Skip to content
Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

Black and White

Dennis Miller

HBO · 1990 · 54 min

A monochrome hour of dense metaphors and hyper-specific pop culture references.

Watch it free on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Dennis Miller treats stand-up like a specialized vocabulary test. Shot entirely in monochrome at a club in Tempe, Arizona, his 1990 HBO hour relies on a relentless stream of metaphors connecting classical literature to obscure television characters. He delivers highly constructed premises with a deliberate, detached smirk. The aesthetic choice to remove color matches the rigid structure of his writing, leaving little room for loose improvisation.

At this point in his career, Miller was still a defining fixture at the Weekend Update desk on Saturday Night Live. He uses the extended stage time to defend Andrew Dice Clay against detractors, casually dropping references to Moby-Dick and the crop-dusting scene from North by Northwest. The set also includes an extended, aggressive teardown of anti-fur activists.

The set list

7 bits

  1. Dancing differences between Black and white couples

    Miller contrasts dance styles and turns the punchline on white men being lame while physically acting it out onstage.

  2. Violence inside a vending machine

    Compares vending machine mechanics to Vertigo, The Other Side of the Mountain, and Lou Grant before begging the crowd to stop him before he sub-references again.

  3. Jack Nicholson impressionists putting him in mundane situations

    Argues against imagining the world's highest-paid actor working as a grocery store produce clerk spritzing turnips.

  4. German reunification

    Compares the reunification to a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis reunion, quipping that he didn't care for their previous work and doesn't need to see new material.

  5. Male dominance in sexual positions

    Offers a theory on why men prefer lovemaking from behind, likening the partner's look to Emma Peel or Audra Barkley as the man feels at the helm of a bobsled.

  6. Animal rights protesters and fur coats

    Expresses anger at activists dictating choices and quips that animal traps should be reserved for social activists.

  7. Ronald Reagan on Mount Rushmore

    Questions whether granite is a dense enough material to accurately depict the ex-president's head.

How it plays

Tone
Snarky, cerebral, caustic, and sarcastic.
On stage
Hip, aloof, dapper, and cocky intellectual with a syncopated cadence and Rat Pack swagger.
Pace
Rapid-fire, machine-gun delivery of intricate run-on sentences executed with precise athletic momentum and no ad-libs or crowd work.
About
American and world politics, pop culture, liberal intelligentsia and social activism, airline travel and flight attendants, human sexuality and relationships

What the critics said

Praised by reviewers as a tightly constructed, highly articulate display of Miller's intellectual wit and delivery at his comedic peak, though noted for maintaining an emotionally detached, cool distance and featuring pop references that age rapidly.

In the room: Supportive nightclub audience that responded with thunderous applause to his libertarian stances.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: imdb.com, filmanic.com, simkl.com, thetvdb.com, vulture.com, cracked.com, nowtoronto.com, en.wikipedia.org, tvinsider.com.

Backstory

Filmed entirely in black and white during the post-Cold War era shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu, and ongoing unrest in Beirut.

Details

Released
Runtime
54 min
Where
HBO
Director
James Yukich
Topics
After
Live from Washington D.C.: They Shoot HBO Specials, Don't They? (1993)

More from Dennis Miller

If you liked this