I’ve never really ended relationships on good terms and that applies to jobs too. The break should only come when you’ve exhausted yourself and your work. Anything else feels like giving up. Over the course of my life I’ve been fired from more than a dozen positions, but one will always stand out because it didn’t have that finality to it.
It was one of the most glamorous jobs I’ve had. I was a script writer for a large production company during what’s seen now as the golden age of TV. Money was pouring in and our names appeared writ large in the credits.
My boss there was a producer with a bulletproof confidence that can only come from feeling like royalty your entire life. He had a stable of writers, went out with a pretty starlet and made money faster than he could spend it.
He had pedigree. His family were distant relations of the House of Liechtenstein, others were Nordic forestry barons and museum curators. It was hard to tell what parts were true but this is where producers came from during that time.
Our place of work was a manor house sitting on a sprawling estate. The producer had bought it and converted the second floor into offices. We had an office in the city but this was his way of trying to instil some kind of loyalty in us. We worked for him first and the production company second.
He’d disappear for long stretches and seemed to enjoy lying about where he’d gone. He’d leave for India one day then reappear weeks later telling stories about dog sledding in Canada. When he was around he’d either be in the writer’s room or drinking on the balcony in his office. He liked to motivate us with meandering stories about his life and how we can get the yacht and the famous girlfriend if we just keep working (the “for him” part was implied).
When work stalled I would sneak into his office and use his balcony as my private smoking area. One day he caught me out there and took the opportunity to impart some writing advice: Stay in your office, write thirty pages a day and if you get stuck or bored come back here and look out at the green lawn with the hard-working gardeners and be thankful you can write.
One day I looked out the window to see him dying of a heart attack that had started in his office and lasted all the way down the flying staircase. He died on the lawn.
I knew I was finished because I wasn’t invited to the funeral. In fact, all of the writers he’d hired got fired after his death. A few weeks later I read in a newspaper that the house was sold off and the company named a studio after him. He’d have hated it.
