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
Satire is an art best practiced behind the back of the intended target. I think inviting politicians on a satirical show becomes a very big trap. Because one of two things happen: Either you have to kind of unsharpen your fangs because you can't be quite as cruel to people to their face as you are behind their backs... Or you don't defang, and those guests get the word and they stop coming.
When Nixon died, on my radio show I started doing sketches with three basic conceits: One, there's a place called Heaven. Two, Nixon got in. And three, he's still taping.
I went to graduate school at Harvard for one year I worked in the state legislature in Sacramento for one year. I taught school in Compton for two years.
I would come back to public school for usually about half the year. It was actually better for me to be out of school a lot, because I was two years younger than everybody, which is a bad situation, socially.
...I was one of the first Cinemascope children...
We were never on strike. The day that story appeared in Variety newspaper, I was at Fox doing vocal services for that week's show.
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.
There are a couple of fairly interesting soundtrack situations that we can't yet announce, because we're still in negotiation. And beyond that, we'll start looking at other artists.
You can never expect a movie to have a life that lasts this long, really.
When (Pryor) took the 'N' word and repeated it in so many contexts and made you laugh at it so much, by the end he had drained that word of its power to sting and hurt,
A bunch of different kid roles on the Benny show. I worked for him for eight years, so I played Jack as a kid and other kinds of parts as well.
I told a different disgusting joke with the same setup and a different punch line, ... I'm hoping that's in the DVD.
What we hope is to break Judith as a major artist. Secondly, I'm going to put my television stuff, both from 'Saturday Night Live' and HBO, on DVD for the first time, and package it with a CD of comedy material -- mainly from my radio show ('Le Show') about the era of anchors who are leaving or have left: Brokaw, Rather, Koppel. And then to go down the line, Judith has a lot more material.
That was Embassy Pictures, they went bankrupt shortly after This is Spinal Tap came out.