With his long-running current-events roundtable show Politically Incorrect, which aired for nine years, first on Comedy Central and then on ABC, Bill Maher evolved from a second-tier comedian best known for campy movies such as Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death into one of pop culture's most trenchant political commentators. Now on HBO with his show Real Time, Maher remains funny and insightful and takes his place with the likes of Al Franken, Dennis Miller and Jon Stewart as one of the country's top political funnymen. He'll be at The Comedy Festival hosting a late-night showcase of dirty jokes, which is not all that different from talking about politics.
How did you get involved with The Comedy Festival?
Well, it was described to me as what we used to enjoy so much in Aspen, in Las Vegas, which to me was a huge upgrade. I never really was that keen on going to Aspen in February. I don't ski. I'm not particularly fond of the cold. And it was always kind of a nail-biter getting into that airport, and sometimes you get snowed in. Once I was there, we had a great time, because it was a bunch of people I know, it was HBO people, it was comedians. There was always a lot going on. A festival in my area—comedy—woo, good. So when they said they were going to move it to Vegas, I was like, "Oh, thank God. What a great idea." It was a no-brainer for me. And then they asked me to host a dirty show and I was like, "Boy, I'm in pig heaven now." I'm looking forward to the whole thing, not just my part of it. I want to see a lot of the events.
Tell me about the event that you're doing.
I'm hosting the X-rated late show, which I think that town sorely needs. Another reason I'm happy to do this is because I've been saying for years that some organization has to try to get Vegas back on the track of human entertainment. It's all Cirque du Soleil and burlesque and Blue Man Group and magic and dolphins. How about a f--king human? What happened to Dean Martin, Shecky Greene? Some of that spectacle stuff is OK, but outside of Celine Dion and Elton John, there's not a lot of actual just human entertainment. I would love there to be at least a couple of places where people in the town could go and see kind of a hip, late-night show like they used to have on the Strip.
And you don't play Vegas that often.
No! Because I'm not a dolphin and I'm not blue and I don't do somersaults and I don't do magic. You see my problem.
Someone else who's playing the festival is Dennis Miller. What do you think of his conversion to a Bush supporter?
You know, everybody asks me that, and I don't know what to tell you, because I've known Dennis forever, but I think everyone who knows Dennis only knows Dennis so much. He's a very private guy. I never knew Dennis to be that political to begin with. Even though he did a show that had politics in it, he didn't seem like he was really taking a big stand either way. I never thought of him as a big liberal to begin with, or anything. I just thought of him as funny. He sort of just—did he take the liberal or the conservative stand? No, he took the funny angle. The short answer that I could give you would be 9/11. 9/11 did change a lot of people's thinking. There's a whole category of people out there called 9/11 conservatives, like Ron Silver, for example. People who were fairly liberal, but after 9/11 got very hard-core about national defense and issues like that.
I'm very curious, now that George Bush has been exposed as the blithering idiot the rest of us always knew and said he was, what Dennis thinks now. Because, Lord knows, George Bush has lost an awful lot of his support, from his base even, in the last few months, after Katrina and the Harriet Miers nomination and all these scandals and indictments that are coming down against his cronies. So it would be interesting to see where Dennis is now. Because I know when he was doing his MSNBC show, he said, "I like George Bush. He's a friend of mine. I'm not going to criticize him." Which I thought was crazy. How can you do a daily show on politics and say you're never going to criticize the president? He's not the king. I wonder if Dennis is where a lot of conservatives are—disillusioned with the president and not afraid to say it—or whether he's still supporting his boy.
Given that Bush's approval ratings have gone down recently, do you think the country has woken up? Will they be making a different choice in 2006 and 2008?
God, I hope so. We had John Edwards on Friday night, and I said to him, "Fill in the end of this sentence: 'If the Democrats can't win big in 2006, they are blank.'" I think that is the key question. If they can't win at this point, then when? What does have to happen? Does Bush have to invade Margaritaville just to lose support? I can't imagine a rosier scenario for a political party. The problem is, of course, as usual for the Democrats, they still don't stand for anything themselves. All they stand for is "Bush is bad." Well, we know that. Why are the Democrats good? That's the question that they have to answer. And they have been reluctant to do that for the last three or four election cycles. They just think every time, "Hey, come on, we can't possibly lose to a guy like this." And then they do.
If you were in charge, who would be your Democratic nominee for president in 2008?
Al Gore.
Really?
Yeah. I think if you look at what—and I was never a fan when he was running. I was very hard on him, because he was a pussy, the way he ran his campaign. Just like John Kerry, same campaign. Same sort of, "Well, I'm running against a retard, so I don't really have to distinguish myself from him on the issues." But since he has lost, there really is a new Al Gore. I think Al Gore is like the Nixon of the Democratic party. He's a vice president who lost a very close election, and then eight years later got elected president. That could happen. That did happen to Nixon: He lost in 1960 to Kennedy, and won in 1968, and Gore lost in 2000 and he could win in 2008. If you read his speeches, and see what he's been saying since he lost, he found his cojones. His speeches are terrific. He just has to remember to be that Al Gore, and not the timid, shy, "OK-take-my-beating-can-I-have-another-one-sir?"-from-the- Republicans Al Gore.
Is it tough to get Republicans to come on your show?
Yes. I mean, it's tough to get them when they're still in office. The second they're out of office, no. Then they're fine. The Bush administration is a bit like the Corleone family: If you get out of line, you get whacked. And so they don't want to do it while they're still holding a job. That sort of is loosening up now that he is in such political trouble. It doesn't seem like a lot of the people care what the Bush administration thinks anymore, because, really, they're more interested in distancing themselves from him than they are in keeping his confidence.
Given that difficulty, do you worry that your balance is too skewed sometimes?
No, because you know what? This is a different kind of show and I don't really worry about balance anymore. I'm much more interested in a collegial discussion that's interesting and that's not predictable than I am in booking people who are predictably at ideological odds with each other. That's what we did on Politically Incorrect. We did it for nine years. A lot of other shows do that now, and God love them. But for me, I've moved on to something else. And if you see the show on a regular basis, you see that, yes, we of course do have conservatives on—we have Tucker Carlson this week with Spike Lee, so there's two people who obviously probably don't agree on anything—but we do encourage, on this show as opposed to the old show, to think outside the box, to be unpredictable, to not be part of that, "Well, I'm on the red team, so I think this" and "I'm on the blue team, so I think this," "Everything the blue team says, I have to pretend I'm against," "Everything the red team"—that kind of bullshit. That's what's wrong with the politics of the country, is that everyone is so down-the-line partisan. I like people who are not part of any team or any party. So I don't mind that we have three people on, on any given show, and none of them is a conservative or a Republican. That's OK. Give me an interesting discussion.