GET BRUCE A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** 1/2
After a dramatic production number of "The Color of the Wind," an Oscar nominee for best song, Academy Awards host Whoopi Goldberg steps back up to the podium. The moment is too solemn for her so she decides to go for one of the lines that she wasn't expected to actually use. "Question I've always wanted to ask," she muses aloud, "what color is my wind?"
If you laughed at that joke or any of the other Oscar jokes in the past decade, you probably have comedy writer Bruce Vilanch to thank. The word in Hollywood is that no Oscar or other celebration can happen these days unless they GET BRUCE, hence the title of Andrew J. Kuehn's hilarious documentary. As fast paced as the best monologue, the movie flies by as laughter fills the theater.
Kuehn has just the right touch with the movie's mixture, helped enormously by Vilanch who even looks and acts as funny as his classic comedy lines. Looking like a Muppet version of the Pillsbury Doughboy, his large economy-sized head holds two mops full of scraggly hair and fluffy beard. Dressed in one of his thousands of sarcastic T-shirts ("My Other Body's In The Shop" being one of his favorites) and bright-colored shoes and glasses, he's a guy that would stand out in any crowd, even a Halloween one.
The director takes interviews in which stars like Goldberg, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams ham it up as they reminisce with Vilanch and mixes them with live examples of the routines he has crafted for them. Interspersed with all of this is the telling of Vilanch's life. An obese, Jewish guy, Vilanch says that he suffered at an early age by being moved from New York to New Jersey.
Part of the film concerns the preparation of the material. Vilanch subscribes to 65 newspapers and magazines and is a voracious reader, always trolling for possible material. In town for a day in New Mexico to do a show, he finds the report of a gas leak that caused an explosion the day before. He's immediately on the phone trying to figure out who's the most famous fat person in town. This day he's in luck. He'll be able to roast the mayor herself as being the source of the killer gas.
"Actually everything gets revised 4,000 times," Vilanch says of all the hard work that goes into each production. "There is no writing, only rewriting." He shows us some of the script versions for one telecast with each printed on different colored paper.
Watching Vilanch at work, you get a glimpse of true genius. A prodigious worker and writer, he started as a cub writer for the Chicago Tribune. He reviewed a Bette Midler routine and ended up having dinner with her. He told her she needed more dialog in her shows, and he came to be the one to supply many of her lines.
Soon, he was off to Hollywood where his big break came when he landed the job as the head writer for "The Brady Bunch Comedy Hour." He says he hit bottom when he found himself writing jokes for Donny and Marie Osmond.
These days he creates comedy sketches for everyone. "He's given more great lines to celebrities than any coke dealer," Nathan Lane says with a grin.
Vilanch carefully tailors his approach to each of his star clients. For Robin Williams, he throws ideas at him and then stands back and watches. One of the clips in the documentary shows one such collaboration. After some obscure inspiration, Williams starts fashioning an ad hoc routine that mixes "The Jack Benny Show," "Amos n' Andy" and "The X-Files."
Although normally behind the scenes, Vilanch does surface on occasion as when he won an Emmy. His one-line acceptance speech was hysterically funny and typically Vilanch: "I'm very sorry I didn't have to sleep around to win this award."
GET BRUCE runs a blisteringly fast 1:12. It is not rated but might be an R for language and sexual innuendo. It would be fine for kids 12 and up.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: www.InternetReviews.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews