Old Girlfriends

ONE OF THE things that I miss least from the days when I had a (more or less) 9-5 job is the idea of office politics. I have many friends -- men and women, whose lives suffer greatly from their forced, unending proximity to people they despise. I sometimes wonder if I still worked in an office, if I'd like The Office as much as I do. Would it be cathartic, or un-bear-a-ble?

This is not to say that there aren't situations in film and TV where you hate your coworkers. That happens all the time. Everyone has the story of the first screamer they worked for, or the producer who made them cry, or the weird grip with the dead eyes who you're pretty sure you saw on America's Most Wanted a few months later. Don't kid yourself. TV and Film has more than its share of ... oddballs.

The thing is, you may bitch and moan about those people for the length of whatever show you're on -- but the show ends. They all end. And most of the time, you know exactly when they're going to end. So it's only the most insane, outrageous, or unreasonable colleagues that ever really drive you over the edge. There's a certain power to being able to think, "in X days, I will never, ever have to see you again."


It's not the personality conflicts that make office situations untenable. It's the fact that there's no reasonable expectation of the thing ending. Ever. That's what kills you.

There's another way in which work relationships you have in film and TV differ from office relationships -- intensity.

Because a TV show or a film is a runaway train, that gets moving and happening all at once and chugs or careens down a hill, there really is no way to get a sense of the whole production when it's happening. All interactions are truncated. Intense. Good producers know how to have a knock down argument in three minutes, because that's all the time you have to keep a crew waiting.

This intensity means that sometimes, revisiting those old work relationships after the project wraps makes them feel more like interactions with exes, rather than ex-coworkers.

I have made friends at work, and I still see them occasionally. But for the most part, when I see someone I didn't know very well or have any great feelings about when I worked with them -- I don't feel anything. It's like a nod, or a 'hi.'

But run into someone you worked with on a production, and it's way more like running into someone and poking the bones or sifting the realities of your past romance. There's a sometimes shocking intimacy to it. You compare notes, recall the 'big events' from the shoot, and invariably there's a Rashomon-like feeling that kicks in. With so much happening at once, no one ever gets the full story. You find out things months, or years later, that completely change how you view that work experience.

Writers miss a lot of this, as we're locked away in our above-the-line garrets -- and onto the next thing before shooting's even done. We miss it at our peril, though -- because it's one of the most interesting parts of the trade.

Jumping from job, to job, to job is not for everybody. But if you get into it, after a while it's addictive. You meet all new people. Some you hit it off with immediately, some you never really get to know, some you decide you don't care for. Some people become friends. Some drift away. It's the closest thing an adult can get to going back to school and having a whole new group of classmates. Most of us graduate college, and watch our opportunities to meet new people shrink. Not in TV and film.

And just as the knowledge that the job ends leads you to tolerate and not obsess over a coworker's bad behavior -- it also leads to another strange sort of freedom. Once you get your professional reputation to a certain point, and you're not worried about where your next cheque's coming from -- you get to pick and choose who you work with. And the further you get into it, the more you start to really consider shows based not only on the material, or the money, but on the people involved.

"Life's too short to work with assholes," is a mantra I've heard a lot in the last little while. And it's a hard thing to argue provided, a) you're good at what you do, b) people know this about you, and c) you're not actually an asshole yourself.

That last one may seem self-evident. You'd be surprised.

For all the sturm and drang that gets tossed on this blog about the state of the Canadian industry, there's a huge secret info-train of gossip and intel that no one talks about -- but it just bubbles under and shapes the industry.

There are several projects I've heard about in the last little while who have had trouble attracting talent in various job categories because "so and so's not worth it." Three years ago, I would have never guessed that. When you're trying to break in, it seems impossible to think of a time when you might find yourself in a position to actually say no.

Because it's not my side of the biz, here's a specific example I can give: right now, Toronto has a serious, serious shortage of lifestyle and factual editors. It's true. I know people who have bumped their rate three times in the last year. There are companies that have been effectively blackballed, shut out of all the top editing talent because they're a nightmare to work for, and they burn people. If you can cut, and you're good, it's the yellow brick road for you right now, my son.

I think that's kind of cool. If the editors in Toronto ever get organized, man...there's going to be trouble. The Canadian industry is lucky there isn't a WGC for Editors.

The other half of that equation, of course, is this: never burn a bridge. You never know who's going to be sitting across the table from you. And since it's so rare to know the full story of any production when it's going on, it's probably best to not burn a bridge until you know the person on the other end is actually a sociopath, and not just someone seeing an entirely different piece, and dealing with entirely different shit from you.

The part about not burning bridges gets said to people all the time -- but the other part -- the part that suggests that yup, you do indeed have some power yourself...that gets said less often. And it's true. The first time you turn down work because the money's not good enough feels kind of good. The first time you turn down work because even though the money's good you decide it isn't worth it? That feels completely different. That actually feels...dare I say it...sexy.

You may wonder why I'm writing about this now...and the truth is that it's inspired by kind of a happy accident. In the last couple weeks, I've run into four people who I worked on three different projects with, that I haven't seen since. And the sharing of those old stories -- those production tales...it always mines nuggets of understanding...and well, that's why we TV film types relentlessly talk shop (Much to the chagrin and forbearance of our non-industry friends, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, etc, etc.) Yup, it's navel gazing and solipsistic. But man, it sure is fun.

Today I saw one of the Actors from a show I did last year in a casting session, and it was like Old Home Week. And there was another actor I know socially. And one of the Camera Operators on The Border opped my short film a thousand years ago. He just moved up from focus puller. And now, the guy who directed all six episodes of Across the River To Motor City, Michael DeCarlo, is currently directing an episode of The Border. And he's (I hope) gonna get me into a location I've always wanted to see. Score.

The other day at the production meeting, just before shooting, there was a moment going through the script where I sort of flashed back, and realized that a whole year has elapsed since we shot Motor City. And there's Michael sitting across the table from me -- different project, different team, different story being told -- both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. And as I'm thinking this, he looked up, and he smiled.

I smiled back. With nostalgia or bemusement, I couldn't tell you.

But I do know this:

Beats the hell out of having to see Oscar in Accounting every day.