Bruce! : My Adventures in the Skin Trade and Other Essays

by Bruce Vilanch

Hollywood's hotshot humor writer emotes and self-promotes in this hilarious collection of essays, stories, and bits covering everything from the Muppets to Star Wars. 40,000 first printing.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published August 28, 2000

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Adam Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun, very short, I read this in a couple of hours. I heard Vilanch discussing this book on the RuPaul podcast and my library had one copy left.
The big stories are in here, Diana Ross, working at a newspaper, but are all very glossed over in a soundbite fashion. There's a lot of throw-away material too, relating to events happening in the mid-1990's that most people will have forgotten. But I remembered them so I was happy to read along.
Vilanch's current stock in trade is his span of time in Hollywood and the tales accumulated, but this shows he can also write engagingly about details and events in the present, and I have always enjoyed his take on life.
Considers this a light appetizer before the hopefully main course of his life story comes out.

[Joancollins · Rating 3 out of 5]

After hearing Mr V on a few pod casts I hunted his book down and got it for a steal on better book worlds web site
It was a quick and easy read, that did make me ponder and reflect on the times captured and how we’ve progressed on gay issues
Albeit not that drastically and conundrums from the books decade still occurring now
I was disappointed it was the LOL fest I’d hoped for which reflects my rating
But a decent read overall

[Sweko · Rating 2 out of 5]

While never laugh out loud funny, as promised by the book cover blurbs, I did get a snicker out of a couple of the jokes told within this book. Sadly most of these were from an article written about the legendary late comedian, Robin Williams, and were quotes from the man himself.
Mostly this was a time capsule for 90’s Hollywood and pop culture. It was insightful to learn about Bruce’s opinions, especially on how gay culture was being incorporated into mainstream media at the time and it certainly proved that American society has moved forward quite a bit in the 25 years since this book was published.
Unfortunately these insights were not enough to make for an entertaining read for 100+ pages. A lot of the references and asides to named stars went over my head as I’m a little too young to know who these people were.