Interview with”Fired” Author Annabelle Gurwitch

” … Just been fired? Don’t worry, your future is wide open

Annabelle Gurwitch spins “Fired” tales of woe into book, Showtime film

Annabelle Gurwitch says she didn’t want to write her book. And you don’t want to feel like you need to read it, but you should.

If she offers the comic relief you’re looking for, it might be because you’re walking the streets and trolling the Internet looking for a job. If not, chances are you’ve been there before - or will get there someday.

In “Fired,” published last year and recently released in paperback, the actor told the story of her firing from a Woody Allen play and collected job-loss tales from two dozen A-list and B-list celebrities who happen to be her friends.

Bob Saget recounted his pre-”Full House” career on a short-lived morning talk show, including the day he arrived to discover he no longer had a chair on the set.

Tim Allen remembered getting complimented for being both popular and creative at the same moment he was being fired.

Ann Meara dished a story about being canned from her hospital kitchen job by a nun for singing show tunes while she delivered meals to patients.

All three also are featured in the film version of “Fired” set to debut March 29 on Showtime. It seems getting the boot was a good career move for Gurwitch, who also produced a stage version, “Fired: Tales of Jobs Gone Bad,” that has appeared off-Broadway and at venues nationwide.

But it didn’t feel that way a few years ago, when Woody Allen fired Gurwitch from an off-Broadway play. She experienced a career high and low all in one work episode.

“Being hired by Woody Allen, it’s like - Say, you’re in IT and Steve Jobs says you’re terrific and you get hired by Steve Jobs, and then you get told you’re terrible by Steve Jobs,” Gurwitch said last week during a talk from her Los Angeles home.

And then there’s the personal and public shame:

“You’ve probably told every person you know you have the job,” she said. “Now you have to tell everyone you know that you don’t have the job.”

Gurwitch said she went through what most people experience when they lose a job: anger, sadness, a sense of loss.

“I cried, cursed the world, cursed Woody Allen, cursed my fate, drank a little too much, ate a lot of French fires, wandered the streets,” said Gurwitch, who is a writer and commentator on NPR.

In time, she stopped cursing the world and gorging on fries, and began the work that eventually would become her “Fired” multimedia adventure, including her website.

“I’ve been doing projects like this on NPR on my show “Day to Day,” where I take things that happen in my own life and put them in the context of the larger cultural issues, so this is not unknown territory for me,” she said. “Clearly, I got obsessed by this topic.”

In a sense, “Fired” could be labeled a self-help book.

“It was really my hope that by putting this book together it would help people to feel better if they had been, like me, fired because they were in the wrong job, or if they had been outsourced, downsized or outplaced,” Gurwitch said.

“My firing was very dramatic for me because I was 40 when I was fired. I think that when you get fired when you’re younger it can be a fantastic learning experience, as it can be when you’re older. But the gravitas really sets in when you’re an older and you’re fired.”

Gurwitch toured the country talking with HR groups and gathering tales about people coping with job loss for her film. She found that even celebrity “fired” stories have universal appeal.

“As an actor, I think a lot of people have the impression that it’s very glamorous. I believe it’s glamorous for six people - those were the cast of “Friends,” said Gurwitch, now 45.

“For the rest of us, if we don’t work job to job … when I lose my job, I’m in the same boat as many people in the country, where I’m thinking. ‘How, first of all, will I pay my mortgage? How will I qualify for my health care?’”

Gurwitch had savings so she and her husband, who have a young son, were able to make ends meet. But she’s come to better appreciate what it’s like to confront job loss. After meeting “Nickel and Dimed” author Barbara Ehrenreich at a book signing, Gurwitch joined the advisory board of United Professionals (www.unitedprofessionals.org), a nonprofit advocacy group Ehrenreich founded that helps white-collar workers.

“I felt a certain amount of patriotic spirit as I’ve gone around the country and met people because we’re all talking about jobs and what it means to work and be a productive member of society,” Gurwitch said.

“All the people that I’ve met really want to work. They want to be useful. They want to provide for their families. And we’re really united by this sense of insecurity. Just being able to get together and laugh about it is very helpful. It’s comedy in the face of a very serious subject, laughing through the tears.”

And you have to learn to laugh, especially when you hear about the latest euphemism for being fired.

“I met someone in HR recently who told me what they’ve been saying lately is, ‘We’re freeing you up for your future.’ I said, ‘Oh, my god! Don’t tell me you really say that.’”

Mike Cote is the editor of ColoradoBiz. E-mail him at mcote@cobizmag.com.

Tags: Annabelle-Gurwitch, Fired!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 1:09 pm and is filed under UP in the news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.