Harry Shearer Quotes

Democrats always like to brag that their guys are smarter than the opponents and Republicans always like to brag that their guys are more moral than the opponents. But if you're looking for morals in politics you're looking for bananas in the cheese department.

- Harry Shearer

Behind the ambitious, creative talent that is Hollywood lies a darker side of the entertainment industry little appreciated by the ordinary moviegoer. It's an opaque world of film financing, revenue accretion, and minimal profit share.

- Harry Shearer

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.

- Harry Shearer

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

- Harry Shearer

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.

- Harry Shearer

One of the problems with 'SNL' is that, if you tried to adlib, the director would put you off camera and off the mic, so only you would know that you ever did it. The director always directed to the script; he wasn't listening to what you were doing. He was calling shots whilst looking at the page.

- Harry Shearer

I love to see what real human behavior looks like. I've always envisioned my job as just observing and noting that and, for the purposes of my work, just cutting out the boring parts.

- Harry Shearer

I am one of those people who thrive on deadlines, nothing brings on inspiration more readily than desperation.

- Harry Shearer

My family was lower middle class, and my parents both worked, so we couldn't take proper vacations. We'd go for three days to Santa Barbara or to the desert, so my first real vacation came was when I was 12, when friends of my parents were taking their kids away. We went to Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Zion National Park in Arizona and Utah.

- Harry Shearer

I think I've ascended to the point after a lot of years where I'm kind of OK on bass.

- Harry Shearer

'Leave It To Beaver' is a fairly famous show in America, but I don't think it travelled. It was one of those typical '50s family comedies. I was in the pilot episode as sort of the dark presence: my character was called Eddie Haskill.

- Harry Shearer

People don't play music in New Orleans for the reasons they do in Nashville or L.A. - to become stars or to get rich - they play because they've got to. It's in the streets, in their family, in their blood.

- Harry Shearer

Most Americans never work as hard as when they're trying to appear normal, and in New Orleans, we just don't bother with that.

- Harry Shearer

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.

- Harry Shearer

I'll always watch anything that Steve Coogan does in the character of Alan Partridge.

- Harry Shearer

That was Embassy Pictures, they went bankrupt shortly after This is Spinal Tap came out.

- Harry Shearer

'Spinal Tap' began as a mock rock band that we four - Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and myself - developed for an appearance on a TV pilot at the end of the 1970s. On our own initiative, we wrote and recorded most of the songs and performed them live in several music clubs around L.A. before any cameras rolled.

- Harry Shearer

Perhaps not unusually for a popular film produced over three decades ago, there have been a dizzying parade of corporate characters trading rights to 'This Is Spinal Tap' through the years. Yet our requests for timely statements of the film's income have been met with a series of slammed doors.

- Harry Shearer

I'm lucky that I can walk down the street, and maybe one person will recognise me from 'The Simpsons,' and another person will recognise me from 'Spinal Tap,' and it's always surprising.

- Harry Shearer

When I did that first movie, it was the introduction to all the set-up time and the waiting time that's endemic in motion pictures, and the repetition.

- Harry Shearer

I never wanted to do a regular sitcom, because I'd be incredibly bored doing the same character week in, week out. But the beauty of 'The Simpsons' is that it's 15, 16, 17 characters. It's the variety that keeps it interesting. And hey, they're all my children.

- Harry Shearer

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.

- Harry Shearer

Bryce Canyon isn't as famous as the Grand Canyon, but it is just incredible - nothing compares to it.

- Harry Shearer

I do stretches every morning and serious yoga. Not the hot, sweaty type - I don't believe yoga is calisthenics in fancy pants. I practise a variant of hatha yoga.

- Harry Shearer

Well Washington DC what are you going to do. They think the capitol steps are the state of the art in comedy. You try to drag them into the 20th century let alone the 21st and they refuse to come with you.

- Harry Shearer

I'm at a little loss in terms of my Leave It To Beaver expertise, since I never watched an episode of the show - so the cast in the pilot could have been Martians or they could have been the regular cast for all I know.

- Harry Shearer

To me, the funniest American of the Twentieth Century is Richard Nixon because he had the most to hide, and he was so bad at hiding it. To me, that's what's really funny - people who think they're doing a great job of hiding stuff, and it just keeps leaking out.

- Harry Shearer

In the year and a half I was on SNL, I never saw anybody ad lib anything. For a very good reason - the director cut according to the script. So, if you ad libbed, you'd be off mike and off camera.

- Harry Shearer

The last president we had was the smartest guy anyone could remember and he did the dumbest thing anyone has ever seen in the White House so go figure.

- Harry Shearer

Bush is a frat boy in the White House but we've had that before. But I wasn't one of those people that was threatening to leave the country. By the way none of those people have left the country. Alec Baldwin is still here.

- Harry Shearer

Well I directed a few feature length things for HBO in the late eighties.

- Harry Shearer

I believe London is the city New York wants to be when it grows up. I love the wealth of cultural resources that a city of that size can offer. I also believe I don't have to sacrifice all of my standards for human behavior to avail myself of them.

- Harry Shearer

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.

- Harry Shearer

That's life's big joke: we all end up looking like Mr. Burns.

- Harry Shearer

Anybody who says that having the public recognize them and relate to the work they do is irritating should get into another line of work. You're in this business for people to know what you do and like it.

- Harry Shearer

I always thought, as a kid, if you - and the reason that I sort of stayed away from doing one character on a sitcom is - if you're doing one thing all the time, the audience is going to come up to you and say the one thing all the time.

- Harry Shearer

We're very pleased to be on a show which is known and loved around the world.

- Harry Shearer

The right-wingness of Fox is basically the news channel. I don't think the broadcast network has any politics at all. It's sub-political at best.

- Harry Shearer

I like Mr. Burns because he is pure evil. A lot of evil people make the mistake of diluting it. Never adulterate your evil.

- Harry Shearer

Doing voices is like singing and remembering songs.

- Harry Shearer

Rock n' roll doesn't change. All the idiocies and pretension continue.

- Harry Shearer

I was a Political Science major.

- Harry Shearer