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Dennis Miller

Liev appeared as a guest on HBO's Dennis Miller Live on Friday, August 4, 2000. Following are transcripts, a few video captures, and an MP3 of the full interview you can download. Many many thanks to Stacey Wheeler, who offered up her images for the enjoyment of all Liev's fans. Please contact Stacy before using these images for anything at all. Also, we have some great caps from Marie. Again, please gain permission before downloading these photos.

Download the zipped MP3 HERE. Zip file is approximately 7.8 megs and unzipped MP3 is about 8.1 megs. If you have an internet connection slower than 56k you may find the file difficult to download.

Liev Schreiber as a guest of HBO's Dennis Miller Live
Friday, August 4, 2000
Photos property Stacy Wheeler

Liev Schreiber as a guest of HBO's Dennis Miller Live
Friday, August 4, 2000
Photos property Marie Paradis

Transcript as interpreted by Angie. I have taken the liberty of omitting extraneous words. Enjoy!

DM: My guest tonight is up for an Emmy for his performance – stunning performance – as Orson Welles. The man is capable of tremendous rage and is an incredible genius in RKO 281, HBO’s elaborate period movie. Price, no man can say. Please welcome Liev Schreiber. Liev…

(audience clapping)
(various “how you doing” and “hey man” garbled under audience noise)

DM: Now, before we get underway talking about rage, that was an amazing performance. Did you research a lot about Welles?

LS: I did. I was always a big fan and my mom used to take me to all the Welles movies when I was a kid so I had a background in it and I think also the rage thing is pretty appropriate. I was always an angry kid so I think I was already ready for Welles.

DM: My all time favorite image of rage is, in fact, that scene where Welles just decimates, destroys the set as an old man (Liev keeps interjecting). It’s, you know the scene we’re talking about late in the movie where he, … it’s just the most uncontrolled I’ve ever seen an actor on the screen…

LS: (interrupting): She walks out and then he destroys the set. And there was this, there was this great story that his assistant told that as he walked out that he, first of all he destroyed the set and he did it in one take and he was incredibly destructive well beyond what he was supposed to do and he came out and he smiled at his assistant as he was walking out and he said, ‘I think I finally got it.” Which of course is the end of the movie.

DM: Did you ever hear Mankiewicz’s line about writng, when he sent in a letter accepting his Oscar for the screenplay, said ‘I accept this in Orson’s absence because it was certainly written in the same’. That’s such a great line. Sorry. Just talking Welles here. Now, what about the first time you experienced rage, Liev? You seem like a pretty relatively calm person. Do you have rage in your life?

LS: I thought that you picked the subject because you thought I was going to be here. It’s a very appropriate subject for me.

DM: Yeah? You sittin’on a shitfull of rage?

LS: Yeah. The only, and you know, and part of what exacerbates it so bad is I have no fucking idea why I’m so angry. I just, I don’t know. I have no sense. I think that makes me even more angry and it’s not the kind of anger you express, cause you’re not really mad at anything in particular, you just…you’re just constantly kind of annoyed and itchy. And uh…

DM: I read your bio. It was like a Dickins story. I mean, maybe it comes from your childhood.

LS: Could be

DM: I mean, what…

LS: No I had a, my aunt recently came cause I was trying to think of stories about rage and she told me a story that I didn’t know. Cause she gave me a puppy and I named the dog chicken. And uh… (much audience laughter)

DM: He’s getting pissed. (laughter)

LS: Whatever. You know. I thought it was, it’s a good name for a dog. Chicken. So I named the dog chicken and the reason I named the dog chicken is when I was a little kid, when I was four we lived on a, briefly lived on a farm, cause we’re New Yorkers mainly. But briefly we were on a farm and the extent of our livestock was chickens, that’s what we had, that’s all we could really deal with was chickens. And one thing, I couldn’t walk much, I couldn’t talk much, but what I could do then was I could make sandwiches. At four years old I was like a Rembrandt of sandwich making, I was very good with sand…I mean I could make a serious sandwich. I’m not just saying that to be funny, I was really good at it. And uh, I slaved over these sandwiches, you know, I would spend like hours and my mother would bring people to the house to show, look at him in the kitchen, look at him working and I’d be making a sandwich, you know, and with diapers and…

DM: That’s a proud moment for a mom.

LS: Yeah.

DM: Kid’s whipping up a bologna and Velveeta.

LS: Actually, the sandwich that I made, she told me that she thought it was something like cream cheese, scallions, bologna on pumpernickel. Which for a four-year-old, I mean that’s progressive.

DM: It’s avante garde.

LS: Exactly. Right. So, I made this one sandwich and I think it was like, you know, really a beautiful sandwich. Actually, I think it was like the best I’d ever made. And I went outside and a chicken, a big chicken attacked me and …, but when you’re four years old a chicken’s a big thing. It attacked me and took my sandwich. And I was like pissed off like I’ve never been pissed off in my life. And I hadn’t at that point been speaking a lot. You know, I hadn’t said much of anything and I came back in the house and Monica told me, my aunt told me that I was purple and red and there was steam coming like the Bugs Bunny and I was furious and they were looking at me and I was like weeping and weeping and I didn’t say anything and they were like “what is it, what is it” and I just kinda said “CHICKEN!! CHICKEN!!” That’s all that I said, chicken, and apparently for years after that I just sort of kept inexplicably muttering chicken.

DM: When you eventually pass on as Liev Schreiber they’ll say his last words were chicken.

LS: Yes, that was my first…

DM: Now your mother is into Eastern philosophies. She lives on an ashram, I believe?

LS: Yeah, she lives on an ashram in Virginia.

DM: Now is she…do you think that sort of religion allows you to deal with, it seems to me that those people are much more together about rage than we are.

LS: You know what I, I read this book that, cause I’ve been trying to deal with the rage thing through the acting, whatever, do something with the rage thing, but I read this book by the Dali Lama and I can’t remember the name of it, cause rage has screwed up my memory, but it was something like Ways to Freedom or Paths to Freedom, anyway, what I like about the Eastern philosophy, and in particular this guy the Dali Lama – who I think is a real straight arrow, is they’re so pragmatic. They’re really, I mean no, it’s not esoteric bologna. He says behavior and emotion can be practiced like anything else. Like a sport. And he’s absolutely right, so he has this one thing, one suggestion in the first chapter that I really like which was, “Can you go ten minutes without having a negative thought about somebody else?” And I thought, gee that’s really stupid. Right away. Like what kind of jackass can’t go ten minutes without having a negative thought about somebody else? And I realized that maybe I could practice that. But, it’s true, because that was my first funny story, but you know it was my first impulse, I was like, boy that’s stupid, that stupid guy, stupid Tibetan guy.

DM: How far have you ever made it into the ten minutes?

LS: I made it about four minutes.

DM: Really? That’s great.

LS: It’s better than nothing, you know. It’s better than like constantly raging. Now they’re doing this, she told me, Colleen, one of your producer told me that they know now that there’s medical evidence that physiologically you’re healthier and you feel better if you’re not having these negative kinds of feelings. Which we’ve always known but now they’re proving scientifically. Somehow. I don’t know the details.

DM: Well, as long as you got the data nailed down like that. Line three, a phone call, we’ve got Matt from Texarkana, Texas. Matt.

Matt: Hey, what’s going on?

DM: How you doing down there, Matt?

LS: Hey Matt.

Matt: It’s cool.

DM: You proud of your boy George W?

Matt: ehhhh….

LS: (Andrew-type giggle)

DM: You’re not currently on death row, are you Matt? What’s your question, big guy?

Matt: I was going to ask you, what’s the worst type of rage you’ve committed?

DM: What’s the worst type of rage what?

Matt: You’ve committed. What have you done?

DM: You know, I have such a therapeutic job. I get to come out here and scream each week so I don’t have a lot of it spilling out into my life. You ever flipped on anybody and felt really bad about it, Liev?

LS: Me?

DM: Yeah.

LS: I went back when I was sixteen and I kicked that chicken about ten feet.

DM: Liev Schreiber, everybody stick around.

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