadway in Vegas and you know all about live performances. God knows she's a great singer. So she was fine.

Bruce Vilanch:
But the others were all kind of trepidatious, none more so than Bob. And so one of the things I said to him early on was, well, you know, the conceit of this show is that the Brady family has gotten a variety show. We don't know why, we don't know why, but it's an era of variety shows and they're hosting and he's kind of thrown into this. So you can be uncomfortable in character because Mike Brady would be very uncomfortable in his character. And in fact, that's what we made the first episode where the kids actually get together and fire him as their dad, an actor to play the part, because he can't do any of this stuff. And it worked out. I mean, in its own insane way, it worked out.

Tony Maietta:
You know, it's funny because he was so reluctant to do the initial series. He didn't even want to do the initial series. And yet he kept coming back to this. Why do you think he did that?

Bruce Vilanch:
I don't know. I think he'd been on a show called the Defenders, which was like the law and order of its day. It was a very powerful CBS lawyer show. And it was reality based, not like Perry Mason. It wasn't just concocted Hollywood mysteries. It was serious stuff. And I think not Eli Wallach, but some very distinguished actors in the lead. And he was hoping that that would lead him to other interesting things.

Bruce Vilanch:
And in fact it did. One of which was he played a. What they used to call a cross dresser, a transvestite in a TV movie, and got him an Emmy nomination for that. So he was on a path to doing kind of serious dramatic stuff. And then. But for one reason or another, it just didn't happen. Then this offer came along and I thought for whatever his reasons were, he took it. You know, it's like Florence took it because she had married a guy named Ira Bernstein who worked for the Shuberts, big theater producers, and they had opened a theater in la and they sent him out there to run it.

Bruce Vilanch:
And they had four kids. And she decided she didn't want to be absent while she was raising these children. And if she had a TV series, that would keep her at home. Sure, you know, and that's why she signed on. Little did she know that it would brand her as Carol Brady for the rest of her life.

Tony Maietta:
Forever. Forever. And she was, she was such a. First of all, she was an Incredible musical talent, as you say in your book. You know, she was the American Julie Andrews. Or was Julie Andrews the American Florence Henderson?

Bruce Vilanch:
You know, they actually tried to make her, you know, the Julie Andrews. They did a picture called Song of Norway, which was a Broadway musical hit, but was not a hit as a movie. But there she was looking a lot like Julie Andrews in Sound of Music, running through the Norwegian mountains in dirndls and pasty faces singing alive to the mountains just like Julie did in the Sound of Music.

Brad Shreve:
I have a question about the cast, but first, there are a couple things from the book that really jumped out at me. I watched several episodes. I had to watch several episodes after listening to your book because I was just addictive. And the one was about Ann B. Davis being uncomfortable with Rip Taylor. And watching the two of them together was absolutely hysterical. It was like something from the Twilight Zone. And you mentioned that she didn't like work with him, you know, in the early, earlier episodes.

Brad Shreve:
She was not supposed to like him as a character. And when she's looking at him, you can see the real contempt in her face. It's not. She wasn't acting there.

Bruce Vilanch:
She was also a strange contradiction because she was living on a Christian commune which was I think, primarily lesbaterian. And she came down in the bus from Colorado with, with the other girls and they were busy fixing carburetors and things. I mean, they were tuning up everybody's cars. They were real hardcore. And, and, and of course Rip is, you know, as gay as. As gay as a goose. I mean, he was all over the place. And I, I just think some deep inside her, she resented his outness, that he was just carrying on because she was very hip.

Bruce Vilanch:
But at the same time she had abandoned Hollywood for Jesus and so had come back, I think, to help finance the commune. And so she was walking a thin line for herself because she was. Whenever I would talk with her, she was always right on the money. There was no grass grew there. She was very smart and knew the ways of the business extremely well and had been.

Tony Maietta:
Well, she'd been in, I mean, since Love that Bob.

Bruce Vilanch:
I mean, she'd been in, yes, since Bob Cummings. She had had two big parts, you know, playing man hungry assistants. And of course that was not who she was in real life. And she also was a musical talent. She was very frustrated that she didn't get to do more. She liked doing that stuff on our show. Nobody remembers that when Carol Burnett left Once Upon a Mattress on Broadway, she replaced her.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, yeah, that's Right.

Bruce Vilanch:
And then I think do a series. And Dorothy Loudon replaced her. So she was in that pantheon of musical comedy ladies.

Brad Shreve:
So the question I have is, I watched her and Rip Taylor up there together. She is dressed in her maid outfit, and Rip is dressed like Rip Taylor. And there's supposed to be a love interest between the two of them. And it leads me to the question I have about the entire cast, because, as you said, they all had a great time, even though you didn't think Robert Reid did. He told you he did. This is actually going to be a good question for everything we discussed today. Did people know at the time, wow, what are we doing here? This is a mess.

Bruce Vilanch:
I think that was the subtext. You know, I don't think anybody ever said. Because we knew what we were doing. We were doing a variety show, and it was. It could work. It could not work. A lot of variety shows didn't work. So, you know, And Fred Silverman, who had pioneered the concept of multiple hosts.

Bruce Vilanch:
Sonny and Cher, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Donny and Marie, these were all his ideas. So the whole idea, he initially wanted the Partridge Family, but Shirley Jones and David Cassidy didn't want to do it,

Brad Shreve:
which would have made more sense.

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah, absolutely. But he. So he thought, oh, the Brady Bunch, because the kids were doing this act, and he knew Florence could do anything. So it was once. Once we were there, it was like, well, let's kind of make the best of it. And of course, Sid and Marty Croft were producing it, and they were like, gung ho. And of course, Sid, who just passed recently at 96, was the original stoner. I mean, this is the guy who came up with HR Puffin stuff and a show called Lidsville.

Bruce Vilanch:
I mean, the names Saturday morning kid shows. So that's how stoned he was. And so it all seemed like a fabulously bad idea at the time.

Tony Maietta:
Well, you know, you speak of many of the bad ideas that you had in your book that have gone into legend, but there is one that you said was about one podcast away from going into the annals of time. And, Bruce, we hope to be that podcast. What Brad and I would love to talk about with you today, also in addition to the Brady Bunch in your book is indeed Can't Stop the music, the epic 1980 musical about the Village People. I want to ask you before we start, you know, you left the movie before production even began. Did you. Had Valerie Perrine been cast when you were on, or.

Bruce Vilanch:
No, no, she had not yet.

Tony Maietta:
So you left early, and clearly, as you state in your book, you were really happy to dodge that bullet. Do you mind people constantly coming up and asking you about Can't Stop the Music and wanting to talk about it with you?

Bruce Vilanch:
They don't, because my name is on it. So they're not aware unless somebody else makes them aware of it. And that could be me. But once they know I was involved, yeah, they. Sure, they do want to know, because it is. It's an iconically bad movie. It's a guilty pleasure. I just looked at it.

Bruce Vilanch:
We had a screening of it for some queer film festival, oddly enough, and. And I sat there with Lee Taylor Young, who has one scene in it, tiny, tiny, tiny scene. And they. They dragged her in. Couldn't get anybody else. I mean, they're either dead or they.

Tony Maietta:
They're.

Bruce Vilanch:
They transition to another sex. So they couldn't get anybody who wanted to talk about it, who was actually in it, except Michael Young. And she was in it for one day. But I had been brought in. Alan Carr asked me to write it. He thought there was a movie in the making of the Village People. And so I sat down with Bronte Woodard, who was a very, very clever writer who Alan had optioned a novel from, which was a serious book, but Bronte was pretty funny. And we had to come up with this sanitized version of how the Village People got together.

Bruce Vilanch:
And it was in the original, of course, there was the real story. There was a Frenchman who came over and saw all these iconic types at the mine shaft in Greenwich Village and decided to make a move, to make a group out of all these American icons. The gi, the Indian, the cop, the construction worker. These were all very macho men. And that was how the thing started. And so, of course, we had to cast all of those people in our story. And the guy who put it together, which was not going to be a French guy, was going to be an American guy, wound up being played by Steve Guttenberg, who himself is an icon of failure. I mean, he's embraced that, which I love.

Bruce Vilanch:
He owns the fact that he is who he is. So Alan decided that he had to have. There had to be a glamorous woman who was his best friend, who helped him create the group. And originally it was his. His concept was Olivia Newton John. And Olivia, of course, he had put into pictures with Grease, and she'd become a movie star. And so he thought she would. You know, she would owe him one.

Brad Shreve:
Right.

Bruce Vilanch:
And what was wonderful was the contrast. This was legitimately good. The contrast between Olivia, who was like Doris Day, you know, for a next generation. And the Village People who were like, you know, scum and villainy, the craziest, sleaziest. And the contrast is what would help, would sell the movie, interestingly. And Olivia just didn't see it like that. She didn't see herself being submerged in all of that. So he began auditioning it to other leading ladies.

Bruce Vilanch:
And each time he did that, I had to come in and write a new draft because Bronte had gone off to do something else. And after it went to Cher and Raquel Welch and a bunch of people kept rewriting it for. I said, this is more than the second draft. I need more money. And he fired me. But he didn't stop calling me. He kept calling me, kept calling me, said, what do you think of that? What do you think of that? And meanwhile, he and Bronte came back and they. Bronte came back and they were.

Bruce Vilanch:
They finally landed on Valerie Perrine, who was a fabulous woman. I mean, she would do any. She was fearless. She would do anything.

Tony Maietta:
And beautiful and a beautiful, beautiful.

Bruce Vilanch:
And she could really act, you know. And she played Lenny Bruce's wife in the Fosse picture opposite Justin Hoffman. And she was wonderful. And. But she was also campy in Superman. She could do it all. And so I thought, that's not bad. But it just got ridiculous.

Bruce Vilanch:
It just went from bad to worse. And I wasn't around for all of that. But when they were shooting it, I kept getting calls about one thing or another. I mean, there was. The lead singer was Victor Willis, and he was. And he was the only straight guy in the group. And a couple of weeks before the picture started, he decided he couldn't be in this movie because everybody would think he was gay. And he quit.

Bruce Vilanch:
And Alan got Valerie Simpson's brother, Ray Simpson, to play that part. But there was a part where he had written in for Victor's wife because he insisted on it. And that was actually Debbie Allen's sister, Phylicia Allen, who later became Phylicia Rashad. And so he fired Phylicia, who spelled her name Fylisha. And we had to find somebody to do it. And Alan went into his Rolodex to find people, and he came on Altaviz DAVIS SAMMY DAVIS WIFE and called her, and she said, yeah, I'll do it. So that's how she wound up in the picture.

Tony Maietta:
That was. I mean, there's so much to talk about with Alan Carr. And, you know, you appear in Jeffrey Schwartz's fabulous documentary, the Fabulous Alan Carr. But wasn't that? That's what Alan did. I mean, he did the same thing in Greece. He brought out his old iconic friends, like Eve Arden in Greece and like Sid Caesar. And in this, he brought in June Havoc and Barbara Rush and Alcal Davis. At least he was giving him work.

Bruce Vilanch:
They were all guests at his table. There was no question about that in the Rolodex. Yeah. I mean, part of the thing in Greece, I have to give him credit, was Eve Arden and Sid Caesar and Dodie Goodman were all TV icons of the 50s and 60s. You may be too young to remember, but eve was our Ms. Brooks, which was a huge sitcom. And Dodie Goodman was on the Jack Parr Show. She was a regular on the original Tonight Show.

Bruce Vilanch:
And Sid Caesar, of course, was a TV God. I mean, they made movies about him and his show. So that was to make it authentically feel authentically 50s, which was what Grease was.

Brad Shreve:
As I was listening you talk about the different people that were discussed as being in Can't Stop the Music, the one that astonished me most. And I have to ask you, did he really think that Henry Fonda would do this film

Bruce Vilanch:
in his madness? Yes, he was friendly. He wasn't so friendly with him as he was friendly with Shirley Fonda, who was a flight attendant that Henry Fonda married later in life. And she became a great Hollywood wife. And so those were. That was Alan's Meet the Hollywood Wives, you know, the wives of the moguls. And Jackie Collins, who wrote about them, the Hollywood Wives, she wrote all of that stuff. And so that was his go to circuit. And so Shirley Fonda was always around and he assumed she would talk him into it, but he was, you know, he was having none of it, none of it at all.

Tony Maietta:
It's incredible.

Bruce Vilanch:
That's how it wound up being Russell Knipe.

Brad Shreve:
Well, I'm sitting there trying to picture him in this film, and it was impossible.

Bruce Vilanch:
I know. It was just that we were writing it, you know. He said, it's a Henry Fonda part. And I said to Bronte that this will never happen.

Tony Maietta:
It reminds me of when Jacqueline Suzanne, Wanting to kill, cast Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra in Valley of the Dolls. And they're just kind of like, come again? What? Excuse us.

Bruce Vilanch:
How about when Alan then had the rights to La Cage aux Faux and before he turned it into a musical, he wanted to do it as a movie. And his dream team was Frank Sinatra and Dudley Moore. And Frank Sinatra said, I love Dudley Moore. He's really funny. He sent me the script and he got the script. And he said, what is this a joke? You want me to place in Rosario at a drag bar?

Tony Maietta:
Not. Not that enticing. Not that enticing.

Bruce Vilanch:
No, no, no, not his meat. We should call Ocean's Nine and a Half and it'll be, you know, much better.

Tony Maietta:
So let me tell the people who is who did make the cut, because this is quite a cast, as we already said. Valerie Perrine plays Samantha Sam Simpson. We have the adorable Steve Guttenberg, as Bruce said, as Jack.

Brad Shreve:
And I could have watched that opening over and over again.

Tony Maietta:
Oh, I love. That's the reason to watch the movie is to watch Steve Gutenberg roller skating down 6th Avenue with his portable radio

Brad Shreve:
and the most beautiful smile you ever saw.

Bruce Vilanch:
And the dungaree short shorts. Yes.

Tony Maietta:
Oh, well, I didn't notice. Now, the next person I'm going to say, we just have to have a disclaimer. It is indeed now Caitlyn Jenner. But at this time, he was Bruce Jenner. So I think if we can all agree, we're going to refer to him as Bruce.

Bruce Vilanch:
I had a very, very serious editor at Chicago Review Press who said, you can't deadname Caitlyn Jenner. And I said, well, two things. First of all, he was Bruce Jenner then. It's 40 years ago. He was the most famous person in the world after the Olympics, and he was on every Wheaties box. And to have it referred to as Caitlin all the way through would be absurd. And secondly, I'm a gay icon. Let them come for me.

Bruce Vilanch:
What the hell do I

Tony Maietta:
want to see your T shirt?

Bruce Vilanch:
I will call Caitlin and ask. And I call Caitlyn. And Caitlyn said, look, what's wrong with this guy? I was Bruce Jenner then. That's, you know, Bruce Jenner. That didn't go away.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah, I'm glad you guys brought it up. Before we were starting this, I was like, okay, how do we touch this? So I'm glad it came up.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, no, I think it's important to point it out just to get out of there. So, yes, Bruce Jenner is Ron White and Paul Sands, who I was like, oh, so cute. So adorable.

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah.

Tony Maietta:
What happened to Paul Sands? He just.

Bruce Vilanch:
Well, he's like 85 now, and he's still. He's still cute. And he lives at the beach and he's a difficult guy. I mean, I'm very fond of him, but he is a difficult guy. And he had a couple of runs at TV series and they didn't work and it was very disheartening. I think. And I think he just retreated, you know, into writing and other things.

Tony Maietta:
Paul Sands and Friends and Lovers, I remember from the early 70s he had his name in the title.

Bruce Vilanch:
I know that was part of the deal and it just, it just didn't take.

Tony Maietta:
But my two favorite people in this movie, and I think probably everybody's are two people that you created these characters. And of course it is the incomparable Tammy Grimes.

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah.

Tony Maietta:
And the wonderful, wonderful and friend of this podcast. We have talked about her, Marilyn Sokol as her assistant, as Lulu. We talked about Marilyn in Foul Play and those characters. That was some of your writing, right? That was left over from your time.

Bruce Vilanch:
That was some of my writing. I suggested it, that there be that element of it because I thought it would fit right in if our star Valerie had an agent. Because Valerie was a big deal model. That character was a big deal model. And if she had a big deal model's agent, that I don't think Nuclear Winter, what we call Anna Wintour, was around. But it was largely based on Kay Thompson, who wrote Eloise and was Liza's mentor and a few other people who were kind of like very grand, who fit that. But it's very close to Kay Thompson in Funny Face where she is playing the vlog editor who runs the magazine. And Marilyn would be her long suffering assistant, which was going to be played by Pat Ast, who was a phenomenal creature who she worked for Halston and she was in Halston's front office and she looked like an exploding tomato.

Bruce Vilanch:
Large woman with big frizzy red hair. And she was from Brooklyn and so she talked like from Brooklyn, but Brooklyn with a lot of airs and she was hilarious and everybody. She was a big fixture of parts. She's in a bunch of movies in small parts and one big part, a picture called Reform School Girls where she is the matron of the jail. You know, so good, so bad. So what that is. Anyway, but Alan just. She was high maintenance.

Bruce Vilanch:
And Alan just said, no, we need somebody who's actually an actress who could actually play opposite Tammy Grimes, who we, who we really wanted.

Tony Maietta:
Did you push for Tammy Grimes was Tammy Grimes?

Bruce Vilanch:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I said, because who has that kind of style? And Tammy was like, you know, absolutely perfect for that. And she gets, to me, the biggest laughs in the movie. And Marilyn was wonderful as a psychic and you know, she was playing the man hungry assistant, the Annie Davis part actually. But, you know, she was more contemporary and more very, you know, from that, that school of that kind of that kind of girl, of that period.

Tony Maietta:
My favorite scene, I think, in the entire film. Well, I have a couple. But other than ymca, but the scene where Tammy Grimes gets her fingernail caught in the dial. Did you write that scene? It's.

Bruce Vilanch:
Yes, actually. It was. Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Maietta:
She's so great. You wonder why didn't. I mean, I know she was big on Broadway. The unsinkable Molly Brown. I mean, she was a legendary Broadway actress. It makes you go, why didn't she do more films? You know, we. Oh, cause she's just so beautiful. Yeah.

Bruce Vilanch:
I don't know. I mean, she had a legendarily bad TV show. I mean, Paul's sand show ran longer than hers. Hers may have been canceled after the second episode. I don't remember. There was a famous show that was canceled during the. During the first broadcast, but I don't think it was that. But she and Debbie Reynolds tied for having the quickest cancellation of a star.

Bruce Vilanch:
A star driven show.

Tony Maietta:
Both Molly Browns. Both Molly Browns, by the way.

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah, they were both. Exactly. They both played Molly Brown. What a very good point. I don't know. You know, it's. A lot of times it's. They think somebody's just too unusual and it's just not going to happen or the right vehicle doesn't come along.

Bruce Vilanch:
And she was happy in the theater, you know, and she had a daughter she was raising. Amanda Plumber, terrific actress. And so she stayed in her theater lane, where she was revered.

Tony Maietta:
Oh, perfectly respectable. Yeah, yeah.

Brad Shreve:
I want to jump a little to the premiere and I don't know if that's where you watched it with Bet.

Bruce Vilanch:
No, we went to the movies. Bette and I went to the movies on Hollywood Boulevard, what is now the El Capitan. That was called the Hollywood Paramount. And it opened. And it opened the same weekend as a bunch of other things.

Brad Shreve:
And of course she loved it.

Bruce Vilanch:
Oh, at the end of it, she turned to me, said, I'll stop the music. We just couldn't believe it. I mean, there were some other people who were there who were with us actually, and they got a kick out of. There was. Alan had cast some Village, local Village People. There's. We called her the bread lady, but she's got a big loaf of French bread and she's hitting people with it.

Tony Maietta:
Yes, yes, yes.

Bruce Vilanch:
There were a bunch of Village People, literal Village People who staggered in and out of scenes that were shot in the Village when they were in New York starting the picture. And of course, the people we were with all recognized all of them. And would go, oh, my God, look, it's Vito. You know, that kind of.

Tony Maietta:
That's one of the things I love about that, about the film is you get. I love movies that give me. Or a time capsule that give me a real taste of an era. And since New York does not resemble that at all anymore, it's so exciting to go and see the village in the 70s when it was. I mean, with all the kooks and wonderfully excited eccentric people. And that's such a wonderful thing about this film is it gives us all those eccentrics, most of them, who were in this movie. But the most eccentric, I think we got to talk about in the. What the hell happened here is the director of this opus.

Brad Shreve:
Yes, you beat me to the punch.

Tony Maietta:
Ida Morgenstern herself, Nancy Walker.

Bruce Vilanch:
Nancy Walker.

Tony Maietta:
How the hell did that come about, Bruce?

Bruce Vilanch:
Well, Nancy was Alan's client. Alan was a manager. He had Ann Margaret. That was how basically he had made it in Hollywood. But then he had all these other clients who signed him, some of them not for terribly long. Petula Clark was with him for a while, and Marvin Hamlisch. And Nancy was with him for a bit. And she wanted to direct because she had no trouble getting parts, you know, as Nancy Walker.

Bruce Vilanch:
And she certainly was making money as the bounty picker upper commercial. But she wanted to direct. And so he. He got her a pilot to direct. It was. It was actually. It was called. I think it was called Madame Sheriff.

Bruce Vilanch:
And it was Conchata Farrell, who was character actress, who biggest thing was on Two and a Half Men.

Tony Maietta:
Two and a Half Men, yeah. Yeah.

Bruce Vilanch:
But that was much later. But she was off Broadway in the Hotel Baltimore and had had a following from that. And the pilot didn't work. And Alan got her the directing job on that pilot, and that pilot didn't work. But the producers then turned it into she's the Sheriff with Suzanne Summers, which had a syndicated run for a while. Meanwhile, Cast out the Music happened. And so he just. And nobody wanted to direct it.

Bruce Vilanch:
I mean, nobody who would deal with Alan, I think, wanted to direct.

Tony Maietta:
Scorsese said no. Did he?

Bruce Vilanch:
Yes.

Tony Maietta:
New York, New York earned him.

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah. Hard times. Not only did he say no, but he sent guys to tell Alan, you know, Nunzio, and Fabrizio came over and said, marty's not doing the picture. I mean, it was one of the beginning of a lot of. Well, Alan happened 10 years later with the Oscars. People who he thought were his best friends or suddenly didn't. Were not interested in working with him. And so I think he decided this was a brilliant idea for Nancy, and, I don't know, nobody could talk him out of it.

Bruce Vilanch:
And she said yes, like, so often. This is. Somebody said yes, because I think she viewed it as a challenge. And also, it was a musical. And she had done so many musicals at Metro as a sidekick and of course, on Broadway. So she figured she'd be comfortable doing this, I'm sure.

Tony Maietta:
Well, I know that she directed some episodes of Mary Tyler Moore. She directed. I mean, she was directing television. But to take on a major motion picture musical is just. It's astounding.

Bruce Vilanch:
I know it was quite. At the time, I think it was a raised eyebrow.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Bruce Vilanch:
But she had done that directing stuff. You know, a lot of that directing stuff is when a show is a TV series, is a hit, and everybody's money goes up every year and the overhead gets higher and higher. And so one of the things that they do is when there are actors who are on the show who want to direct, they let them direct it because they know. They know the show and they've seen other directors do it, and so that they pay them a director's salary instead of raising their fee as an actor. And that. Although I don't know if that was the case with Nancy, I suspect it was. And that happens a lot. It just came up in the new GGA contract, the Directors Guild, where they put a cap on.

Bruce Vilanch:
How many cast members of a show can direct a show in a season?

Tony Maietta:
Really?

Bruce Vilanch:
That's interesting, because they were putting directors out of work.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, yeah.

Bruce Vilanch:
That became a negotiating point in the. In the recent contract negotiations. Go. No, I just.

Tony Maietta:
I think of Nancy Walker and her babushka directing the Village People. It's just. It's mind. It's mind boggling.

Bruce Vilanch:
I know.

Brad Shreve:
It's something else that I was sitting there trying to picture as I'm watching the film, and it was next to impossible. It was as much of an acid trip as a. The film itself.

Bruce Vilanch:
Well, what I remember just. I was on the set briefly, was I thought the impossible dilemma of this woman who knew everything about comedy, trying to teach guys who didn't even sing live on the albums or in personal appearances a lot of times, and who had. Teaching them how to be funny. Yeah, I mean, it was. I thought she must have gone home and banged her head against the sink all night because.

Tony Maietta:
Well, you. Now, this is true. I think she did not direct the YMCA number, probably the most iconic.

Bruce Vilanch:
That's the best part of the film. The best part of the film. After they'd shot the movie, they came back and they brought in a video team that did MTV work and they shot the video at Metro and the Esther Williams swimming pool.

Tony Maietta:
Amazing.

Bruce Vilanch:
And it's really good because it's like an MTV video.

Tony Maietta:
It is. And it's such a call out to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to. Is there anybody here for love? And for people who don't know, who haven't watched can't stop the Music, please watch it. The entire scene takes place in the YMCA and there are semi clad and totally unclad men just roaming. It's. It's. It's so gay. I can't believe it got through.

Tony Maietta:
It just amazes me. This movie is so gay and yet nobody's talking about it. And that's what's so fascinating to me.

Bruce Vilanch:
That was the Village People. I mean, do you think people who were doing YMCA in the stands of a football game actually know about the Village People and actually know the story of the Village People? No.

Tony Maietta:
And how many weddings did they play ymca?

Bruce Vilanch:
The music became iconic and they removed all of the gayness from it. It's hard to remove it from Macho man, but it's just funny. It's just a funny parody of Macho Man.

Brad Shreve:
I live in a plaza in a little town in Spain. We have 30,000 people here. And last week there was a party on the plaza. All Spaniards. None of them speak English. They were all 60 and older and they were doing YMCA.

Tony Maietta:
The whole thing, it's like the Macarena, you know?

Brad Shreve:
Yes. Doesn't matter where you go.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, but with this thing there was another. So I think it's important to point out in New York City at this time filming at the same time, there was another very notorious. It's so funny. The same year you have these two notorious air quotes, gay films. You have can't stop the music shooting. And you have none other than cruising shooting the same time. And didn't people didn't. Weren't there some protests that the protesters got mixed up.

Tony Maietta:
Bruce. About where they were protesting and where

Bruce Vilanch:
they weren't it probably. I don't remember that. I wasn't in New York.

Tony Maietta:
I think I read somewhere that they were protest. That the protest. Because there were protests about cruising.

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah, the cruising protests I know about. Yeah.

Tony Maietta:
And so they got mixed up one time and they were protesting outside of the set for you can't stop the Music. And Nancy Walker came out and said, boys, you got the wrong movie. It's down the street.

Bruce Vilanch:
Probably happened. I can't debunk it.

Tony Maietta:
There's a scene in the film where Valerie Perine's character does a milk commercial like I've never ever seen before. Is this a holdover from when Olivia Newton John was going to.

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah, the idea was the song is the milkshake, but it's. Yeah, it's on the album. Yeah, that was. The idea was she was so pure that she could sell milk, that she was a spokesperson for milk and that she brought in the Village People to work with her on this commercial, who were the opposite of all of that. And that stayed in. I think it stayed in the movie because the idea was still the same. Well, she wasn't portrayed as. I mean, she didn't come.

Bruce Vilanch:
Valerie didn't come to the picture with Olivia's good girl qualifications and all that. So it didn't quite have the potency that it would have had if it had been Olivia. But I mean, the idea was still kind of like, we're gonna sell milk. We're so wholesome, we're gonna sell milk. It's silly.

Tony Maietta:
It's just. It's. It's mind boggling. It's mind boggling.

Bruce Vilanch:
And. And Jacques wrote a song, Milkshake.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. No, it's a great song. I love, you know, love the songs. I mean, besides the iconic songs that the Village People did, you know, there's some wonderful songs in here. I love the one that at night. Magic night. Magic night. It's a.

Tony Maietta:
It's a wonderful sequence, too.

Bruce Vilanch:
Music.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, it's fantastic.

Bruce Vilanch:
It's fantastic. Yeah, there's some good stuff there. I mean, Jacques and I wrote a Village People album after this, after the debris had been cleared away, I started writing lyrics for a show in Paris at the Crazy Horse that Jacques wrote for every year. And then he said, we wrote for Eartha Kitt and we had a big disco hit with her and we did an album for Eartha. And then he brought me on the Village People album, where we had a notorious song called Sex over the phone, which was a big deal, then banned by the BBC, which of course it went to number one on Capital One and Radio Caroline, the alternative radio in Britain. And so we had a big success with that album. Every place but the U.S. of course, because they never would in the disco revolution.

Bruce Vilanch:
They burned all the Village People records.

Tony Maietta:
Well, I was going to say that's one of the less fortuitous things, among the many less fortuitous things that happened to this film was while it was in production, disco was murdered.

Brad Shreve:
Basically.

Bruce Vilanch:
We were, after we Were behind the curve.

Tony Maietta:
Yes, exactly.

Bruce Vilanch:
In Australia, we were in the sweet spot. Australia. Disco was huge, and the picture was a gigantic hit and didn't make its money back in Australia, but. But it was. Everyplace else was okay. But in the States, there was an active disco death going on.

Brad Shreve:
So could you feel that that was happening? Airplane came out in 1980, and there's a scene in Airplane where it hits the antenna and they're saying, disco forever. And I remember the audience standing up and applauding when that happened. And that was the same year as this film. Was there the feeling that this was happening, that disco was dying?

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah, but nobody was admitting it. Yeah, they were in too deep.

Brad Shreve:
Too deep, yeah.

Tony Maietta:
Wasn't Alan's original idea for the title of this Disco Land where the Music Never Ends?

Bruce Vilanch:
That is correct.

Tony Maietta:
Thank God he didn't, you know, they didn't go out with that title. So. Yeah, there was the big premieres here in Hollywood. There was a premiere, I think it was at Schwab's. And he had a red. Did he have a red carpet going down Sunset Boulevard or something like that?

Bruce Vilanch:
No, I don't think he had that. But he did have the billboard. There was. Yes, the billboard, The Netflix billboard that was built for that because it had a platform. And so they could get everybody up on the red carpet on the platform and do all the media up there. And then since it subsequently had a platform, it was. Somebody did a. I forget who.

Bruce Vilanch:
Some phone company did a stunt where it was like Survivor. They had a bunch of people up on the platform living on the platform. And the one who could stay the longest was the one who won the big money. I forget what it was, but that put the whole thing, that billboard, on the map. And now Netflix has it. I don't think the platform's there, but the billboard's still there. But I think the theater. It was either.

Bruce Vilanch:
I think it was at the Chinese or the Paramount or one of those big theaters where they actually started. I did not go, but I think I was away, actually.

Tony Maietta:
Anyway, yeah, I think the New York one was at Lincoln center. In the fountain. In the fountain, of course.

Bruce Vilanch:
Good, then.

Tony Maietta:
Well, I'd love to talk about the legacy and the stats, but, Brad, was there something you wanted to mention about the film or the podcast?

Brad Shreve:
Absolutely. As Tony said, please watch this film if you haven't seen it. It's delightful in its own way. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please rate and review right there on the app that you're listening to. There should be a button where you can just do that as well as follow if you're not doing so. And most importantly, if you enjoy guests like Bruce or the things we talk about, tell a friend and to just emphasize, once again, rate and review and let people know that you enjoy the show so that others will say, I want to check it out, too.

Tony Maietta:
Yes, absolutely. Do we know how much movie. How much movie? How much money? You can't stop the money. How much money did the film. Do you have those. Those figures, Brad?

Brad Shreve:
Oh, I did.

Tony Maietta:
Well, I know it cost. Didn't it cost something like $20 million?

Brad Shreve:
And it made 8 million. It made 8 million, I believe.

Tony Maietta:
I think it made less. I think it made 2 million. Isn't it? Doesn't that sound about right to you, Bruce? About two.

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah, it does. But of course, that's. Those are $1980, right?

Tony Maietta:
Exactly, exactly. Exactly. And needless to say, the reviews weren't great. In fact. Now, is this true? I've read this, I've heard this, and I haven't it alongside Xanadu was the reason that the Golden Raspberry Awards were created. Did you ever hear that?

Bruce Vilanch:
No, I didn't realize that, but I certainly know about them. But I wouldn't be surprised.

Tony Maietta:
It won the first one, I believe, so that I always heard that. Which I thought. I was wondering if that was a. If that was an urban myth or if that was accurate.

Brad Shreve:
Let's say it's accurate. That's more fun.

Bruce Vilanch:
I think that's true.

Tony Maietta:
That's true. So, yes, I love them. I love, you know, a fictionalized version of the formation of the Village People. How could you not love this movie?

Bruce Vilanch:
Xanadu bombed also. So Xanadon, which later became the title of a musical, that was a huge. And that one had Olivia.

Tony Maietta:
Yes, exactly. She turned down this one to do that one. So, you know. You know, Bruce, this has been such a delight having you here, talking about your book, talking about these movies, talking about the Brady Bunch, Variety Hour. What is going on for you now? What's. Because you're always working. You're always working on something. Is there anything that you care to share that's happening that.

Bruce Vilanch:
Well, I actually have written a play about the Oscars, about all the Oscar shows I did, but I kind of concentrated on one, and that was, of course, the one in the book, the first Oscar show I did, which Alan produced and of course, changed his life. And I always thought that would be a good subject for a play. And so I wrote it with Nathan Lane in Mind, as Alan and Nathan said, I love this, but I'm doing Death of a Salesman. Well, I can't fight that. So he said, you should play it. And I said, that's what I always have wanted to hear. We're doing a couple of readings of it. We're going to do a fundraising reading in August in LA for Celebration Theater, which is a gay theater company.

Tony Maietta:
Oh, great.

Bruce Vilanch:
And I will play it, and hopefully I will round up some interesting people to play all the other parts. And it's a funny play, but it's also sad because it's talks about what happened when you have a big disaster and it's not funny.

Tony Maietta:
So to tell the people, the Oscar ceremony you're talking about is the notorious 1989 ceremony with snow White. But you did not write that musical number.

Bruce Vilanch:
No, I didn't write that. That was actually Steve Silver. I'm in San Francisco right now, and Steve Silver, Beach Blanket Babylon. Alan was pixelated by it. And he brought down Snow White, who is the star of the show, and created a number about Snow White returning to Hollywood after all these years and encountering new Hollywood and old Hollywood. And Steve Silver came down and they put it together. And he borrowed from his own show and came up with some stuff for his new show. And so I was not involved with any of that, except to say, I think me might change this.

Bruce Vilanch:
Maybe you could change that. Otherwise, I did Hildy Parks and I wrote the rest of the show and

Tony Maietta:
some wonderful stuff, too. I love the Carrie Fisher and Martin Short in the same dress is.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah.

Tony Maietta:
You know, what was Martin. Martin says, carrie, you have thousands of dresses. I have four or something like. And Lucy and Bob Hope that wonderful. You know, Lucy's last appearance. There's our Lucy moment. Bradley. Just wonderful, wonderful.

Tony Maietta:
I think I want to mention to people, too, that there is also a fabulous documentary about Bruce called Get Bruce. Isn't that right? When did that happen, Bruce?

Bruce Vilanch:
1999. Way back. Way back.

Tony Maietta:
Wow.

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah. A friend of mine named Andy Keene, who ran a trailer house, which is where they make coming attraction trailers called Kaleidoscope, and he wanted to do a documentary. He said, I think somebody should do a documentary about your life. And I said, I do, too, but Fellini just died, so I know who's up to it. And he said, well, I'll take a shot. And so I said, well, if you can get all these people that I work with to talk about their deconstruction, go for it. And he did. He talked Bette Midler, Billy Crystal Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams into doing big chunks of it and then a whole bunch of other people.

Bruce Vilanch:
And we shot backstage and things. And Robin and my mother are the stars of the movies. My mother was fabulous in this movie.

Tony Maietta:
I was gonna say your mother's the highlight of that show.

Bruce Vilanch:
She was the greatest. She lived to 95. And her joke was, the first 90 years are easy. The second 90 are a bitch.

Tony Maietta:
Well, they need to do a second part of that. They can call it Get Bruce Again. Give Bruce Again.

Bruce Vilanch:
I said we're working on. It's called Had Bruce. With a much larger.

Tony Maietta:
There's a reason for those Emmys, Bruce. There's a reason for those Emmys, Brad. Is there anything else you'd like to say to our wonderful host before we bid him farewell and on his way so he can enjoy his life, other

Brad Shreve:
than a big, huge thank you? I mean, I could go on, this could be a miniseries, but I used to interview authors every week. And I gotta say, I was not one to always praise the. The book. So I don't want people think I'm doing this just to be nice. One of my favorite things about your book is you have so many asides that I think if it was anyone else, it would have been annoying. And each one was absolutely fascinating.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Bruce Vilanch:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I had a lot of footnotes in it which are not on the audio. They may be now, I'm not sure, but I was referring to things that happened years ago and people who were popular years ago. And I thought a younger audience needed to have a little. If they weren't sure who Jayne Mansfield was. You know, some of those names. Of course, Mariska Hargitay, her daughter has brought her back into the limelight with a documentary.

Bruce Vilanch:
But I thought I had to. I owed it to this audience to explain things. So there are a lot of asides. Yes.

Brad Shreve:
Okay. Well, thank you once again. And listeners, read the book.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. What I love about the book, Bruce, as a film historian, I love the fact that you give dates. I love that when you reference something, you give the date it happened. And that is just. It just delights my little film historian heart when you do that. Thank you.

Bruce Vilanch:
It seems crucial in this case, because

Tony Maietta:
it does, but it's just. It's respectful.

Bruce Vilanch:
They don't remember the 70s actually happened on exactly this date.

Tony Maietta:
Go out and get the book. Download it. Listen to the Audible. The book is called It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time. Now available in paperback. Also, Get Bruce is available on all streaming platforms. On YouTube, on Prime, on everything. So watch it.

Tony Maietta:
Bruce, it has been such a joy to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for doing this. You are. You're a real dollar. As I say, New Jersey.

Bruce Vilanch:
I'll take it.

Tony Maietta:
Brad is. I don't have anything else to say. So I guess there's only one thing left to say. But especially now, I don't want to say it. So let's not say goodbye. Let's say au revoir.

Bruce Vilanch:
There you go.

Brad Shreve:
Now, for a change, I don't want to say it, but I'm going to do it anyway. Let's say goodbye.

Tony Maietta:
Goodbye, everybody.

Bruce Vilanch:
Bye.

Tony Maietta:
Thank you, Bruce.