 "Photo: IFC Films")
Every defeat of the ego is a victory for the soul. - Carl Jung
Firing is a growth business. Ever since the explosive economic growth of the '80s and '90s, America has been awash in a flood of comfortable career opportunities. Check that. The land of the free and easy jobs was true right up until the dot com bust, 9/11, Enron, the flop of a war in Iraq and now Donald Trump. Here in 2007 it seems you can't exhale without incurring the wrath of your asshole boss and getting canned.
Enter Annabelle Gurwitch. An actor, writer and all-around bright-star, JV entertainer, Gurwitch too has found herself put rudely out on skid row, only her asshole boss was theater giant and cultural icon Woody Allen. When a god sits you down to lecture bitterly how disaffecting and "terrible" your performance is…well that kind of hospitality just destroys. And if this passes for par in the entertainment business, then it's a wonder more writers, producers and actors don't fling themselves from buildings.
Not Gurwitch. She has taken personal tragedy and bronzed it. Writing and producing and hosting the mockumentary Fired! (based on the play, which was based on her book), Gurwitch has made getting canned a cult. Journey with her as she processes rejection and its residual self-loathing by way of catharsis. Her mission: step behind the stigma and get others in the entertainment industry to share their own experiences of getting fired.
Andy Dick makes an appearance, so does Sarah Silverman. Illeana Douglas, Harry Shearer, Fred Willard - all the faces you think maybe you should know, but wouldn't bother to ask an autograph of given a chance, random meeting. Still, these are people just one or two choice roles from immortality, and it's refreshing to know that they too couldn't hold down that precious minimum wage schlepping at the video store.
Fired! is a hybrid. The actors, the people are very much real - but many of their stories lack the kind of credibility to pull this off. That's not to say Fired! fails, just that audiences are continually left wondering where the line between fact ends and fiction begins. Some interviews are conspicuously staged. Others do have the flavor and the feel of authenticity (check out the cameo interview with Ben Stien or with one-time costar Tim Allen), but the combination is confusing: Is this a comedy doc or are we exploring the subject on the level?
Gurwitch does a good job selling herself as Ms. Down-and-out-and-recovering, but too many of her guests come across plastic, over-engineered. David Cross as the ex-boyfriend(?) with a pump-you-up personal message by VHS; Beverly Kaye as a savvy talent management specialist; Fisher Stevens as the almost on Friends serial actor - all of these are woven clumsily amongst a cast of straight players who presumably look or at least attempt to look like their interviews are on the level.
Does it work? I don't think so, and I think the film's biggest liability lies not in its shaky, shoulder-carry camera tricks (this is a real documentary, we promise!) or in its raw, low-budget post production (we're a team of talented but essentially starving artists who have to work without professionals, we promise!). Rather, the audience is tasked to judge which segments are life imitating art, which are art imitating life, and the whole package comes across unsure of itself, a victim of indecision.
Still, Gurwitch plays the soul-searching investigator well, probing into the off-color world of termination as though she were every bit the serious journalist. And the subject matter itself sells: It's just dark enough to intrigue, just common enough to apply universally and just soft enough to rate the low-level comedy factor attached to this film. (In other words, who would pay to watch a mockumentary on breast cancer? Didn't think so…)
What this film might lack in overall punch and polish it does make strides to make up for by making good light of a bad situation. Getting fired is no treat for the one losing their job. But that doesn't mean it can't become entertaining for others.
So if you've ever found yourself head in the oven because you lost that job slinging pizzas or working production line, then give Fired! a look and check out what others are saying about their ego defeats, how they recovered and how and why they took their own heads out of the oven - even if only to suck up to another tragedy of a job for some other asshole boss.
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