Teddy Bears' Picnic

Teddy Bears' Picnic (2001)

For fifty-one weeks a year, they run the country. For one week, they run amok.

In Harry Shearer's tongue-in-cheek comedy, a waiter at Zanbesu Glen (a chi-chi Northern California resort) uses his movie camera to spy on the annual communal vacation of a group of rich, white U.S. government and business leaders who drink and carouse to excess while plotting their next move on the global stage. His goal? To sell the embarrassing and incriminating footage to the media and expose the "leaders" for what they really are.

Date of release
2001-04-30
TMDB
4.0 / 10 (4)
Runtime
1h 20m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Harry Shearer

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Los Angeles

Teddy Bears' Picnic is a 2002 American comedy film written and directed by Harry Shearer. It was released in May 2002 to limited audiences. Shearer has a small role in the film. It is also Kenneth Mars' last film before his death in 2011.

Production

Harry Shearer wrote, directed, and executive-produced the film. He hired old friends and colleagues (Michael McKean, Howard Hesseman, and Fred Willard) and younger performers (Annabelle Gurwitch as a camp follower and Justin Kirk as a disgruntled part-time employee who tries to smuggle videotape of the glen's strange rites to a local television station). He paid everyone "low-budget scale," Shearer said.

The film was shot in less than three weeks, at a cost of $800,000. Shearer funded the film; he said that the money came from 20th Century Fox Television, for his voiceover work on The Simpsons: "That's why there's a 'Thank You' to Rupert Murdoch at the end of the credits – it's his money, he just doesn't know it. It just kind of flowed through me."

The film was shot using high-definition video equipment. Cinematographer Jaime Reynoso shot the film; post-production work was done by Visionbox Pictures.

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