Harry Shearer—of This is Spinal Tap and “The Simpsons” fame—decides to makes a Serious Documentary. The voice of Mr. Burns talks to Premiere’s Michael Gaughn about his new documentary The Big Uneasy, post-Katrina flooding, and his beloved city of New Orleans.
What was the learning curve like making a documentary?
Well, my producer Karen Murphy and I had shot five little documentary pieces two years ago for mydamnchannel.com of five people I know here, mainly musicians, telling their post-Katrina stories. Otherwise, the learning curve was very steep. But I had an experienced documentary cinematographer and my producer had done all of Chris Guest’s faux documentaries and had started out in real documentaries. And I had been making fun of documentary—with Chris, with Spinal Tap, and with Albert Brooks’s first movie, Real Life, which was a faux documentary. So I’d been a student of the form from the other side for a long time.
Of course, you collaborated on the most famous fake documentary of all time.
Yeah, it’s ironic. You know, there is this rule in satire that you end up being what you make fun of.
