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" I think I've ascended to the point after a lot of years where I'm kind of OK on bass. "
Harry Shearer
Bass
Years
Where
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" I was a Political Science major. "
Harry Shearer
Political
Political Science
Science
" 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
Digital
Myself
Revolution
" 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
Childhood
Parents
Time
" That was Embassy Pictures, they went bankrupt shortly after This is Spinal Tap came out. "
Harry Shearer
After
Tap
Spinal
" You have to do real acting, not just do a voice. "
Harry Shearer
You
Acting
Just
" 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
Rights
Doors
Years
" 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
You
Easy
Home
" 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
Try
Alone
Art
" 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
Me
Walk
Street
" 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
Time
Did
Pictures
" I'll always watch anything that Steve Coogan does in the character of Alan Partridge. "
Harry Shearer
Watch
Anything
Does
" That's life's big joke: we all end up looking like Mr. Burns. "
Harry Shearer
Big
Looking
Like
" 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
World
Creative
Talent
" 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
Good
Camera
Director
" My job is to take what I think is funny and to make other people think it's funny, too. "
Harry Shearer
Think
Job
Funny
" 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
White
Boy
Way
" 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
Work
Business
People
" Rock n' roll doesn't change. All the idiocies and pretension continue. "
Harry Shearer
Roll
Change
Continue
" Doing voices is like singing and remembering songs. "
Harry Shearer
Remembering
Songs
Doing
" Bryce Canyon isn't as famous as the Grand Canyon, but it is just incredible - nothing compares to it. "
Harry Shearer
Canyon
Grand Canyon
Famous
" '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
Band
Music
Myself
" 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
See
Job
Work
" 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
Children
Character
Beauty
" I am one of those people who thrive on deadlines, nothing brings on inspiration more readily than desperation. "
Harry Shearer
Who
I Am
Thrive
" 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
Morning
Serious
Pants
" 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
Character
Doing
Thought
" 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
City
Love
Myself
" 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
Problems
Looking
Camera
" 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
State
Two
Year
" 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
Me
Funny
Great