The Oscars’ Longtime Head Joke Writer Reveals What Went Wrong During the Most Disastrous Ceremony of All Time

Anyone who’s watched television in the past 50 years is likely familiar with the work of Bruce Vilanch, the comedy writer who appeared on Hollywood Squares for four years, and co-wrote the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special.

One of Vilanch’s biggest contributions to the world of pop culture has been writing for the Academy Awards. After all, where would the Oscars be without one-liners and upbeat musical numbers about Titanic and Good Will Hunting?

Vilanch began writing for the Oscars way back in 1989, and he eventually became the ceremony’s head writer from 2000 to 2014 — which means that he both began and ended his Oscars career with notoriously disastrous telecasts. 

The ‘89 Oscars, as you may recall, found Rob Lowe and an actress dressed as Snow White murdering the legacy of Creedence Clearwater Revival, and arguably the medium of music in general.

Meanwhile, in 2014, the hosting duties fell to Anne Hathaway and James Franco, who proved to be the peanut butter and chocolate of awards ceremony awkwardness. Hathaway clearly tried her best, while Franco acted like telling goofy jokes in a tux was part of some kind of court-ordered community service. 

Vilanch recently guested on WTF with Marc Maron, and revealed a little more about exactly went wrong on that fateful night. He claimed that the 2014 Oscars were an even “bigger disaster” than anything that had come before. When Maron pointed out that it seemed as though Franco “wasn’t willing, wasn’t game” to go along with the show, Vilanch mostly agreed, but wasn’t angry. “She’s a precision instrument, and he wasn’t playing along with her,” Vilanch explained. “And he’s apologized to me a million times since.” 

According to Vilanch, Franco took the hosting job when it was offered because he was nominated for Best Actor that year for “the movie where he gnaws his arm off (127 Hours) and he knew he was going to lose to Colin Firth for playing the stuttering King George (in The King’s Speech).”

So Franco thought to himself, “Do I wanna sit in the audience and wait to lose or do I wanna do something else?” Vilanch said that the actor later admitted to him that accepting the host job was a “mistake” because it was “not in his comfort zone.”

So, in other words, James Franco was worried about being miserable during the Oscars, so he decided to make everyone watching the ceremony miserable too?

Vilanch went on to explain that a lot of celebrities turn down the hosting gig, not just because it pays like crap, but because if “you’re famous enough and rich enough, you don’t need to host that show,” adding that if a host does a bad job, “the stink will sit on you forever.” 

Or in the case of Franco, that stink will be overpowered by other, even worse stenches.