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" You have to do real acting, not just do a voice. "
Harry Shearer
You
Acting
Just
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" 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
Vacation
Parents
Three
" 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
" 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
Friday Night
Will
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
House
Guy
Last
" 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
" I'll always watch anything that Steve Coogan does in the character of Alan Partridge. "
Harry Shearer
Watch
Anything
Does
" 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
" 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 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
" If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure? "
Harry Shearer
Pure
You
Make
" Well I directed a few feature length things for HBO in the late eighties. "
Harry Shearer
Well
Eighties
Late
" 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
" I was a Political Science major. "
Harry Shearer
Political
Political Science
Science
" 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
" Doing voices is like singing and remembering songs. "
Harry Shearer
Remembering
Songs
Doing
" 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
Work
Trying
Normal
" 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
" 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
" 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
Never
Loss
Leave
" That was Embassy Pictures, they went bankrupt shortly after This is Spinal Tap came out. "
Harry Shearer
After
Tap
Spinal
" 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
You
Moral
Morals
" We're very pleased to be on a show which is known and loved around the world. "
Harry Shearer
Known
Loved
Show
" 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
" 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
" '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