Harry Shearer Walks Away From "The Simpsons," and $14 Million 214
Actor Harry Shearer, perhaps best known as the voice of several characters on The Simpsons, including that of Montgomery Burns, will be leaving the show's cast, according to CNN.
Showrunner Al Jean said Shearer was "offered the same deal as the rest of the cast, but turned it down." ... Shearer is not just walking away from Springfield, but also a large sum of money. The actor was offered a guaranteed $14 million for two years of work, according to someone with direct knowledge of the matter. The proposed deal also allowed for him to do other projects if he wished." That last part, though, seems to be in dispute, and central to Shearer's decision to leave; Shearer tweeted that it's because he "wanted what we've always had: the freedom to do other work."
Derek Smalls (Score:5, Informative)
Uhh...... no. Harry Shearer will always be know first and foremost as Derek Smalls from Spinal Tap.
"On the bass, Derek Smalls, he wrote this"
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so are we doing stonehenge tomorrow?
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"After that concert I realized I want to spend as much of the rest of my life as possible playing folk music with these gentlemen. And I want to spend all of it as a woman. I came to a realization that I was, and am, a blonde, female folk singer trapped in the body of a bald, male folk singer, and I had to let me out or I would die."
Millions of dollars (Score:2)
If he already have tens of millions of dollar for his past work, it's a lot easier to turn down $14 million.
More than money (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of things. Although he doesn't look it, other media have reported him as being 71-years old! He might just be slowing down. Other media are also reporting that the contract banned him from doing other things. It seems kind of strange that after 25+ years, the new contract prohibits this whereas the previous ones didn't. And then, didn't Fox originally say that this was the last year of The Simpsons? Harry might have started planning other projects to fill his time. I think he's still doing a weekly PBS show and works on documentaries and comedy releases. But certainly, prohibiting him from doing other projects would have been a sore point for someone as busy as Harry.
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Re:More than money (Score:4, Insightful)
Not at all. When new management, especially inexperienced management, comes in there are often a lot of changes made merely to assert authority.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:im thinking the discourse was very fox. (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny, I have heard nearly the opposite: I know two people in the Hollywood scene that don't know of him, but know people that have worked directly with HS, and they've heard that he's an astonishingly talented guy but a gigantic pain in the ass and prima donna - very hard to work with.
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So in other words, just like almost everyone else related to the entertainment industry.
Redirect the money (Score:2)
Maybe hire some writers so the show could actually be funny again.
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the Benders?!!
He's Had a Long Career... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to shamelessly plug, but Harry Shearer was recently on WTF with Marc Maron [wtfpod.com] - I think it gives a lot of insight into the guy and his career and all that good stuff..
DoH! (Score:3)
Does it really matter? (Score:2)
I mean, Homer has been in a coma since the house blew from Bart messing with the thermostat. Everything since has just been Homer's dream sequences.
Derek Smalls (Score:2)
His best work: Operating the Ettnauer 226XL (Score:2)
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Very few good episodes this year... (Score:2)
It is close to the edge so it might just be the right opportunity to end the show.
Next episode "Left Behind" (Score:2)
Will Fox clone his voice? (Score:2)
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With 573 episodes to pull from and even more studio tape they have sufficient material to clone his voice. All they need is some other anonymous slob to read through all the hours of old material which they can do for a lot less than 14 million dollars. The question is will they?
In case you have forgotten, someone executed a similar plan at least once before [wikipedia.org] resulting in one of the highest rated season premiere on the comedy central network...
Will they try it? Probably not, but it's not unheard of...
I would say he's abandoning a sinking ship (Score:2)
But I'm pretty sure it's actually been a ghost ship for about 15 years now. No one's at the wheel, the crew is long gone, the hull paint is only visible in splotches, the nameplate has faded to the point where you can't even make out its name--yet on it sails, forever, and ever, and ever. With no port and no end until the day if finally, mercifully sinks.
Rock Musical Based on the life of Jack the Ripper (Score:5, Interesting)
Finally they can finish work on Saucy Jack.
Who Watches This Anymore? (Score:2)
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Then you've missed at least six good episodes.
14 million (Score:2)
Momma said there's only so much fortune a man really needs and the rest is just for showing off.
Compensation level is simply absurd (Score:2)
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I agree the wages are absurd, but the fact is that Fox make an obscene amount of money out of The Simpsons, and it's only fair that a healthy chunk of that dosh goes to the people involved in actually making the programme.
It's the same with the football Premier League here in the UK. We have players that are paid £250,000 every week for several hours work (at most), and most people find that abhorrent. But that fact is that millions of people either pay the extortionate ticket prices, or pay Sky
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NO!!! (Score:2)
PLEASE PLEASE Don't break The Simpsons! 26 years of gold, and it's still amazing!
Re:Sometimes folks dont realize how lucky .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a nice few million in the bank...
Make some wise investments...
Live very well off of dividends from your investments...
He probably has way more than 14 million, that is plenty.
He will not regret the choice he made, just regrets that the situation couldn't be better.
The guy clearly has other things on his mind that are way more important.
And lets face it, all of our time is finite, and he has made an ENTIRE CAREER out of the Simpsons.
He may miss out on the 14 million he probably doesn't need.... but He'd regret not attempting to feel fully accomplished as he sees it before it is too late.
Re:Sometimes folks dont realize how lucky .... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm073... [imdb.com]
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after what like 26 years I think maybe he has the right to do something different.
I would trade about 15-20 years over the duration of his performing Mr. Burns for a couple more creations on the level of Derek Smalls.
Re:Sometimes folks dont realize how lucky .... (Score:4, Informative)
I think maybe he has the right to do something different.
Given what has been said on the various sites, that's not it.
Reading his tweets, it looks like he is rejecting it because either just him or probably the rest of the cast is getting the typical "we own your soul" style of corporate contract. ("I wanted what we've always had: the freedom to do other work.") Maybe he's just standing up for himself, or maybe he is trying to make a stand for everyone on the team. That isn't publicly discussed.
Sadly that demand is increasingly common from corporate overlords in most jobs. Anything you do outside of work becomes owned by the company. Even if that thing is unrelated to the company's actual work, they want to claim the right to profit from anything and everything that you do at any time.
Seeing as he is 71 years old and has many side ventures, I can completely understand how such a contract would be unacceptable, and since he's financially well-off, he can afford to be somewhat of an activist for the others on the show.
As written in TFA, Shearer has created and stared in another series, is doing stage work, and has his own NPR show. They're offering $14M, but several sources are claiming (and others contradicting but still mentioning) that comes with a handcuff about continuing all his other side projects, or that others in the team have those handcuffs but they were offering to release just him.
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He's 71 years old. I highly doubt he's going to regret a couple million more in the bank and less time to do whatever he wants with the few remaining years he has left.
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The one thing that *nobody* says on their deathbed is "I wish I'd spent more time at work".
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It is still on?
If it is, is anyone still paying attention?
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...and if not, does it make a sound?
Re:The simpsons are still on? (Score:5, Funny)
...and if not, does it make a sound?
Not without Shearer.
Re:The simpsons are still on? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, and to me, it's actually funny again. It nose-dived around 9/11 if you ask me - like a lot of other shows that seemed to hold back a bit in the aftermath.
Too bad Harry's leaving. I think he added a lot to the show.
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At least the Simpsons had the dignity to literally jump the shark around the time Groening left. For me, that was when the series tanked, but fortunately Groening's humor was there in Futurama soon after.
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when did he leave?
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Well, he's still an EP, I think, but that's just money. You could see the decline starting in 97, when he starting developing Futurama, and by 99 he wasn't really involved creatively with the Simpsons any more, AFAIK. Somewhere in there, Homer jumped a shark on waterskis just to drive to point home. I can't for the life of me remember what season that was, but soon after the show changed format, and stopped being a 30-minute (well, 22-minute) plotline, and went to 2-3 shorts per episode.
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This. Simpsons went downhill for quite a while, but it's improved a lot the last 2 years or so.
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Or are they just going to use voice clips of him saying "Excellent..." every now and again and recycle him?
Give the character a stroke and they can cobble clips together with an explanation of why they sound weird.
Using his voice is difficult work? (Score:2)
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Re:Ungreatful Cunt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ungreatful Cunt (Score:5, Insightful)
He's been doing this for 26 years
Think about that for a moment, folks. That's a QUARTER of a fucking CENTURY. Many Slashdotters weren't even born then, and for most of the rest, it's still been more than half of their lifetime.
And he's still not officially gone until they make the first episode with either A) none of his characters or B) a replacement voice.
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What? Are you telling me there are Slashdotters under 40? Wow!
Seeing as though there's nobody on the lawn, I thought all the youngsters were all off twitting their instachats or something.
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I would do a lot harder work than just fucking voice-over for $14M for just two years.
It really pisses me off when I hear about people who turn down so much for doing so fucking little
So you are saying that rather than being able to make a choice, he should of been forced to dance like a monkey for you or other peoples benefit?
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LOL
That pretty much sums up every single actor, celebrity or athlete :D
It's just how misplaced the values in the US really are.
If you cured Cancer tomorrow, you would win a million dollar Nobel Prize. Hooray !
Yet, be able to cry on cue or throw a ball and you'll never have financial issues ever again.
Now, of the two, which are more important ? :|
I gotta agree with you though. It's rather morale-killing to the 99% when someone is even able to make that kind of money doing something
so trivial while the rest
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Don't hate the player, hate the game. Pay is a function of supply and demand for talent.
Medical research is done by teams- no one person is going to "cure cancer" by force of sheer intellect. If such a thing were to happen and that person had reasonably good business sense, that person would easily become the wealthiest person who ever lived. What actually happens in the real world is that hundreds of researchers, who are actually mostly pretty fungible, perform years of grunt work to come up with a drug
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I'd be willing to bet the opposite is true -- there are a LOT of people out there who can do a completely convincing Mr. Burns. I doubt his main characters will even be retired -- they'll just have somebody else voice them.
When Mel Blanc died, did Warner retire Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemit
Re:Ungreatful Cunt (Score:5, Insightful)
I won't make $14 MILLION in my lifetime. In fact, at my current rate of pay, it would take me 175 YEARS to make it.
And the 1% wonder why we hate them so f*cking much.
You make $14*10^6/175 = $80,000 per year.
Minimum wage in much of america averages about $8 per hour. Source: http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wage-chart.aspx
$8/hour * 40 hours per week * 50 weeks per year is $16,000 per year. What do you do that is worth so much more than people who make minimum wage? I hope you understand how much they hate you.
I will take your complaints seriously when you get your employer to pay you less. But they can't pay you little enough to avoid overpaying you based on the world-wide average. Only when you make less than prevailing wages in the less developed parts of the planet will people stop hating you.
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Yet, be able to cry on cue or throw a ball and you'll never have financial issues ever again.
The reason you never have financial issues again is that you're doing something that is making people sit up and spend money on it. You personally, as a TV watcher or a video streamer or a movie renter or whatever, have contributed to this and for some reason you didn't have an issue with it then.
I'm not really sure what you're bitching about.
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If you could cure cancer, tomorrow, by yourself, you would be a billionaire. Not any piddly millionaire, a billionaire. Genentech, the leading cancer drug company, makes north of 10 billion annually. The US alone pays 120 billion a year to treat cancer. If you have a cure, walk your ass to the patent office, then call up the world at large and name your price.
But you can't cure cancer, anymore than you can fly to the moon yourself. The previously mentioned Genentech has 13,000 employees, and it is one of
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Really? You think you'd be allowed to destroy a multibillion dollar cancer treatment industry with your cure? Especially if it was a cheap cure?
You don't think they'd kidnap/kill you, torture the formula out of you, and then only offer the cure to the very rich/powerful in secret?
(Okay, not realistic - cancer has so many forms that a cure for one type isn't going to work for most of the other types, but the sentiment remains.)
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Well, it's widely known that Shearer knows how to spell "grateful", so that's probably giving him a leg up.
Re:Ungreatful Cunt (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh right. Because voice-over requires so much "smart"s. And talent?
Yes, it does. It doesn't matter what luck you get, being able to 'be' a character requires talent. If you don't believe me why don't you get on a microphone and do a passable impression of Mr. Burns reading a scene from Hamlet. There might be 14 million in it for you!
That we even pay such stupid amounts of money for such stupid "work" is itself retarded. We are a fucked up society.
Actually what society is showing is that they value uniqueness. That isn't fucked up at all. In fact, that can work to your benefit... if you actually try.
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Don't forget that Harry Shearer does the Mr Burns/Smithers scenes in a single take, while performing both voices. Along with the other dozen or more voices he does for the show.
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Here's a fun fact: There are union rules about how many characters one can do for a show. I don't know what the actual limit is but it's something like this: You get paid for every three characters you play.
This came about because some voice actors have the diversity to play so many roles they could practically voice it themselves. You'll notice in the Star Trek Animated series that James Doohan played a shit-ton of roles on it. The idea was to level the playing field a bit by not making it cost effect
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And I would rather it goes to the actor than the executives at Fox. At least he actually *is* creating the show not just profiting from the creativity and labors of artists.
$14m is nothing compared to what Murdoch is pulling in for owning the Simpsons. It's the same problem in sports, people complain about how much the athletes are making while the owners and league executives get a pass. If it's going to be highly profitable then yeah the players should get rewarded too.
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"Yes, it does. It doesn't matter what luck you get, being able to 'be' a character requires talent. If you don't believe me why don't you get on a microphone and do a passable impression of Mr. Burns reading a scene from Hamlet. There might be 14 million in it for you!"
It also requires luck to "be" a character, as you say it. We think that Harry Shears is Mr. Burns because that's what twenty or more so years of the Simpsons taught us to expect as the voice of a modern day Scrooge. If another moderately capa
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It also requires luck to "be" a character, as you say it.
That's bunk. I takes a lot of hard work and training to be an actor. A portion of it is developing a good sense of observation and another portion of it is figuring out how to translate what you observe into how you behave. That's why there's a such thing as shitty actors, not everybody gets that.
If another moderately capable voice actor got the role when the casting was done, we'd think He is the only actor that can do justice to the role.
Actually that's what happened. Chris Latta, otherwise known as Starscream and Cobra Commander, was the original voice of Montgomery Burns. If he hadn't have passed away, you're right, he may have kept the role.
Here's the problem with your logic: Don't you think that if it was that easy to swap people out they would have dropped Shearer long before he started making millions in the role?
Incidentally top Japanese voice actors get paid much less, and just look at how much more "anime" gets produced, rather than just a few notable American cartoons.
Not particularly relevant, here. Do you really think there's just no more room for prime-time animated comedies? Stop and ponder for a bit where the money to pay the voice actors millions per year comes from and why they'd actually earn it, then ask yourself how that applies to anime.
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Maybe, but go look up a name or two on wikipedia to see how many projects they are doing this year and if you add up what they get from each gig it's going to be quite a bit.
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Voice actors read from a script.
Voice actors convey a character to your ears via lines from a script. If you don't believe me then go watch some fan films.
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What about Smithers, Otto, Kent Brockman, Skinner, Ned, Rev. Lovejoy, Lenny and Rainer Wolfcastle?
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But he was only getting $300,000 per episode before he quit. Over $7M per year. (I'm pretty sure he's in all 26 episodes per season, every season)
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But he was only getting $300,000 per episode before he quit. Over $7M per year.
I'm pretty sure this is not about the money. The guy is 71 years old and has is own TV show and his own radio show, plus multiple books. I seriously doubt the money is the problem.
Look at what he talks about and writes about. Even read TFA about this. His comments are about the contract terms being able to do whatever other work they want on the side.
As has been commented elsewhere, basically he is in a position to become a Social Justice Warrior on the contracts. Corporate contracts likely demand that
Re: Ungreatful Cunt (Score:2)
He has accomplished all the above while he was under the oppressive yoke of his Simpsons contract - how much more freedom did he want/need?
The production company said it offered Shearer the same contract as it offered all the other cast members, but Shearer turned it down.
Shearer says he simply wanted what he always had - the free
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He has accomplished all the above while he was under the oppressive yoke of his Simpsons contract - how much more freedom did he want/need?
The production company said it offered Shearer the same contract as it offered all the other cast members, but Shearer turned it down.
Shearer says he simply wanted what he always had - the freedom to work on other projects.
How can you reconcile the above?
You seem to misread.
The OLD contracts allowed all cast members to work on other projects. This is what he is fighting to keep.
The NEW contracts with cast members are more modern corporate evil, presumably requiring that everything they do in life be given to the company to profit from.
Likely given his position in life and power at the company, his specific contract was rewritten to allow him to keep working on other projects, I'm assuming he was fighting for ALL the cast members to be given the freedom p
Now that bit was weird (Score:2)
As is clear from the summary the terms have changed and "what he always had" is not possible under the new contract.
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The word is ungrateful.
It's pronounced nu-cular, nu-cular.
Meh, he lost his way in the foilage.
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Do they need to? after 70 years of episodes, i'm sure they have every single sample of his voice they'd need to make another 70 years of episodes.
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Why do I have a hunch you aren't a lawyer?
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And you a comedian?
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for 14mil they can get 100 people to replace him... in about 30seconds
Except that he's a talented voice actor and not a software engineer.
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and his voice modulation can't be reproduced by 100 talented engineers?
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Yes. Voice synthesis does not an actor make.
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They didn't replace the voice actor they replaced a single role of his. There is a world of difference and the guy who did it probably got a wheelbarrow full of money.
Voice actors are not inter-changeable. If you grew up on the original Ninja Turtles cartoon then deep down you know I'm right.
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And were all of Mel Blanc's roles replaced by one person?
Or, let me put it this way: Why do you think Shearer was getting 14 million? Fox's legendary generosity?
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for authenticity..
people pay for that. execs pay for that. would you rather have van damme or arnold? both can play essentially the same roles.
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What I am more worried about, is he will spend time on his stupid Radio Program on NPR.
The radio Program is based on the following.
How Bad the Olympics are.
How Bad Nuclear Energy is.
How Bad the catholic church is.
A few public apologies.
A bunch of people who start their sentence with So...
How Bad, Really Bad, horrible, evil and worse then the Devil the Army Corps of Engineers are.
Then a song or two that is slightly amusing.
He use to bash the Bush administration for everything they did. However he couldn't do
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Would you prefer he go off the deep end into scientology like the actress who does bart's voice?
Le Show and The Big Uneasy are both excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
By which you're referring to "Le Show [soundcloud.com]" which covers items in the news and his very well researched documentary "The Big Uneasy" which shows how the Army Corps of Engineers made Hurricane Katrina far worse than it would have been and evades responsibility throughout. Speaking of showing, Shearer backs up his points by quoting and interviewing experts in the relevant fields of discussion and by quoting published hypocrisy from those in power. That's far more backing for his points than I see you giving your views which purport to know what he thinks. In short, you apparently don't think he's funny or insightful but "without actual good context" for anyone to see your views as anything but a name-calling accusation.
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Shearer backs up his points by quoting and interviewing only the experts that agree with him in the relevant fields of discussion and by quoting published hypocrisy from those in power.
Fixed that for you
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"Le Show" is not on NPR. The host station (KCRW) syndicates it on their bird but it's not an NPR product.
So there.