Harry Shearer
The comedian and media expert on Indian gaming, the Jerry Lewis telethon, and why New Orleans isn't
Iconic 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap is the kind of movie that tends to define a career, but Harry Shearer's hilarious turn as mustachioed bassist Derek Smalls is only one line in what has become one of the longest résumés in Hollywood - 284 (to date) episodes of The Simpsons; 109 films or TV appearances as an actor or voice talent; 14 as a writer; five soundtracks; five stints as director, etc. A former intern in the California state legislature and a cast member in the early years of Saturday Night Live, Shearer continues to demonstrate a wicked political wit in his blog on the Huffington Post, his weekly syndicated radio broadcast, Le Show, and comedies such as his 2002 film, Teddy Bears' Picnic.
A razor-sharp observer of types and the warp of language, Shearer has found a new format for his big-ensemble comedic vision, recently releasing his first novel, Not Enough Indians. A send-up of the complex politics around the nationwide boom in Native American gaming, the book chronicles the imaginary town of Gammage, New York, which hopes to offset downsized and outsourced manufacturing by declaring its residents to be a makeshift Indian tribe, the Filaquonsett, and opening a casino. Shearer's particular brand of smart hijinks ensue, rendering even meetings of the town's Board of Selectmen into a comedy of manners, until an outraged neighboring tribe takes its ultimate revenge. But why not a screenplay, from a man who's written many of them? "Because screenplays don't get made!" Shearer laughs.
-Dean Kuipers
CityBeat: Was the town of Gammage modeled on any particular town? Do I see the Santa Monica City Council in there?
Harry Shearer: It partakes of two or three towns that I know pretty well, none of them in New York state. People can hear echoes of whatever they want. But I certainly have been a fan of the Santa Monica City Council radio show for a long time. Despite my wife's earnest entreaties to "Turn that thing off!"
Did you research the casinos and their culture for this book?
Yeah. I talked to people knowledgeable on both sides of the issue, including a lawyer in Louisiana who is the leading anti-Indian-gaming attorney in the country, apparently, C.B. Forgotston - unforgettable name and a remarkable guy - and I got connected to a resource that's operated by one of the members of the Pechanga tribe that sort of aggregates an awful lot of information about Indian gaming - I'm sorry, gambling! Who are we kidding? The Vegas stuff had come to me earlier when I was working on a [1986] television show I did with Paul Shaffer for HBO called Viva Shaf Vegas.
The town of Gammage votes itself to become the Filaquonsett tribe. That's probably been going on all over the country.
As I tour the country, I hear the most amazing stories about, "Gee, that's sorta like what's happened here." My inspiration was the Mashantucket Pequot, which was the tribe that opened the first really big Native American casino, Foxwoods. When they opened, The New York Times ran a piece saying that the number of full-blooded Mashantucket Pequots living on tribal land at that point was one. So, I just went: "One take away one is a funny idea for a book."
Has there been any reaction from Native Americans about your book?
Unfortunately, no! I don't know necessarily what they'd be ticked off about, but I wish they'd be ticked off about something, 'cause it helps book sales.
What about the whole idea that a tribe can create itself out of the dust?
Yeah! Well, on the other hand, the story is - in some lights - a revenge fantasy. Because Jennifer New Moon is sorta the voice of the traditional Native American [who] just refuses to be pigeonholed into either buying or not buying whatever the white man is selling.
Are the casinos themselves the ultimate revenge fantasy? Are the tribes getting rich at last?
That's the thing I was trying to figure out. It reminded me very much of when I did a very long piece of journalism about the Jerry Lewis telethon, and I tried to get the answer to the question: Does Jerry get rich off this? And everybody you talk to had a slightly different answer. The same with this. Forgotston maintains that not one single, actual, working or nonworking Native American has benefited from Native American gambling. But there are plenty of other people who disagree, who say there are tribes who built schools and hospitals. So I think it depends on how corrupt or not the leaders of any particular tribe are at any particular time.
Why was this a novel and not a screenplay?
A friend of mine I was working with on our long-delayed musical comedy about J. Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar, I mentioned this idea to him one day, and he said, "You should write that as a novel." I said, "Why?" He said, "Because they're never going to make it as a movie." When you've written a novel, you've actually made something. When you've written a screenplay, you've sort of made the blueprint for making something, and then a lot else has to happen.
You still live part of the time in New Orleans. What is your reaction to the federal and state relief efforts going on there?
Nothing's going on there in the way of federal and state relief efforts. That's real easy. Contrary to the president's pledge that red tape would be cut, new, previously unseen quantities of red tape have been manufactured for this process. Of the $12 billion that was finally appropriated by Congress in June to compensate homeowners for the damage they incurred in the flood, I think about $700,000 has been paid out so far. And the rest is just sitting in a non-interest-bearing bank account, waiting for people to jump through impossible hoops. And the state had hired this private contractor, ICF Inc., out of Virginia, which had never done this kind of work before. Nobody knows who chose them. But we do know that the company that created the specifications and the standards for bidders for this job was ICF of Virginia.
The state is trying to rebuild its hospital system, which was a charity hospital system that was set up by Huey Long. The feds are saying, if they're going to help at all, the state has to move away from that, to an insurance-based system, even though state auditors say that would cost something like $500 million more. So, it's compassionate compassionism.
And the national media have never told the real story of the Corps of Engineers' culpability for the flooding. People around the country don't understand that their tax dollars paid to flood New Orleans. So there's been a marked lack of political will in both parties to do anything about this situation. You didn't hear Nancy Pelosi say, "This is going to be one of the first things we tackle."
Is this changing the racial makeup of the city?
I certainly think there's a class, as opposed to a racial, bias going on here. In America we like to talk about race when what we really mean is class. Sometimes the assertion is made, "Well, you had all of these poor people in these concentrations, and that's where your crime came from." Well, there's a standing rebuke to that: The crime came back and the poor people didn't. That's also a very un-covered story: We, in New Orleans, have been living through a social experiment that has pretty conclusively proved that there is no nexus between a lot of poor people living in your city and the crime rate.
Sounds like you have a whole other book to write. Maybe not as funny.
Yeah, that's the thing. I'm waiting. My friend, Chris Rose, who's a wonderful columnist for the Times-Picayune and was a Pulitzer finalist this year for his work, has been able to find a way to be funny and incredibly poignant about this stuff. I'm still just so pissed-off.
Published: 01/04/2007
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