How to get fired in Hollywood

AXE MAN Getting fired by Woody Allen is no Hollywood Ending

Laid off, downsized, let go, escorted out by security—however it happens, being fired sucks. When actress Annabelle Gurwitch was fired from a play by Woody Allen, who told her that she "looked retarded," she went through the requisite torrent of tears before realizing that as firing stories go, she had a pretty good one. And, it turned out, so did many of her show biz friends. So Gurwitch took the topic and ran with it, creating a stage show, a book, and now a film, Fired! (in theaters now), with tales of torturous job losses by the likes of Tim Allen, Anne Meara, Judy Gold, Sarah Silverman, Fred Willard, and many more, plus a look at some non-show biz folks whose stories are a bit more dire.

As a longtime veteran of surgical job removal, I felt well-qualified to talk about the experience with Gurwitch and two of the film's contributors: comedian/writer Paul F. Tompkins (Mr. Show, Best Week Ever), who was fired from two video stores, one of which let him go for purloining mass quantities of videotapes over an extended period of time; and humorist Andy Borowitz (CNN, NPR, borowitzreport.com), who, several years before cocreating The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, was fired as a writer for The Facts of Life because he didn't "get" Tootie.

Lesson No. 1: "If you feel you're about to get fired, take other people down with you. It's so much better to get fired en masse. It really mitigates the pain"RADAR: So how'd the idea for the film come about?
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: The whole reason I have Fired! is that I went to interview a friend of mine, Richard Foos, who founded Rhino Records. In his first and only job working for someone else, he was a delivery boy for a pharmacy. Let's just say his firing had something to do with delivering the wrong drugs to the wrong people. He couldn't keep the orders straight. Not only was he fired, but the next week they asked for the money back that they'd paid him. He said, "Fuck you. I'm never working for anyone ever again." And he hasn't. I love that story so much, that's where the movie came from.

The three of you each have stories as well. Annabelle, when you were fired by Woody Allen, did you see it coming?
GURWITCH: Oh, I saw it coming. Many times, when you're going to be fired, there's writing on the wall. Or, in my case, being told I "look retarded."

The firing for theft from the video store seemed well deserved, Paul.
Paul F. Tompkins: Absolutely. One hundred percent. I stole everything from Hollywood classics to current releases. The Third Man came from that haul. There was a movie called The Incident, an obscure Martin Sheen movie from the late '60s or early '70s—a hard-to-find release, and I still have a copy of it. The Star Wars trilogy ... I took a lot of stuff.

Andy, how long were you at The Facts of Life?
Andy Borowitz: One season. I wrote five episodes. For a guy who was reviled, I was pretty productive.

CHARACTER FLAW Tootie

Did you see it coming?
Borowitz:I was warned by friends that there was a writer the season before who had done terribly and was not renewed. That guy turned out to be Paul Haggis, who wound up writing and directing Crash and winning Best Picture. I didn't know him. I just thought, Paul Haggis, what a loser. Even I can write Tootie better than Paul Haggis. Another guy who was not well thought of on the show was George Clooney. He joined a year after I left, and he was playing the goofy handyman.

When they told you that you just didn't "get" Tootie, what went through your mind?
Borowitz: I thought the show was terrible, very hacky, but there's this moment where you realize, I'm writing this really hacky show, but I'm failing at it. So how bad does that make me? I must be the worst writer in history. So when I really started to fail, I got Stockholm Syndrome. I wanted to please my captors. I wanted to really prove that I "got" Tootie. But it was to no avail. My work deteriorated from there.

If being fired is so universal, why do you think it still has such a stigma?
GURWITCH: It's one of the last bastions of shame.
Tompkins: The way it happens is very shameful, and you're made to be ashamed while it's happening, in a lot of cases. They're saying, "We're letting you go." It's not always, "Hey, we're downsizing, we have no choice." A lot of times it's, "We are unhappy with you as a person. You have to get out of here."