ANNABELLE GURWITCH: I just ran out of time and money. I had only a certain amount of time to edit and that’s what I had to do. It’s so hard, I had an embarrassment of riches you could say, scary, too many fired stories.
CRISTI STITZ: Just like you said, the times that we live in. Since a lot of people tend to judge their success on that one moment of when they’re fired, you feel so low and down and that you just weren’t worth anything the entire time you were working there. I was just curious how you judge your success and maybe if it’s changed since this or gotten stronger?
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: I have to say, once you’ve been fired and it has been impressed upon you that you are replaceable, which you could say everyone is, no one is not replaceable. The only way you can really be irreplaceable is if you’re self-employed. After getting fired, I realized I needed to create more self-employment. I decided I wanted to write more and that’s what I’ve been doing for one thing. It really does challenge your belief of how much we identify with our jobs and when we’re on an upswing or when we’re on a downswing. There’s statistics that say Americans spend more time at work than with their families and friends. And I think unfortunately it can be a necessity if you have a mortgage and children. And yet at the same time, I think pinning your entire identity on your job has a very deleterious effect on your soul and even on your sense of self. What’s the first thing somebody asks you, "What’s your name and what do you do?" We are so enmeshed in our job identity. I struggle with this personally, it has challenged my ideas that I find that I have had to detach myself a little bit from that and it’s really important.
CRISTI STITZ: Definitely, I think studies have shown that it helps you livelonger and you just need to be a more rounded person.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: And at the same time studies have also shown that if you can continue working, it also has great benefits.
CRISTI STITZ: Right, it wards off Alzheimer’s…yes. Well you can do the crossword puzzle and be fine I think.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: The crossword puzzle can also be good. Anecdotal evidence, anybody that you talk to that’s retired, you often see a decline in people when they stop working. And it’s just as people we all want the option to work or not to work and everyone’s choice when a job is going to end, you don’t want to be told. Actually one of the funnier stories I have heard, I was being interviewed by Bill Wolcott, who writes about movies for the AARP and he has a radio show called "Movies for Grown Ups." He was telling me a story about a job he had earlier in his career, he had given them 30 days notice, moving to a different position, thinking he was doing the right thing, and 15 days into the time when he’d given them notice he got a call saying "Your quitting just isn’t working out for us, you’re fired."
CRISTI STITZ: Mine was two days after I gave notice, but less harsh. It’s never fun, you think you’re being the good person–
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: Nobody wants to be the one told, they want to tell you when to come and go.
CRISTI STITZ: And it shows you your employer after all just maybe doesn’t care; you’re trying to care for them.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: When you’ve been fired, you do in fact realize that you are expendable as an employee and that’s what I think is so difficult to accept. It’s sort of one of those existential lessons in life, you know when you’re a kid a you find out the world doesn’t revolve around you. Particularly people that I know. In my book there’s a fantastic story by Martha McCully who is the executive editor at InStyle Magazine, about one time when she was fired when she was the executive editor of another very large magazine. No reason was given why she was fired, they just said it was time to make a change. She was so stunned, she was sort of feeling fabulous about herself and she said "It was like someone had punched me, I’ll never forget what I was wearing that day." Doing the walk of shame past the people whom she had worked for, like her assistants, she was uninvited to weddings. The loss also of your community, the people that you’ve worked with all this time, I mean sometimes when you’re fired, you’re losing this community of people that you spent everyday with; that’s one of the reasons why it can be so devastating.
CRISTI STITZ: That can be a huge part of it.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: My very first reaction upon being fired was, "What if I pretend I didn’t get this call?" [laughs] I forgot to include that in the film, I actually didn’t know how to include that. But I thought, I’ll pretend I didn’t get this call and just go to work the next day.
CRISTI STITZ: I think I’ve seen a comedy, 30-minute skit on that.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: When Albert Brooks is fired on Lost in America, he can’t accept that he was fired, they kept telling him he’s fired and he just doesn’t hear it. There are so many great firing scenes. There’s a great scene in a Tom Cruise movie the "Show me the money" movie, what’s the name of that movie?
CRISTI STITZ: Jerry Maguire.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: Jerry Maguire, he gets fired, his firing starts off the whole movie.
CRISTI STITZ: He takes his goldfish or whatever.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: And he makes this big speech and no one comes with him. Except for Renee--
CRISTI STITZ: Renee Zellweger.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: So there you go.
CRISTI STITZ: [laughing] At least he got one though. Wouldn’t he have felt awful. Even worse, can you imagine.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: [laughs] It was a really funny moment, an impassioned speech, "Who’s coming with me?"
CRISTI STITZ: People were like, "I have a mortgage still; I love ya but…," see ya.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: [laughing] See ya. Oh it’s hard.
CRISTI STITZ: Well, I really enjoyed the whole combination.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: I should mention, accompanying me to the premiere of the film in New York were two actors who were in the same play with me.
CRISTI STITZ: Oh and who was that?
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: Oh just one, Cleo Louis, Grant couldn’t make it that night. But actually he came to see the Fired! show so you could say that. Cleo Louis who just started in the Andy Richter series, it was really great and Grant Shaud who was in Murphy Brown, he played my husband in the play. We’re great friends, Grant actually I’m thrilled to say, was one of the first people to come and see one of the first live Fired! shows and it just meant so much to me that my former cast mates got such a kick out of the whole thing.
CRISTI STITZ: Definitely. That camaraderie.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: In fact one of the first people that interviewed me was Jay Thomas on his radio show. Jay Thomas was also in the play.
CRISTI STITZ: See, you just go around getting fired and you meet all these new people from all your old jobs.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: Fired and not fired, yes. Let me just say, that one of my first jobs, actually almost every single job I’ve had in show business, to be honest has come at someone else’s expense. The very first TV series I got where I was a regular on the show, being the anchor on Not Necessarily The News, they had just replaced the entire cast and when I got the job, I didn’t think anybody had been fired in my mind I was like 28. Thinking they just replaced the cast but now I know they were fired. No wonder they all looked at me like "I hope you die." I get it, at the time I didn’t, I’d see them around town and be like "They weren’t fired, they were replaced." Replaced, fired, I don’t know.
CRISTI STITZ: Same thing, you still aren’t getting a paycheck.
ANNABELLE GURWITCH: Right, even though it was nothing to do with them not being great they were fantastic, they did just go in a different direction. But having now been on the other side of "Their going in a different direction" I get it.
