The Many Voices of Harry Shearer: Masters in Business (Audio)

I don't know if they could do the show without him. And and he's just really a thoughtful, intelligent, interesting guy that has some real insights into the entertainment and television business. Unfortunately, we only had him for about forty five minutes. He had a run, uh to catch a plane, so we were a little tight for time. But um, it's really an interesting and entertaining conversation. And the next time he's

in New York, he lives in New Orleans. The next time he's here, we'll get him back to talk about an update to the documentary he did ten years ago about New Orleans. It's it seems really really fascinating post Katrina, what happened, Why it happened, what failed. I'll let him tell you the story. It's it's it's intriguing and just generally talking to somebody with the breath of experience that he has in film, theater and music, um, television, radio.

He's really just a general entertainer and I found our conversation delightful. I hope you do as well. Without any further ado, my chat with Harry Shearer. This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. This week on Masters in Business, we have a very special guest. And I know I say that every week, but it happens to be true. We have an actor, comedian, writer, voice, actor, musician, author, radio host, director and producer, the one, the only, Harry Sheer. Harry,

welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you very much. So for those of you who may not know who um Harry is, UM, which includes me, I don't know who I am. You know I have a question about that coming up. We'll get to that. I first noticed him not for his synchronized swimming on Saturday Night Live, but as the bass player of a band whose drummers kept on spontaneously combusting called spinal tap. Do you hate the word mockumentary or no, No, it seems like that's been beaten to death. That was

the first mockumentary, or at least it feels like that. Yeah, I co wrote with Albert Brooks a sort of precursor to that, called Real Life, but it wasn't shot in exactly the same way, so it didn't quite qualify as a as a mockumentary. But yeah, I mean I don't get as sick as that as I get of television shows sort of taking the visual style of the movie without any purpose at all, you know, just to make it look a little different, just to make a little

little edgy. Uh. You know, speaking of television, you've dabbled, and I've dabbled. I've dabbled in a cartoon show for about twenty seven years. He is again for those of you who may not be familiar with The Simpsons, he's essentially Harry is essentially half of the characters. Here's the quote. He's half of the regular characters. And quote he pads his resume with God, the Devil and Hitler on the Simpsons. Um,

and you're some of the really big characters. So Mr Burns Mr Burne, Smithers and ned Glanders, reverential love Joy Kent Brockman, scratchy auto principal Skinner and Brockman really sounds the closest to yours, you think, so I do. Interest, we'll talk a little more about The Simpsons and a little bit. Um, I'm not done with your your curriculum, vite.

He's the director and producer of the documentary The Big Uneasy about the destruction of New Orleans, and then there's a ten year version of that, an anniversary of that coming out at radio documentary for the BBC called The Crescent in the Shadow, which runs on on BBC's National Service in Britain and also in the BBC World Service worldwide. Are we going to see it here BBC America or anything like that. It's not. It's not. It's radio, right, I mean, it's uh some we can some public radio

stations carry World Service, so it may be. I listen to BBC two on streaming over the internet Radio two. Yeah, So so I should like that middle of the road music, do you? Um? I like what's his name, um, Bob Harris? Yeah, I just I mean, you know, it's funny because I every now and then on the blog on on the big picture, I'll throw up a music post or something. And people have said to me, you found Amy Winehouse

before anybody ever part over here. I go, oh, Bob, And there's a half a dozen other people along those lines that I used to on the in the winters when I'm working indoors on the weekend. Now, you're from California, so you're spoiled. But here, when the weather is nice and you have worked to do it, you go out. It doesn't matter. And there I'm told the weather is always nice in California. Yeah, mainly I live in New Orleans now, and the weather nice except during the summer.

You're a California kid, though, didn't you grow up out there? When when did you make the move to New Orleans? Well started. I first went to New Orleans and eighty eight, and then just kept going more and more often, and finally my wife and I decided not to subsidize the hotel business there anymore, and we bought a place in the mid nineties, and then we bought our present huge spread and uh, it's not a spread, it's a pile. In two thousand six h post post. There you go alright.

So so let's get into a little detail about your background, because I find you to be um fascinating for many reasons beyond the Simpsons. So let me ascu you this question. You meet somebody, they don't know your work, and they ask you, so, what do you do? How does someone like you answer that question? Well, you know, I have the occasion to to answer that very question quite often because I go to London and they don't know who

you are there. No, they know who I am. But I mean, you know, on the on the landing form you have to say your occupation and I just put entertainer and that's it. Yeah, I mean everything I do. You know, even when I was making that very serious no jokes uh documentary about why New Orleans flooded, I had an entertainer's clock working in my head. It's a narrative. You want to tell a story, but if the people are if the viewers aren't interested, the point never gets

got ninety minutes max. If I haven't got the story told by that time, I've lost him. I should learn that here because I go two hours sometimes with something you need, you need my my clock inside your head, all right, you know we tell people if it's too long, listen to it in two segments. Um, so let's listen to it faster. You can do that with the line of the playback stuff. So the story that you've you've discussed about how you got into the business sounds like

an urban legend. You have a piano teacher who decides I'm going to become an agent. Yes, and goes to your parents and says, hey, your your boy would make for a good child actor. She was the mother of a of a child actress, so she already knew people in the business had contacts. Um. I don't know if she went to the parents of all the kids that she taught, or just to mind that that's lost in the midst of history or lack of history. But she did come to my parents and say, do you mind

if I try to get Harry work. They were both immigrants from Eastern Europe. Um they thought this was fantasmagorical and they'd never hear from her again. And then seven months go by and finally she calls with an audition for the Jack Benny Program. And I was a very good reader, and so I went in and just aced the first reading and got the job and worked for Jack Benny for eight years. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Harry Shearer,

best known for The Simpsons Spinal Taple Show. You've put out a number of musical CDs, including Greed and Fear, which we'll get back to later. Has a little bit to do with the financial crisis and other things. But I'm intrigued by your early work with you were eight years old, seven years old, seven years old, Aben and Costello. What was that like? Well, Uh, Abbott wasn't there that day. I worked one day in Abbert and Costell go to Mars.

Uh Costello was was nice. You know, I basically was a binary world that a child actor exists, and either they're nice or they're not nice. That's that's, that's it. Yeah, Jack Benny was Jack Benny was extraordinarily nice. And I knew him for eight years, so I mean I have I had a fairly special relationship with him. I thought, when you were working at that time in Hollywood, were you aware the fact that hey, this is the end really of an era, that the Hollywood machinery was starting

to really change into something else. And I was more aware of the fact that it was the end of a very specific era, of the era of big time network radio, because I started in on Jack Benny's radio program, and people were doing comedy programs and dramatic programs on the radio like they still do in England, interestingly enough, but all that was dying as I was entering it.

So within a few years Benny had had added a television show and I worked migrated to that, and I saw these radio shows just sort of falling in the dust, and the radio networks following. And yet You've stayed with radio your whole career. I love radio. Um it changed, and I was really profoundly influenced by a comedy team

and a newscaster. A comedy team was Bob and Ray worked in New York for forty years together and really invented the modern way of doing radio, not on a big stage in front of an audience with an orchestra, but by themselves in a little studio. There was a third guy, to Gean Shepard, who was a storyteller on the radio, again just by himself in his studio. And then Paul Harvey, the legendary news broadcaster who again sat

in the studio talking to the audience. Personally, wasn't a big show anymore, but it was this incredibly powerful fifteen minutes of radio, and I became aware of how easy it is to paint pictures with radio. I do satirical sketches on my radio show, and the work that I do to create a picture of Hillary and Bill talking, or Obama, Richard Nixon, Pritchard Nixon, or Trump looking with his advisors would take a hundred a crew of a

hundred people on television. For me on radio, it takes me and you having a gift for voices, so that allows you to do things that perhaps one person working by themselves normally might not be able to correct. But even even with that alleged talent, to do it in television would take a lot more people, and a lot more money and a lot more time. So radio is something I can do while I'm doing the rest of my life. So let's let's shift gears a little bit

and talk about spinal tap. I just fell in love with the movie in college, so that that tells you how how old I was and tells me he went to college. Um, they you know, I actually went all the way I wow kept going until they said, that's what you've done. Oh you mean with your studies, with my studies, it's exactly that's exactly correct. Um yes, well, um hence you can see I'm on radio, so that

those sort of braggydicio does not really take place. So the film was made in twenty five days something like that. What was that set? Like you have you? Christopher gets Michael McKeen and Rob Reiner directing this. That had to be a hilarious group of people. It was, and then we had all these really funny people coming in to do other parts. Billy Crystal, uh, friend Dresher, Fred Willard. Fred Willard is the one who who challenged to not laugh.

I mean it was almost impossible when Fred Willard came in. He is he is from another galaxy. Uh, you just can't fathom where this stuff comes from. And he's relentless and his energy is just overpowering and he So that was really the challenge was not to laugh during Fred's scenes. But yeah, it was. It was great fun. Uh. We'd have about three or four takes maximum and then it's rolling on mostly IMPROVV Two lines were written in the

entire moved. That's the entire thing, famously improved. How much good stuff didn't make it into the fun hours of stuff, So there there. There was never really a Spinal Tap Director's cut DVD. There was a DVD with some some extra scenes, but there's a few minute I mean, like, if there's hours worth of stuff, I gotta think, especially given how the audience for this developed. It came out a lot of people didn't necessarily get it. Some reviews

were really laudatory, so not so much. And then it's slowly developed its own following, and now I think it's on twenty nine of the hundred, number twenty nine on the best Comedies, the first suck filler. I can tell you one thing about Spinal Tap. It is probably in the annals of relatively successful movies, the only self marketed one. Nobody ever spent a dime on marketing. You never saw a billboard for that movie. You never saw saw a

post or somewhere. We had it. And I worked in the campus films with with a friend, and there was for the for the for the video, for the for the theatrical film, and uh, you know, there was I think there was one newspaper ad when the day it opened it was it was all of the success has been self marketed, basically by fans telling each other word of mouth. It's a classic word amount story. Yeah. This is pre internet too, so that it was tweeting about.

So this is a horribly cliche question, but I have to ask it. So you make this movie that turns out to be this incredible cults longevity film. When you're doing it, do you have any idea that you guys got a little bit of a lightning in a bottle. Well we had to. We had to pitch it to Hollywood studios, all of whom turned it down. And what I would say to them is, look, everybody in the world in this in this day and age, in that day and age particularly, uh knows all about rock and roll.

Rolling Stone has shoved every detail of rock and roll down their throats. This is not an unfamiliar story. Uh, this is a familiar story. Forty million people have taken guitar lessons. This will strike so to speak. Um, they all turned it down. Fortunately, Norman Lear was running Embassy Pictures for a few moments and picked it up. But

by the way, since it's a financial show. I think it's important to say that despite all the success it's enjoyed, according to what we're being told officially, the film has not yet gone into profit according to Hollywood account, yes, although that has chan changed with the The Watchman Call at the Coming to America litigation. No, that just put it to that. That just all that did was pay a few people to go away so that the studios

didn't have to open their books. That was it. So Spinal Taps still in the red because seventeen dollars and forty three cents to make it's gross billions of dollars. But you know there's a lot of other costs involved that don't show off on That's correct. They're they're just they're they're palazzos in Italy. We don't even know about. You're listening to Master's in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today Harry Shearer, you know him from The Simpsons. Uh,

Spinal Tap the show. We could keep going down the whole list of things, maybe Jack Manny and and Avian Costello for some of our older audience, The Mighty Wind, the Christopher guest movie, that's right, And what else have you done with Christopher guests. I did that and for your consideration, the last Cristifer Guest movie the the the Oscar mockumentary, so to speak, I recall that and you were not, you were not, and best and show I

was not. I was making my own movie at that time, which was a comedy about a lightly fictionalized comedy about the uh secret, supposedly secret retreat of the richest, most powerful white man in America. The real one is called Bohemian Grove Show. The movie was called The Teddy Bears Pechnic because if you go out in the woods today, you're in for a big surprise. Okay, there you go. Um, let's talk a little more about spinal tap before we

get into um the big uneasy um. So you still record occasionally, as Derek smalls, how how often is is that going on? Or write songs in his voice. I'm in the middle of a Derek Small's solo album project as we speak. I've been writing the songs and UH doing demo versions of them, and my producer and I are working on on, you know, getting together and getting an all star band together to play him, and UH, is anyone willing to be the drummer for Derek Smalls

or does that come with its own liability. I think we'll just get a machine. We bought a drum machine, but it explode it. So I don't know what we're gonna do, but yeah, I think we'll get some drummers. We once had drummer auditions for Spinal Tap, and uh we had it at the l A Coliseum just because it's capacity was ninety three thousand and three hundred people showed up and uh, the drummer for Fleetwood Mac came in an asbestos Uh yeah, you know, just to make

sure he didn't. When when was this done? This was in the ninety two when when our second record came out, Break like the Wind, and I just like saying, break like the one. Of course that's the only the only other way to break. So so let's get serious a minute and talk a little bit about the big Uneasy. So you've been a New Orleans resident for quite a while, and in the documentary you basically say this, this wasn't an act of God. This was a man made disaster.

I don't say it. I bring you the people from two universities, UC Berkeley and Louisiana State who organized independent investigations, uh, much of its pro bono work lasting months and months. UH. They did all the the forensics, they did all the literally deep digging, and they came up with remarkably uh identical conclusions that, in the words of the co author of the Berkeley Report, this was the greatest man made

engineering catastrophe since Chernobyl. That had the so called protective system worked as advertised system that the federal government built for New Orleans via the US Army Corps of Engineers after the hurricane, the worst Katrina would have inflicted on New Orleans would have been quote wet ankles. That's pretty much. And and you know there were I recall, post Katrina, everybody starts finding and re rediscussing and retweeting. I don't remember if it was Twitter or some other media at

the time. Was probably pre Twitter articles that had predated Katrina warning, hey, you know, this levy system ain't a whole lot of No. They were warning about what would happen in New Orleans if a Category five hurricane hit the city. Those were all the predictions was the city is in big trouble if a Category five hurricane hit the city. Two things Katrina wasn't a Category five hurricane by the time it went in the vicinity of New Orleans. It was a strong one or a week category two.

That's according to the National Curricane Center's final report, and two it didn't hit the city. It went thirty five miles in the northeast. So this was not the widely foreseen disaster that people had four tolds. This was just an engineering failure. This was a widespread The system, so called the corp of Engineers itself admitted, or the head of it admitted at one point this was a system in name only. It had been built over forty years.

It had never been completed piecemeal piecemeal. Uh. It broke in over fifty locations. So here we are a decade past. You live in New Orleans, sir? Do you feel safe for now? I feel fine because I live in this part of the city that did not flood in in two thousand five. It's called the Sliver by the river,

It's by the Mississippi. It's the highest ground in New Orleans. Uh. If I look at the system that, at a caxspayer cost of fourteen billion dollars, has been built by the same people who built the last one, and I read what the the educated people, knowledgeable people say about it, which is it was built to a lower standard than the one that failed. So we got nothing to worry

about it. I got. I'm cool. So in the last minute, we have New Orleans still susceptible to a Cat five hurricane and still susceptible to a near miss with high flood. Was well, cat five is not Yeah, I mean cat You know, Miami, every every city on the Atlantic and Gulf Coast is susceptible to a Category five hurricane. That's not the issue. But New Orleans if a lesser hurricane comes by with very heavy rainfall in the next two

or three years, there might be a problem. You're listening to Master's and Business on Bloomberg Radio, and my guests this week is voice actor best known for The Simpsons, Harry Shearer. So, so let's go through the list of all your voices, all your characters on The Simpsons. Mr Burns, who you've described as the most difficult character you currently do. No, I have not, I have not. No, he's fine. Uh. Dr Marvin Monroe, well you you don't do him anymore? No,

although they brought him back last season. They brought him back from the dead. No, Burns is find The only time I had problems with doing him was when we were doing a video games and I'd be doing Mr Burns for four consecutive hours and the only direction, the only direction I'd get was louder. Then they then he gets a little strange, stressful, you know, and then and then Mr Burns assistant Smithers. Who's Who's a wonderful character, one of my favorite voices. Thank you. I believe the

correct description of him is is emmanuensis. Okay, and we've we've talked ned Flanders, and ned Flanders really developed into a whole different character than originally planned, or so I've read. Yeah, you know I've read that, and I have no memory of that. Uh that if that ain't an urban legend. I live in Lake City. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it may have happened. I couldn't swear either way, but it's it's out of my can I just remember, you know,

being handled a script and saying you're this guy? So so was the hey Didley Doodle stuff written? Or did you kind of create that? I couldn't even answer that question. Kidding, Yeah, I mean you know that's in the in the in the in the beginnings of stuff you don't really keep I don't. I don't keep a diary. I wasn't, you know, taking notes. I wasn't keeping score. This is mine. I'm owning this. I should have. But uh, you know, so I I couldn't say with any degree of certainty. It

may have been written. It may have been an ad libe, and may have been an I lived that then the writers expanded upon, and may been something written that I expanded upon. So so given that, let's let's digress a little bit. So what sort of planning or thinking or or inspiration goes into each of these characters? I would say, basically, uh, almost none. Okay, I was shattering my I'm trying childhood,

trying to I would see these scripts. We would never see the in the early days, and never see the drawings of the characters, so we had no idea what they looked like in the boarding stages. When you say early days, you mean like the Tracy Ullman show, the first couple of Simpsons. I wasn't on the show when I came to the Simpsons, and we would start, you know, I would start doing characters. They started sending me scripts. You're this guy, You're this just so, there's this guy,

there's this guy, there's this guy, there's this guy. I wouldn't see a drawing. I just have a one line description, you know, Old Miser runs the nuclear power planet in case Mr Burns, and I would make uh an intuitive leap as to how the person sounded. And I figured, if they don't like the intuitive leap, they'll tell me to stop. And if they don't tell me to stop, I'll keep doing it. I didn't think I keep doing it for twenty seven years, but is it that long?

But so there was not it was not an analytical process. That's what I try to impart is that, uh, it's it's it's intuitive. Uh. There are only two people, only two characters that I do that had any resonance with people I'd already done before or people in the real world. One was when they had me doing real Red love Joy and uh, who's Who's actually a sort of charming,

albeit whacking. He's one of I do two characters on the show that years after the Christians were denouncing the show for Bart being a bad role model, they discovered that my two of my characters were the only two professed Christians on American television, Prime Time, Love Joy and

at Flanders. So I had done. I've done satirical takeoffs on this evangelist named Ernest Angeli who was a healer, and uh so I took his voice and just changed it a little bit for revn Lovejoy and then Principal Skinner. I was really running out of intuitive leaps. And you may remember a guy who used to be on CBS named Charles Kirault. He was on the road, and he was on the road because he had a squeeze in Montana in a cabin hidden from his wife. You know

that story, right, No, I don't. We'll talk about it anyway. Uh So, I just took that particular kind of nasality and sped him up and made him less avuncular and more sinister and turned him into Principal Skinner. Oh that's unbelievable. So um, what about bus driver Otto? Where does that come from? It comes from the part of the voice that I hate doing. That's that's the pain painful part. So well, Dr Margra Morou is more pain full of that. Otto was kind of a trick. But Marvin Monroe was.

He was written as a character he was a family therapist, and the whole joke of his character was he was a guy who was far from being you know, somebody a healer. Just made you stressed out from listening to him talk because he had such an irritating way of speaking. So that was the whole idea. So let's talk a little bit about Skinner. Right, I didn't even mention you're working on SNL. We haven't even gotten yeah swimming, you mentioned we were, so we were so ahead of our time.

There is now a male synchron i swimmer and so so you guys actually pre pressingly appreciently anticipated. So so let's go back to principal Skinner. So not a couple of years ago, the writers decided to basically take, however many years that Skinner had wormed his way into everybody's heart and turned around and basically say he's right, let's let's let's just make him a fraud star. Yeah, and

you really pushed back on this. Yeah. You know, the one thing that we in the cast, everybody that Cass tries to do is is, uh, keep faith with the audience. Who's kept faith with us? Uh, they know these characters were kind of the institutional memory of the show. And uh, it's a protective it's a it's a writer's show, as most television is, but we're protective of the characters. And I said, boy, this is you're not you're not making you're not rewarding the audience for their years of attention.

And of course that's that's now an episode that's never spoken of. So they did it and then kind of forgot about it. And Skinner what happens with him afterwards? Now he's back to like nobody ever. It was a dream. That's the that's for words of you always need to know about television. It was a dream. Well, that seems to be the classic ending if you can't come up with any any other ending. So I have a quote of yours I have to throw out because I love this.

And again, we're a financial show, and this talks on the finance. But quote says Harry Shearer, as an actor on an insanely sucessful TV series, I am, by any standard of the human species, obscenely overpaid. It is also true that, as an actor on one of the most insanely successful television series of old times, I am getting

royally screwed. Both things are true. Discuss Um. You know, I've just been through a very uh somewhat publicized by somewhat pumblicized you mean entire internet worldwide, Twitter, Facebook, linkedinwhere else discussion and a series of discussions with the show, which resulted satisfactorily in my return to the show. Both of us, I think, are satisfied with the result. Um, that was not about money. Uh. It is apparent that the guys who got in early, um got the lion's

share of what was going on. And I don't mean the cast members um and UM, there may not be anything more there at this point. Uh, So I'm I have to be happy with what we got. You know, uh understood, it's not chicken feed. I know we've been concentrating on the first part of that sentence. The Wikipedia actually lists what your your per episode UM payroll is, and it looks like a lot of I have to work. You know, if you're in finance, you have to work

like two weeks to get that. This is you know, what you do in an hour, so you're you're really really well paid. But that's we don't get paid by the amount of time we work. We get paid by one intro business gets paid by the amount of value we create, don't we all wish we can say that? Well, but I mean it's true. It's true of sports figures, and for sure of celebrities sports figures. How many people in the world's are Michael Jordan or Lebron James or whoever?

You know. I always have this debate with people when you could do something fairly unique and there's a demand for that service you could charge with the market. And my feeling about when when in the old days Fox used to say, however, how much or how quick we we how much time or how quickly we could do these shows? I would always say, yeah, if you've got the thirty years of experience that allows you to do

with that quickly. If you want to hire a guy off the street, he'll take you two weeks to do it, you could have that. Writers are fond of saying, I apologize for the length of the letter. I didn't have time to write shorter. It's the exact same, exact same things. So so let's go through the development of a typical episode of The Simpsons. How involved are you given your background and ad lib in comedy and snl in in all these things. Do you just come in and voice

the characters? Or is there a little back and forth? Um? The back and forth is basically what we were talking about earlier, about defending the characters? Uh or or yeah, what about in the service of the funny? How does that work? They're they're in charge of that. Um. Now, this year I may be writing a script or two, so I may getting more deeply involved in that problembly done that previously? Is that something that that's been You would think that that's a natural fit. You have a

long career as a writer, a comedy writer. How is it that you've worked for them for twenty seven years and no one said, Hey, this guy Harris here, he's funny. You should get him to go to ask one of them. Really, it just never came up, never came up. Well, I suggested at one point and they said, no, we're fine, and I saw I dropped. Were good. There's plenty of people coming out of Harvard Lampoon we could do this

was this was not my suggestion this time around. It was proposed to me, and I thought, okay, so that's a very nice gesture. Yeah. So we'll see I have. I have a couple of ideas. So oh that's exciting and let's keep um. You know, we're talking a little bit about We talked earlier about radio before we started, but talking about your career. You've done TV, you've done on film, you've done radio, You've written books, you recorded c ds, I've acted in plays. So what turns out

to be your your favorite form of media? You know? I used to say, uh, much like my friends Christopher Guests and Michael McKean, I like doing it all. That's why I do it all. But there was one year, about five or six years ago, when it was about this time of year, and I realized, well, we did a spinal tap record, than I did some live gigs off of not the Green and Fear record, but the

one before that with great musicians. Then we did uh, Michael and Chris and I did a tour where we were going out touring as ourselves but playing spinal tap music and folksman music. Not God, it's been eight months of doing nothing but music. I've never been happier. Really. Yeah, that's fun. So is there more music, uh well coming up in your future? Yeah? I mean this Derek Small solo album. So when is that coming out? I don't know yet, but it's all base. No, no, it's not,

but it's I think we're gonna call it so Low. Okay, that works as a solo record, and there's a reference to the basis and now, but not right now. I'm working on a Christmas single, charity Christmas single, so I'm getting a bunch of singers involved and it's sort of a uh maybe out this Christmas hopefully. So I'm always working and I write songs every once in a while for the radio show, So, the show, which you've been

doing for how many thirty seven thousand years? Right, so you've been doing this for longer than you've been doing the Simpson So Radio. Really you you talked about the various shows and the various people who are influences. I know I only have you for a few more minutes, So let me let me turn to some of my favorite questions that that I ask everybody, um, and one or two that I just asked. I gotta talk politics a little bit. Okay, So you come of age in

the sixties, clearly some political bend. What what what was the motivation for that? What other than avoiding going to Vietnam. That was a big one that works so biggest is that the thing that really colors your perspective more than anything. It colored my perspective on a couple of presidents who wanted my ass. Yeah, but no, I grew up in a political in a family that was My parents, as I mentioned, were European immigrants, so they had they had

serious reasons to pay attention to politics. I mean, the most life and death reasons imaginable. Sure that they leave Europe during UH before the hal offaust just before, and the only ones out of their family. Nobody else had made it. So I was, you know, raised by people who read the paper, talked about it all the time at dinner time. We paid a lot of attention to it. So and yet you still voice Hitler for the Simpsons.

Is there any irony in that? Orum? Mel Brooks did a whole movie about Hitler, you know, I mean, yeah, one one, uh Freud said you make fun of the things you fear. Makes sense, right? He got that one, right, Yes he did. So. I you know, the only thing that's really changed for me is, uh, I've got a lot less fascination with the day to day machinations of current American politics, because so much of it seems to be a shadow play these days. I mean it's always

it's there's always some aspect of that. But as the as the Democratic Party uh found that its source major source of funding was being dried up as the Union movement shrank, it was forced to turn to many of the same sources for money as the Republican Party. Exhibit A. Barack Obama's the largest contributor in the two thousand and eight election was Goldman stas So. And by the way, the fascinating thing about that, that's not a secret. That's

pretty widely known. Bloomberg writes about it. I mean, I know it's it's not a secret, but I would say most most most fans of Barack Obama have chosen to ignore it, to have forgotten it. Yes, have chosen to

forgot it, forgotten it. And if you look at Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, for that, lots and lots of Wall Street, well, Bill, Bill Clinton, you know, bears responsibility for the repeal of Class Stiegel and the commodity futures modernization I so Quick Fund to Telecommunications Act, which Bob Dole said was a seventy two billion dollar giveaway and was right, and it was you know, a quick funny story about the Glass Stiegel repeal. So I've written a number of things about that.

I actually have a book for you to take a plain weeks um and uh. I get a call from media matters that are fact checking Bill Clinton saying Glass Stiegel didn't cause the crisis, that they repeal Glass. The repeal of glass Stiegel did not. Right now, Phil Graham, if you want to have blame somebody, that's right. If you look at the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, I have a list of fifty causes. Graham is near the top.

Bill Clinton doesn't escape criticism. But I really look at the repealed Glass st Eagle as it didn't make banks do stupid things. It allowed banks to become bigger. So when they did stupid things, they damage. You know, if you're gonna jump out the fifty floor or the floor well off the fiftieth floor, that splat is bigger, but you're dead regardless. It's that sort of nuance that it's really not all his fault. It was the Mariskuito cherry at the top of the same day of disaster. That's

a fair, fair way to describe it. You know that I'm always anytime somebody says this caused in this really complicated, intricate system with a million moving parts, that life is rarely that easy. Absolutely absolutely, you know. But that said, the Marichino cherry is a is a perfect metaphorature. So so God, I'm really pressed for time, and I don't want to let you go. You sure you don't want to take a flat out in the morning, all right, So I'd rather be at home or in New York.

So we didn't get to Mill Blank. So let's talk about your your early mentors and luncers. How did you ever meet mel and what did he? Mel Blank was a member of the cast of The Jack Benny Show, and so Willie Nilly we were working together, and he had a son who was my same age. So I think he felt a sort of potter familiar quality, not in the Catholic priest's sense of the word, but you know, very very benign. And but he never said, hey, kid, here's how you do voices or anything like that. It

wasn't that. Did it ever come up? Did you ever know? So this is just a wild, random quin. Absolutely, you know, but if you're writing my life story, please don't. But if you're writing my life story, it would seem like the most obvious straight law from mel Blank to one of the most famous voice actors in history. You worked with, but he really didn't influence you, all right, No, I mean I was a fan. Couldn't help but be a

fan of the greatest voice actor of his generation. I would say ever ever, okay that ever, uh, I tell me, I wouldn't dare say you're wrong. The Luney Tunes characters are are unforgettable and timeless and genius inventions, just brilliant, just just I'm I'm fond. And he was a wonder and he was a wonderful guy, very funny guy. Uh, lovely person to have. I don't dare do a voice in front of you, No, you don't. But the the bugs, Bunny, the space invader, guy who's a bowling ball Earthlings make me.

And that voice has stayed with me since I was this tall. I just always barry, you're only this tall now, well now, but I used to be that now. I used to be this. That's the thing you can do in radio that you can't do anywhere else. Um, let's talk about some of your favorite books. What really influenced you, what, what stayed with you, what had a an impact on you? Um, As a New Orleans I can't uh not cite Confederacy

of Dances a brilliant fantasia about life in New Orleans. Uh. It captures so much of the craziness and the unpredictability and ah, the weird routines of of life in that city. It's just a masterpiece. I love the rhythm of the title Confederacy of Dunce's Parliament of Whoors. There have been a number of books that carried that same sort of verbal rhythm that just grabs you and it and it has so much residence. Cash twenty two, when I was

a kid, was a profound you know. It was like, You're trying to think, am I crazy for thinking that this stuff is crazy? And here comes a guy saying, no, you're right, this is crazy. It was very powerful influence, to say the least. Um, what sort of advice would you give to a millennial or someone graduating college who wanted to have a similar career and entertainment as you do live at home with your parents? No? Uh, any of them. Many of them still are, I know, for

as long as humanly possible. Now, I I always say this when I'm asked that question about show business, because the big this exists to find young talent, find the one specific thing that young talent can can be narrowed down to mind that as quickly as possible, as as deeply as possible, and then throw it away. Tossed you to the curb before harvest the organs, and then but put the rest into the site. So I say, talent is good, luck is better, But nothing beats sheer, brute persistence.

That's quite fascinating. You know. The role of luck comes up on the show constantly, and I get to interview a lot of billionaires, and when these guys say, you know, you can't discount how important it is to get lucky, occasionally it comes up time and time again. And I don't think that's a false humility. I think it's it's the real deal. I mean, I I know so many brilliantly talented people in in show business who haven't had

that luck that I had to. You know, have Matt Graining be a fan of my radio show when they were doing the casting on the Simpsons. That's how it happened. That's simple. Yeah, wow, that that's amazing. If I weren't a stubborn s ob and continuing to do the radio show for no reason at all, for no money at all, Matt wouldn't have been a fan, and I wouldn't be sitting here going I own you. And that's that's the beauty of finding something you really love and and working

at it. Even if there's no a parent financial comp Even if there's no apparent financial compensation, you're still running a thing called a life. And uh, speaking of which, I have a print out of your entire retirement account here. I wanted to discuss some of your some of your stock picks before you run off to the airport. I'm gone, I'm so gone. Let me give you the last question. Um.

I asked all my guests, and it's simply this. What do you know today about your chosen profession show business, acting? Whatever you want to describe entertainer that you wish you knew when you started out all those decades ago. Just how hard it is, really, yeah, just how hard it is. You make it look easy. I wasn't and I'm not just saying that to blow smoke. That's you seem to be naturally. You seem to be very comfortable with it. And well, I don't see the perspiration, don't I don't mean.

I don't mean the work. The work it comes easily because you have one has perhaps a certain talent. But the survival, the the weathering of the storms, the grind, the grind, the fact that if you're in show business, many of us, because it's something you love and you have to do it. That's the other thing I say to kids is, don't get into this if you think, well, this would be nice. Get into it if you have to do it, because that that will be the basis

of your persistence. But because you love it, because you adore it, because you have to do it, you have given a rusty ice pick to the executives who run the business to scrape into your innerns at any given moment. And that's the that's the hard part. It's just it. It's unrelenting and uh until your for profit business. And and that's it's more than that. It's it's the it's the egos of guys who are in a business where people are getting adored and revered and they're sitting there

going on when it's making effing money. I hate these people. That's good money, if money is the best money. But you know what I mean, it's there's a there's a certain uh envy that the executives have of the people who supposedly have all the fun and they're going to get their piece of the There there a ton of flesh right for for for whatever I know you have to run. I'd love to keep you here another hour and a half. You've been listening to Masters in Business

on Bloomberg Radio. Our special guest today has been Harry Shearer. People want to find you, they can go to Harry Shearer dot com and on Twitter at the Harry Shearer at the Harry Shearer. I knew it was just a little off from your name. I'm Barry Ridholts. Thanks for listening.