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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

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I've Been Doing Nixon

Harry Shearer

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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.

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I Was Never Into Candy And Games And Clowns.

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.

Merry Christmas

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.

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.

I Was A Political Science Major.

Political Science

Well I Directed A Few Feature Length Things For Hbo In The Late Eighties.

I Am One Of Those People Who Thrive On Deadlines. Nothing Brings On Inspiration More Readily Than Desperation.

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.

Nobody Makes A Movie Thinking It's Still Going To Be Watched And Talked About And Quoted 20 Years Later.

I Always Used To Sit Next To Mel Blanc When We'd Do The Shows. When You Have Jack Benny On One Side And Mel Blanc On The Other, You're Not Going To Go Far Wrong.

Nixon's Genius Was That He Was Able To Portray Himself As The Toughest Of The Anti-communists, And Yet Run On A Platform That He Had A Plan To End The Vietnam War. And, Of Course, His Plan Was To Prolong It Until His Second Election - But He Didn't Tell Us That Then.

If Nixon Were A Republican Senator Today, He Would Have Been Primaried Out.

I'd Always Loved Radio. I Loved Bob And Ray. I Loved Stan Freberg.

Music Can Happen With Equal Ease As A Solo Or Collaborative Venture, It Seems To Me.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

You're Not Just Looking For Laughs, But You're Trying To Do The Characters First, And Then The Laughs Come Afterwards.

The First Thing You've Got To Do Is Know Your Craft, And Then You Can Do Something Else With It.

Can Do Something

Music Often Happens Even Faster Than Comedy In Terms Of The Creation.

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.

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.

If Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, Does Absolute Powerlessness Make You Pure?

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.

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.

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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.

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.

The Hardest Work Most Of Us Do Is Maintaining The Appearance Of Normality.

I Think The British Learn Their History Through The Prism Of This Gallery Of Grotesques Known As The Royals.

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.

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.

When Nixon Died, On My Radio Show I Started Doing Sketches With Three Basic Conceits: One, There's A Place Called Heaven. Two, Nixon Got In. And Three, He's Still Taping.

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.

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.

To Do Then Now Would Be Retro. To Do Then Then Was Very Now-tro, If You Will.

[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.

I Think Nixon Says A Lot About Those Times. It Was Possibly Hard, In The '90s And Early 2000s To Understand The Grip Of Fear That Communism Had On The Country In The 1950s And 1960s - A Fear Nixon Rode Like A Endless Great Wave On The Pacific To High Office. I'm Sure, Though There's No Evidence Of It, One Of The Things That Rankled Him Down Deep Was That It Was Called Mccarthyism And Not Nixonism.

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.

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.

The Theater Business Is Very Much About "hey, If You Want Our Big Blockbuster At Christmas Time, You'll Play Our Piece Of Crap In April."

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.

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.

As A Kid, I Really Did Want To Hang Out With The Grownups, So It Was Hanging Out With The Hippest Grownups In The World. This Was The Nicest Bunch Of People I've Worked With In Show Business, With The Exception Of The People Around 'a Mighty Wind.' It Really Was A Wonderful Eight Years.

I've Got An Odd, Negative Bond With C. Montgomery Burns. He Reminds A Lot Of People Of Bosses They've Worked For. He Certainly Reminds Me Of Someone I'm Working For.

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.

[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.

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If You're Going To Do Something That Lasts 90 Minutes, You Can't Really Do It With Stick Figures.

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.

You Have To Do Real Acting, Not Just Do A Voice.

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For A Guy Who Is Always Banging On About The Masculine Virtues, Nixon Had This Remarkable Proclivity For Very Dainty Gestures.

Satire Is An Art Best Practiced Behind The Back Of The Intended Target. I Think Inviting Politicians On A Satirical Show Becomes A Very Big Trap. Because One Of Two Things Happen: Either You Have To Kind Of Unsharpen Your Fangs Because You Can't Be Quite As Cruel To People To Their Face As You Are Behind Their Backs... Or You Don't Defang, And Those Guests Get The Word And They Stop Coming.

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