Harry Shearer
Harry Shearer
Harry Julius Sheareris an American actor, voice actor, comedian, writer, musician, author, radio host, director and producer. He is known for his long-running roles on The Simpsons, his work on Saturday Night Live, the comedy band Spinal Tap and his radio program Le Show. Born in Los Angeles, California, Shearer began his career as a child actor. From 1969 to 1976, Shearer was a member of The Credibility Gap, a radio comedy group. Following the breakup of the group, Shearer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionVoice Actor
Date of Birth23 December 1943
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I'd been freelance writing all this time, and I then got involved in a radio broadcast which was a series of satirical newscasts every day.
It grew out of the fact that so many record executives had seen Judith, and had said, 'She's great, we know she's great, we love her, we don't know what to do with her,'
The hardest work most of us do is maintaining the appearance of normality.
I didn't have a lot of independent film connections. It really took until the digital film revolution came along that I realized that I could do it myself.
Well I directed a few feature length things for HBO in the late eighties.
When it moved to Friday night it disappeared, when they find another show that can do what The Simpsons does, they will be delighted to do cancel The Simpsons.
To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will.
If you're going to do something that lasts 90 minutes, you can't really do it with stick figures.
Because I don't do stand-up, radio has always been my equivalent, a place to stay in connection with the public and force myself to write every week and come up with new characters. Plus it's a medium that – having grown up with it and putting myself to sleep with a radio under my pillow [as a kid] – I love. No matter what picture you want to create in the listener's mind, a few minutes of work gets it done.
My parents didn't want me to be a regular in a series. I was a working actor from time to time but they thought was a little too much being a star of a series. They wanted me to have a slightly more normal childhood.
[The word class has] been excised from the acceptable political vocabulary, except in the limited usage of right-wingers when they accuse liberals of inciting 'class warfare' - a charge that means it's okay for rich people to vote their economic interests but it's not all right to encourage poor people to do so.
You know, radio was a really easy way to do the shows. You'd come in, do a read-through, there'd be a few rehearsals, then you'd come the night of the show and do it in front of the audience and then go home.
I'm not sure that there's anybody else that's as psychologically complex and who's given us this window into his soul that Nixon gave us. That's what I find absolutely addictive and seductive.
Nixon's genius was that he was able to portray himself as the toughest of the anti-communists, and yet run on a platform that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. And, of course, his plan was to prolong it until his second election - but he didn't tell us that then.