The Oscars. Tweezing your chin is more interesting. Forget “Gone With the Wind,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and other favorites like Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Paul Henreid in 1942’s “Casablanca.”
It’s now all-time winners like “Anora,” “Wicked,” “Conclave,” “The Brutalist” and the completely unknown “A Complete Unknown.”
Bruce Vilanch, a longtime writer for the show who probably started during Charlie Chaplin’s bar mitzvah, says: “People tire of these award shows. How many times can you see Meryl Streep run down the aisle?”
“I have files. Joan Rivers used to have files. Our writing team is divided up. During the show we’re in a little enclosure stage left. There’s food and monitors. Important is the food. Writers must be fed.
“Once Michael Moore did anti-Bush material. The audience booed him. Host Steve Martin needed something fast. We gave him, ‘The stagehands are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his car.’
How about the host this year, Conan O’Brien?
“It’s a difficult job. If you’re famous enough and rich enough you don’t need to host the Oscars. You can get in your own way. But this might bring him back to a position he hasn’t been in for a while. See, they’ll take a joke from him because they know he’s not meanspirited so that helps. He’s got his writers. They’ll take a joke from Conan. Everyone knows he’s not Ricky Gervais.
“He’ll have to tackle the LA wildfires. And there’s no big deal this year like ‘Barbie’ or ‘Oppenheimer.’ Your good jokes start at the beginning. As the evening wears on and fills up with losers, the audience doesn’t care what’s happening. They’re already texting their agents and therapists.
“And because it’s now so many young people we can reuse old people jokes like Bob Hope’s oldie: ‘Welcome to the Academy Awards — or as its known in my house — Passover.’ ”
When do you start the writing?
“Can’t until nominations come out. You don’t want to write 13 jokes for something that won’t make it. Once we thought Jim Carrey would be nominated. We wrote a whole routine. He wasn’t nominated so you’re stuck with it.”
Vilanch, who wrote for 25ish Academy Awards, plus the Tonys, “The Lily Tomlin Show,” “The Brady Bunch Hour” and appearing on “Hollywood Squares,” “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and probably knocked off a few lines for Queen Isabella before she sent off Columbus to find our new migrant city, has a new book out: “It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time.” Pub date is next week, March 4.
Now a memory. Grammy winner Roberta Flack, who we all knew for her sultry ballads that once topped the charts, left us this week. Lived in the Dakota, next to John and Yoko. Unknown to the world was her slightly unsultry habit. She played darts with money manager George Venizelos.
BACKSTAGE at one Oscar event. Two actresses. One: “I haven’t seen you or Marvin for years.” Said the other: “Oh, then you didn’t marry him?” Said the other: “Yes I did.”