Harry Shearer Quotes

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"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

#Lasts #White House #White

"The act of getting married, stripped of the necessity to have a secure setting to raise children, seems to me no less grim than registering your emotions with the government."

--- Harry Shearer

#Emotion #Getting Married #Grim

"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

#Easy Way #Fronts #Way

"For a guy who is always banging on about the masculine virtues, Nixon had this remarkable proclivity for very dainty gestures."

--- Harry Shearer

#Dainty #Banging #Remarkable

"I have a very strong visual memory of the first time I made him laugh. That was remarkable. I was like, "Oh, God, I just made Jack Benny laugh.""

--- Harry Shearer

#Made #Memories #Visuals

"I couldn't help but be struck that this guy I had thought was the embodiment of everything wrong with American politics, a lot of his domestic policy was mind-numbingly, head-spinningly to the left of Obama's. It was under Nixon that the EPA was created. It was under Nixon that OSHA was created. Under Nixon that the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts were passed."

--- Harry Shearer

#Clean #Air #Mind

"I wasn't playing Nixon's satirical stick figure. I was playing Nixon the man. As an actor, I felt I had to get to the deeply flawed humanity of the guy."

--- Harry Shearer

#Satirical #Sticks #Actors

"To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will."

--- Harry Shearer

#Retro #Mighty Wind #Would Be

"Privilege has its own way of seeing the world. It's not about the kind of people they are; it's about the situation they're in."

--- Harry Shearer

#World #Seeing The World #Way

"I think in most cases, if you're with good people, comedy creation happens faster in collaboration. That's how I can tell if it's a good collaboration: If it's faster than me by myself, then it works. If it's slower than me by myself, then I get out of the room."

--- Harry Shearer

#People #Thinking #Creation

"I happened upon a memoir by a midlevel White House staffer, and he had been in the room that [Nixon's last] night [in office]. This guy's memoir told me what Nixon's last words were. And they were, on August 8, 1974, to the crew: "Have a Merry Christmas, fellas!" That was just so bizarre."

--- Harry Shearer

#Lasts #Happened #Last Night

"I was never into candy and games and clowns."

--- Harry Shearer

#Candy #Clown #Games

"Nobody makes a movie thinking it's still going to be watched and talked about and quoted 20 years later."

--- Harry Shearer

#Thinking #Stills #Years

"You're not just looking for laughs, but you're trying to do the characters first, and then the laughs come afterwards."

--- Harry Shearer

#Character #Firsts #Trying

"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."

--- Harry Shearer

#Mediums #Plus #Done

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

--- Harry Shearer

#Late #Features #Length

"The first thing you've got to do is know your craft, and then you can do something else with it."

--- Harry Shearer

#Knows #Firsts #Can Do Something

"[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."

--- Harry Shearer

#People #Mean #Vote

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

--- Harry Shearer

#People #Desperation #Thrive

"You can get an awful lot of effects into the customer's mind for a great deal less time and money in radio than you can in television."

--- Harry Shearer

#Time And Money #Effects #Television

"The Simpsons will end as soon as Fox is able to find an 8 p.m. comedy hit to replace it - so I give us another 50 years."

--- Harry Shearer

#Ends #Foxes #Years

"When I was growing up, we learned our history almost as lives of the saints. And it came as a shock, "Oh, Jefferson had slaves?" It always comes as a shock to us that elevation to the White House didn't somehow cleanse them of all their deep character flaws."

--- Harry Shearer

#Elevation #Character Flaws #White House

"There were really funny characteristics about this guy [Richard Nixon], chief of which would be that he seemed to devote about 85 percent of his waking energy to suppressing any sign of his emotional response to anything that was going on around him, and the other 15 percent blurting out those authentic responses in the silliest and most inopportune ways. And he had these smiles that would come at the most inappropriate times - just flashes that there was an inner life screaming to get out."

--- Harry Shearer

#Waking #Inappropriate #Response

"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

#Friday Night #Friday #Night

"I've been doing Nixon pretty much my whole professional life. I was in this comedy group called the Credibility Gap in Los Angeles when he was president. I was doing Nixon on the radio, and when we did live shows I physicalized him - if that's a word - for the first time. And then I did a Nixon sketch on a very short-lived NBC show called Sunday Best."

--- Harry Shearer

#Gaps #Sunday Best #Credibility

"Here's a guy [Richard Nixon] who had no gift for small talk, never liked to be around strangers, was physically awkward, and he goes into the one business that calls for ease with strangers and a gift for small talk."

--- Harry Shearer

#Ease #Stranger #Guy

"I was a Political Science major."

--- Harry Shearer

#Science #Political Science #Political

"[C. Montgomery] Burns is much purer evil than Nixon was. I think it's the purity of his evil that attracts me as a comic character."

--- Harry Shearer

#Thinking #Character #Purity

"A movie script more than anything else is a plan of action for the crew. Everybody in the crew looks at the script to see what they're going to do. It has to contain where you are, and how many people are there, and what they do, and what time of day it is, and what time of year it is."

--- Harry Shearer

#People #Time Of Day #Action

"I think the British learn their history through the prism of this gallery of grotesques known as the royals."

--- Harry Shearer

#Thinking #Prisms #Known

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

--- Harry Shearer

#Powerlessness #Absolutes #Power

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