Voice artist extraordinaire Harry Shearer is ending his quarter-century run on “The Simpsons,” says series showrunner Al Jean. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Shearer, eh? We’ll remember that name.
IT’S ALL so Simpsons-esque, in its quick and cutting efficiency. A lawyer holding a briefcase and a terminated contract shows up, utters a few bureaucratic words, and suddenly, half of a community disappears.
After this Sunday’s season finale, barring a reprieve from a real-life Judge Roy Snyder, much of Springfield becomes a ghost town. That’s because Harry Shearer, the man of so many voices (including Snyder’s), is reportedly not being brought back for Fox’s historically long-running “The Simpsons,” which last week was renewed for Seasons 27 and 28.
Shearer, who has been there since the post-“Tracey Ullman” beginning, says that squabbles with his “Simpsons” employment overlords are not about his pay (reportedly $300,000 an episode), but about his freedom to do outside work, from radio to the stage — a liberty he said he’s enjoyed for decades.
Either way, this announcement tolls as not merely a power tactic amid contract negotiations, as has happened in the show’s past with the main players. In this case, “Simpsons” honchos have separated Shearer from the herd and cut him loose. As showrunner Al Jean told CNN Money this morning about the coming two seasons: “Harry Shearer will not be within the show.”
But what about the virtual herd of characters that Shearer so prominently voices? “We do not plan to ‘kill off’ his characters,” Jean told CNN in an e-mail, “but replace them with the most talented members of the voice-over community.”
And just like that, talent agents are hot on their mobiles as they sip their Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf hard past Santa Monica Boulevard and pray for both California water and a callback from the offices of Jean and show co-creator Jimmy L. Brooks (who tweeted Thursday that he still wanted to make peace).
Yet no matter whom they hire, we’ll miss the inimitable tones of Shearer, because he brought one particular gift to the show that’s irreplaceable: No one does the ring of authority quite like Harry.
That’s the thing about Shearer: He can deftly play most anyone who is either in charge, or who needs to sound as though he’s at the controls. But he doesn’t have the “voice of God” delivery of a Morgan Freeman. No, Shearer put a certain English on the ball with each role. It was the waver of the weasel, or the over-enunciation of the huckster. Whether it was the news or nuclear power, these men were often selling you something — frequently the belief in their own shaky authority (though sometimes it could be the simple sweetness of left-handed tchotchkes). This was from the School of Phil Hartman, although instead of going up “to 11″ (yes, a la Shearer’s “Spinal Tap”), Harry’s mellifluous men could often dial it down, true to the grounded nature of human worms, squirrels and snakes.
Which brings us to Shearer’s greatest character presence, riffing off the genius of Sam Simon. Harry has been special as the Bart-challenged Principal Skinner and the moralizing Ned Flanders, of course, as well as Eddie and Lenny and Reverend Lovejoy, Jebediah and the judge and Julius Hibbert — plus the smooth-news guys like Kent Brockman and Dave Shutton. But “The Simpsons” is simply not “The Simpsons” without Montgomery Burns — the man who looks a bit like Fox boss Murdoch, crossed with every modern Ebenezer, including Judge Potter and the Grinch, but was actually inspired by Simon’s fear of ol’ Fox broadcasting honcho Barry Diller (with a vocal side of more Barrymore).
If smart Marge is the heart of the show, and chubby-hubby Homer is its soul, then Burns is its soul-less. Monty is the dark side as a reptilian billionaire, and from those scales, Shearer delivered a quarter-century master class in quips and pivots and silky line-readings that helped Burns become the show’s most quotable character not named Simpson.
So it seems unfortunately coincidental that the “Simpsons” overlords look a little Burnsian as they — in the eyes of some fans — release the trap door, and the hounds, on Harry.
Once upon a time, the show, co-led by the recently deceased Simon, liked this fellow Shearer and the cut of his jib, as Mr. Burns might say; they landed this “young hellcat” and declared him to be “Excellent!”
Now, we can only hear the echo of a Burns quote, as delivered by Shearer himself: “What makes a man endanger his job … by asking me for money?” (Or for anything else?)
Cruel business, this, and so often it comes down to money on both sides. But for 26 seasons in this dog-eat-dog industry, gifted Harry Shearer, voice-actor employee, got to be the one vocally manning the trap door and deliciously releasing the hounds.
Writer/artist/visual storyteller Michael Cavna is creator of the "Comic Riffs" column and graphic-novel reviewer for The Post's Book World. He relishes sharp-eyed satire in most any form.
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