Bill Maher
Bill Maher is an actor, born 1956.
Before the talk shows there was a stand-up with a small and slightly strange screen career. Bill Maher turned up in D.C. Cab in 1983, in Ratboy, in House II: The Second Story, in the television version of Max Headroom, and, unforgettably for anyone who has seen it, in Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. He also published a comic novel, True Story, in 1994.
The thing he is genuinely good at is running a room. Politically Incorrect, which ran from 1993 to 2002 across Comedy Central and ABC, and Real Time with Bill Maher, on HBO since 2003, are both built on a format that should not work: sit four people who disagree at one table and let the host referee with jokes. He holds it together by being willing to be the least popular person on his own show, which is a real skill and also why his audience has changed shape several times over thirty years. He holds a Primetime Emmy for outstanding hosted nonfiction series or special.
The rest of the output has widened rather than deepened: the documentary Religulous in 2008, an appearance in the documentary Sicko, cameos as himself in Iron Man 3, The Campaign, Swing Vote and Late Night, and the podcast Club Random from 2022.
Movies (16)
- Iron Man 3 (2013)
- Reality (2023)
- The Campaign (2012)
- House II: The Second Story (1987)
- Late Night (2019)
- Sicko (2007)
- Swing Vote (2008)
- Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (1989)
- Fuck (2006)
- Religulous (2008)
- Rags to Riches (1987)
- D.C. Cab (1983)
- Ratboy (1986)
- Pauly Shore Is Dead (2003)
- Earth to America (2005)
- The Undefeated (2011)
TV (14)
- Real Time with Bill Maher (2003)
- The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992)
- Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012)
- Finding Your Roots (2012)
- The Jay Leno Show (2009)
- StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson (2015)
- America: The Story of Us (2010)
- Primetime Glick (2001)
- Max Headroom (1987)
- One Night Stand (1989)
- The Showbiz Show with David Spade (2005)
- The Jackie Thomas Show (1992)
- Rags to Riches (1987)
- Larry King Live (1985)
Books (1)
Where to start with Bill Maher
Religulous is the single best artifact of the Maher method, a whole film of him doing at length what the weekly show only has time for in bursts. Watch that first and then decide whether you want the television version.
If you do, Real Time with Bill Maher is the ongoing project and the panel format at its most practiced. The rest splits cleanly in two. There is Maher playing Maher, in Iron Man 3 and The Campaign, which is precisely as interesting as it sounds. And there is the pre-fame oddity, which is much more fun: D.C. Cab, House II: The Second Story and Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, a film whose title is doing more work than its budget ever could. True story, his novel, is the deep cut.