Dennis Miller Live

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Dennis Miller Live was a weekly talk show on Home Box Office, hosted by comedian Dennis Miller. The show ran 215 episodes from 1994 to 2002, and received five Emmy awards, plus an additional 11 Emmy nominations. It was also nominated six times for the Writers Guild of America Award for "Best Writing For A Comedy/Variety Series", and won three of those times.

The show was mainly characterized by its simplicity. The show had a small set, no house band, or even much lighting. It mainly consisted of Miller speaking to the largely unseen studio audience on a darkened stage.

The show's opening started with Miller doing a brief joke about a current event. The credit sequence showed Miller in a pool hall playing by himself set to "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" by Tears for Fears. In later seasons, the sequence was changed to show oversized toppling dominoes featuring images of political and social leaders. The final domino falls in front of Miller who walks away while an overhead shot shows the dominoes spelling out the word "LIVE". In the ninth and final season, the opening was very brief. It consisted only of a close-up of a monitor with the title of the show on it. A new original theme played as Miller immediately walked on stage to start the show.

Then Miller would perform a two-part monologue. The first part being the usual jokes about current events typical of late-night talk shows. This would then segue directly into a stream-of-consciousness diatribe that became Miller's trademark. This second part of monologue always began with the catch phrase "Now I don't want to get off on a rant here..." and ended with the phrase "Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong." These monologues were the highlight of the show. A series of books which compiled transcripts of these monologues were released during the run of the show, starting with 1996's The Rants to 2002's The Rant Zone.

There would be one guest per show live with whom Miller would discuss the topic of the day. During the first season, some guests were interviewed via satellite. During the guest segment, the show would also take phone calls. The call-in number was originally given as 1-800-LACTOSE. Reportedly, Miller chose the word "lactose" because it was the only word he could make with seven digits to make it a vanity number. But starting in the 1997 season, he stopped using the word and simply gave the corresponding numbers.

At the end of the interview, Miller would tell the guest "Stick around, I've gotta go do the news", at which time he would step next to a monitor named "The Big Screen". Black-and-white photographs from newspapers would be shown, and Miller would make humorous captions regarding them. At the finish of this segment, Miller would harken back to his SNL days by saying "That's the news, and I am outta here!"

The show was directed by Debbie Palacio for most of its run, and head writers were first Jeff Cesario and then Eddie Feldmann. Other writers included José Arroyo, Rich Dahm, Ed Driscoll, David Feldman, Mike Gandolfi, Jim Hanna, Tom Hertz, Leah Krinsky, Rob Kutner, Rick Overton, Jacob Sager Weinstein, and David S. Weiss.

[edit] The Final Season

Many feel the show jumped the shark after the attacks of September 11, 2001 because Dennis's attitude clearly changed in what turned out to be his final season. Instead of equally ripping both sides of the political aisle, he clearly leaned more to the conservative side, often showing support for President Bush. Miller has defended his change in attitude on the talk show circuit, saying the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil had forever changed his priorities in politics.

His feelings on other political issues also changed. Once a critic of the War on Drugs, post-9/11 he invited former DEA chairperson Asa Hutchinson as guest of that show.

[edit] Trivia

  • Dennis's first in-studio guest was Robin Williams. All other guests appeared via satellite, and many continued to do so until after the 1996 season.
  • Between the Big Picture and the guest interview, Dennis had a spot called "So what have we learned?" when he tried to put a synopsis on the topics of today. He would end the spot with, "Aw fuck it. Who wants pie?" The segment was dropped after the first season.
  • The music for the Big Screen was from Civilized by Rollins Band
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