Judd: As someone who is an existentialist with a dash of Buddhism, if that’s your philosophy, you seem like a serene, happy person. How have you taken the darkest philosophy there is and found peace for yourself?
Harold: Serenity is an illusion, but if anything is possible and I can do anything, then there’s a limitless capacity to do good. That’s what Groundhog Day is about. In Groundhog Day, Bill destroys all meaning for himself. Buddhism says our self doesn’t even exist. The self is a convenient illusion that gives us ego. In conventional terms, of course, it exists. There’s a name and picture on your driver’s license, you have to get dressed in the morning, and your paycheck is addressed to somebody, so you have a self. But it’s really an illusion. I did a group exercise, and we were asked to face another person and describe ourselves in two minutes. I started describing myself, and from the very first statement started thinking, That’s not really true. That’s what I like to think about myself, but I’m not as good as I’m saying. It’s all a projection. So then we switched partners, and they said, “Now tell this person who you are.” So I did a corrective on the first, wrong view of myself, and as I’m talking I’m thinking, That’s not me, either. The whole point of the exercise is that we’re not who we think we are. We’re only occasionally who we want to be. We’re not what other people think we are. The self kind of evaporates as a concept. If you can take yourself out of these existential issues, life gets a little simpler. If life is full of possibility, and I stop thinking about myself, I end up where Bill ends up at the end of the movie: in the service of others. I called it the “Superman Syndrome.” By the end of the movie he has every moment scheduled so he can do some good. He’s always there to catch the kid. He’s always there when the old ladies get a flat tire. We even cut some things out where he’s always there to put his finger on a package someone is wrapping so they can tie the string. How the hell does Superman find the time to talk to Lois Lane when he could be stopping a dam from breaking? There’s always some good you can be doing, which can make you crazy, too. There’s a condition I call “altruistic panic,” where you feel like you have to do something for someone somewhere. If life only has the meaning you bring to it, we have the opportunity to bring rich meaning to our lives by the service we do for others. It’s a positive thing.
This interview originally took place as a panel at the Austin Film Festival in 2005.
HARRY ANDERSON (1983)
Yes, I was a Harry Anderson fan, too.
When I sat down with him, he was a magician and stand-up comedian whom I’d seen on Saturday Night Live a few times, doing his bit, and on Cheers, where he had done some memorable guest spots as an actor. I interviewed him just before Night Court started airing, so to me he was just this demented, semi-famous magician whom I happened to find hilarious. We talked for a long time—much longer than a teenager with a high school radio show should ever have hoped for—and he went pretty deep. He talked about some very personal things with me. I remember being a little taken aback by how open he was about his life—his successes, his struggles, and his pain. I remember having this vague sense of being moved by it all, but in ways I didn’t fully understand yet, and am only coming to understand now. What I took away is a lesson that has proved absolutely vital in my career: Do not be afraid to share your story, or to be vulnerable and open when telling it.
Judd Apatow: On Cheers you play a con man—and it seems to be true, right?
Harry Anderson: If I were, I guess I would lie and say no.
Judd: No, but I saw you on Letterman the other day and you said you got in trouble in New Orleans for—
Harry: A shell game. I ran a shell game for about three years on the street.
Judd: Taking people’s money?
Harry: Yeah.
Judd: And living off that? Were you doing stand-up at the same time?
Harry: No, I didn’t do stand-up. I got into magic when I got my jaw broken doing the shell game, and I gave up gambling and then turned it around and did a comedic exposé of the shell game, which really wasn’t an exposé but it was more of—there was no gambling, I just passed my hat at the end of it. This is back before street performers were so common. I was on the street from the time I was fifteen until I was twenty-five.
Judd: When did you get into magic?
Harry: I’ve always done magic as a hobby. I’ve done it professionally, too. I played at amusement parks in Southern California when I was a kid, did birthday parties and things.
Judd: At fifteen you started hustling?
Harry: When I first went out at fifteen, I did a street act with linking rings, but I wasn’t very serious about it. I didn’t make much money at it. When I was twenty-one, I went to San Francisco and started hustling full-time with the shell game because the money was better that way.
Judd: You just had people bet and they thought they could beat you out? Just like the guys on Eighth Ave.—
Harry: And Seventh Ave. and Sixth Ave. and Fifth Ave….
Judd: And you made a lot of money doing that?
Harry: Well, no. I made better money but I didn’t—too dangerous. I wasn’t really cut out for it. I wasn’t tough enough and, if it comes right down to it, I wasn’t black enough to be doing that kind of work. Because the mobs that were running were black mobs, and I never had a mob. I never had shills. I did rough hustling, what they call playing against the wall. I just played myself with the players so I would pay, I would make them shill. I would pay certain players and then take from others. But it’s a real rough way to do it. Sometimes it’s called dumb hustling.
Judd: You were able to support yourself?
Harry: Well, yeah, I made a living, but then I got my jaw broken so—
Judd: How did that happen?