Harry Shearer's New Doc 'The Big Uneasy' Marks Five Years Since Hurricane Katrina

Harry Shearer, the actor known for his voiceover roles on "The Simpsons" and movie roles in "This is Spinal Tap" and "A Mighty Wind," is wearing a new hat these days: documentarian.

August 30, 2010 will mark five years since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and on that day Shearer, a longtime resident of New Orleans, will release The Big Uneasy in a one-day theatrical event.

“My connection with documentaries to this point has been ‘mock,’” he confessed.

Contrary to popular opinion, and to what President Obama claimed in a recent town hall meeting, Hurricane Katrina was not a natural disaster. “People down there know that two investigations done by incredibly reputable engineers and scientists…have both come to the conclusion that this was, in the words of one, ‘the greatest manmade engineering catastrophe since Chernobyl,” said Shearer.

The Big Uneasy is Shearer’s attempt to spread that message. Like most, he initially thought Katrina was a natural disaster, until he dug a little deeper.

“What happened in New Orleans was entirely different,” he said. “This hurricane protection system, so-called, that had been ordered by Congress after Hurricane Betsy in the 60s failed in more than 50 locations. Eighty percent of the city was under water for like six weeks.”

According to the people who know what they’re taking about, the levee breaches in New Orleans occurred because the system was built wrong in the first place. “It wasn’t ‘uh-oh, big storm,’” said Shearer. “This was a storm surge that this system was advertised to withstand, and it didn’t.”

Shearer spoke with a whistleblower inside the Army Corps of Engineers who believes that even the new pumps installed after Katrina to drain the city are defective in design. An agency of the federal government that investigates such claims agreed, and sent letters to the White House and to Congress.

“Nothing has been done,” said Shearer. “Which doesn’t give me a great deal of confidence.”

In The Big Uneasy, Shearer also explains how Katrina was a disaster “bought and paid for” by the American public. “Federal tax money built a defective system,” he said, adding, “It’s a very human story of what happened to us as taxpayers, what happened to these people who stood up and told the truth, as well as to the people of New Orleans.”

President Obama has done little to “return New Orleans to its former glory,” as he has promised, but Shearer acknowledged that some progress has been made. “He has appointed a good new FEMA director who has cut some of the red tape,” said Shearer. “And some of the aid money that was stalled for years by red tape is now flowing. That’s it. That’s all we’ve seen.”

The Big Uneasy will play in movie theatres on one night only, a decision Shearer thinks will bring more attention to the film.

“The major news media are DNA programmed to pay a lot of attention to the fifth anniversary of anything, whether it’s Britany Spears’s divorce or the flooding of New Orleans,” he concluded.

-Julie Kanfer