Termination sensation

>> Annabelle Gurwitch on being canned by Woody Allen and how that led her to direct the new documentary Fired!

by MATTHEW HAYS

Never meet your heroes,” Annabelle Gurwitch warns. It’s a sage bit of advice, given the actor’s experience of five years ago. She had landed a coveted role in a play in New York, and—what seemed a dream come true—would be working for Woody Allen, who was slated to direct.

But a funny thing happened on the way to opening night. In a tale that is rapidly becoming famous, Allen called Gurwitch’s performance “retarded” and fired her. Not surprisingly, she was devastated. The first few times she told the story, she recounts now, she was in tears. “I came into that experience with so many expectations,” Gurwitch says from her L.A. home. “There are very few people who are as iconic as Woody Allen. And then he cans you? That was something else.”

As Gurwitch told her peers the story, they were captivated. After all, most in the thespian community dream of getting a casting call from Mr. Allen. But the thing that struck Gurwitch the most was that everyone she talked to had their own employment-gone-terribly-wrong horror story to tell. Though her anecdote had celebrity cachet, the experience of getting axed “went so far beyond my own personal story. I couldn’t believe how universal the experience was.”

Gurwitch pulled together some of her buddies in L.A. and put on a tell-all show, in which people got up and recited a series of monologues, discussing their own firings. The show proved a hit, played for months and drew loud critical praise. Gurwitch knew she’d struck a nerve, and that these anecdotes resonated far beyond the acting community. From there, Gurwitch—now a columnist for National Public Radio and the host of TBS’s Dinner and a Movie—turned the concept into a book, Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized and Dismissed, which included termination stories from Jeff Garlin, Tim Allen, Bill Maher, Robert Reich, Felicity Huffman and Morgan Spurlock.

Comic therapy

Rounding out this cottage industry is the feature film project of the same name. And the movie is well worth seeing. While funny, Gurwitch also offers up a Michael Moore-style analysis of the modern work world and how common canning has become. “I saw this as comic therapy. I wanted this film to help people to put things into perspective. As people shared their stories of getting fired with me, I realized that not only was I not alone, but that there were people out there who had far worse experiences than I did. It’s cathartic to tell your story when you’ve experienced something traumatic.

“In a sense, I also wanted to remove the stigma from being fired. Let’s be real: many, many people get fired, and for a bunch of reasons. And no one wants to quit, either, even if things are clearly not going well.”

The stories in Fired! are as horrifying as they are hilarious. Illeana Douglas talks about getting fired as a coat-check attendant after a few hours. An actor discusses being canned from a stint on a film and then arriving home to find they were shooting the movie on his doorstep. And Gurwitch’s own bittersweet dismissal supplies a lot of the cringe-soaked laughs: one scene has her arriving to a large extended-family gathering, where she must explain to her Jewish relatives that she’s just been canned by Woody.

While Gurwitch does try to broaden the range of experience in the film, she also readily concedes that most of the focus is on performers. “That was where this began, with friends of mine in the business. The fact is, they often know how to tell a great story. But I also think they have something to teach people. The fact is, the new paradigm of work is that everyone is having to freelance or go from contract to contract. Actors have had to do this forever, so they have a lot of advice and experience to pass along to others who are facing this for the first time.”

As for her inspiration, does Gurwitch know if Allen is aware of her film? “I have no idea, though I really doubt it. Let’s just say that I doubt very much that Woody Allen has to work on his people skills much.

“Right after getting fired, I was offered a part in a play where I would have been working with Mia Farrow. I admire her so much. But that would have been too strange, and it didn’t entirely fit with my schedule, so I said no.”

Fired! opens Friday, Feb. 16