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Harry Shearer Walks Away From "The Simpsons," and $14 Million
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."
Er, I mean "bogus!"
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"
If he already have tens of millions of dollar for his past work, it's a lot easier to turn down $14 million.
Lol, so salty
Maybe if you were smarter, or you know, maybe talented?
Wow, how original.
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.
Sure, that's a lot of money to walk away from, but after 26 years of working on the same show, I'm sure he must have a few bucks stashed away somewhere...
If he can't be persuaded to stay, then this is a shame. It will be interesting to see who they replace him with
J Williamson
Surprisingly there are a lot of people on this thread who don't appreciate that there are things much more valuable than money-- (the best things?) Shearer is a smart and super talented guy who's in his 70s now and has had a long and extremely notable career and has earned the right to retire and enjoy life on his own terms. If he wants to do other stuff or if he just doesn't feel like doing Smithers any more for money, great. He doesn't have to be your (or Fox's) dancing monkey for the rest of his life.
Congrats, Harry. Thanks for the laughs so far, and looking forward to your next whatever.
nt
Feel free to have a go in entertainment and see if you can score the big bucks. More power to you if you can. Maybe you can voice the new Mr. Burns.
fox: if you stay for 2 more years of this 20 year old cultural dead horse we will pay you 14 million dollars.
Shearer: I want to be creative, to exercise my creative talent on other projects besides a few bit part voices.
fox: sure, you can do other projects.
Shearer: like what did you have in mind
fox: what if we added a new simpsons character
Shearer: thats still the simpsons.
Fox...whats your point..
Good people go to bed earlier.
Maybe hire some writers so the show could actually be funny again.
from slashdot to tmz ...
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.
It is still on?
If it is, is anyone still paying attention?
#DeleteChrome
Why does it piss you off? He's been doing this for 26 years, maybe for him it's time to do something new. It really pisses me off that people think money is the only motivation. Quit being jealous. Stop comparing your life to other peoples and you'll be happier for it.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
we pay these people way to much while children are starving
what an evil system, clearly we should be ashamed ourselves
He's already rich though, he's been doing this for 26 years.
It pisses you off that talented people have it better than dumb cogs like you? That's self-loathing.
after what like 26 years I think maybe he has the right to do something different. To be honest the Simpsons jumped the shark a long time ago.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
He's 71 years old, and has worked on the show for 25 years. I'm sure he has more money than he can spend, and maybe he just wants to do something a little different with the remainder of his life and career. Hasn't there been enough Simpsons?.
I hate to shamelessly plug, but Harry Shearer was recently on WTF with Marc Maron - I think it gives a lot of insight into the guy and his career and all that good stuff..
Not his entire career. Not even close (especially since it started in 1953).
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm073...
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
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?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
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 slave away doing the daily grind somewhere for a tiny fraction of that. Seriously . . . $14 MILLION for two years of talking.
( I won't even insult the working class by calling it " work " )
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.
( For the record, those making minimum wage would need 928 YEARS to make it )
And the 1% wonder why we hate them so f*cking much.
I doubt "having a go" is very free.
Actually, isn't the area full of waiters and dishwashers having a go?
That sounds like a much better way to spend his life.
Excellent.
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.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
He wants to reprise his role as the base player for Spinal Tap.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
..in Albert Brooks' Real Life: https://cdn.thedissolve.com/ar...
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
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 that marginally increases survival rates. The company keeps most of the profits because the company is what organized and bankrolled the effort in the first place.
In entertainment, the phenomenon of one-person brands means supply is necessarily limited. Only one person on earth can be Mr. Burns, and a lot of people want to see Mr. Burns. So if you want Mr. Burns on your show, you had better pay that person a lot of money. By contrast, there are hundreds of thousands of medical researchers, who are all willing to work for low six-figures or less. They, in turn, make a lot more than fry cooks, a job which just about any reasonably healthy human can perform with minimal training.
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.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Might I suggest you watch http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091042/?ref_=nv_sr_1 and actually listen to what Charlie Sheen has to say. You might find it applies more to your life than you thought it did.
As for the direct answer...
They know why you hate them. You hate them because that is what you were trained to do.
well, develop some better skills. Since he's being offered that much it means HE'S ALREADY MADE MANY TIMES THAT AMOUNT AND HAS MORE SAVED THAN YOU'LL EVER MAKE IN YOUR LIFE. He's free from financial need and doesn't need the money. Don't be jealous, aspire to that yourself if you wish it was you.
Money, money, money. Come on, nobody quits over the little stuff. It's always the money.
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.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
There were only a couple good episodes this year..... I use to enjoy watching pretty well all the episodes, but it is more of a chore these days watching episodes - sometimes skipping through them waiting to find one gem in the rough.
It is close to the edge so it might just be the right opportunity to end the show.
Well, it's widely known that Shearer knows how to spell "grateful", so that's probably giving him a leg up.
Do you have ESP?
If they do want to continue on but without those characters that are to be retired.... maybe they can do a spoof where god comes down and takes away all those with faith... leaving behind The Simpsons and taking Ned and the Reverend ... and even Skinner :p
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.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
the "players" are the ones who write the rues for the "game"
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?
Seriously, if he's made enough money why the fuck would he keep working?
I would stop working if I had enough millions to not run out of money.
I'd go do some other shit I enjoy, like cycling, swimming, coding, whatever.
Or are they just going to use voice clips of him saying "Excellent..." every now and again and recycle him?
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 ? :|
If you cure cancer, you'll bequeath to the world a bunch more people who are spending their lonely lives enduring the crushing boredom of everyday existence.
If you can entertain those people, you'll be doing them, and the rest of us, a huge service.
Besides, if you cure cancer all you will do is cause a lot more people to die from heart disease or prostate enlargement or pulmonary disease. If nobody can cry on cue or throw a ball, these people's lives will be longer and more dull, and they will STILL die. So don't begrudge the entertainers their money. They get that money because people LIKE to be entertained.
Now, if only there were some way to make "funding cancer research" into an entertaining pastime that would convince people to spend more money on it... Hmm...
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.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Finally they can finish work on Saucy Jack.
. .
Who Watches The Simpsons Anymore? I don't think I have seen an episode in 6 years or more.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
No, you and I write the rules for the game. Every time you watch an episode of the "Simpsons" instead of paying to read a scientific journal, you increase the demand for the former at the expense of the latter. You can argue market failures, and they do exist (especially with respect to things like executive compensation), but market failures aren't the reason why movie stars get paid more than scientists.
The problem is that you aren't very useful. You may think and feel like you are useful, but you really aren't that useful to enough people. This one guy does one thing that benefits millions of people directly. That's why he gets paid that much money. It's like how pyramid schemes work, but without the fraud.
If you do something worth $1, but only worth $1 to 5000 people, then you make $5000. If you do something worth $1, but worth $1 to ten million people, then you get $10M dollars. That's just how money works.
Momma said there's only so much fortune a man really needs and the rest is just for showing off.
still a long time, i don't think anyone would really blame him if he just didn't want to do it anymore because he's already rich and wants to relax and enjoy life in other ways
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.
Talent? A bit. Uniqueness? Nope, maybe in the sense that voice actors "invent" a sound. Actors (stage excepted) have it easy. Voice actors even more so. Voice actors read from a script.
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 slave away doing the daily grind somewhere for a tiny fraction of that. Seriously . . . $14 MILLION for two years of talking.
( I won't even insult the working class by calling it " work " )
[...]
And the 1% wonder why we hate them so f*cking much.
Your rant against "the 1%" is heavily misplaced, especially in this circumstance. Where do you think that $14 million comes from? Does FOX have a money printing station that craps out wads of cash to their voice actors and producers? Of course not. That money comes from advertising and merchandise, just like anything else on TV. Advertising brings in so much money because it's effective. People buy stuff. Most of those people are in the low and middle class. They exercised free will when they bought those products, voluntary exchanges of money.
So don't get pissy at a voice actor who just happens to be in one of the most popular and longest running series that ever existed. A series that has brought entertainment and humor to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. That's no small feat.
He was on The Simpsons? I always thought he was the radio DJ on Wayne's World. Handsome Dan!
and Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, has enough star power to try to "disconnect" him from listeners of that show.
Simpsons probably holds more double entendres per minute than any other piece of culture mankind has ever made. There's even triple and quadruple entendres belted out occasionally, but maybe I'm mixing them with relevant analogies. Speaking of analogies, so many things in life has a relevant Simpsons analogy. My first girlfriend and I used to speak in Simpsons quotes over dumb stuff in life. But after 8-9 seasons, the writers got lazy or there's new writers or something because it just wasn't as chock full of creativity.
Whoever wrote the contract should let the man have his creative freedom. If Harry Shearer walks, the guy writing an oppressive contract should be to blame.
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.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
What about Smithers, Otto, Kent Brockman, Skinner, Ned, Rev. Lovejoy, Lenny and Rainer Wolfcastle?
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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)
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 effective to use only one-man-bands.
I don't think that's why Shearer was earning that much money, though. I think it's because he's behind so many distinct characters that his departure will leave a notable absence in the show. Well... that and that particular show still generates a shit-ton of revenue for Fox. Right now they're opening up a Springfield attraction at Universal Studios so you can go to Moe's Tavern. Lots of money changed hands to make that happen. There's still plenty of love for that show.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I write code. I make significantly more than $80k per year
What does nehumanuscrede that is so worth so much less than what I do?
Off topic: scientists receive no proceeds from journal publications. Science publishers, in general, are leeches.
"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 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.
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.
By which you're referring to "Le Show" 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.
Digital Citizen
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.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
when did he leave?
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 all cast members -- except a few people in special bargaining positions -- cannot work on any other projects, or that everything they do becomes owned by the company. That is increasingly common from our corporate taskmasters who demand the opportunity to profit from anything you do outside of work, no matter how unrelated it is to the workplace.
My guess is that he wasn't negotiating just for himself, but that all the cast members be freed to work on side projects as well.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Seriously, this is a good show and he apparently is very good at what he did. Nothing to do with him nor trying to discredit this, but the compensation level is simply absurd. Thinking about nurses, teachers or whoever that is very good at their job makes $70K a year. That's a 100x. Uniqueness This doesn't include actor/voice-over who does NOT have a Simpson's gig, but could be just as talented, but doing odd gigs for $70/day. To me, top notch entertainers are getting paid for what 95% of those who didn't make it big (like sports).
Nah, 14 mil isn't enough to keep me going.
What a cunt.
Only one person on earth can be Mr. Burns, and a lot of people want to see Mr. Burns. So if you want Mr. Burns on your show, you had better pay that person a lot of money.
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, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepe Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote or the Tasmanian Devil? Nope. Take a look at Wiki and you'll find that even the legendary Blanc's characters were able to be mimicked by a raft of other voiceover artists, and some of those artists were able to cover not just a few but many of his characters.
The fact is that like any other job, voiceovers are something that can be done very well by a whole lot of people.
Hey, Smilie-face McDerptard, what is wrong with you?
You write like a teenager - did you hack your father's Slashdot account?
L-O-Fucking-L and smilies and winkies and that shit belong on Facebook or something, not here.
Thank you.
Hurr durr I'ma sheep.
This could be my big break . . . my ticket out of here!
Or not.
The word is ungrateful.
It's pronounced nu-cular, nu-cular.
There can be nothing better than The Simpsons. It mocks everything, including The Simpsons, better than anything else.
I don't see how the twenty-three or so characters Harry Shearer voiced are going to continue, but those are only voices, and maybe others can take up the slack.
The show itself must continue because it is the ridiculer of record for modern society.
Life In Hell was funny.
Being able to impersonate accents is a very difficult skill to master. Being able to do it on the fly like Harry Shearer can is a step above that (seen him a few times on live TV over the years).
Considering that most people cant re-intonate their voice at all it certainly is a difficult skill. Many people have the same accent until they die even when completely they live for decades in a new country.
Most people trying to read Hamlet in another voice, be it Mr. Burns, Jeremy Clarkson or a generic Mexican accent are nothing but cringe worthy because most people dont get that you dont sound the way you think you sound (I.E. record yourself and listen).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The only other thing I remember him doing were minor parts on SNL and This is Spinal Tap. I guess the Simpsons must have been pretty good over the years if he can afford to walk away from $7M/year.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
...and if not, does it make a sound?
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.
Well, if you can do, it walk in there and try out. There's a position open.
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?
Harry Shearer famously tried to 'demand' that the voice actors get royalties from product licensing - do you know what happened then? Not only did the voice talent NOT get participation in product licensing revenue, the entire cast got a PAY CUT.
Harry Shearer has a history of being the squeaky wheel, tilting at windmills under the pretense of helping others.
Presumably Mr. Shearer was offered the same contract he had the previous 26 years, the contract that allowed him to write several books, have his own radio, TV shows, and whatever else, but he wanted more... What that 'more' was I can not say, only that the production company felt they couldn't give him whatever it was he asked for, so now someone else will voice his characters and collect some fraction of the reported $300K Mr. Shearer was previously paid per episode.
Ken
...and if not, does it make a sound?
Not without Shearer.
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 dozens of companies just like it. Doing big things, like curing an entire class of diseases, require the work of thousands of people, most of whom are surprisingly well paid.
As for the rest of your "argument", if you are paid very little, it may be because someone has outright tricked you, but more likely than not it's because you are replaceable. Maybe you work a cash register, or do yardwork, or move objects from one place to another, but the theme is that just about anyone can do your job. So when your company makes money from your work, it doesn't have to share much with you. You don't like it? You get replaced. Sometimes people can't be replaced, though, and then they have the power to demand a bigger share of the pie. Harry Shearer is one of these people.
I have no love for income inequality. It is an incredibly serious, timely issue. But there are different types of income, and when you start whining about entertainers or athletes it tells me that you don't understand economics and can't even grasp the real roots of income inequality.
The problem is that you aren't very useful. You may think and feel like you are useful, but you really aren't that useful to enough people. This one guy does one thing that benefits millions of people directly. That's why he gets paid that much money. It's like how pyramid schemes work, but without the fraud.
If you do something worth $1, but only worth $1 to 5000 people, then you make $5000. If you do something worth $1, but worth $1 to ten million people, then you get $10M dollars. That's just how money works.
I'd say our definitions of the word useful differ quite a lot. Let me paint a picture for you:
Scenario A: Every actor, sports star, celebrity, singer, entertainer, etc. mysteriously vanish off the face of the earth overnight. Civilization largely continues on with, at most, a few highly localized areas of decline where the economy of that area was built entirely on such things.
Scenario B: Every engineer, software developer, scientist, teacher, doctor, etc. mysteriously vanish off the face of the earth overnight. Civilization decays rapidly into a new dark age as all research instantly grounds to a halt, infrastructure gradually rots away, disease and famine become rampant, and, at a minimum, decades of ruin pass before enough of what's left of humanity has relearned enough of the lost knowledge to start climbing back to a state approaching the world we know today.
I get that those entertainers are in some way or another making their large income off of willing fans, but does that help you understand the frustration that many feel about the wide variance in pay, especially when the only reason those entertainers are able to earn any money at all is because others have worked hard to build and maintain a level of infrastructure that allows entertainers to connect with their fans and affords their fans opportunities to do something besides constantly fight for survival?
The problem is that you aren't very useful. You may think and feel like you are useful, but you really aren't that useful to enough people. This one guy does one thing that benefits millions of people directly. That's why he gets paid that much money. It's like how pyramid schemes work, but without the fraud.
If you do something worth $1, but only worth $1 to 5000 people, then you make $5000. If you do something worth $1, but worth $1 to ten million people, then you get $10M dollars. That's just how money works.
I'd say our definitions of the word useful differ quite a lot. Let me paint a picture for you:
Scenario A: Every actor, sports star, celebrity, singer, entertainer, etc. mysteriously vanish off the face of the earth overnight. Civilization largely continues on with, at most, a few highly localized areas of decline where the economy of that area was built entirely on such things.
Scenario B: Every engineer, software developer, scientist, teacher, doctor, etc. mysteriously vanish off the face of the earth overnight. Civilization decays rapidly into a new dark age as all research instantly grounds to a halt, infrastructure gradually rots away, disease and famine become rampant, and, at a minimum, decades of ruin pass before enough of what's left of humanity has relearned enough of the lost knowledge to start climbing back to a state approaching the world we know today.
I get that those entertainers are in some way or another making their large income off of willing fans, but does that help you understand the frustration that many feel about the wide variance in pay, especially when the only reason those entertainers are able to earn any money at all is because others have worked hard to build and maintain a level of infrastructure that allows entertainers to connect with their fans and affords their fans opportunities to do something besides constantly fight for survival?
He has a point. I'm pretty sure clean drinking water is a lot more valuable to a lot more people than the latest pop music CD or movie. Where are all the millionaire municipal water treatment plant operators? I'd like to meet one and shake his or her hand.
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 present in older contracts to work on other side projects without ownership going to the corporate overlords.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Well, if it's any consolation to the less "unique" people, high paying positions for entertainers and professional athletes will likely be thin on the ground once the world economy crashes so hard that money becomes mostly worthless and basic survival is the only real priority. And if you don't believe that the rapidly increasing debt of the last 8 or so years hasn't put us all into a spiral where a such a crash is no longer mathematically preventable, only mildly delayable... then I'm afraid you may need to refresh your own understanding of economics.
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.
As is clear from the summary the terms have changed and "what he always had" is not possible under the new contract.
They already did that joke in 1999.
No one can tell the diddley-ifference!
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.
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.
Talent? A bit. Uniqueness? Nope, maybe in the sense that voice actors "invent" a sound.
You appear to have no idea what you're talking about.
Actors (stage excepted) have it easy.
Yep, you definitely have no idea, whatsoever.
Voice actors even more so.
In many cases, it's actually the opposite. You would know that, if you had any clue, which you don't.
Voice actors read from a script.
The only correct statement in your post, and it's irrelevant, which is yet another thing you probably don't understand the reason for.
I give 2/10 for effort. Your knowledge is lacking.
Don't know. Why don't you discuss that with him instead of asking people who know neither of you and can't possibly explain it to you?
This. Simpsons went downhill for quite a while, but it's improved a lot the last 2 years or so.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.)
Who's the sheep, the person who decided the show is no good and decided to stop watching it or the fanbois who keep on watching despite the precipitous decline in quality?
I wish you guys would stay relevant. How could he live on only $7 million per year?
He's pissed off because he thinks voice acting is the same as reading a bed-time story. He's pissed off because his job is much harder than reading bed time stories, but he gets paid a lot less than $7M/year. Probably thinks he'd be a great NFL coach, too. "I could do that job, but I don't have the right connections to get a shot."
You might consider spending some of your (admittedly smaller amount of) money on some anger management therapy.
At $80k / annum, you are probably in the 1%. (Certainly would be in my country - I can't tell for sure in the US.) So you hate yourself ;-)
Scenario A: Every actor, sports star, celebrity, singer, entertainer, etc. mysteriously vanish off the face of the earth overnight. Civilization largely continues on with, at most, a few highly localized areas of decline where the economy of that area was built entirely on such things.
Humans have had actors, singers, and performers for a very long time. Art and drama are more fundamental to who we are than medicine, architecture, or chemistry. If every professional performer disappeared tomorrow, you would still tell stories to your friends, you would still whistle tunelessly, and we would all continue to think you suck at it, desperately wishing for someone with a better sense of timing, rhythm, or tune. The Dark Ages were more a failure of Art than of Science.
Scenario B: Every engineer, software developer, scientist, teacher, doctor, etc. mysteriously vanish off the face of the earth overnight. Civilization decays rapidly into a new dark age as all research instantly grounds to a halt, infrastructure gradually rots away, disease and famine become rampant, and, at a minimum, decades of ruin pass before enough of what's left of humanity has relearned enough of the lost knowledge to start climbing back to a state approaching the world we know today.
It's a lot easier to train someone to be a competent physician or engineer than to train them to be a world class actor/artist. Curiously, it also takes a lot more technical people to do anything useful than it does actors to entertain. GM uses 219,000 people to build 8.5 million cars/year. 38 cars per person: individually, those people are not very useful. Monday Night Football is 20 million people watching 92 players and associated, mostly fungible support personnel. Sure, the car has more value than one football game, but that value is very diffuse. There are tons of entertainers in local/regional theater groups, local bands, and local artists who get paid so little that they have to keep day jobs.
Stop comparing elite artists to average technical workers, and you'll find much less discrepancy. The average programmer gets paid much better than the average guitarist.
The one thing that *nobody* says on their deathbed is "I wish I'd spent more time at work".
The word is ungrateful.
It's pronounced nu-cular, nu-cular.
Meh, he lost his way in the foilage.
PLEASE PLEASE Don't break The Simpsons! 26 years of gold, and it's still amazing!
Not his entire career. Not even close
I assume you are commenting on this line.
he has made an ENTIRE CAREER out of the Simpsons.
I think we are working on two different definitions of "career". In my mind, a person can have more than one career throughout their lifetime.
Ah, scottrocket, our little walking libary.
They "literally" jumped the shark in season 2. (homer jumped a shark tank) Groening was around for quite a while after that.. It's how it has lasted so long. As soon as they had a deal for more than just the original season they jumped the shark to get that out of the way.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Silly Billys Toy Shop is now stocking the Lego Simpsons Series 2 Minifgures, read all about these new Minifgures and how Harry Shearer has missed out on all the Lego furor on Silly Billy's toy shop blog, http://www.sillybillystoyshop.com/blogging, hopefully Mr Shearer will not be too disappointed.
He gets paid $7 million a year for doing voices? How fucked up society is!
Voice acting is still acting. You can pretend to be someone else (it's a lot more convincing with characters who mostly say things like "what's up doc?"), but you can never copy someone's acting performance perfectly. If a substitute were equally as good, they wouldn't have offered $14 million to keep the original. Fox isn't a charity.
That Harry has quite a bit of money now and MAYBE, he just wants to do something else? Or retire? Or take a 2 year vacation somewhere?
Dude, just because someone is offered a bucket of money, doesn't mean it has any value to them.
I don't know if the show got worse or if I got older. for a while it was a big part of my cultural consciousness. who shot mr burns. hms pinafore. monorail. I cho cho choose you. hank scorpio. then I grew up, got into other things. maybe it's a lot of things, the show's not getting older, I'm getting older.
I have a dislike for many SJW causes... I feel it's a disservice to associate what he's doing, which I think is a good cause, with the SJW tag.
Cure cancer and you'll never have financial issues ever again. Of course, this is a task that's exceedingly complex (there's lots of different sorts of cancer), and progress is typically made by large groups of people, so you're not going to do it.
There's lots of scientists and engineers and such in the US. There are a few thousand in the major professional sports, and lots of them make minimum pay (probably more than you make, but you aren't as good in your field as the crappiest major league baseball player is at his).
There's lots of people who can act or sing or whatever, and most of them get a pittance from that. I know a woman who can cry on cue, and has some impressive other abilities, and put a lot of hard work into refining them, but she gave up her attempt for an opera career (as a Verdi soprano) because it wasn't enough to make a living on. Making millions in an artistic field demands either being extremely good or extremely lucky or both. Quite likely you can perform in some sort of creative field, and there's tens of thousands of people in the US better than you at whatever you do.
An actor needs special talents to break into the field, and for a long time afterwards is going to be constantly wondering if there's another job coming, or if the current one is the end of his or her career. (Drug use is high among high-end actors and similar, since they do get lots of money while they're working, never know if they're going to get another gig, and there's tremendous pressure to use whatever they can to do just a bit better to keep their careers alive.)
When you're looking at creative people making lots of money, you're looking at people with lots of money, who typically have worked very hard and sacrificed to use their talent and first break, and who are are entertaining a large number of people themselves. A baseball pitcher is likely entertaining tens or hundreds of thousands of people, and Robert Downey, Jr. entertained far more than that by playing Tony Stark. My employer could replace me with a couple of less able people without much problem, but it's bit more difficult to have more than one person play Natasha Romanov (aka Black Widow), in scenes where you can see her face (a lot of stuff can be done by stunt doubles, of course).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The problem is that you aren't very useful. You may think and feel like you are useful, but you really aren't that useful to enough people. This one guy does one thing that benefits millions of people directly. That's why he gets paid that much money. It's like how pyramid schemes work, but without the fraud.
If you do something worth $1, but only worth $1 to 5000 people, then you make $5000. If you do something worth $1, but worth $1 to ten million people, then you get $10M dollars. That's just how money works.
I'd say our definitions of the word useful differ quite a lot. Let me paint a picture for you:
Scenario A: Every actor, sports star, celebrity, singer, entertainer, etc. mysteriously vanish off the face of the earth overnight. Civilization largely continues on with, at most, a few highly localized areas of decline where the economy of that area was built entirely on such things.
Scenario B: Every engineer, software developer, scientist, teacher, doctor, etc. mysteriously vanish off the face of the earth overnight. Civilization decays rapidly into a new dark age as all research instantly grounds to a halt, infrastructure gradually rots away, disease and famine become rampant, and, at a minimum, decades of ruin pass before enough of what's left of humanity has relearned enough of the lost knowledge to start climbing back to a state approaching the world we know today.
I get that those entertainers are in some way or another making their large income off of willing fans, but does that help you understand the frustration that many feel about the wide variance in pay, especially when the only reason those entertainers are able to earn any money at all is because others have worked hard to build and maintain a level of infrastructure that allows entertainers to connect with their fans and affords their fans opportunities to do something besides constantly fight for survival?
That's exactly my point. The value of a single artist can be a LOT more than the value of a single engineer, doctor, etc.
One teacher is useful to, at most, around 120 people per year. An engineer is useful to more than that, but in a way that is not visible and in a way that is easily replaced. If there was only a single engineer, then that engineer would be worth a WHOLE lot. There are millions of engineers, though.
Scarcity is how money works. It's just difficult to accept the logic of reality.
They're not a charity, but they're well aware that if they sacked someone and replaced them with a cheaper copycat, they could end up in court spending a whole lot more money for the "cheap" option. It has nothing to do with how easy (or not) it is to mimic the voices. Listen to Bugs Bunny throughout the years and you'll find there's more variation in Blanc's own performances than there is between Blanc and some of those who came after him.
I have a dislike for many SJW causes... I feel it's a disservice to associate what he's doing, which I think is a good cause, with the SJW tag.
So wait ... because you personally dislike some other social causes, you want to rename the term when it applies to causes you do like?
A bit of cognitive dissonance there. That's what the term is, so it applies. People are fighting for a cause they believe makes society better. You may or may not support that specific cause, but that doesn't change what they are doing. You may think the term SJW is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is what it is: they are fighting for social justice.
That reminds me of people who use the ACLU fighting for something is a bad thing if they dislike the issue, but a good thing if it is an issue they support; when they start talking about the ACLU you never can be sure if that is a cause they support or a cause they reject.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement