LOS ANGELES (U-WIRE) — How do you make a major motion picture with the “who’s who” of the world’s best comedic talent for $500,000? Ask Harry Shearer, who directed, wrote, executive produced, wrote music for and stars in “Teddy Bears’ Picnic.”

“I was stupid enough to use my own money,” admits Shearer. “I violated the first rule of Hollywood.”

With so much at stake and a bankable name like his, Shearer thought studio financing would complicate and compromise his artistic integrity.

“With a picture like this, which is such an unconventional piece … it could go off the tracks in a lot of ways if the money guys started poking around,” explains Shearer.

So began his odyssey into the world of pseudo-guerilla filmmaking.

“It’s also a statement,” he says, “if you make a film at a certain price point, you can [make] a moderately successful film violating most of what Hollywood thinks are the rules for comedy. You can break the rules if you do it in a prudent and mindful way.”

With an 18-day shoot, a huge cast by any budgetary standards and an unconventional script, Shearer made his mission statement a reality with a little help from technology.

In conjunction with Panasonic and Visionbox, “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” was quite literally a guinea pig for the new Panasonic 480P camera system, which captures images on single frames at 30 or 60 frames per second as opposed to regular film’s 24 frames per second. The results were sharper images and much lower costs.

“Tape is cheaper than film,” said Shearer, who needed to make this production as lean as possible for obvious reasons. “We never had to burn a take because the camera had to reload. That was something I promised the actors. I said, ‘You are getting paid economy-class, but we’ll try to make you feel like you’re at least flying business.'”

Best known for his formidable, 14-years-and-counting vocal domination on “The Simpsons,” Shearer’s career stems back to the ’50s, where he made his film debut in “Abbot and Costello Go To Mars” at the age of 9 and later played Eddie Haskell in the pilot episode of “Leave It To Beaver.”

“Saturday Night Live” gave Shearer his first taste of widespread exposure with a stint as a cast member in the 1979-1980 season and again in the 1984-1985 season. But it is for 1984’s pop-culture cult classic “This is Spinal Tap” that Shearer is best known.

Around this time, “Bohemian Grove” was making a name for itself, albeit in hushed tones, as a place where the super rich and powerful could relax and unwind. An old boys’ networking retreat, rumors began to abound in the bat area of unsavory and collegiate-like behavior more akin to “Animal House” than the White House.

Shearer got wind of these antics from a couple of San Francisco-based producers, the seeds of what would eventually become “Teddy Bears’ Picnic.” The film, about a yearly retreat of the most powerful and wealthiest men’s network in America, is loosely based on “Bohemian Grove” — a place, Michael McKean is quick to point out, “whose existence, somehow, shadily suggested Zambezi Glen. Although our lawyers inform us that it is by no means the same place.”

“I was invited once as a guest after I had wrote the script,” says Shearer. “I thought, ‘What a great thing. I can go fact-check my research.'”

“The head of one of the major multinational firms was found face-down on the golf course Saturday morning, sleeping off his drunk from the night before,” Shearer exposed.

The previous night involved a wicked concoction of rum, hot chocolate and more rum called a “Nembutal.”

“And that,” laughs Shearer, “was what this guy was sleeping off.”

Of the large and impressive cast, only Shearer has had any direct experience with the retreat spoofed in the film.

“The closest I’ve ever come to this was in deep character,” says Shearer’s co-star and fellow bandmate Michael McKean.” Spinal Tap recently played a private party thrown by a very rich software guy in the Pacific Northwest. “This was one of the guys who actually invented that ‘linkage with the linux.’ It wasn’t rich and powerful. It was more like his employees,” according to McKean.

This scathing look at the old boys’ network is sure to draw many comparisons to persons living and dead, a fact Shearer doesn’t seem to be worried about.

“[My experience has been] that you can try to hit people real hard and savage them from a satirical point of view. But, you’d be amazed that 99.9 percent of the time they are flattered,” Shearer says.

But there’s always that .1 percent.

“The only guys that have been appropriately ticked off when I have done them (are) Tom Brokaw and Mr. Blackwell,” remembers Shearer. “They have been ticked.”

For Shearer’s sake, here’s hoping the wrath of the leaders of the free world and capitalism is nothing like Mr. Blackwell’s.