Fired! : Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, and Dismissed

by Annabelle Gurwitch; Bill Maher; Felicity Huffman; Bob Saget; Robert Reich

• ISBN13: 9780743289856
• ISBN10: 0743289854
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-02-28
• Publisher: Touchstone

Summary

If you've ever been fired, you're in good company. That's what actress and writer Annabelle Gurwitch discovered when she was fired by her idol Woody Allen ("You look retarded"). She confided her tale of woe to her friend Felicity Huffman, who made Annabelle laugh with her own stories. Annabelle realized that there was a world of people out there waiting to laugh at the experience that virtually everyone shares, and she began to collect stories of being fired from friends and colleagues. Soon she was contributing regular "Fired!" segments to Day to Day on NPR and gathering friends to appear with her in sold-out performances of Fired! in Los Angeles and New York. Fired!, her documentary film inspired by these stories, comes out in 2006. This book is a collection of hilarious but true tales from people who've all gotten the ax, the boot, or been canned at some point in their lives. In "That's a Fact," Andy Borowitz tells the story of being fired as a writer for the television sitcom The Facts of Life after being informed that he just didn't "get" Tootie. "Take that hanger off your head, you idiot!" were the last words Jeff Garlin heard before being fired from Spec's Music store after only one day on the job, just one of the many firings he recounts in "That Garlin Boy." In "Jimmy the Idiot," Dana Gould sums up his firing from the cast of the sitcom Working that led him to become a producer of The Simpsons: "In the second episode, I was a math genius, in the third -- a motocross racer, and in the fourth episode I was replaced by a chimp, but nobody noticed." In "Poor Judgment," Illeana Douglas tells about being fired after a few hours of working as a coat check girl: "How is it possible to be fired from hanging coats? I have arms. I know what coats are. I don't come home and throw my coat on the floor. I hang it in a closet. I have experience." How did Bob Saget find out he was being phased out of his job on The Morning Program? "One day I showed up and my hosting chair was gone!" With an all-star cast from Tim Allen to Morgan Spurlock, from Anne Meara to David Cross, and contributions from people from all over the country, this book proves it's not the bounce that counts, it's the bounce back.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xiii
Who Came Up with the Phrase ``You're fired''?	xv
The Job So Terrible You Can Only Hope to Be Fired	1	(40)
That's a Fact	2	(5)
Andy Borowitz
The Big Red Shoe Diaries	7	(6)
Paul Feig
Bimmy in Training	13	(2)
Larry Charles
The Snuggery	15	(6)
Eric Gilliland
Bruce Cameron Remodels Your Redundancy	21	(3)
Don't Call Me, I'll Call You	24	(5)
Judy Gold
Poor Judgment	29	(5)
Illeana Douglas
Number One Pooper-Scooper	34	(3)
Robert Reich
Nesting	37	(2)
Jessica van der Valk
When Children Fire You	39	(2)
Ian Gomez
The Firing You Didn't See Coming	41	(62)
The Little Fuck That Could	42	(5)
Sandra Tsing Loh
Extra! Extra!	47	(5)
Brian Unger
Schadenfreude	52	(3)
Anne Meara
Sent to Cyberia	55	(9)
Lori Gottlieb
Harry Shearer Minds His Credibility Gap	64	(3)
Fired by the Queen and Dumped by Trump	67	(8)
Joyce Beber
Felicity Huffman on Popping Your Cherry	75	(1)
Dead Man Working	76	(5)
Jason Kravits
The Do-Bee	81	(5)
Martha McCully
David Cross Might Just Be Too Big	86	(2)
Mauve	88	(4)
Jack Merrill
Fried	92	(3)
Hillary Carlip
One of Them Stories	95	(3)
Tate Donovan
Steak Today	98	(2)
Wildman Weiner
Substandard Performance	100	(2)
Anonymous
Dahling, It's Eva Gabor	102	(1)
Glenn Rosenblum
The Time You Deserved to Be Fired	103	(46)
Video, Video	104	(4)
Paul F. Tompkins
Short Ends	108	(7)
Jonathan Groff
Crimes and Mythdemeanors	115	(5)
Annabelle Gurwitch
That Garlin Boy: An Interview with Jeff Garlin	120	(4)
Right On!	124	(4)
Jill Soloway
Friendless	128	(4)
Fisher Stevens
Bill Maher: Warm Body Telling Jokes	132	(3)
The Postman Never Rings Twice	135	(4)
Richard Colburn
Ba-looney Tunes	139	(5)
Matt Walsh
Grrl Genius Gets Canned	144	(3)
Cathryn Michon
All Those Parts	147	(2)
Shirley Gurwitch
The Time Getting Fired Leads You to Something Better	149	(42)
Patricia Heaton Hopes You Enjoy Your Stay	150	(4)
Jimmy the Idiot	154	(6)
Dana Gould
The World's Worst Waiter	160	(5)
Jeff Kahn
I'll Knock Your Block Off	165	(2)
Andy Dick
Bob Saget Doesn't Sit Here Anymore	167	(4)
Can You Get Fired If You Aren't Being Paid?	171	(1)
Morgan Spurlock
I Was the Master	172	(2)
Tim Allen
Madison Scare Garden	174	(5)
Elizabeth Warner
D. L. Hughley: Lot and Lobby to Late Night	179	(2)
No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service	181	(7)
Maxine Lapiduss
But We'd Love to Work with You Again	188	(2)
Judd Apatow
Shock and Remorse	190	(1)
Lilly Anderson
The Time You Had to Fire Yourself	191	(36)
A Thoroughly Modern Firing	192	(3)
Tonya Pinkins
Remembrance of Porn Past	195	(7)
Scott Carter
Last Shift at the Fetish Deli	202	(4)
Mark Haskell Smith
Attractive in a Bad Way	206	(6)
Rob Cohen
Cappi's Pizza and Sangweech Shop	212	(5)
Carl Capotorto
No More Rain Days	217	(2)
Janet M. Lorenz
Recipe for the Recently Redundant	219	(4)
Walter Scheib
The Fired Song	223	(4)
Roy Zimmerman
The Letter You Wish You'd Sent to Your Boss! Now You Can!	227	(2)
Notes	229	(8)
Acknowledgments	237

Excerpts

Chapter One: The Job So Terrible You Can Only Hope to Be Fired Work is the province of cattle.-- Dorothy Parker I do not like work, even when someone else does it.-- Mark Twain I have only been fired once. I was let go from an office job where the boss told me that he was firing me because he wanted someone to work for him who, when he said, "Jump!" would say, "How high?" Ironically, the job was in the offices of the multiple sclerosis society, where the majority of our clients scooted around in motorized wheelchairs.-- Rainn Wilson, actor That's a Fact Andy Borowitz I did a number of things in the '80s I'm not proud of. On more than one occasion I shouted out the phrase, "Everybody Wang Chung tonight." But there's one thing I did that was so heinous, I've never told anyone about it. In 1984 I wrote for the TV show The Facts of Life. I'm sure everyone remembers the cultural phenomenon that was The Facts of Life. But for those of you who somehow missed it, The Facts of Life was a coming-of-age saga about four teenage girls at an exclusive boarding school in Peekskill, New York. There was Blair, the sarcastic beautiful one; Natalie, the sarcastic chubby one; Jo, the sarcastic tomboy; and Tootie, the sarcastic sistah. Watching over all of them was their mentor, Edna Garrett, also known as Mrs. Garrett or, when the girls were in full Fonzie mode, Mrs. G. Oh, and here's one more piece of Facts of Life trivia: It was the worst television show ever produced. Now, given how monumentally it sucked, you may wonder, why did I agree to work on it? Well, quite simply, for the money. You see, I was the sarcastic whore on The Facts of Life. But you have to give me a break: I was just out of college, I was broke, I didn't have a car. I had to take the bus, which in L.A. is tantamount to eating out of a Dumpster. I remember my first day on the show, going in to pitch stories to the producers. These were two middle-aged women charged with the responsibility of making sure The Facts of Life did not lose its edge. And the show was at a critical point: It was moving from the safe confines of the boarding school to a whole new setting, a gourmet cheese shop cleverly named Edna's Edibles. It was a move fraught with risk. There was no margin for error. And that was the hornets' nest I was stepping into. As I sat down in the producers' office, I noticed that they each had coffee mugs with the Facts of Life logo on them. I was like, "Cool mugs, where'd you get them?" "Mrs. Garrett gave them to us," one of them explained. It turns out that Charlotte Rae, the actress who played Mrs. Garrett, liked to reward the writers by giving them Facts of Life logo mugs, and the better job you did, the more mugs you got. Now, you want to talk about an incentive! I started pitching my story, entitled "Gamma Gamma or Bust," in which Blair, the sarcastic beautiful one, pulls out all the stops to get into the Gamma Gamma sorority. The producers took it in, chewed it over, and then one of them finally spoke. "It's an interesting story, Andy," she said. "But what's the 'fact'?" "Say what?" I said. "The 'fact,' " she said. "Every Facts of Life story has a fact, a moral lesson, if you will, a deeper truth that the audience can take away with them." Suddenly the room started to spin. I realized: They don't know the show sucks. They think they're doing Moliere here. And I'm a comedian, I don't really do moral lessons, so I just started spinning my wheels...A stitch in time saves nine? Neither a borrower nor a lender be? Finally, with their help, we agreed that the fact of my story would be "Be yourself." I started to write the script and I thought to