My Dennis Miller Interview

by effenheimer at 10:10 PM on January 24, 2004

Normally, I wouldn't bug you guys with this, but it's pretty cool. OK, I lie, OF COURSE I would bug you with this. Are you kidding? DN is Daily Nonpareil ie me. DM is self-explanatory, CHA-CHA! Read on...

Dennis Miller is a denizen of deep thought masquerading as a cocky wiseacre comedian who comes off as a bit of know-it-all. Along with his hipster swagger, foul mouth and curve-blowing vocabulary, Miller is something of a pundit, a wise man who thinks of himself as a comedian first. But not many simple comedians have won five Emmy Awards covering hot-button political and social topics.

Miller has always evolved and starting Monday night at 8 p.m. on CNBC (Cox Cable channel 42), the latest stage in his move up the evolutionary ladder – “Dennis Miller” – will be a four-night a week, hour-long news program he hopes will be as funny as it is informative.

The Daily Nonpareil was able to speak to Miller by telephone about his new show Friday afternoon. And what, pray tell, will be the hot topic of the day?

Howard Dean’s emotional outburst after the Iowa caucuses.

DM: Well, the simple fact is that while we’ve all condensed it down into a funny word, “The Yelp,” the fact is it’s over, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a good reminder that in the immediate 24-hour news cycle world we live in, you can ascend reasonably unscathed quickly over the Internet with funding but it can all go away in one Fred Flintstone moment where you order the large ribs and it flips the car over. With that yelp – short of pulling his pants down and mooning us – he couldn’t have done anything else to look less presidential. And the truth is, that campaign has gone so far off the beaten path that he’s gonna have to install and Onstar button in the middle of his forehead to get back on the road.
I think for the next 10 months in the polarized electoral climate we have, it’s gonna be the main topic of the show. I mean, it’s kind of fun. Politics is serious, but not SO serious.

DN: Was getting back on television a priority for you?

DM: That seems to be my career up this point. It’s my job to get back on TV as quickly as possible with a tan.

DN: Once on Dennis Miller Live, you said you were more pragmatic than liberal, that always seemed to suggest you were a liberal, but not a wimpy one. Have your politics changed much over the years and where do you see yourself on the political spectrum?

DM: I would say I’m liberal on many things, but conservative on the defense of this country. Quite frankly, if two homosexuals want to get married, it’s none of my business. I’m happy for them. I like it when people fall in love. If some nut case wants to blow up their wedding to make a political statement, I expect my government to step in first and flatten the guy. So I guess I’m conservative to that extent.

DN: Are you concerned about recent perceived challenges to civil liberties through the Patriot Act that some say may be using national defense as an excuse?

DM: All I know is when Woodward and Bernstein wanted to see what Howard Hunt’s library records looked like it was viewed as a seminal moment in the history of journalism. When we want to find out if Ramsey al-Kaboom has taken out a bomb cookbook somewhere it’s thought to be Orwellian. All I ask is that if John Ashcroft wants to spy on me that he be so good at it that I never know.

DN: Politicians seem to open up more on talk shows than on more mainstream news programs. Why is that?

DM: I’m able to get more out of people. For one thing, I’m allowed to say who I like and dislike and it seems to me the sort of Edward R. Murrow dictates of the “real” journalism world preclude anybody from doing anything but a straight, five-W [who, what, where, when and why] interview where they pretty much don’t reveal their bias. But the simple fact is at least I’m telling people up front that I’m voting for Bush. Peter Jennings, over the course of the next year, will tell me he’s liberal in a million ways. There are certain poker tells that I have to figure out over the course of the year. I’m just putting it out front so people don’t have to view me through a prism. They know where I stand. It seems more ethical in some ways to announce what you are.

DN: Do you ask different questions than say, Peter Jennings?

DM: I know I ask a stupider question than Jennings. I needed the Cliffs Notes to follow him last night for God’s sakes. I was sitting there watching thinking, my God, I can’t even follow this question. And from the squint on a couple guy’s faces – John Edwards in particular – neither could they. Pete, get to chase man. Come on. I think people watch Jennings and they think, don’t work so hard at this, just pop a question, let’s get on with it.

DN: What are you trying to accomplish with the new show?

DM: I’d like to get a laugh and I think the guests would like to get a laugh, too. Think about the sturm and drang of being a politician and getting asked the same question every day 500 times and thinking, God I wish I could show my stuff and show who I am as a human being. I think that’s why Jon Stewart is great at this. He doesn’t put people under the microscope of somebody who considers himself to be a hard-hitting journalist.

DN: So you aren’t shooting for journalism?

DM: I consider myself to be something of an entertainer. I read and I’m not ill-informed but I’m probably not as informed as some. I think it gives you an honest bounce on what a politician is like as a guy. I think that at the end of the day, if I can ask a smart question or get some insight into somebody, that’s fine, but that’s secondary to me. At some point, I’d like to make the show entertaining. I come from night clubs for God’s sakes. If you go for 30 seconds without a laugh or reaction from the crowd at a night club, you don’t get invited back to work there. I’m not gonna turn it into the lounge at the Fontainebleau, but I’m Pavlov’s dog. I want to be entertaining. I just don’t want to sit there and be a font of pristine journalistic ethic or a conduit for strict nuts-and-bolts information. I’d like to get a little humor out of it or something.

DN: Your HBO show was only a half hour per week. That never seemed like enough time to cover everything you could cover.

DM: Well, you’re about to see, frankly, that half hour a week was enough time. I’ll run it up the flag pole and see what happens, my friend. Believe me that 27 minutes thing? That went by like a Brahma bull ride in a rodeo. It was like BAM! It started and it seemed like it was over. And it was live. I’ll see how I have to adjust my rhythms to this, but I think I can do it. But I’ve yet to do one so, we’ll see how I feel in a couple of weeks.

DN: You seemed to operate in more of a stream of consciousness style that resulted in a stream of obscenities as well. Any trouble keeping things in check with the new show?

DM: When I did football for two years, I never got close to saying F---. The simple fact is whatever my boss wants, I can do. It’s not like I go to work thinking, Oh God, I hope I can swear here. I worked on HBO, did you want to watch Tony Soprano say, “That frickin’ guy is bugging me?” I could control myself easily, it doesn’t even come to mind.

DN: Besides talking about the issues, will there be anything new added to your repertoire?

DM: Dave Garroway had a monkey on the Today Show and I thought that so weird and so random. I swore if I ever got a news show, I’d have a monkey.

DN: Really? Why a monkey?

DM: You tell me that if you’re watching somebody do an interview about the gross national product or something else you don’t give a damn about that you wouldn’t look at that monkey and think, isn’t that the damnedest thing?

DN: You aren’t worried that some people might protest the monkey?

DM: I’m sure I will receive protests. If the chimps unhappy I’ll let her go. I like monkeys. The monkey is cool. If somebody could come in and show me the monkey’s unhappy I’ll let her go. I don’t want to put the monkey in harm’s way. Somebody wanted to put the monkey in some clothes and I said I thought monkeys operate best nude. I’m trying to think of the monkey. The monkey loves the gig. She just wanders around, looks at me once in a while and get’s paid. They’ve got some nice food for her. MAYBE it’s hell for the monkey, but it sure doesn’t seem like it. We should all be that lucky. I gotta write jokes every day. The monkey just gets to cruise around.

Miller said he owes a great deal of his pragmatic nature to growing up in Pittsburgh, Penn., a city he said takes a man at face value.

“If you’re a nice man, they’ll be nice to you and if you’re not, they don’t suffer fools lightly,” he said. “That’s life in the Burgh.”

Pittsburgh seems to have informed Miller’s comedy, which could easily be described the same way. Miller calls everything the way he sees it without regard for notions of propriety and sensitivity. During an election year, his candor could be the anti-politics that keep candidates real – at least the ones who dare come on his show.