Top 18 Bruce Vilanch Quotes

I’ve got more chins than a San Francisco phonebook.

I’ve learned that most of gay America is coupled up, or looking to be. No wonder gay marriage has such traction. So many of us are already in it, so of course we want the legal benefits.

I do a lot of screen re-writing.

What makes me laugh? Richard Nixon always made me laugh.

I mean, when I started out I was billing per hour, like a shrink because you would sit with somebody and work. But most of it, if it’s for a live show it’s usually a buy-out. A flat fee.

I have one rave ‘New York Times’ review framed next to a flop ‘Los Angeles Times’ review. And it’s for the same show. These people watched the same show. That’s what happens. They love it, they hate it.

I think I intimidate hecklers because I weigh more than most of them.

Musicals have clearly gotten more physical. You never saw Ethel Merman doing step aerobics.

I mean, I’ve sold all these scripts and nothing’s been made. Studios have closed, stars have died. I had a director find Jesus. And the pictures just don’t get made.

My assistant says I’m an eBay auction waiting to happen. I have a very large collection of T-shirts… about 4,000 now. Maybe I’ll pillage it someday. I have resisted the offers to do a line of T-shirts.

Generally with the Oscars or the Emmys there isn’t much you can do until the nominations are announced. Then you know what kind of year you’re dealing with – what’s been overlooked, what the issues are.

Of course I adored and wanted to be Catwoman. That goes without saying.

My skirt fell off on stage during a performance of Hairspray on Broadway, revealing my fat suit over my own natural fat suit. I turned to the audience and said, ‘Now you know why I spent six years in a square.’

As I’m always fond of telling hosts at the Oscars who are doing it for their first time, for everybody who wins, there are four people who don’t. As the evening wears on, the room fills up with losers, and then they are bitter.

I write screenplays that don’t get made and pilots that don’t get picked up, and I re-write other people’s movies, and those are all different kinds of fees.

It’s really live television, the way God meant it to be.

Every single line on the Oscar show is negotiated. Unless you’ve been there, you have no idea how it is put together. It’s like nothing else on earth. I’m writing a book about it, but I have to throw in my sexual escapades to make sure it sells.

I’ve written about 15 screenplays and they all sold – they were all sold on pitches.