Background and career
Dennis Michael Miller (born November 3, 1953) is an American political commentator, stand-up comedian, talk show host, writer, actor and former sportscaster. Miller was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1985 to 1991, and he subsequently hosted a string of his own talk shows on HBO, CNBC, and also in syndication. From 2007 to 2015, Miller hosted a daily, three-hour, self-titled talk radio program, nationally syndicated by Westwood One. On March 9, 2020, Dennis Miller + One show, launched on RT America. It ran twice weekly and featured celebrity interviews. In 2004, Miller was listed as 21st on Comedy Central's 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time. He was ranked as the best host of SNL's Weekend Update by Vulture.
Miller was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in the suburb of Castle Shannon. He is of Scottish descent. Miller's parents separated and he was raised by his mother, Norma who was a dietitian at a Baptist nursing home. Miller is reluctant to speak about his father, usually just saying he "moved on when I was very young." He is the oldest of five children. Miller attended Saint Anne School, a Catholic elementary school. At St. Anne's, he managed the Catholic Youth Organization basketball team for boys 15–16 years old. His first inspiration to pursue a comedy career came when as a child he was taken to see comedian Kelly Monteith at a Pittsburgh club. After the show, Monteith was kind enough to answer the young Miller's questions about being a comedian. Two other early influences were Jonathan Winters and Tim Conway. Miller went to Keystone Oaks High School. At Keystone Oaks, Miller was a member of the Physical Fitness Club, and in his senior year he worked on the Keynote newspaper and served on the student council, but lost his bid for senior class president. By high school, he had already developed a reputation for humor. Despite this, his actual personality at this time was one that was reserved, lacking self-confidence, and hidden under a layer of comedy. He graduated from high school in 1971 with the intent of studying to become a sports writer.
At Point Park University Miller became a member of Sigma Tau Gamma fraternity. Miller likened his social status at this period as being lower than Booger of Revenge of the Nerds. Miller majored in journalism. In the fall of his senior year at the university, he began writing for the South Hills Record, mixing humor into his sports reporting. When the paper changed its payment structure to pay around an eighth of a penny per column inch, he quit. He graduated from Point Park in 1976 with a degree in journalism. He later reflected, "I'm just not that interested in other people's business and that's a tragic flaw in a journalist." After college Miller moved through several occupations, including a clerk at Giant Eagle deli, a janitor, a delivery man for a florist, and an ice cream scooper at the Village Dairy. As an ice-cream scooper, Miller recalled that he was twenty-one, five years out of high school, and wearing a paper hat while working alongside teenagers. A spur to quit the ice cream scooping job was when he took the order of the prettiest girl from his high school, which filled him with embarrassment. Miller later said that at the time he feared that if he stayed in such jobs, his life would become a Franz Kafka novella, and it stiffened his resolve to start pursuing a comedy career. Leaving the ice cream parlor Miller joined the staff at Point Park's Recreation Room, where he was in charge of the bowling alley, video games, and running the air-hockey league. A patron from that time recalled that Miller sat on pool tables telling jokes and honing his comedy to those in the rec room, which was the only place the commuters gathered. Miller and the other patrons closely followed the NFL at the time as it was the "era of the Super Steelers".
In 1979, after seeing a Robin Williams comedy special on HBO, Miller began to pursue his dream of being a stand-up comedian.
In Pittsburgh, Miller began a comedy career by performing at open-mic nights. He backed out of his first two attempts to perform at an open mic due to stage fright and anger with himself over the question of whether the drive to perform was a need for approval from others. When he finally made his début at the Oak's Lounge on Sleepy Hollow Road in Castle Shannon, most of Miller's family was in the audience to cheer him on. He began appearing onstage at the Oak's Lounge in Castle Shannon while working at the Giant Eagle deli in Kennedy. Miller lived without a car and without much money in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, hitching rides or taking buses.
He continued to do stand-up in Oakland and at places like Brandy's in the Strip District and the Portfolio on Craig Street, eventually saving up $1,000 which he used to try to fast-track his comedy career by moving to New York City. Once there, Miller had to bribe a landlord to give him a room for $200, then had to pay the security deposit of $250 and the first month's rent of $250. Thus, he spent $700 of his $1,000 savings on his first day in New York, for a sparse, bunker-like room. While in New York he submitted a joke for a Playboy magazine contest for humor writing that was judged by an all-star panel including Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Cosby, David Brenner, Martin Mull, Art Buchwald, and Buck Henry. Of around 15,000 entries, Miller tied for second and his joke and picture appeared in the June 1979 issue of the magazine. Miller won $500 in Playboy's first annual humor competition with the following joke:
