(Continued...)

The firing experience is such a weird power dynamic, because it's the ultimate show of control from someone who already has complete power over you.
GURWITCH: Absolutely, and yet, at that moment they fire you, you have been set free from their circle of power. Once when Harry Shearer was fired, the person firing him said, "I envy you your freedom." That's not what Harry was thinking, but what he later thought was, Yes. Freedom from your tyranny.
Tompkins: The big issue, though, is the shame. When you get fired, you're hesitant to talk about it. You don't wanna get that look from someone, that brief flicker of disgust: "Oh, you were fired from a job."
"After I was fired by Woody, I thought about waiting on a street corner and accosting him"Borowitz:In Hollywood, being fired as an actor or writer may have a stigma, but being fired as a studio executive does not. There seems to be a feeling that if you're a studio executive and you lost $200 million or a half-billion dollars for a studio, at least you had the experience of losing that amount of money, so you're qualified to do it for another studio. I think it's also true in government, where these political hacks just go into a think tank in Washington for a couple of years, then bounce right back. It's really not stigmatized at the upper echelon. The head of Home Depot was recently fired, and he got something over $200 million. I would love to be in a job and do such a shitty job that they're willing to pay me that amount of money to go away. You gotta really fuck up big time for them to say, "How much money could we put in your pockets to please make you never show up to work again?"

Have you ever gotten revenge on an ex-boss? I was a little alarmed by the woman in the film who said she contemplated taking out a hit on the people who fired her.
GURWITCH: Who hasn't? After I was fired by Woody, I thought about waiting on a street corner and accosting him, like, "Hey man, how come you didn't call me yourself!" I didn't price out a hit, but think of Woody himself in Bullets over Broadway. Jennifer Tilly was so bad in the playwright's play, he had to kill her. It did occur to me after I was fired that I was lucky he didn't kill me!

It really adds insult to injury when the person in charge doesn't even do the firing themselves.
GURWITCH: In my book, I have a story by Joyce Beber, who founded Beber Silverstein. She was fired three times by Leona Helmsley and once by Donald Trump. When she was fired by Donald, he had an underling do it. She said to the underling, "Tell Donald he should take a lesson from his friend Leona. At least Leona fired me herself." Cut to years later, and there's Donald Trump doing all the firing on his show! She said, "It was prophetic. I told him he should do his own firing, and look what happens—he went into the firing business."

Have you ever fired someone?
GURWITCH: Yes, and it's horrible. I hate firing people—I'll do anything to not fire someone. Dana Gould, one of my favorite comedians, describes in my book how terrible he is at firing someone. Talking about how he fired an agent, he said, "I fired him like a man—over an 18-month period of squirming and indecision." That's me.
Borowitz:I was a producer for many years in Hollywood, and I hated firing people. I would suffer gross and prolonged incompetence before I would actually give somebody the ax. Then when I did, it was like a break-up. I had to fire an assistant, and I talked a lot about our chemistry. It was like saying, "It's not you, it's me. I wanna start seeing other people typing my letters."

What advice would you give to people about the best way to recover from being fired?
GURWITCH: 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.
Borowitz:When you're fired from Kinko's, you go out with your friends and drink and get depressed. We should imitate what happens to our superiors in society when they get fired. Put out a press release and say, "We're leaving Kinko's to explore new opportunities, and to spend more time with our family." Then people will think it's a move upward. "We feel like we've accomplished all we can at Kinko's, and now it's time to explore new opportunities—possibly at Wal-Mart." The more Rumsfeldian it sounds, the better off you're going to be.

READ MORE
• Embarrassing Books Some Authors Wish We'd Forget
• Hollywood's Jungle Fever
• Today's Top Stories