Bruce Vilanch's New Hyundai Has a Blind Spot with Trixie
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You guys, we're in the studio today. Oh my gosh. Obviously, we have Bruce Valanche here. Clap, clap, clap. Oh, thank you.

That's one person clapping, but you know that's 100% of the people in the room. But a ferocious clapper. A ferocious clapper. Big time. Today we have with us legendary comedy writer, comedy... Today we have with us legendary comedy writer, actor, singer. He's won Emmys for writing for the Academy Awards and was a judge on Drag Race. It is Bruce Valanche. Hello. Thank you.

Hello, my camera. This is you. This is me. This is me, I know. This is a fabulous profile shot of me, which is amazing. Although, I do kind of look like Alfred Hitchcock.

What do you think about this? Everybody hates our new set. We just painted it blue. What do you think? It's not gay enough. You think? And it's very self-referential, as I suppose it should be. But why not? And these flowers are even... These are, oh well, they're plastic. They're plastic, they are. It's a gay touch, sort of. But it's lovely. What's not to love? And you've got color-coded pink and

Purple microphones. Isn't that nice? They all look like, you know, I mean, horses when they're happy. Studs, at least. Well, you're kind of like, you know, when we have Katya, she's worn wigs like your hair in her career. So it kind of feels like we have her wig today. She's wearing a Bruce wig. Yes. Do people go as you for Halloween?

- Do what? - Do people go as you for Halloween? - Oh yeah, they do actually, yes. I mean, I wasn't, when I was living in West Hollywood, at both Tender Queens, a restaurant there, and I would, on Halloween would come and I'd be on my balcony and I would watch the Russos go by. There was a period where there was, you know, it was an easy thing for a fat guy to do, just, you know, just put on a blonde wig and a t-shirt that said something obscene, and it was me.

The eyewear also. - The eyewear, the red glasses, yeah. It's easy to find that's true. And you know, I always wore glasses, but when I was on Hollywood Squares, I had different glasses every night.

the prescription changed and they i would have to take a second mortgage to get them all so i it happened that week on the show we had sally jesse raphael i was just we're so sorry who was you know for those of you who are too young to remember a talk show host who did a kind of oprah sort of show in the daytime and she had two blonde with red glasses right the same lawyer actually so i uh i said uh i said i have to get all these glasses changed she said

She said, well, you can have red ones if you want. I said, no, but that's your brand. And she said, I'm retiring. I said, may I? So I took the red glasses and that's all I wear now. I was listening to you talk and I was like, it's Sally Jessie. It really is. And so it's like crazy that you brought that up. Because I was like, it is kind of Sally Jessie. It is. It's Sally Jessie if she shaved. It's also a little bit Ghostbusters. What do you want?

Remember her in Ghostbusters? She has like fun glasses. No, actually. Remember their receptionist in Ghostbusters? Oh, yeah. I want to say Carol Kane, but it wasn't Carol Kane. It was someone like that. She's so gorgeous. Like Annie Potts or somebody like that. Yeah, like a character actress. Very pretty, though. A cute character actress, yes. Why do you think, do you think that character actress means unattractive?

I hate that. Well, you know, it's old school and it's not leading lady. Right. It's a supporting part and it's, so she's not the romantic interest in the picture. Right. So she's the character actor. She becomes, and it just, it's bled down from the studio system. It's one of those things that remains. Right.

I do think it can be probably kind of difficult for women to do comedy when, well, when they're excessively gorgeous. I feel like, don't you feel like entertainment loves like, you have to be like either like the hot slut and everything. Yeah. It's very difficult, I think, to be gorgeous and funny. I mean, that's why Lisa Evolve was such a huge star because she was spectacular. I mean, she was a showgirl, but yet she did all this physical stuff and she was funny.

I mean, she had intense, amazing timing. And, you know, you find people who have that. Julia Roberts is very funny. Yeah. And Renee Zellweger and Reese Witherspoon. I mean, they all have, they've got comic chops, so they can carry that stuff, the romantic stuff.

I just, I just, rom-coms, if they ever come back. Rom-coms. I just watched Pretty Woman for the very first time. Really? I'd never seen it. I watched it last week. My God, did I cry. Yeah. They really get you at the end there. Well, yeah, it's Gary Marshall. He knew what he was up to. When he shows up in the limo, like her story about the white horse, I was watching it like, oh my God. And because it's so, even then it was kind of like, really? Does this, does this really happen? It was a fairy tale.

It was, you know, it was kind of fun. I mean, I want to find a rich guy who's going to let me loose on Rodeo Drive. Well, she did kind of have like a bob like yours in the beginning. Oh, really? I didn't notice. Remember when she's like in her prostitute outfit and she's in like that little... She did have a bob. Is this a bob? I didn't even know. It's just a blob is what I think. Well, I watched your documentary in preparation for this. By the way...

To do homework about Bruce Valanche is only opening a Pandora's box of how much there is to know. I felt like I was preparing for that LSAT. Every time I found somebody that you knew, it was attached to another project that I knew, attached to another thing I've seen. You really, when people have you on things...

your bio is like a scroll that hits the floor. I've been around. And when you do award shows, you meet a lot of people. But I had an agent once who said, you know, I went on your IMBD. You can lose the last few pages. You can just, because it makes you seem much older than you are. I said, I'm exactly as old as I am. And I have nothing to hide. And,

I mean, I've written a book about that. Oh, yeah. You have a new book. Tell us what the book is. I have a book because I would do podcasts like this with people your age and younger. And they would ask me about these pieces of crap that I wrote in the 70s.

Oh, no. I'm going to ask about some of those pieces of crap. I'm wearing one right now, the Paul Lind Halloween special, because I refuse to let go of Halloween. I don't care how early Mariah Carey makes us love Christmas. I am hanging on to Halloween. This was one of them, Star Wars holiday special, the Brady Bunch variety hour. I mean, and they saw them all on YouTube. And their question to them was, how?

how did this happen? Yeah. Who said yes to this? And so I thought there's a book here. So I've written a book about how I wrote the worst TV shows of all time and lived. And it's called, it seemed like a bad idea at the time.

And I've extended it to movies like Can't Stop the Music, which I wrote the Village People movie I wrote the first draft of, and Broadway and other places where I've had disasters. Yeah. So... You wrote a song for the Village People. I wrote... Yes, I did. I did an album for the Village People, which was actually banned by the BBC. Why? Because we had a song called Sex Over the Phone that became a big hit in England. And the BBC said it was not to their standard.

Don't you feel like that's almost like a safe sex PSA? Nobody can get an STI on the phone. I think exactly. It predated all of that. This is in the 80s. Right. So, well, I was actually in the middle of all of that. So it was a sex positive message when I think about it. But yeah, they banned it. And as a result, we made a lot of money on it. Yeah.

I always recommend getting banned because that moths to the flame. You know, I remember hearing that Lady Bunny would sometimes pay a church lady, someone to dress up like a church lady and pick at her show. That's funny. I didn't know that. You get good attention. I'd never heard that, but.

Yeah, I mean, people who, you know, it's a traditional thing to do. You know, I mean, there's a word for it now. It's like, I don't know, not... I can't think of the word. But it's...

It's what people often do, just fake. It's just fake news. They plant stuff to draw attention to whatever the thing they want to have attention drawn to. Then the fake stuff kind of goes away. Yeah. When did you start? I mean, you kind of also know all the drag queens. I do. Well, I started in Chicago when I was at the Chicago Tribune writing for the old school legendary drag queens who came through town. Charles Pearce.

Lynn Carter, Jim Bailey, Craig Russell. I wrote for all four of them at once at the same time, which was strange because if one didn't like the Mae West joke, I would give it to the other one who did the Mae West joke. That's just economical. I knew it worked. It was all personal taste. And then it just kind of extended.

Although this whole new drag phenomenon came much later than that. I mean, there were certain people who broke through, like Jim Bailey was a Vegas headliner. Right. But mostly it was...

drag queens and drag bars and it slowly crept in. RuPaul came along and it transformed the whole thing. My God, yeah, you... And I wrote for him, her, them. I think she says you can call me he or she or Kathie Lee as long as you call me. I mean... But I think Ru's approach to like whatever you call her in drag is very inclusive. I don't think you can really offend RuPaul. I don't think you can offend RuPaul. No, well...

you know the brand is love and if you're not going to love yourself who else are you going to love so i mean it's all framed in that and uh from the very beginning from the moment that he was noticed in the first book he would talk about the ritual of getting into this character yeah and it is is just all about love so uh it comes from a different place drag was traditionally uh satirical yeah can i ask i mean

I mean, I didn't find this in my research, but when did you meet RuPaul? Like, do you remember when that was? Yeah. He was doing his VH1 show. Oh, the RuPaul show. The RuPaul show. And I met him and he came up to me and he said, Bruce Valanche, you're in mahogany. Yeah. 32 minutes in. Yeah. So I raced home and put the VHS in the tape and 32 minutes in and there I am. I thought,

Not for nothing is this guy RuPaul. This guy's going to go places. This is a precision instrument. Well, he's obsessed with Diana Ross, as we all love it. Well, yeah, of course. You work with Diana so much, too. Well, I think a lot of black gay guys were obsessed with Dionne Warwick and Diana Ross and Diane Carroll because they were glamorous men.

old school glamour. And there wasn't much of that, you know, for black, black guys to emulate. And so they, they latched on that because that's what they wanted to be when they got into their drag personas. They wanted to be glamorous people. Right. And, and they are. This episode is sponsored by the digital picture frame that will literally change your entire perception of what a digital picture frame can be.

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Winter is finally upon us, dear listeners. The gray skies, the shorter days, the frigid temperatures that wreak havoc in nudist colonies. The changing of the seasons is always disruptive, but the arrival of winter seems to always be the harshest transition. Gone are the bright fiery colors of autumn, and in their place come the monochromatic grays that seem to be the antithesis to vibrance and positivity.

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And that's also like with the Vanessa Williams of the world, who I think you also know too, right? I know Vanessa, yeah. I met Vanessa when she was Miss America. Oh my gosh. You know, I did a couple seasons of a show with her, so I knew that she knew you, and I texted her about it, but I think she's in the UK right now, so the time zone. Yeah, she's doing Devil Wears Prada, the musical. But I know that you knew her, and one time she told me her whole story. We were at dinner, and I was fortunate enough for her to tell me, basically. I was with...

who was I with? I forget who I was with, but someone asked, someone had the audacity to ask like, how did that all happen? And I was like, oh my God, I get to hear firsthand like how that all happened. And it's wild what happened to her. Oh yeah. So unfair, so crazy. I know. Nuts. It was nuts. But you know, at the time,

The unfortunate thing is so much is branding. Miss America is a brand. Right. And she was the first black Miss America, and it was a big deal. And then, of course, art studies surfaced, as they do for many gorgeous girls who need to put bread on the table. Right. Or not bread. When you eat bread, that's too fattening. But other things on the table. The suggestion of bread. The suggestion. Mock bread. So they...

She it was a gigantic scandal because the brand was so lily white and wholesome. And here she comes along and we discover that she has a sordid past. Right. So back back then, that was quite a big deal. Of course, now it's, you know, Miss America is kind of like.

it's been duplicated by so many other pageants. And also the whole idea of Miss America is I'm gorgeous in a bathing suit, but I really wanna be a nuclear scientist. - Right. - And so I need a scholarship. I mean, it's kind of like-- - I think it was hard for Vanessa because she was a serious musical theater actress, dancer, singer, and she wasn't a pageant girl.

So then after the Miss America thing, when she would go into auditions, she said it was difficult for her to get taken seriously because these casting agents immediately placed her attached to the scandal. Sure. Great, beautiful singing. We loved your monologue. We don't know if we can put you in this. Yeah. And that was probably heartbreaking for her because I don't think she cared about. When this was happening to her, television was still a sponsored thing.

medium, it's not like there are streamers today. I mean, and mostly they were concerned about Kraft cheese, not wanting to be associated with her and therefore not doing the show. So they would get rid of the problem because they didn't want to get rid of the money.

And that also morphed as more different channels began showing up that were not supported by advertising. But on a movie, on the studio level, then it becomes an ethical decision. It's like, how hurt do we think we're going to be by this? Because they don't have sponsors to concern themselves. But they have stockholders, but that's another story.

But also for Vanessa, like everyone who was remotely racist who followed pageants was waiting for her to make any mistake. Well, that's true. Absolutely true. She accidentally ended up being responsible for like the perception of, you know. You know, it's like Wanda Sykes hosted the White House Correspondents Dinner the first year that Obama was president. And she says it's so exciting to have a,

to have a black president. She said, but you know, we're all sitting here waiting to see what the verdict will be. If it will be, we had a black president. Wasn't he wonderful? Who was that half black guy who fucked everything up? Right. I know. It's wild. And you know, that's Wanda, but yeah. Well, that's how you felt. There's so much on her shoulders because, you know, I mean, it's the Lena Horne story, right? You know, it's, it's a, you're the one. Yeah. So you have to be perfect. You have to be perfect.

That was like you watching Sally Jesse. You were like, this bitch in the red glasses better not ruin this. That's right. Get in contact. Your IMDb and your Wikipedia, I mean, it was awesome.

You really have just done every single thing with everything. But I have to tell you, I went on your Twitter. Have you been on your Twitter for a while? Have I? I have a Twitter, a twat. I have a twat account, but I never post. I read other things. There are a lot of good naked people on there, so that's fun. I'm going to tell you that your first post was in July 2011, and your last post was in November 2011. Oh, my God.

I think so. You lasted about five months on Twitter. I probably didn't get laid. That's the problem. I was only on there to get laid. Your first tweet, I believe, was, My Hyundai Elantra has a blind spot.

And I was like, I guess he didn't get the automotive help he wanted. And he left. That was me. That could have been fake me. There are a lot of fake me's out there. Oh, my God. Yeah, people could really like Andy Warhol you. Yeah. They could go to a red carpet event and be like, hello, it's me. Yeah, exactly. Here's the hair. Here's the lessons. There's one reason why I don't do it. But also, it's too...

it's soul draining. I'm on, I'm on Facebook, which I call sit on my Facebook because I also am looking to get laid there because I can't go on grinder. Why? Because they don't, you know, they don't want us to have sex with me. I mean, the ones who do, I'm not interested in and the, uh, they want to meet me.

or something else, but they're, and not on, I wouldn't be on Grindr for that. So I found it doesn't work for me to be real. Or you get reported as a catfish. And I, you know, it needs to kind of age out and then you get into people who are like too kinky for me. You know, I'm very vanilla. Oh, in Los Angeles? In Los Angeles?

People are like, I'm not meeting up unless, like the bone collector level violence and kink that has to occur for someone to get in their car and come over. Whatever happened to just little, let's just kiss and touch it and go home. Right, yeah. But now it's like, oh, well, I'm obviously going to have to urinate on you and then I'm going to punch you in the face. One of my favorite old jokes, this is from George Slaughter who created Laugh In, my favorite, who I worked with on a million different things. Oh, wow. It's hysterically funny.

He said, it's a guy picks up a girl at a bar and they go home. And she says, do you want to get kinky? And he says, yeah. And she says, hang on, I'll change. She goes upstairs and she comes down about five minutes later and he's on his way out the door. She's in her full dominatrix outfit. And he says, where are you going? I thought you wanted to be kinky. He says, yeah, I did. I shit in your hat and fucked your cat. I'm out of here. Let's take a break. Okay.

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Oh, I also, okay. And we're back. That was our break. That was a perfect segue for our sponsor. Do we have sponsors? Am I not allowed to say those things? No, no, no. It's perfectly allowed. Because I would think, I mean, what's pod, what a podcast for. Right. Our sponsors today are not aligned with the words, but given by Bruce Blanche LLC. Thank you. Thank you. There you go. Can I ask you to, I mean, you're, you were a child model. Uh,

I was briefly for Lane Bryant, which was no longer among us, but it was like plus size fashions for the forgotten woman. For children. But they decided there were not enough fat women in the country. So they were looking for fat kids. And what was it? It was called chubby something. It was charming chubs. Charming chubs. Cute little child model. Yes. Stylish stouts. And then I became a Husky. My career ended. Husky, you're neither man nor boy.

And nothing fits. Not a girl, not yet a woman. Anything that does fit is sincere sucker. So, you know, you just, it's a fool's errand. Yeah. I know you get sick of it. It didn't last and I can't find the photos. And I think that's probably a good thing. That could be merch. That could be amazing merch. It could be. I may have to. And if Lane Bryant is gone, they can't sue you. They can't. They'd be dead. Yeah.

I have to ask. I know you said people my age ask about it, but I watched all that Brady content on YouTube during COVID because I'm obsessed with the Brady Bunch. I was a Brady Bunch watcher. When I was little, they had Brady Bunch on. In the summer, they'd have marathons. It's the only thing my brother could agree on, so we'd sit and watch marathons. I've watched all the holiday movies. What was it like working with the goddamn Bradys?

What is it with them? What was it like working with them? Oh, well, like working with them. Well, I did the Brady Bunch Variety Hour, which was after the Sherwood Schwartz Empire. That was, he created the Brady Bunch. Yeah. And it was after the series was off the air on ABC, but it was in reruns all over the place. Right. And as a result,

It's the one with the pool, right? It's the one with the pool. Yeah, that show's wild, girl. Fred Silverman, who was running ABC at the time and believed in teams for variety shows. Donny and Marie, he came up with. Tony and Cher. Tony and Donny, they went on. All of those things were his ideas. And he was looking for the Partridge family because they were a singing act group.

act on their show and it would make sense for them to do a variety show. Uh, but Shirley Jones and David Cassidy didn't want to do that. And Susan day, they were all out of there already. So, uh, he went, he said, Oh, well the Brady bunch, because the Brady kids had an act, uh,

which they would do like the state fairs and stuff like that. Is this the one with the fake Jan? Wasn't there a fake Jan? This was, well, yes, we got fake Jan. Eventually you got fake Jan or you started with fake Jan? No, no, Eve Plum wouldn't do it. Eve Plum had broken away and become a TV movie star in a movie called Dawn, Portrait of a Teenage Runaway. Right, right, yes. And so she was Brady free. So we got, we organized, auditioned for a

A Jan, a fake Jan. Were you in the fake Jan auditions? I was in the fake Jan auditions and it came down to two girls, two girls, one...

was jerry reichel who got the part and the other was my gosh she was a girl who became kathy hilton mother of paris shut up and we joke about it whenever i run into her because you know she's there are very much she was the almost fake jan she was the almost she turned out okay she did very well she she thought every time she's i'm so glad i didn't get that part yeah i think jerry is jerry is now riding the fake jan gravy train i mean you know she's

came out and said, I am fake Jan. And of course, with the internet, you know, she's become a little star, which is great. She's a lovely woman. But so they, we had to concoct this variety series that had a storyline with the family and also had big production numbers. And Florence, of course, Florence Henderson was a Broadway star and Vegas star and could do anything. My God, her singing. And the kids were,

You know, some of them were better than others, but they could all kind of clomp around, sing and dance. Robert Reed was the only, you know, the one who was like alien in alien turf. And that's all in the book, by the way, because that's one of my favorite disasters. Well, I've seen a bunch of the episodes. I watched them all on YouTube. They're available on YouTube. I don't know if it's okay to promote people to steal a show on YouTube, but I don't think. They were available when the Brady movie came out, which was a satire.

Of the Brady Bunch. Incredible. Nickelodeon discovered, which is owned by Paramount, discovered that they owned the Brady Bunch Variety Hour. And so they programmed it on Nickelodeon, on Nick at Night. And I got a call one night from this guy, stoned out of his mind saying, dude, dude, I'm watching this thing on TV. And Bob Reed, Robert Reed, the dad from the Brady Bunch, he's doing Carmen Miranda. And your name is on it. Yeah. Dude, how did this happen?

A precursor to my book, basically. Well, I believe, isn't the first episode about how the dad isn't sure that he can do it? Yes. Because he's not a singer-dancer. Yeah, exactly right. Yes. And also in there, we had Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors, who were a couple at the time. And Donny and Marie showed up.

And the way it was shot, too, it was like a proscenium with a huge swimming pool in front of it. Well, you know, they had it was produced by Sid and Marty Croft, who had produced the Donny Marie show. And Donny Marie opened with an ice rink.

And what they call the ice angels, but the Mormons didn't like that. So they became the Croftettes, I think. So and that worked great. And so Sid thought, well, let's do it with water ballet on this one. So we had the Croft water ballerinas and it was hysterical because it was supposed to be the pool at their house at the beach.

So there's this gigantic pool and beyond it is the Pacific Ocean, which is sort of like... Okay, I'm going to say as a viewer, I never got that. No, but we were shrieking on the set watching the whole thing and all that. And of course, it was always a bonus. The crew loved it because there was a tank.

And the tank had portholes so they could put the cameras in the portholes and shoot the underwater stuff on the ballet. So the crew loved to come to rehearsals to watch the croftets swimming, you know, from underneath. You know, all this stuff would be going, swimming by. And we used to have to peel some of the kids off of the... Because they're glued to it like the TV. Oh, yeah, because it was like softcore porn, watching all these women kicking and...

doing, you know, doing breaststrokes. But weren't there these moments for like, okay, there's, you know, there's the Brady singing and then there's the girls jumping in the water. And then the weird thing was they would talk to the camera like we're

were doing a show, but they would still pretend they were a family? Yes. It was... The template for that was the Jack Benny show, which was... Jack Benny was a comedian, and his show was about him and his life in Beverly Hills, and he puts on a show. And that's... So part of the show was...

his show with an audience. And part of it was preparing for the show in Beverly Hills. So, and he would have a guest, he had Marilyn Monroe. And so he had Marilyn, you know, Marilyn Monroe comes for tea or something with his wife. And then they do the show where Marilyn's on the show. So that was the template for it. And it was the Brady Bunch do a television show. They have a variety show and they open it with the swimming number at their home.

And then they go in. But there was always a backstory about what they did on the show before.

around the show it was like a show within a show it would be like what are we gonna do to like we haven't prepared enough like it was very like we didn't know we were doing the show today well i mean they knew because they would show up in the opening number in in spangly pete menefee costumes the costumes are fucking yeah they're great they're fucking beautiful i hate to jump around but we have so much to cover go for it i texted kathy griffin i was like i know you know bruce i was like what should i talk to him about and she said well you gotta ask about the squares

Well, she was on the, yeah, she was on the squares. I knew she was on squares with you. And, um, is that where you maybe met her for the first time? No. Uh, no, I think I'd met her before then, but I don't actually remember where I first, but I think I met her with Brooke Shields when she was doing the sitcom. Oh, um, suddenly Susan. Yeah. I think I met her there. Yeah. I wasn't working on it, but I was there for something. I think Brooke was doing the American comedy awards or something like that. You were auditioning for the new Brooke. I was. Yeah. Yeah.

and kathy was there and i met kath i think that's where i actually met her but um do you got any fucking wild like hollywood square stories you know it's it's bizarre because uh um i was a head writer and i was i always say i was a square i was to the left of whoopee if that's possible right but it was a very efficient organization and the fun of it was the nine people showing up and um

And doing five shows on a Saturday and five shows on a Sunday. So we only worked 36 days a year because we would do a week in a day. Oh, my God. Life to tape. Yeah. So we tried to keep it as close to the air date as possible so it was topical. Yeah. But basically, people were on good behavior most of the time. Right. Because if you weren't, there were like eight other people going, girl.

Yeah. You know, girl, I mean, Roseanne was in a foul mood. Uh, and so she kind of, I think she still is. Oh, well, she's one of her 43, you know, people. And I've worked with her and I keep saying, I would say to her, would you please ask number 16 to start talking to number 32? Cause we're not getting any work done. Right. But I mean, she's, you know, she's, she's her own case study. I love her. She's on a journey. She's her own case study. She's, you know, now she's a,

a crazy Trumper and you know, I mean, I still love her, but. - What other kind is there? - Exactly, exactly. There you go, that's why I can still stand. - Can I ask like a logistic thing? So the way Hollywood Squares is like, I mean, we have maybe a lot of young viewers who maybe have never seen it. It's set up like a grid. - It's a tic-tac-toe board. - Yeah, and so you guys really couldn't, I mean, you couldn't see each other under a top. - No, we couldn't see each other once we were in our squares. But you know, there were monitors.

that facing us so that we could see big like teleprompter monitors, but so that we could see what was happening. We could see what the shot was. Right. Oh, right. And so we could, we could, we could see,

see what other people were up to and all that as it went to that. Must have been fun. And once there was cross-talking, they would be going back and forth. And that was, of course, my favorite moment when I guess the YouTube thing that gets a lot of comment is, you fool, which was a woman was...

She needed one square to get the win and she could not get the right answer. And it started with Gilbert Gottfried who, when she, when she didn't agree with him, said, you fool. And it went on like that Penn and Teller on there. And it became, this woman liked about six times and finally she won the thing. So thank God. It's a very funny clip on YouTube watching because everybody kind of begins to lose it because it's so, it's so insane. It's like,

Things you never expected would happen. Do you think squares would ever come back? It is coming back. It is? It's coming back in January on CBS with Drew Barrymore in the center square and Nate Burleson, who if you don't know, if you watch CBS mornings with Gail King, he's the black guy. Tony DeColpo is a white guy and Nate Burleson is a black guy. Are you going to go back?

I don't think so. Be a guest at least. So far, I'd love to, but no one's called. This is an official casting call. That's right. If you're watching, I'm happy to go back. I think it's gauche, but sometimes when I'm on something, I'll just ask to be on something and then sometimes it does work out. Yeah.

Well, this is going to be one of those primetime hours, probably after like two FBI shows on CBS, like 10 o'clock on a Wednesday. But so it'll only be once a week, like Alec Baldwin doing a match game and name that tune with...

Jane Krasinski. So it's Jane Krasinski. I think I've made just- Krakowski? Krakowski. I just made a child of her and Emily Blunt. Yep. It's Jane Krasinski. You have an enemy now. That's right. Jane Krakowski. Sorry. Can I ask, if I get to do it and you don't, I will wear like a Bruce Wig and glasses in honorarium. Well, okay. Did you think you would win in a Bruce lookalike contest? Ah.

They just had the Timothee Chalamet contest. A famous story about Carol Channing going to an impersonator contest in San Francisco and losing. And Dolly. Oh, Dolly said that she had one and she lost too. I kind of believe Dolly. I don't think Dolly would ever lie. You have a new project coming out with Dolly. I do. I wrote a musical with Dolly during COVID.

It's called Here You Come Again. Sounds like a porno, but isn't. And it's about a 40-year-old... I think you tweeted that, too. I think I saw that on your Twitter, too. That's true, yes. It's about...

A 40-year-old gay comic who's never happened, who's working in the comedy club as a waiter in New York. COVID hits. The club closes down. He has to isolate, quarantine in the attic of his parents' home in Longview, Texas, where he has an intimate relationship with his imaginary friend, Dolly Parton. Shut the fuck up.

She steps out of a poster and she basically, in 12 easy songs, fixes him up. Does she play? Is she in it? No, no. Somebody's going to play her. An actress named Trisha Payaluchio who has played her in various 9 to 5s and Patsy Cline shows.

- She's franchising. - Franchising. - She's 3D printing dollies. - We wrote it together with her husband, Gabriel Barry, who's the director who directed it. And we got a grant and we did a Zoom. - Oh my God. - And I had to go to Dolly for the rights. And I didn't think she would go for it, but she loves it. She's our partner.

And we did five regional productions and now we're doing a six month tour of the UK and we will be going into London after the first of the year. You got to go see the girls. You got to go see the, the, the Dolly, um, the, the permanent Dolly understudy.

There are? What? I mean, this actress who's playing her is kind of like the permanent new Dolly in this show. Oh, yeah. Suspend disbelief, if you will. Well, a lot of people have. Megan Hilty played her in 9 to 5. I got to see her at the Hollywood Bowl once, and I just like...

Yeah, I saw her at the ball. She got slightly political. Trump was running, I think, the first time, and she indicated her displeasure with the gist of the campaign. But it was a very Dolly kind of thing. She kind of has a way of touching on it without touching on it. Yeah, exactly. She's really good at that. I mean, she goes for basic human issues because she's never really political. No. I mean, but she's incredibly philanthropic, so...

Like, instead of saying, like, I love the gays, she might say something like, I think everyone deserves the right to love who they love. You know, like, she has a way of saying it without ever being too... Yeah, exactly. And she always has been saying for years if...

If I were a man, I'd be a drag queen. Yeah, I said the same thing. I'm looking at you now. What happened? One time when I started the bullshit, this amazing, like, I don't know, it was kind of a joke, but the wind was blowing because, you know, the glow, not the globe, the the balls outside. Yes. Wig hair was blowing in her face and she grabbed it and pulled it. She went, oh, I think it's so funny to pull a wig hair out and say, oh, do you have any memories of doing drag race?

Yeah, I was Santa Claus once. That's right. In an early one. And then I was a comedy mentor and a judge four or five times. And what's interesting to me about it is when I started, it was the early days of Drag Race. And they said, well, we want you to mentor the comedy. And people at that time were either gorgeous comedians.

lip-syncing replicas of of stars you know Bojeric or something like that or they were people like Bianca who had worked clubs every night of their life and knew how to work a room and I said it's not fair it's apples and oranges I mean you can't hit them in comedy okay so now lap does off to the last time I was on where all of the little queens at home watching

that to win the thing, they have to be everything. You do. They have to be funny. They have to be able to sing. They have to do the split. They have to make their own clothes. They have to live with each other in a motel. So they've learned how to do that. So now they're all like mega queens. It's crazy. They're all like lab queens.

created diamonds exactly it's really they all have comedy chops they've all figured out what they can do that will get them through that part of it even the ones who aren't funny obviously have got people coming in with you know advising them when they when they create this persona right they're going to use on the show so it's a whole different ball game now well you've done drag before you did hairspray didn't you i did hairspray for two years in new york

On Broadway? Yeah, I did a year, the first national tour, and then on Broadway for a year. Do you like touring like that? I loved it. Well, I was touring in the first class Broadway show when I was a star. So I was like, you know, limos, suites. Diamonds, movie stars. Exactly right, movie stars.

uh did you like doing the drag uh yeah well yeah i mean it's uh it is it's not like something i would do every now and again i would but we had it down to a sign so i would come in like an uh an hour before and we would get it all done yeah we'd have to do the wig the wig hair every night and i wore a 35 pound fat suit which was basically uh

on top of my own God-given fats. It was kind of like, it was a corset and with huge jugs and they weighed 35 pounds. And then in the last week,

of the show is she's in this fabulous red beaded gown. Oh, yeah, for the reveal. Which was another 40 pounds of beading. So I was carrying around 75 pounds and wearing what we used to call at Lane Bryant fat lady shoes, which were two and three quarter inch heels. Lady bunny shoes? Could be. I don't know. I never examined her feet. My shoes? That's not my fetish. But...

So your whole center of gravity changes, which is why I have my foot in the brace now. I'm convinced. I never missed a show, but it's because your body is used to carrying your weight around a certain way. And when you change that, all your joints say, hold on, we're going to realign you now. And without you knowing it, but suddenly it begins to happen.

So that, that would, those are the perils of drag, but you know, I was doing that kind of drag. I was, I was doing a plus size, you know, plus size broad. So it wasn't, and also it wasn't a drag. It wasn't a drag performance in the sense of,

a woman in quotes, it was this woman. Yeah, she's probably not a woman, really. John Waters invented it for Divine, so she was doing a certain kind of woman that you were doing, a working class woman from Baltimore. Right. And

So and she wasn't commenting on anything. This she was real and warm and in a real marriage and with a real love for her daughter and all of those things. She just was extreme in the way she expressed herself. Right. So it was you were you were acting a role. You weren't.

just being a woman being in drag for the, to be in drag. Of course it's unfortunately part of the whole of woke culture has been to, to, to downgrade all of that because they're, they're drag Queens. And then there are, there are characters like Mrs. Doubtfire and Tootsie who,

who are men who put on dresses... For a purpose. For a purpose, and they learn something as a result. Right. And somehow that's become square and old-fashioned that when a man is a woman, he suddenly realizes that there are other things in the world besides what he's always liked as a man. Didn't you do a film kind of about this, like a body switch film? I did a... Well, I was in a documentary about... Oh, was I in a body switch film? It's like a gay guy, like a body switching...

Didn't you write a movie about somebody who's like a Freaky Friday situation? Did I? I don't think I wrote one. I don't remember. Was I in one? Maybe I'm starting to add things to your career that didn't happen. Pile them on. I mean, I know I got to let you go, but I don't know if the kids at home know that you obviously have all these Emmys from writing all these awards programs. Yeah. I wrote 25 Oscar shows. I am the EGOT of award shows. You are. Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tonys. I've written them all. I'm not the only one. There are several.

people who've written all four of them. - That must be a madhouse. - Multiple times. But I hate using that word, multiple, 'cause it's everywhere now. - Multiple. - But yeah. - That must have been madness. - But I have written, and I did do 25, and we won two Emmys for two of the Oscar shows, which confused my mother until her dying day. - You won an Emmy for the Oscars. - Yeah, right.

Wow. Two Emmys for the Oscars. What's the most chaotic one leading up to, what's the most chaotic one of all the types of award shows? What's the one where you're like, oh girl, here we go. That's a very good question. I think it's probably the Grammys because it's all musicians. Right.

And also, of course, it's become a concert show. And it always was, but it had a host who was more hosty. Right. You know, Billy Crystal, those kinds of hosts. Whoopi, it wasn't, now they have, you know, LL Cool J or...

Well, now they have Trevor Noah, so it's more of a host thing than they used to have. But the real clusterfucks were like the People's Choice Awards. The American Comedy Awards was hilarious because every category was funny and everybody had to be funny. And it was comics playing for an audience of comics, which you're in danger of people. You say something and they go, funny.

Funny. Honestly, that is it. If somebody's in comics or in the audience, they go, that's funny. That's funny. They won't clap. They'll go, that's funny. That's funny. Yeah. I'm assuming that Tony's goes the smoothest because it's a bunch of people who are everyday live performers. They are. And they are at the top of their game. They're doing these numbers eight times a week. That they do all the time. Yeah. And they're all stage performers.

So they when they get up on stage in front of an audience, they know what to do. Right. You know, in the movies, you get movie stars who only work for a camera. Right. You know, no one's ever done Johnny Depp at residency at Caesars. Yeah. You know, you never saw Keanu Reeves live in Central Park. Right. I mean, these are movie stars and they get it. And so this is not their comfort zone.

Yeah. So even the ones who came from theater originally kind of sometimes forgot they came from theater. Right. I find it's interesting when like the people who play for camera, the people who play characters, they get up there and this maybe is the first time we see some of these people speak from the heart or like not as a character. Right. You can tell they get nervous when they're not in character. Oh, yeah.

When they're not playing that character. Very much so. That's when they're accepting an award. Well, Bruce, thank you enough for coming down here and talking to me. You let the girls know where to find you. Maybe not your Twitter. It's not exactly active. There's a cycle, wegotbruce.com.

and it's run by a fan and he knows what I'm doing. I check up every morning to see what I'm up to. - Love that. - 'Cause he knows more than I and he publishes all the rumors and all that kind of stuff and it's not true about me and Zac Efron, I'm sorry. It's just not true. I couldn't with anybody that muscular who's Jewish. I couldn't. - It's not true. - I couldn't as a Jew, I couldn't do that unless he was Israel, maybe, nevermind. - It's not true they got married first so it was in wedlock.

So it's okay. Everybody say bye, Bruce. This podcast is brought to you by Aura, the most complete online safety toolkit.

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