FOFA #283 – The Man Who Put the F.U. in Funny

We are really excited to see Bruce Vilanch at Milwaukee Pridefest this weekend. We had such a good time talking to him when he was coming to Chicago to host IML in April of 2006. Please enjoy this classic interview with the very funny Bruce Vilanch and please join us this weekend in Milwaukee on the Summerfest grounds.

Bruce Vilanch put the F. U. in funny for a lot of folks. And boy does he on today’s podcast! He’s on today’s show to talk about why he’s coming to Chicago, why the Academy Awards blackballed Brokeback Mountain and where he keeps his enormous collection of t-shirts.

Although he started out wanting to be an actor, Bruce turned to journalism and writing for a career which really took off when comedy legend Bette Midler hired him to “punch up” her act. Hollywood soon called and he moved to Los Angeles to write for television shows like Cher’s post-Sonny TV variety hour titled “Cher” as well as provide material for comedians like Richard Pryor, Lily Tomlin and Joan Rivers.

And of course, he is the man behind most of your favorite jokes that appear on the Oscars and the Tony award ceremonies. We think that next year he should hold his jokes hostage and demand that a gay man host the ceremonies- it’s the least we can do after the tragedy of having “Brokeback Mountain” lose to “Crash.”

When Harvey Fierstein left the the popular Broadway hit “Hairspray,” Bruce returned to his acting roots to take over the part of Edna Turnblad.

Listen as we chat with Bruce about John Travolta taking on the same role for the film adaptation of the Broadway musical adaptation of the original film.

Buy Bruce Vilanch’s 1999 definitive documentary “Get Bruce!” on DVD on Amazon.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 2:31 am and is filed under Classic Podcasts, Comedians, Interviews, Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.