Get Used to It: Ep. 58, "Voices of Our Lives: Bruce Vilanch"

this [Music] hi i'm sheila cule welcome to get used to it it's our first show of the new year or if you're watching the reruns i have no idea what month it is but we're really glad you're here and i have a great guest today and the reason that i seem so giddy is because he's been talking before i'm actually talking to you it's bruce valanche who's a emmy award-winning writer you've uh probably don't even know all the wonderful funny stuff that he's written for bette midler and a number of other people as well as all the academy awards shows that we've seen well recently rights for the advocate now writes for hollywood squares and occasionally even appears in one of those squares clearly the funniest person on the show and the openly secret square the openly secret square and the and the bonus square sometime one would be if i know how to work it welcome so glad you're here it's a pleasure party like it's 1999. yeah 1999. and you know in just a year a whole new millennium i'm scared at the end of the show i'll ask you about your plans for the next thousand years because i have to be reset personally for them for 2 000. i have my own y2k problem i'm going back to the i think we all 1900s but seriously though aren't people i know a number of people who are planning to see if they can completely rid their lives of any kind of embedded time chip as though they know you know what it is um but i don't know if we well i have a 34 year old car so nothing in it is you know depends on anything but me right you know the windows roll up like this et cetera but enough about me bro i have something 34 years old but it depends on me a lot well this show is about you about me yeah it's about you the world's funniest man well it's certainly in the top five i think really that's yeah gee thanks so where did robin you've been knocked down a pig where did this funny life start patters new jersey which is a lab riot it's a it's a it has riots and it's a laugh riot actually i was born in new york and i was taken to patterson new jersey at a tender age which was the first of many affronts against my sensibility i was forced to leave new york and go to jersey very early but i grew up in jersey and i actually i i had a good time but i was in new york a lot and i was acting a lot i was a child actor i was a child model i was a charming chub for lane bryant what kind of acting is a child i well actually i was um i always played older men because i i had a very deep voice and i was big and so i would play like joel gray's father in in the stock production of cumberland i was half his age at the time i am no longer half his age just so you for joel's sake i have to point this out good i did a lot of that kind of acting i did every stubby k part all the musical comedy you know so now you're rocking the boat that kind of stuff now how did you get into this i was uh this is a show business family no no no my mother was kind of stage struck my father was a doctor but uh i from a very early age my mother said i would learn to read by reading the movie ads in in the paper i would the first words were like i could read were mayo we think it was virginia mayo could have been mayonnaise we're not sure it might have been but i would read the movie ads and i was always sort of struck by this it's almost an argument for for some previous life you know or i don't know i it was i was a holdover from i was mrs patrick campbell i was a great start at london stage i think you were who could very well be she had as much facial hair as i did so it's entirely possible no one can sue during this show you understand for anything said this is not the management responsible here lays on me now did you have a good time you know a number of people have asked me because i obviously also acted as a kid and they always think that you were forced into it by your parents and that it was just drudgery and people say oh well you never got a childhood but for me it was just the opposite uh i loved it i mean it was what i wanted to do i didn't want to have a childhood i didn't want to do anything as mundane as all of that i mean i you know i was rooting for auntie mame from the get-go i said all right give that kid something different i never was interested in any of those of the the the regular activities but that's partially because i wasn't an athletic kid and uh you know it was so important it probably still is but it was so important in those days and uh and i liked all those exotic things so i was much more at home in the theater and working and around adults than i was around kids my own age so does any of that relate i mean some of those sort of code words as well about uh not sort of liking what other kids liked and certainly we all felt that we were very different because we were exotic we were actors we were in the theater or whatever but how much of that related to being gay i mean you probably knew you were gay at an early age i did i i was always attracted to boys and um but but it never occurred to me that they went hand in hand because i had also had friends who were not athletic either but they weren't attracted to boys and they let me know it but i i never thought that the two of them were this where were the same although in later life i think maybe there's some kind of a link i since being the attraction to other other men was always natural and obvious and it was never a startling revelation to me um i i couldn't really correlate the two of them but i suppose that that some psychologists really could if they if they bothered i tend to believe in a gene i tend to believe it's it's it's a thing that happens it's genetic and we don't have a control all the other stuff that happens is other stuff that happens but you were you had told me before that you it wasn't so clear that you were going to be just gay or wanted to be or it was clear to me what i what i desired i also i was a classic bisexual i probably still am i mean i'm attracted to women in fact you're looking pretty good right now thank you very much it's the dead of winter so how do you happen in hibernation true uh i always wanted to have everything i wanted to have a wife i wanted to have kids i wanted to have a house in the suburbs to pick a fence you know that i really wanted to have i wanted to have beavers life i was even going to have beaver i was happy that way but i finally came to the realization that i really did i really was attracted to men and i i felt that any woman who i was going to invest all that energy and trust in and who was going to invest all her energy and trust in me deserved better than a husband who was going to be running out to the greyhound station every night you know looking for a hey sailor and i so i shut that part of my life off i just said this is not going to be i'm not going to be able to live that way honestly and so i chose to live to the the gay way which was which was the honest way for me and a lot of you know a lot of gay men are repelled by women and have a real problem with women and i i adore them i mean i embrace them and my closest business and personal relationships are with women so i mean my manager is a woman my agent's a woman and uh and bette midler is my longest standing business relationship it's been almost 30 years and she's several women [Laughter] so you went off to college and but how did you transition from acting to writing because i think it's for writing that we know you've been yeah i know i was uh i was acting and i went i went to college because i started writing about showbiz when i was in high school and i was always acting at the same time and i went to college and i uh i thought as i was doing the acting i thought well when i got out of here because i was in the five-year stay out of vietnam program that everybody was in except oliver stone apparently everybody else everybody i knew was in was trying desperately not to go to vietnam and so uh i was there and and i kept exploring new things to do career-wise and i thought if i go to act if i go to new york and become an actor then i'll be sitting in rooms with like paul sorvino and jimmy coco and people who you know are vaguely rotund and jolly like me and i'll be really competing with them and i thought why do that i was writing and i was selling pieces to newspapers and magazines i was getting work and i was getting asked by the movie studios to come out and hear and be a consultant because in those days the student revolution had taken over and there was they had first identified the youth market as a really viable market not just pictures for kids but they realized that a picture like easy rider was a gigantic success and there was a whole new audience out there and they didn't know how to connect with them so they would go to campuses and read the movie critics on campus and they would fly them out to hollywood and ask them for the key to the new direction and so i was being flown out and i would sit in these rooms you know with these guys and this was the 60s right so i'd sit there in my paisley shirt with my beads you know smoking dope with a bunch of guys who were in paisley shirts and beads smoking dope and they were in their 60s and i was in my 20s it was it was ludicrous i thought this is a great way to make a living but uh i said if i keep the writing up i'll be able to do this kind of stuff and it made me laugh a lot so i i continued the writing and the acting kind of shunted and when i got out of college i had a bunch of offers from newspapers i went to the chicago tribune and i was there rock critic i was the wipe up tv critic i was the movie critical engine cisco was the movie critic and and i went to i was the theater critic i was every kind of critic and um and i met bette midler shortly after i got there she uh was on broadway in fiddler on the roof she was playing cycle she was that was the oldest daughter who marries who marries muttle the tailor leonard frye and uh she was sharing a dressing room with adrian barbeau who uh was uh one of the other dancing daughters and piazza dora who was the youngest daughter in the crowd and uh three girls the with the biggest boobs on broadway you cannot get through the dressing room door these three girls this is gangway we need more room anyway so so bet on her at midnight would go and she would sing in a club and she would sing at the improv which was run by bud friedman who became her manager and bud friedman and i were friends because i would do stories on his clients who would come to chicago when they played clubs and he called me and said this girl's coming she's in fiddler on the roof don't hold that against her because yeah i thought she's a fiddler on the roof she's gonna you know it's gonna be like a peasant woman's gonna walk her so go if you like her do a story at us so i went to this club where she was appearing mr kelly's and she was opening for jackie vernon who was a deadpan comic who was very popular at the time he was he would he would never crack a smile and say uh when i was a kid i was unwanted now i am wanted in 13 states that was his act and i should be priceless anyway he had an audience of people who looked and sounded like jackie vernon i will have the halibut potatoes on the side and this was the audience so so she came out and she wore she wore a shed her hair huge red hair and an orchid in her hair and she had a blouse tied around the the waist bellafonte fashion and no bra which this was a night like 1970. so this was a women's liberation so this was considered a a feminist uh you know a political statement right in her case it was a terrorist act she came out of this thing and and tuxedo pants and spring laters which were like the old betty gravel kind of wedding and she's saying her opening number was shaboom and she came out from the kitchen boom clanking and you heard forks dropping and you know people's teeth landing in glasses they were just done and she got on stage and did the most amazing act she hardly spoke but there was such energy and and the choice of material was so eclectic and intelligent and i thought she was great and so i i went up to her afterwards and i said i'm going to write a column about you and so we sat down and i did this story and a couple of days later she called and said that column was pretty funny and i said well you know you're funny you really should talk more on stage she said you got any lines and that was the beginning a phrase that has echoed through the corridors of time i mean i'll go home today and it'll be the answering machine i'm doing nothing she's on letterman i got any lines so i started writing and and uh that was like a magnet i mean she attracted the best people and they all began branching out i mean her piano player was barry manilow and her backup singers were melissa manchester luther vandross and peter allen was her opening act and uh i mean the dresses were done by a girl who was in the did the wardrobe fiddler on the roof was became norma kamali and the guy who who threw together the choreography over in one evening was michael bennett i mean all these people went on and um so i and i went with them i would write different things for them as they as they broke apart and at the same time i was writing for the paper and i was writing for other people who i met like lily tomlin and flip wilson and richard pryor they were coming through town and i wrote for them finally bett's dresser had an act her bro brett stretcher's brother had an act called manhattan transfer and we went to see them after much nudging from the dresser and they were incredible this bet had a dresser who was we bailed her out once in las vegas because she got off the plane she had three joints braided in her hair and was wearing six or seven dresses one on top of the other and we went down to the police they didn't know who she was but they just arrested her on site and when we got to bail her out i said why are you wearing all these dresses she says bruce no matter how much drag you pile on you can't hide talent so she put together this act manhattan transfer and we went to see them and loved them and we put their show together and bet got her manager down there in her record company and pretty soon they had an act and they uh they got a television series and i came out here to work at your alma mater cbs in 1975 on this manhattan transfer summer series which no one remembers happened even the transfer has quietly forgotten about it i have tapes however and in those days you had acts still that were doing shows on television there were varieties there was a lot of variety there was there was a big variety show every night on tv in those days i mean ed sullivan cal brunette dean martin mac davis they were all so i stayed and i started writing those shows and not knowing that i was bringing the death knell i mean with donnie and marie oh i don't think it was just you guys it wasn't me it was cable cable killed variety right yeah i don't blame it you think about they think of the forum and also people there aren't those kind of in and out of those things i mean we did comedy and then there was nothing until all in the family you know for that's true for 10 years and there was all this serious 90-minute stuff and i i do think that things sort of uh are popular and then they're not even in terms of the genre people don't really know this they're trying to revive that that form of variety now but it's hard because there aren't the performers well and even if there were you know now instead of going watching people spinning plates yeah you know we're going to the cirque du soleil there's just a kind of a different specificated plate spinning yeah very true very it's true so you um you have an extraordinary talent for writing in i guess what people would say are other people's voices but in a sense you're really sort of creating their voices for them i mean how do you decide what you'll say for bet to say or you know someone different flip wilson of course it wasn't that different always but uh it truly actually wasn't um uh with flip actually a lot of it was geraldine which was uh right which was which was wonderful i mean it was a unique character because it was it was a sassy black woman and there really hadn't been one at that point i mean uh uh i mean i can't think of anybody except you know sapphire stevens i guess but she wasn't sassy i mean she just was like alice crandon she just kept putting him down um it's about developing a persona once someone has a persona then you can write to that i mean the the mism character that bet has which is kind of bawdy and kind of uh kind of tacky and and out on the edge and outrageous and and her her view of the world is uh is from the outside looking in and saying it's just ridiculous with all these these rich and beautiful and famous people are doing and in fact i am the most beautiful of them all i'm i just overcome with my own my own fabulousness and so this allows me to to rule on them that allows me to make judgments on them it's a similar energy that miss piggy has and that uh which i've also written i've also written weyland flowers and madam years ago um it's actually a favorite energy of mine a way to comment on on the rest of the world maybe it's the true bruce it could be it could be coming out but it's also an extension of one facet of best personality it's it's who she is when the light goes on i mean it's that very big compensating for the fact that in in reality she's very bookish and and can be quite shy and and unpre-possessing nobody realizes that but because they only see her in work situations but she can be quite a quiet person well it's kind of extraordinary i think because you i've always thought that you and and really fine writers like you allow that person's character to emerge i mean it i think people feel that is the real bad and don't know right that you're sort of just writing from her from you know watching uh with lily i think people do begin to suspect that either there is no real lily because we've never you hardly ever see her out of character in any way she could be emceeing something and she does it in one of her characters um and i think it allows in a way it allows them to have such a persona to really sort of fill that out with with your words right exactly it's an important role but what about what you do for your own voice my own voice yes well it's lauren mccall before noon in his own voice yes then after the cough medicine wears off he works its way up to higher dungeons by the end of the day it's julia child by 4 o'clock for high g what is my voice uh i i don't really know what my voice is i i think it's probably an amalgam of a lot of those things i've just uh i'm somebody who's always been out and who's always been uh i guess it's it's kind of like honey and vinegar i mean i will make a sharp comment about somebody but then i'll have something nice to say about something else um i'm not quite sure it's uh i i haven't analyzed i guess it's one of those things where you think oh if i think about this too much maybe it will go away no well i know or get better artists all often think that what they do is kind of by magic because you know you better not open and look at it it really thinks then you have woody allen who can't stop looking at it i mean he was in analysis like every day of his life and then runs off with the others i don't understand why he needs analysis when he makes his movies i mean yeah exactly it's like he's asking us to do it for now i know but but it works for him but it was interesting when i said your own voice you said well i've been out yeah what's the connection there is it is is it i mean i can't say because you're gay you're funny or because you're gay you understand these women or maybe there is something there but what did you mean what i meant was it's an intrinsic part of who i am and i i think um i've i think probably because i never wanted to be false about it it kept me from doing a lot of things that i that i would otherwise have done had i've been willing to say uh i'm i'm i'm a straighter i have a double life or this is something i don't talk about i might have gone further in acting i might have said okay i'm going to i'm just going to be an actor or i'm just going to be a television personality i might not have i've gotten into this look i might have had have affected a more ordinary look but it was it was something which i wasn't prepared to to subvert i mean it was a part of who i i am and i use it all the time and it's uh you know it's part of my voice i mean somebody once said to me oh i heard that joke last night and i knew it was you because it was filthy and topical two things to be known for but i think that that was it i i it's always been a part of who i am and i've said years ago that i've always felt that the professional homosexuals should respect the rights of homosexual professionals because i've always felt that i'm a homosexual professional there are people who are professional homos and i'm not i mean you could say you could put up a good argument because i use it so much certainly on hollywood squares i i play the gay card constantly because it's funny and because nobody else will and because it still has that sense of of audaciousness to it that somebody will actually some huge guy sitting up there will will not be afraid to say well yes there are men in my life you know that that that kind of energy so um uh so i use it all the time but it's not that's not that's not just what i am i mean it's um if this isn't too long-winded in there no no i understand the distinction and that and i um i think that there are a number of people in the industry who uh we all know live in glass closets and think that if they simply don't not just play the gay card but even reveal you know that it's face down on the table um that they're going to be saved from something somehow but you said you needed to i mean in order to have one's own voice you need to kind of be clear about who you are and and and honest um so i guess we don't want to criticize people who don't feel they can come out yet but do you see that they're so much more successful or um that you know that it serves them well kind of to hide well in some cases certainly it i mean although it's the times they are changing it would be hard it would be hard for a a pers a man who makes a big living singing romantic ballads on the radio 20 years ago will be very hard for that man to come out it's not hard today i i mean i don't think anybody has i mean george michael is a rock and roller uh and again and he was kind of forced out but uh it would be an interesting test to see if somebody could do that uh i've i've always felt that i never understood the the rationale of dragging a person out of the closet kicking and screaming what kind of of role model does that set for somebody in who's in dubuque iowa wondering if it's okay to be gay if one of his favorite singers is dragged is forced to admit this not of his own free will i mean how nice is that i mean well not only that but normally when you're dragged out of the closet it's because someone wants to show that you're a hypocrite yeah you know you haven't admitted it so what are you doing you're showing someone to be a bad person right and that that you're i agree with you it never made sense to me either so and people will come out when they're going to i mean obviously we can keep hammering the the issue home that the only way we're ever going to make a difference is to be visible well it's also interesting to me that a number of the people you've written for for our women yeah and the voice that you find for them that that same big sort of brassy voice it's always struck me that for gay men that that's that's a leap difficult to take but very satisfying because there's a big brassy voice in there that is seen to be a dangerous voice to use not a masculine voice yes absolutely is it easier for you to write for for women i know you've written for a number of men as well but uh i you know i suppose although although uh i i couldn't really set an example i mean it's it's uh i have a good time writing for both so i don't know this easier it's it's uh i will say it's easier to write for a character whatever the character is then then it is just right for a person because when you're where you're just writing for somebody then it genuinely it generally is tied into that particular job if there's if they're on a certain show or speaking at a certain place then you can use those references but um in a general way if somebody has a character that you can write to i think it uh it makes it easier but then if they're a man or a woman i think it's probably the same if it's a if it's the main room and obviously a lot of the women who i write for do have those big characters and some of the men do too i mean they're they're uh you know they're larger than life larger than life is good so but what happened you were writing for these variety shows but um recently you've really made your mark in many of the awards shows i mean that's where you won your emmys right i won two emmys for riding two oscars which confuses my mother yes i can imagine you keep saying where are your oscars i didn't win those but uh variety television ended really cable really i think um put it into it it didn't make much sense for for big stars to do network television shows when they would have all that interference from sponsors and from networks when they could do a show on cable do exactly what they wanted to do have no commercials to worry about no sponsors to worry about and own the back end of it own the home video rights and the overseas rights and all of that so you know if i were madonna i would certainly have done those hbo shows and not the nbc special because you know you can imagine madonna's sitting there with the guy from kraft cheese telling her she's showing too much cleavage i mean i've been in those meetings so um that effectively ended variety television and it it staged a mini comeback it held on because there were these award shows that would happen every year and it was an excuse to get a lot of celebrities together and put on a show and be seen by this audience and so they became more and more popular especially as uh it became cheaper it became cheaper to do an award show than one episode of seinfeld because you were paying everybody on seinfeld so much money so you can have all of these celebrities getting together and uh as a result there was a proliferation of award shows of what daniel boyson called pseudo events you know they're just they're they're just not real and i've done them all i mean i'm down to the american bulimia awards i have nothing left i've done animal actor awards i've i did beauty pageants i did miss usa i've done i did miss black teenage idaho isabel sanford was the winner there was absolutely no one left i mean not a large field of entry i've done all of them because well first of all they were exciting i wanted to see what miss usa was actually like i just couldn't get over the idea of it and uh and also because it's that's variety that's that's where that television has landed and because i was writing movies that weren't getting made and doing pilots for sitcoms that weren't getting picked up and yet every year they give out the tonys whether you like it or not they're going to give a tony award to somebody this year you know so i just kept doing those and the um the future ah because i'll be in hollywood squares for the next 30 years well that's time in my menopause it's sort of like a mortgage in the millennium it's a big hit you know so so um and it's a dream gig i get to go in and sit in that paul in bitter queen square and crack wise and i i write it i throw jokes at everybody and uh we have to we tape it on the weekends we do five shows a day so we do two weeks in a weekend and that's about 600 jokes that we have to come up with wow i have a staff working with me but i need to decapo di capo di jokies so i mean i will be doing that for a while and then there is i don't know what will happen because as we speak there is a documentary that has been made about my life in the comedy gulag wow which is called get bruce as in get bruised but i it's like get bruce uh and it was made by a man named andy keane who runs a company called kaleidoscope which is a big coming attraction trailer house and miramax has bought it they're distributing it and they're showing it at sundance this month wonderful we have four screenings of sundance out of competition so we we're not we won't get in the way of the sensitive coming-of-age film that will no doubt dominate on it or the splatter movies my favorite the kind of like faux tarantino splatter pictures which you see a lot of now but we'll be up there and then it'll be distributed by miramax so after that i mean it's either uh i'll become just a gigantic star or i'll be like isaac was rocky after his documentary and go out of business i don't know i don't see you ever going out of business now is there an autobiography well you know i've been writing one and we thought we would issue it as a study guide a companion piece of documentary but we didn't quite get that together because we weren't sure when when the picture was going to be released so i figured okay if they go to see this movie then maybe they'll buy a book so i don't know we'll see we'll see what happens but i i have a lot of advocate columns i could fling together but also i have i've been writing it all along so it's it's on some back burner somewhere well you know it's interesting what you said about professional homosexuals rather than a homosexual professional and i uh certainly i've been uh the recipient of your generosity and showing up at a couple of fundraisers for me on ice on ice so that was the best oh my favorite i am a [Laughter] to raise money for the cause it's you they don't know that i'm a real politician but i must be because out i came on the zamboni you know that's what you did um but i know that you're you're very aware and have been involved uh probably from the do-gooder you know let's show up at the benefit or the thousands of benefits role but this is a movement that has really made a difference in the past you know quarter century and i think it will continue to make a difference and i i wonder from your perspective as a a homosexual professional rather than a professional homosexual i don't know where i've fallen out let me switch caps yes please um what you think about all of this activism and whether it's had an impact on the industry as you see it or or not because you said very rightly well i can't name one exactly you know who's sort of out uh or or one of those romantic singers or a romantic actor uh who will take the risk because people say to me now oh please you know isn't that all over now i mean uh why the industry's so accepting everybody's safe and i say well then name me you know three major stars who've come out and they actually can't yeah i know what does it look like from the inside it's bizarre because i had made the argument a couple of years ago to david geffen i said why don't you guys take take your money give it to me no that was another argument i made i lost that one so they said no and then and then i said uh why don't you go to one of these big closeted leading men and say we will do make your next three pictures at your price because the argument always is if i come out the the town will abandon me okay here we're coming to you and we're saying we're not going to ban and you will make the movies you'll make your money and we'll see you over whatever the reaction is he said that's a great idea who do i go to and i said well i couldn't think of anybody now either i'm woefully misinformed or ill-informed and i just don't know what people are up to or there just isn't anybody in that category at this point at this moment in time there isn't anybody who really qualifies and uh i i tend to think that that's the case and that won't always be the case obviously but uh certainly in the record business there there were there were a lot of closets and there still are a lot of closeted people but uh i think that that um that's a different scenario i think just it's harder because in the music business you're dealing on a local level with people i mean the reason that people haven't come out in the music business traditionally has been the what happened elton john in the 70s when he announced he was bisexual and what happened was the the station in des moines iowa gets phone calls from the churches saying you must drop him from your playlist how can you play that guy and so you're asking you're asking the radio station programmer in des moines to be brave and to be an activist and he's not going to do that he's just going to drop him from the playlist and the same thing happened to boy george with culture club as a result once those stations stop playing you the momentum goes away and you don't get a hit and you you don't happen anymore um that's not the same in the movie business the movie business you know the studio can keep firing they can keep coming with you and and and the local theaters are going to play the picture anyway they're not gonna they're not gonna cave in because most of them are shane mass chained on anyway there have been a number of leading men that we now have discovered later you know 30 years later were gay or lived a somewhat gay lifestyle and yet to say now because now it would be found out everybody would certainly know everybody would certainly talk about it now we can't name a major star who really is gay that we wish were coming out i mean from what i just heard i guess unless i'm overlooking somebody well maybe there's with this spotlight now on everybody's you know telling the truth and knowing everything about everybody and there being no shame in any way about talking about it maybe there's a certain amount of self-selection even worse than it was in the old days when the studios would just cover it up and you know make you get married to somebody and then everything would be fine but it is it's kind of intriguing because everyone thinks it's so much better and look at the flip side of it in terms of what we see about characters i don't know i mean i you know i watch will and grace and i think that here's a straight man playing i think very well playing you know the gay lead in that show um and we see gay characters and numbers of things does that make a difference and and i guess you know what america is thinking oh sure i think it's made a difference for a long time i i going back to all in the family when they started doing having a gay character i think it's been it's been a progression all along i mean when billy crystal did soap 20 years ago it made a tremendous difference i it's it's not a new phenomenon i mean it's we seem it's not being being codified suddenly somebody's adding them all up and never used to add them all up but if they had they would have discovered that there were quite a few along the way because it's a part of life i mean people write what reflects their reflection of life and they see that all the time and i think we all know that that ultimately the the only way to to combat homophobia is for people to know somebody who's gay and that entails people who are gay coming out and letting their friends and lovers know well their lovers know but i mean their loved ones know sometimes and they sometimes know too uh uh you know it comes back to the visibility issue but the amano amano is difficult not to to to embrace people who are different than you are when when you're on the same level and especially if you already love them i mean i didn't i didn't come out to my parents until i was 40 and it was a great risk because they'd already invested 40 years in me and they were certainly older than i was and felt they were getting along so what were they going to do go you know get out of my life which they could have and thank god they didn't um i could ask you about your folks but just to finish this point because it's it's so devastatingly brilliant i wouldn't want to please just go away in in in our modern culture in the last 10 or 20 years where so many people's families are fractured and so many people live with extended families and so many people actually identify with people they see on television and make them part of their extended family i think it's been very important that that extended family has included gay people who they relate to whether they're played by straight actors or not the idea that there are gay characters who they relate to as human beings can only help when they actually encounter real gay people which we hope they will encounter more of as more of us come out well the power of television especially television i think because i don't believe there's been anything else quite so ubiquitous in our lives and so accessible because radio it was engaging but it it wasn't the same because it didn't have the extra component the movies you go to and i know there's some impact but then you leave somehow and it's kind of like a you know a small piece of your life the internet hasn't quite gotten there yet but television it does make you feel like they're part of your life i mean people used to write me letters and say you come into my living room every week and that's exactly what it was absolutely and it was coming to their house and kind of performing i mean there was certainly no engagement but i think that the impact is very it's very powerful in terms of what people say and what they're like but you were talking about this extended family and about fractured families um what was your family like when you were growing up and how were they about knowing if they knew you were gay my family i think always knew although we never spoke of it but until i was uh old enough in high school i guess to really talk about it and then it was only because they were so confused they because i always you know had myra greenberg who i was going to marry we were going steady and then they would find me with these guys you know and they could i think they were really they never got the yin and the yang they and they couldn't quite figure they but they knew that i was doing this stuff with boys but they didn't quite understand how it squared with myra greenberg who i was also doing it with but so they it was it was tough it was a tough call so they uh they i think they were mostly concerned that i was gonna elope you know or do something really really rational i think that when when it came down to oh he's only gay it was like oh well that's okay that's not at least he's not going to you know marry a black girl because at one point i was threatening with that i had a girl and that was even worse oh yeah well it was scary i mean it was it was scary but i think that they realized it was some kind of a political statement i mean i i was and she was a she was fabulous i mean we were never going to get married she wouldn't marry me i mean but uh but the idea of it the specter of it you know haunted my family but they they finally when when it became clear you know when i told them you know what what the story was which i finally did when i was drafted i was i was um i was uh uh it was the lottery the draft lottery had come in at at the end of the vietnam war and i got a low lottery number and so i had to go for the physical and i said to my father i'm going to check the box which meant that you you said oh you were practicing homosexual you know after you did the joke no i've got it down pat thank then you check the box and he said well is it true and i said well yeah it's true he said well then go ahead and do it but know that this will follow you the rest of your life this will be on your record and uh at the time i said i you know there's no government job i could possibly want that this would get in the way of in fact i said i'm checking the box so i don't get a government job yeah so that made sure of it exactly and it was true so it's you know then i was treated actually with quite a deference and respect by the draft people they they i was amazed because i thought that i would get like you know lots of little jokes and stuff no they just they sent a shrink in and you know he asked me a couple of questions and i answered i guess i passed i had to make sure that you didn't realize right had to make sure you were really gay by analyzing yourself to sing like you know the trolley song important stuff like that i see defining what else was on the test i just had to do you know the betty grable pose over the shoulder and say a few things it was a period thing um but uh i saw so they were they were very cool and in fact my father had uh had actually fought for me at one point when i was in at the ohio state university i was being blackmailed by uh by a student who claimed that uh that we had had sex and the irony was we never had had sex i mean oscar wilde at least you know got a piece of those hotel porters i never even got anything so um and i've gone to the police i called my parents and said what do i do and they say go to the police it's you know you're being blackmailed and we went and and they the police turned it over to the school and the school and their wisdom decided to discipline both of us him and me him for blessing him for blackmailing me and me for being gay me for being blackmailable and they decided they they investigated they dragged everybody out of my dorm and they said is he a homosexual oh my god has he ever has he ever approached you and as it happened i hadn't approached any of anybody in the dorm because i was too smart for that at that point still it must have been devastating it was horrible it was awful and i i moved out of the dorm i mean it got me out of the dorm which i actually was grateful for but it was an awful thing when it happened and they had this hearing and my father flew out for this hearing and actually did that scene out of splendor in the grass and then we read patagonia comes in and pounds his fist on the table and says you're persecuting this child and you must have prisoners and you know i mean basically i we all felt that i was being marked as like a rich jew who who would pay up and um this being ohio and this being the 60s and uh being like a rich gay jew well i mean i don't know which was worse you know i mean we weren't rich but i mean gay and jew we were so uh but he had been really wonderful about that i mean and they they backed down immediately when he i mean when they realized that they had a serious parent on their hands you know who was himself college educated was a doctor and would make trouble they backed down but a lot of other people i'm sure got chewed up and spit out by that system which i i hope is no longer in place there i suspect it isn't but well may if not there i mean other places i went through the same thing i got when i was kicked out of my sorority and then the dean of women had this record on you know that i was suspected of of being gay and it was devastating because all your friends sort of or people at least you know that you're friends with they sort of melt away except for a few right and of course those are the few i'm still friends with 35 years later but it was uh it was devastating at the time because you don't know what effect something will happen down the line and when your father says to you but this is going to be on your record and he wasn't kidding but he wasn't saying it in a hateful manner from what i could tell really they want to take care of you yeah you know parents want to say okay but do you know what you're getting into here right not sexually but in society everyone will hate you parents always you know say to their kids my mother said you'll be alone she would say she would say you'll you'll just be by you won't have any family you'll be by yourself i always found this ironic in the light of the fact that the only two the only gay people she really knew were these two old queens who made dresses for her and they were like a married couple i mean they had a little atelier in new york and the name may have given it away it was kind of heaven [Laughter] and they really were too old they were just two old queens and one of them was a designer and the other one was the sewer and they were like well they came to my bar mitzvah i mean they were like you know really close and i said you mean but but look at those two i said i'm gonna be alone i'll wind up with one of those two old crones to go through life what do you mean alone what is this alone stuff are you folks um still alive no my father died about 20 years ago and my mother is still around my mother is alive and very much kicking sincerely kicking well it's wonderful to be able to to remember your dad doing that i was thinking about the scene and scent of a woman you know where he shows up and gives them a big lecture about what they're you know what they're doing to the guy but so what do you what do you think if if a young writer is like yourself no but i mean a slightly younger writer who is um has been out because he's of a generation now where everybody knows he's gay and he wants your advice about you know what to do about this and there are a lot of people watching the show that i think are are somewhat in an ambivalent situation they don't have their career together yet they think that they want to be you know brave about their identity um but they're really not sure and sometimes when they look at people like you and maybe even me they say well it was easy for them because they just did it and look it turned out all right but what if it doesn't turn out all right and i think some of the stories that we tell show that it wasn't all right always for us either but what would you say to them um and i'm sure people do ask you for advice well i i i obviously i speak from an unusual position because i'm an unusual individual and and i think i probably made a decision somewhere along the line to to use that to to just work that to the wall uh because i mean i don't look like anybody else except maybe a muppet i mean that's you know and shelly winters on but the rest of uh uh for writers certainly i would say be who you are i don't i don't think i i tend to believe that the the era of major discrimination against against writers has uh has kind of gone i mean i know that when i started out i remember merle miller saying a is a homosexual gentleman who's just left the room and um and i determined i was i was you you could call me that but you're gonna have to deal with me on it i was gonna call myself that first or i was going to let you know that you couldn't do that and so i think that uh that people have an obligation when when they are in a homophobic environment to identify themselves uh because if they don't they'll never change it and they'll they then become part of the of the problem and not part of the solution and i i mean it's easy for me to say i don't think that you will lose your job or be fired as a result of that but you might but i suspect that in most cases people just want to know when they when they find out that they are dealing with somebody who's gay and that there are certain lines that can no longer be crossed they adjust just the way they adjust to black people and the way they adjust to women and the way the way the old power structure has quietly shifted to to the other side and uh i think it's worth taking that step and being brave i i also think that um that if you write good stuff it doesn't matter what your sexuality is i mean they're not gonna it'll be at the bottom of the list of things that they're interested in i mean it will finally come up when they want to be friendlier with you and so they invite you and your wife girlfriend spousal equivalent significant other sheep what have you got there in that room you know that's when it finally you know comes up they say well you know we're having where everyone's bringing their wives what are you bringing but it's okay but it's okay it's okay at that point to bring to say i'm bringing ahmed but and you can't get out to the full range of your talent i don't think unless you decide that you're going to be honest because the first coming out is to yourself obviously and it's it doesn't turn out to be this great miracle that well i came out and then it was just heaven all the way after that because it isn't but the stuff that you lose turns out in hindsight to have been really good stuff to lose yeah you know you're not working for those people you're not being someone that you're not you're not worrying every day are they going to find out i i think that it's it's different it's interesting to me when you know tammy baldwin was just elected to the congress the first lesbian elected to congress and the first gay or lesbian person who was out when they were elected i mean um and it's it was a relief to her not to have to deal with that fear she worried about homophobia yeah but not about being exposed suddenly you know i mean it's like some guy said to me when i was first running i you know i i hate everybody but you because they're all dishonest but you've already told us the worst thing about yourself yeah that was such a relief to my voters like she did that why would she lie to us about anything else she's willing to be dishonest that must be good for a politician you know so i think that it really works in a funny way um looking sort of back yeah you know along the road and eventually we get to the point where it's not a bad thing to say exactly yeah it's kind of a good credential right certain people think you're funnier and you are oh of course you are the funniest well we'll see about that and now watch me as i dance on my head and spit wooden nickels here's the hysterically funny it just reminds me of sophie tucker when she played the when she played the palladium in london and and lenny bruce was on the bill and lenny bruce used to do material about sophie tucker he really hated her and she had heard the material and she really really pissed at him and she got out there and she said and she sang something like you know maida shimama has cancer one of those songs that you know just the audience dissolves in tears and she said and now i'd like to sing a song dedicated to those wonderful young men who went to dunkirk and did not come back why didn't they come back because they are dead and now the comedy of lenny bruce [Laughter] and he said it was mount rushmore you know it was an oil painting out there i could say lincoln jefferson [Laughter] got him she got it so yeah well speaking of voices that's one of the my favorite bette midler voices i mean i i am responsible for that i introduced her to tucker i i was a big fan and uh when i first started working with bet i took her to see francis faye who was hilarious and rusty warren and dorothy donaghy and hazel scott there were a whole bunch of these women most of them played piano and they uh and they talked and they were really bawdy and just it was like a party and uh um and sophie tucker actually didn't play piano but it was the same kind of of anything can happen sensibility and and making fun of herself and i mean towards the end you know i'm a red-hot mama and she was like 300 pounds most of its feathers you know and sweating with a handkerchief and and doing these these these double-entendre jokes you know and talking about her um i made up the boyfriend ernie but she had um she had jokes like that i mean and and then of course we i got other jokes from other people and and that were real red fox gave me some classics that were these are too dirty for me because you know when he told them they were really filthy but to have some body old woman telling them sort of cleaned them up right away so i i that's my contribution to pop culture it certainly is and it's ongoing because whenever she has to do anything she says give me some new self jokes you know like they just well someone called me and said you know you should have bruce valanche on your show he is batman [Laughter] don't tell her but she's but she's so much more than of course oh she's astonishing i mean she turns on a dime i mean bet is the only performer i've seen who can come out there and absolutely and do i mean a song and just break your heart i mean just break your heart and then turn around and tell a fart joke and just like that i mean she's she's both sides of that i mean she is she is the comedy and tragedy coin and she's remarkable i mean i've never seen anything like that i mean she's she's the only one who really other people are like it but she's the only one who really does that we're big fans we're all big fans so are you writing another award show i'm doing uh the american comedy awards which will come up which is always a favorite because the whole show is just schtick lots of funny and then i'll be doing the oscars again and uh maybe the grammys i'm not sure yet but uh the oscars uh i'll be doing at the moment we don't know whether billy's gonna come back but we'll we'll find out i don't know how he can resist i said billy how can you resist the saving private ryan number i mean dancing around with one arm on the i mean it's true and you could write it it's too scary i mean it's because you know it's one of those pictures it's reverential how can you is there something you want to write that you haven't had the chance to yet uh god no i mean i've had the chance i've failed at a few i'm gonna say a big broadway show i'm writing one now with cycleman but i had a big flop 20 years ago so it's like i've had the opportunity well um things turn around in 20 years but no i mean i i i don't think so i think i i just i like what i'm doing and and if there was something that i really wanted to do that badly i'd be doing it i mean i i really believe that most of us live live a lot of our lives in denial and the sooner we stop doing that the happier we are i mean this is what i do for a long time i said to myself i'm going to be neil simon i haven't become neil simon why aren't i neil simon because i wanted i saw myself cranking out one play after another and i then began to realize guess what this is what i do this is not practice for something else this is what i do and i better have a good time doing it or do something else and i realize i do have a good time doing it and if i want to do something else it's within my power to do something else but clearly i'm doing what i like doing and most people don't recognize that about themselves they go to their graves denying that this is the real thing and i think that barring some hideous misfortune we have the power to give ourselves the real thing and the sooner we do it the happier we are bruce you're not going to believe this but there's only 30 seconds left that was such a good close-up of the show oh my god i'm so grateful to you for being on the show it was so much fun uh this was a whole hour it went by in four minutes and um it you know i'm a great admirer of your work and certainly of you and i thank you very much i hope you enjoyed your time with us remember what bruce said about doing what you really want to do and this is it so you might as well get used to it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you