Sidetrack Bookshop presents Bruce Vilanch

Tue Apr 08 2025 at 06:30 pm to 08:00 pm UTC-04:00

North End Taproom | Royal Oak

Sidetrack Bookshop
Publisher/HostSidetrack Bookshop
Sidetrack Bookshop presents Bruce Vilanch
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Author Bruce Vilanch will discuss and sign his new book, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time.
About this Event

Join us at Sidetrack for a night of laughter and behind-the-scenes Hollywood tales with Bruce Vilanch—legendary comedy writer, Emmy winner, and the mastermind behind some of TV’s most infamous moments! Bruce will be signing and discussing his new memoir, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time: The Worst TV Shows in History and Other Things I Wrote, a hilarious deep dive into the wildest productions ever to hit the screen.


More information about It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time

Bruce Vilanch is known as a go-to comedy writer for award shows, sitcoms, and top-heavy variety specials, but he has also been responsible for quite a few of the worst shows ever put on television—legendarily bad productions. Some of his work lives in infamy—The Star Wars Holiday Special, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, Rob Lowe dancing with Snow White at the Oscars, and The Brady Bunch Variety Hour. How did these ever seem like a good idea? Well, everyone has screwed up a few times, or had their work screwed up by others. It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time 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. It involves very famous people and people who were not very famous but should have been. And it explains to the person in the audience who says to himself, once he has gotten his jaw off the floor, “’How did this ever get made?” Don’t we all want to know?


More information about Bruce Vilanch

Bruce Vilanch is an actor (occasionally an actress), writer (occasionally a rewriter), and comedian (occasionally for money, often for causes). He has coauthored 25 Academy Award spectacles, winning two writing Emmys in the process, and has been nominated for seven more. In addition to the Oscars, he has cowritten many Tonys, Emmys, Grammys, People’s Choice, American Comedy Awards, TV Land Awards, SAG Awards, and a ton of other pageants, roasts, tributes, and various trumped-up reasons for people to strut a red carpet. He has coauthored dozens of variety television shows and actually put words in the mouth of Cher. He’s also a lyricist, scoring gold and platinum records for disco songs he wrote for Eartha Kitt and the Village People. And musical theatre geeks will remember him as the coauthor of the Broadway misfire called Platinum, which was revived off-Broadway for reasons that continue to mystify Bruce.


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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

North End Taproom, 111 South Main Street, Royal Oak, United States

Tickets

USD 0.00 to USD 34.37

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