Comedy writer Bruce Vilanch will revisit the low points of his career in a new memoir, People magazine reports.
Chicago Review Press will publish Vilanch’s It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time: The Worst TV Shows in History and Other Things I Wrote next year. The press says the book “is a lifetime reflection of what Vilanch has experienced, learned, forgotten, dismissed, and embraced in decades of working in show business, specifically the south forty acres known as comedy.”
Vilanch began his writing career as an entertainment journalist in Chicago, where he met Bette Midler. He co-wrote Midler’s 1980 concert film, Divine Madness, and went on to write for television specials including the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, which was reviled by critics.
He wrote jokes for the Academy Awards from 1989 to 2014 but is best known to television viewers for his appearances on the game show Hollywood Squares, for which he was head writer.
“All through COVID, I was a guest on podcasts hosted by people waaaay younger than myself and all they wanted to know about was some legendary TV specials I wrote waaaay before they were born—Star Wars is a hint,” Vilanch told People. ““They’d seen them all on YouTube and what they really wanted to know was...how did these things get made? Who said yes? And has that person paid their debt to society?”
It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time is slated for publication on March 4, 2025.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
