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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 -
For a guy who is always banging on about the masculine virtues, Nixon had this remarkable proclivity for very dainty gestures.
Harry Shearer
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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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
I'm not sure that there's anybody else that's as psychologically complex and who's given us this window into his soul that Nixon gave us. That's what I find absolutely addictive and seductive.
Harry Shearer -
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
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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 -
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 -
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.
Harry Shearer -
Music often happens even faster than comedy in terms of the creation.
Harry Shearer -
To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will.
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
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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 -
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 -
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 -
You're not just looking for laughs, but you're trying to do the characters first, and then the laughs come afterwards.
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 -
Even under the best of circumstances men are hard creatures to trap. Women who flatter themselves into thinking they've trapped one are like people who believe they can get rid of the cockroaches in their kitchen. They're in for a big surprise late one night when they turn on the light.
Harry Shearer
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I just think everyone knows you go on those political satire shows if you're a politician to, "humanize yourself" - to show, "Hey, I can take a joke." Well, why should satire be in the service of humanizing these people who are supposed to be the target of our venom and vitriol? I think that's unseemly.
Harry Shearer -
Nobody makes a movie thinking it's still going to be watched and talked about and quoted 20 years later.
Harry Shearer -
Sometimes, songs spill out of you very fast, and sometimes you have to wrangle them to the floor. But the same thing is true of comedy, where sometimes it really flows.
Harry Shearer -
I was a Political Science major.
Harry Shearer