Creator / Dennis Miller

"I don't want to go on a rant here, but the U.S. foreign policy makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the First Battle of Antietam. I mean, when a neo-conservative defenestrates, it's like Rovslofski filibustered deoxymonohydroxinate." ^note What the hell does "rant" mean?

—Family Guy

Dennis Michael Miller (born November 3, 1953) is a stand-up comedian, television/radio host and political commentator. He is known for his very snarky jokes and commentary that includes lots of obscure references and big words.

He got his start as the Weekend Update anchor on Saturday Night Live from 1985^note during the show's 11th season, which was so fraught with mediocre writing and acting that NBC nearly had the show cancelled. According to the book, Live from New York: The Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, Dennis Miller's turn as Weekend Update anchor was considered the only reason to watch the show at the time to 1991, making him the first truly long-running Weekend Update anchor^note with Tina Fey tying his record, Seth Meyers breaking it, and Weekend Update with Colin Jost and Michael Che beating the 112 installments of Weekend Update that Miller racked up between 1985 and 1991 and the first SNL cast member to stay on the show for longer than five years.^note Prior to that, most cast members either were dropped after one or two years [whether they quit or were fired] or stayed on until their fourth or fifth year (often leaving to star in feature films or other television shows). Miller opened the door for other long-running cast members like Darrell Hammond, Phil Hartman, Tim Meadows, Kenan Thompson, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and fellow Weekend Update anchors Tina Fey and Seth Meyers (the only other Weekend Update anchors to stay on past the fifth-year mark).

Though Miller acknowledged that he wasn't good at acting in sketches and felt much more at home as a Weekend Update anchor (which provided an opportunity for him to do his stand-up), there were rare times when he was in sketches. His recurring characters were Koko, a forest sprite in the short-lived recurring sketch "Miss Connie's Fable Nook", and Steve, a sarcastically observational stand-up comic (seen in a season 11 episode hosted by Jay Leno and a season 13 episode hosted by Tom Hanks). His celebrity impressions included Nathaniel Crosby (Bing Crosby's son), US senator Gary Hart (whose 1988 presidential campaign was derailed by a sex scandal), and George Harrison from The Beatles.

After his stint on SNL, Miller hosted a short-lived late night talk show, The Dennis Miller Show. After the show's cancellation but before it went off-air, Miller began indulging in long-winded and humorous rants about social and political issues. The rants created such a stir that Miller parlayed them into a successful HBO talk show, Dennis Miller Live, which combined a celebrity interview and a Weekend Update-like "news" segment with a humorous rant from Miller about a specific topic each week. The show ran from 1994–2002. During this time, Miller also made a famous but abortive attempt at NFL color commentary on Monday Night Football from 2000–01, where his trademark obscure references were poorly received by football fans.

Although Miller's politics have never been confined strictly to one side of the political spectrum (he's often described himself as "socially liberal and fiscally conservative"), his commentary began to shift noticeably to the right after the terror attacks of September 11, causing an upheaval in his fan base. He is currently a regular contributor on the Fox News channel, and from 2007–15 he hosted his own talk-radio program, also called The Dennis Miller Show, on Westwood One.

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Tropes associated with Dennis Miller include:

• Catchphrase: On Weekend Update he would begin with, "Good evening, and what can I tell you?" and end with "Guess what, folks? That's the news, and I am outta here." On Dennis Miller Live his rants would begin with "Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but..." and end with "Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong."
• Rant Comedy: In the final episodes of The Dennis Miller Show, Miller began throwing out his scripts and simply using the platform to vent his beliefs on a wide range of topics. Audiences found the rants so entertaining that Miller made them a central focus of his next show, Dennis Miller Live, in which he performed a scripted rant Once per Episode. He even sold audiobooks of collections of his rants.
• Re-Release Soundtrack: HBO's On Demand versions of Dennis Miller Live have replaced the theme song (originally "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears) with something that sounds like it was written by someone who had heard the lyrics of the original song described second-hand and tried to re-write it.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and Sophisticated as Hell: He mixes obscure references and big words with lots of slang, and when uncensored, cursing.
• Verbal Tic: Calling people "babe," something that no impression of him can dare omit.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: One of the main reasons why Miller is a polarizing comedian. Other shows have made fun of this, such as The Simpsons (season ten's "They Saved Lisa's Brain," where Comic Book Guy's "C:/DOS. C:/DOS/Run, Run/DOS/Run" shirt is only considered funny to one person out of a million (which is called "The Dennis Miller Ratio") and Family Guy (the Cold Open to "Peter Griffin: Husband, Father, Brother?" has Peter watching a monologue to Dennis Miller Live filled with obscure vocabulary and historical references — and Peter responding with "What the hell does 'rant' mean?")

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