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FIRED!
Directed, Photographed & Edited by: Chris Bradley & Kyle LaBrache.
Written & Produced by: Annabelle Gurwitch.
Produced by: Annabelle Gurwitch.
Released by: Short Factory/International Film Circuit.
Country of Origin: US. 71 min. Not Rated.
With: Annabelle Gurwitch, Andy Borowitz , Ileana Douglas, Judy Gold, Richard Kind, Anne Meara, Bob Odenkirk, Robert Reich, Jeffrey Ross, Harry Shearer, Sarah Silverman, Ben Stein, Fisher Stevens, Paul F. Thompkin & Fred Willard.

Back in 1996, Annabelle Gurwitch was fired from a Woody Allen play by Woody Allen himself, who told her she sounded “retarded” and that the sound of her voice made him go deaf. Although her humiliation hit a little harder than most firing experiences, she figured that almost everyone has been canned at least once. Banking on that, she turned her experienced of getting sacked by a cultural icon into a meticulously researched book, a series of sold-out comedic stage performances, and now a movie.

Through sketches and an extensive amount of interviewing, Gurwitch manages to turn what could have been a bunch of celebrities talking about getting laid-off into a cultural and political dissection of the forced unemployment experience shared by us all. It begins as you would expect: an introduction to Gurwitch’s Woody Allen disaster and a slew of interviews with celebrity friends (David Cross, Anne Meara, Sarah Silverman, Judy Gold, and so on) to commiserate and vent. But, like the book, Gurwitch quickly gets serious. She takes us to a company rally in the hometown of General Motors, where hundreds of thousands of people are being downsized. She interviews a woman fired for being a smoker, which was legal because 21 states currently allow workers to be let go for “moral” reasons without an explanation. She visits a counseling center to help people overcome being let go, a counseling center to help companies manage lay-offs, and even a counseling center to help companies not fire employees. This is not your typical celebrity outing with a video camera.

It’s also pretty funny. Gurwitch’s reenactments of what she did after getting the sack can be hokey at times (footage of her wheeling a shopping cart through a supermarket while wearing a bathrobe and eating a whole tomato was probably funnier on paper than it is onscreen), but her caustic humor shines in conversations with friends. Clips from her play are downright hilarious. Ileana Douglas, who talks about being fired as a store model and a coat check girl, and Andy Borowitz, who was let go as a writer from TV’s The Facts of Life, are so funny that their stories are interspersed throughout the film and perk it up during the occasional slow moment. Zachary Jones
January 27, 2007