Smallscreen News

Who to blame? Bruce Vilanch and James Franco dust up over Oscar flatliner

By April MacIntyre Mar 22, 2011, 4:41 GMT

Bruce Vilanch - Santa Monica, CA, USA © Image of Sport / PR Photos

The recent past Oscars went over like a lead balloon, with blame laid at the hosts, and the writers too.

But the aftermath has seen a new Twitter dust-up between award show writer Bruce Vilanch, who also writes for Bette Midler, and actor James Franco, who was accused of being too low energy for the award show.

Vilanch lobbed the first bomb via Vulture, "I have to call James Franco and tell him the show's over," Vilanch tells Vulture. "He doesn't know. He took a nap and he woke up in class." Does Vilanch attribute Franco's sleepy performance to an actual lack of sleep? "He has so many balls in the air, he didn't get to town till Thursday before the show on Sunday. And so we e-mailed a lot. But we had a lot of meetings. He had a bunch of people who were writing for him, and if it had been him alone, it would have been different. But it was him and Anne Hathaway, and they both had to be serviced. So there was a lot of communication beforehand. But he didn't get there."

Franco picked up the foul ball: "Bruce, he let me down" and he tweeted a photo of himself and Vilanch, one of the four staff writers on the 83rd Oscar show.  In the photo, written over the image was: "James f***ed up the Oscars. Trust me, I know comedy," on the top, and "I mean, come on, I write for Bette Midler!" on the bottom by Vilanch.

What say you? Do you lay more blame on Franco, Franco and Hathaway or the writers that include Vilanch who wrote their material?