Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 18, 1995 TAG: 9510180034
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LYNN ELBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
They also tell him, right to his face, that he's so wonderful they simply can't picture his brand of humor on TV - although he is allowed to lurk behind the scenes as the voice of Mr. Burns and others on ``The Simpsons.''
Here's the truth, straight from the national treasure that is Shearer:
``I think there is in Hollywood and New York a tendency to disparage and feel contemptuous toward the audience, the people who haven't had the great good sense to move to Los Angeles or New York, and who stubbornly like living where they live.
``So I find that in show business, if an executive sincerely, personally admires and likes what you do, they count that against you from the standpoint of commercial appeal,'' Shearer said.
One executive - ``who I could name,'' he says, cheekily - invited him in to gush over Shearer's weekly syndicated radio program, ``Le Show,'' now in its 11th year.
Shearer suggested he could bring that self-same wit to the executive's very own network.
The reply? ``He said, literally, these words: `We tend to make more pedestrian choices.' ''
And who pays the price? We, the viewers, shorn of our Shearer. Deprived of our right to genuine laughter provoked by a singular sensibility, as opposed to artificial hoots for mass-produced sitcoms and comics.
Shearer, to recap, has given us ``This is Spinal Tap,'' the rock band parody he helped create and in which he played bassist Derek Smalls.
He was a writer-performer on ``Saturday Night Live'' and has written for movies, TV and stage - including ``J. Edgar,'' a musical comedy that features a love duet between J. Edgar Hoover and his reputed gay lover.
The chief outlet for Shearer's tangy subversion is ``Le Show,'' his National Public Radio program which allows him to spout unfettered on airwaves across the land.
(He's also alive in cyberspace, at http://ww.pobox.com/harry).
In recent months, ``Le Show'' became a forum for his riffs on a certain one-for-the-record-books murder trial. He's collected the routines in his newest comedy recording, ``O.J. on Trial: The Early Years.''
A few snippets:
A radio psychiatrist attempts on-air counseling during the Bronco chase (``You're angry, and you're hurt. Aren't you, O.J.? But you know what you're really doing right now? You are obsessing about yourself.'')
``Mr. Johnnie's Jewelry Club,'' a home shopping program with a certain defense attorney hawking Colombian necklaces of ``genuine 24-karat gold.''
Shearer was an admitted Simpson junkie, structuring his days to catch as much as possible of the trial.
He said the case offered ``a remarkable intersection of conflicting big themes in American life'': race, celebrity, sex, money, violence, excessive lawyering and ``a judge who either loved or hated television depending on what side of the bed he got out of.''
Shearer was inspired to video artistry himself. His ``O.J. on Trial: Wall of Silence,'' features clips of key trial figures caught between utterances.
The display, at the Museum of Contemporary Art's storefront location in Santa Monica, includes clips of attorneys, commentators and journalists, all not talking.
Shearer lost a bet - ``a fairly serious bottle of wine'' - on the trial's outcome. While he may think twice about the perils of gambling, he's unwilling to concede the case and surrounding frenzy were instructive.
``One of the things that is embedded in the scripts I write and try to get made into movies, that I think stands in their way, is my feeling there are no big lessons. People don't learn.''
Television, certainly, has proven stubbornly resistant to learning how to make good use of Shearer.
He's had offers to do routine TV work, such as supporting roles in sitcoms. That's not for him, Shearer says.
One TV program had the smarts this season to recruit him. It's an Australian sitcom called ``Frontline,'' a backstage look at a news magazine show, which brought Shearer over as a guest star.
``Australia is so far behind the times that they actually want me to appear on prime-time television,'' says Shearer.
Kangaroos and Shearer, too; the land down under is one up on us.
by CNB