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NPR's Shearer to air Katrina documentary in Tallahassee

By Tom Flanigan

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-976614.mp3

Tallahassee, FL – Harry Shearer is usually a pretty funny guy. But Tom Flanigan reports Shearer set the comedy aside last year to produce a film documentary on what caused New Orleans to flood when Hurricane Katrina struck.

Shearer graces the WFSU-FM airwaves every Sunday afternoon with his long-running current affairs potpourri program called "Le Show". He says he was content, at first, to use that medium as the primary way to cover the story.

"I'd interviewed the leaders of the two independent investigations into the flooding of New Orleans and a whistle-blower from inside the Army Corps (of Engineers) on my radio program. And I'd been blogging about this at the Huffington Post, but in October of 2009, President Obama came to New Orleans and held a town hall meeting and referred to the flooding as a natural disaster', which we all here by that point knew was not the case."

Shearer says that was the impetus to produce "The Big Uneasy".

"People go make independent documentaries these days and since I knew these folks who really knew the subject matter - I had interviewed them on the radio - and I had treated them well enough that I thought they would trust me to put them in a film, and I had through the good fortune of my other work the resources to make the film, I thought, Gee, if not me, who? I should do this.'"

This from the man who himself has appeared in funny films, such as "This is Spinal Tap" and "A Mighty Wind", as well as doing the voices of nearly twenty different characters in the cartoon series "The Simpsons". Given that, was Shearer worried that audiences might expect "The Big Uneasy" to be a serious subject with comedic elements thrown in a la Michael Moore?

"I was determined that it was NOT going to be that type of film, that it was going to be a serious film and in the first version of it in fact I wasn't in it at all for that very reason. I did not want to distract people with, What's the guy from the Simpsons talking about engineering?'"

So, even though Shearer finally did show up in the film, it's in a purely supportive role. The real stars, he says, are the investigative reports. Two of these came from noted Engineering Professor Dr. Bob Bea from the University of California at Berkeley.

"These two reports delineate in excruciating detail all the misjudgments and errors and mistakes and other mis-feasances by the Army Corps of Engineers in the four-and-a-half decades that they built but never completed the so-called hurricane protection system', which congress ordered them to build in 1965."

The bottom line, says Shearer, is that New Orleans would have flooded eventually even if a hurricane like Katrina never stuck. And it's not only New Orleans that's still in danger.

"The Corps themselves say that in internal discussions and they said that publicly in 2007 when they gave out a list of more than 100 communities around the country whose levy systems the Corps either built or supervises and are not up to snuff at this point including Dallas, Texas where they told the city, Oh those levies along the Trinity River that run through downtown Dallas? They're built on sand. We're really sorry about that.'"

Shearer says Congress is part of the problem, too for using the Army Corps of Engineers as a federal money pipeline to members' home districts. As such, Shearer says the Corps has become better at shoveling pork than dirt. Since its release last fall, "The Big Uneasy" has won scads of awards, both at home and abroad. With all that acclaim, does he see another film in his future?

"I mean, I loved doing this film, because I'm passionate about New Orleans and really outraged about the refusal of the national media to report this story. I'm not shopping about for anything else that would get me similarly outraged, although I wouldn't foreclose the idea that something might, but that sure isn't my career plan. I didn't do this as a career move, because, as I say, I find myself at the confluence of the knowledge and the resources and the outrage."

The result of those three elements, Harry Shearer's "The Big Uneasy", will be screened Friday at six and this Sunday at five at the All Saints Cinema just off Tallahassee's Railroad Avenue. Tickets are seven dollars general admission. Members of the Tallahassee Film Society, which is showing the film, get in for five dollars.