(Photos courtesy of NFL Films and Warner Bros. Discovery) (Photos courtesy of NFL Films and Warner Bros. Discovery)
By Michael Grant on

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Dennis Miller’s two-year stint on Monday Night Football was brief but memorable. The comedian, known for his snarky wit and obscure, highbrow references, was an unusual choice for a sportscaster.

No one was surprised it ended, but perhaps the powers that be never intended for Miller to be there for the long haul. Director Jeff Cameron examines the former Saturday Night Live comedian’s strange primetime run in the HBO documentary Miller Night Football. It debuts Sept. 29.

We recently spoke with Cameron about the 41-minute documentary to discuss his latest project.

Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

How did this idea start?

Jeff Cameron: “I’m always interested in these quirky, forgotten little pockets of NFL history that aren’t quite long enough to focus on for a feature-length (film) or certainly for a multi-part series. I was doing some research, and Dennis Miller popped up. You forget that he was on air for the ‘He did what?’ game, the Antonio Freeman catch, and the Monday Night Miracle when the Jets came back against the Dolphins. ‘Oh, that was a thing.’ It kind of fit the bill for this short doc series that we’re building.”

How difficult or not difficult was it to get Dennis Miller to participate in the documentary?

“We made a pitch and assured him that this was not a hit piece on this era by any stretch. I think this era of Monday Night Football goes down as one of the biggest, quote unquote, blunders of all time, an example of what not to do in sports broadcasting. We assured him that this would be an honest portrait of this era. We weren’t going to take cheap shots; we were going to celebrate the highs, look at the lows, and see what didn’t work. He was on board, and he could not have been more gracious with his time and his home. We interviewed him at his home in April, and he was great.”

What were some of the challenges of this project?

“We were in a bit of a time crunch. We interviewed Dennis, Dana Carvey, Al Michaels, and David Israel, the former coordinating producer, all in the same week. We couldn’t quite make an interview with Eric Dickerson work, unfortunately, with his schedule and our schedule. That was late April. Then fast-forward to July. It was a bit of a scramble-edit to get to post-production by August. So it was a truncated timeline. That would probably be the biggest challenge. But overall, for a while there, my day job was watching old Monday Night Football broadcasts and categorizing everything Dennis Miller said. I have a bin of subsequences of his historical references, his art history references, and his geography references. It was a lot of fun. The research was the fun part, for sure.”

How would you persuade someone to watch Miller Night Football?

“I would say that, believe it or not, there was a time when one night football put a stand-up comedian into the commentary booth. That, to me, is the hook. It’s like, ‘I’m sorry, what?’ In the same way, last year, we did a short documentary on the Super Bowl Shuffle. ‘By the way, the most intimidating football team of all time once did a hip-hop music video declaring that they were going to win the Super Bowl.’ It’s like, ‘I’m sorry, what’s that?’ That’s kind of our thought process with these.”

One fascinating detail was that MNF tried to convince Dennis Miller to do a Weekend Update-style halftime show. Could you tell us more?

“I think that would have been fantastic. Like (producer) Fred Gaudelli says in the doc, it was right in Dennis’s wheelhouse. I think absolutely people would have stuck around for halftime to see his take on the previous day’s games and everything that happened. I think, in a way, it was kind of ahead of its time, and in what you see happening in terms of other networks’ post-game shows now—the recaps and things—I think they were on to something for sure. But for whatever reason, Dennis didn’t agree and didn’t want to do it.”

Could you explain how the change in producers affected Miller?

“Don Ohlmeyer came from the entertainment world. Before he took the Monday football job in 2000, he was at NBC, where he was responsible for Must See TV. He was very show-business. He was, in some ways, from a bygone era. He assembled this team and was very entertainment-oriented. He left after 2000 and was replaced by Fred Gaudelli, who, as Melissa Stark plays out, was not so show-business and more football. He came from Sunday Night Football. Very Xs and Os, detail-oriented. He’s not the Fred Gaudelli we know now. He was still finding his voice. If this had happened years later in his career, he might have been a little more forceful with Dennis and maybe insisted on that halftime idea you brought up. But I think the combination of the personality difference between Fred and Dennis, not being the same as Don and Dennis, and Fred being a little newer in his role, combined to not have the same success as in 2000.”

From the documentary, you get the sense that Dennis Miller wasn’t bothered by criticism, but he did want viewers to like him. Is that your impression?

“One hundred percent. In the doc, he talks about his whole career, kind of living on that mean line of 50 percent of viewers loving him and 50 percent not being so sure. He told me a story because I brought up the same thing to him in his interview. Whether or not ratings ever bothered him, or he ever thought about bad ratings or executive feedback. He kind of likened it. He was like, ‘I call that a lump in the armpit problem. There are problems, ratings, viewers maybe not liking you, this and that. And then you’re in the shower one morning, and you find a lump in your armpit. All of a sudden, those problems are not problems anymore.’ I thought it was interesting. I thought that was a good perspective. I think as time has passed, that’s only become clearer.”

What does Dennis Miller believe is the No. 1 reason he didn’t last?

“Like he says in the doc, once John (Madden) becomes available, that’s kind of it. There’s no countering arguably the greatest football broadcaster of all time when he becomes available and not only becomes available, but wants your job. There are very few things anyone could have done to stop the pairing of Al Michaels and John Madden, which, looking back, seems so inevitable because it was so great.”

How do you think Dennis Miller looks back on that time now?

“He looks upon it very fondly. I think he said in his interview that his whole career has kind of been hopping from lily pad to lily pad as a comedian. Coming up, he got used to just getting to the next gig. I think enough time has passed that he looks back on football as a super fun thing he did. At its core, this is a film about a football fan who grew up in Pittsburgh, watched the 70s Steelers, and fell in love with football. Finding the golden ticket in the chocolate bar, if you will, and becoming the kid football fan who gets to call Monday Night Football games as an adult. Like, it’s kind of this brief dream come true. I think he shares that notion.”

Did your perspective on Miller’s tenure on Monday Night Football change?

“Fred Gaudelli, at the end, revealed the conversation he had with Don Ohlmeyer after that. Don was like, ‘Fred, this wasn’t meant to last. This was a stunt cast. This was meant to get people talking about Monday Night Football again.’ That hit me. There were certainly things I learned that I didn’t expect. But overall, a fun jaunt back through this absurd era of NFL history was exactly what I envisioned.”

About Michael Grant

Born in Jamaica. Grew up in New York City. Lives in Louisville, Ky. Sports writer. Not related to Ulysses S. Grant.

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