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DENNIS
MILLER concludes his famous acid-tongued rants with the same
disclaimer every time: "Of course, that's just my opinion. I
could be wrong." And he means what he says: an avowed
conservative libertarian, he fervently believes in every person's
right to believe what they want to believe. His harsher critics,
however, have nonetheless indicted the razor-witted comedian for
being condescending, arrogant, self-indulgent, proselytizing, and
worse. One thing is for certain: Miller, a gifted social and
political satirist (Playboy dubbed him "a social Darwinist with
a funny bone"), doesn't believe in pandering to any crowd. In
his own defense, he'll say that he's just trying his damnedest every
Friday night to stiffen up the sagging backbone of comedy.
A
native son of Pennsylvania, Miller and his younger brother, Jimmy
(now Jim Carrey's manager), were raised primarily by their dietitian
mother (their father moved on from the family scene early in the game
and died when the boys were still quite young). Inspired by Robert
Redford's performance in the landmark investigative-reporter biopic
All the President's Men, Miller completed a degree in journalism at
Pittsburgh's Point Park College. When he discovered that he couldn't
pull off the rumpled-suit look quite as convincingly as Redford, and
that reporters are paid by the . . . uh . . . inch, he abandoned the
occupation before even getting started. He knocked about in several
different jobs--working in a dairy and in a grocery store, selling
storm windows, driving a delivery truck--before stumbling upon his
true calling. After witnessing a truly horrible comedian struggle
through his boorish act at a local comedy club, Miller convinced the
owner to let him take the mike on slow nights. From then on, there
was no looking back. Miller expanded his touring radius to include
well-known clubs in New York and L.A. In 1980, he parlayed his
growing reputation into a job writing and producing humorous segments
for a Pittsburgh program called PM Magazine, and into a hosting gig
(the first of many to come) on a teen-slanted weekend show called Punchline.
In
the mid-eighties, Miller was bumped up to the major leagues of
comedy when he was "discovered" by Saturday Night Live
producer Lorne Michaels, who caught the comedian's act at The Comedy
Store in L.A. one night, and subsequently invited him to join the
cast. Following the well-worn path blazed by Chevy Chase, Dan
Aykroyd, and Jane Curtin, Miller stepped in as anchorman for S.N.L.'s
popular "Weekend Update" sketch, which provided a perfect
showcase for his libertarian soapboxing. He delivered the news of the
week with acerbic fury, and by the end of his report, after he had
signed off with a trademark pen flourish across his copy and an
"I am outta here," viewers didn't feel quite the same about
being American.
After
six successful seasons on the show, several Miller Lite commercials,
and a number of awards-show emceeing gigs, Miller broke from Saturday
Night Live to launch his own late-night talk show, The Dennis Miller
Show, which boasted "the smartest monologue on television."
A galvanizing addition to the staid smorgasbord of late-night
programming, the show debuted in January 1992 to a fair share of
critical approval, but, it fell prey to low ratings (and, to hear
Miller tell it, some rather underhanded tactics by late-shift
competitor Jay Leno), and was euthanized within six months.
Miller
packed up the family and fled L.A.'s rat race to take up residence
in Santa Barbara, where he set about expanding his stand-up career.
He didn't have to scramble for long: within thirteen months of his
show's cancellation, he had re-entered the ring, rabbit-punching more
furiously than ever, with HBO's Dennis Miller Live, and won his first
Emmy for the effort (he has since received a second). Now in its
fifth season, Dennis Miller Live offers a solid format that includes
an introductory socio-political "rant" courtesy of a
sneering Miller, a tête-à-tête with the guest du
jour followed by viewer phone-in participation, and a closing roast
à la "Weekend Update" of the news events of the
previous week. Miller's eviscerating topical harangues are notorious
for their biting cynicism, intelligence (he takes his
vocabulary-building word-of-the-day calendar very seriously), and
liberal peppering of cultural esoterica. His tirades became so
popular, in fact, that he published them in the book Dennis Miller:
The Rants, in 1996. Each of his inspired diatribes is "brief
enough to read during one visit to the bathroom," according to
the author--now that's quite a recommendation.
In
addition to drop-in parts in a handful of forgettable films
(Madhouse, The Quest, Broken Highway), Miller has landed memorable,
if minuscule, roles in two major features: in 1994's Disclosure, he
played Michael Douglas's techno-geek co-worker, and in 1995's The
Net, he was Sandra Bullock's ex-boyfriend. His first lead role came
in 1996's Tales From the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood, in which
Miller essayed a detective who investigates a brothel operated by
vampiristic prostitutes, and then kills off the vixens with a Super
Soaker filled with holy-water ammo. As a general rule, Miller doesn't
give a rat's hindquarters for filmmaking (now, that is refreshing for
an S.N.L. alum), and suspects that he got this particular part
because one of the Baldwin brothers flaked. His aversion to acting
aside, he had a substantial role in the Wesley Snipes flick Murder at
1600 Pennsylvania, in which he played sniveling cop to Snipes'
supercop. But Miller cares deeply about two things: his noble
profession as a comedian and his family. In fact, he is such a family
man that he named his company Happy Family Productions. Miller
married Irish-born Ali Espley, a former model, in 1988, and the
couple has two sons, Holden and Marlon. Once asked to complete the
sentence, "Being powerful in Hollywood means . . . ," the
perennially vitriolic comic replied: "Absolutely nothing. What
means something is having a wife and kids, and if you can keep that
together, that really means something." Of course, that's just
his opinion. He could be wrong.
The
Rants presented here are from his earlier work. In recent years he
has "gone over to the dark side" so to speak in his support
of the George W. Bush administration and it's so called War on Terror
much to dismay of this fan and I suspect many others. Dennis, what
were you thinking?
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