The Unemployed Life

Off the Page…and Into the Real World

I couldn’t help but laugh when, right as we were approaching the final stretch of the presidential campaign, the economy went off the deep end. I laughed because I sure as hell didn’t need the 24-hour news cycle to tell me how bad things were.

I’m a screenwriter, a card-carrying member of the Writers Guild of America, and though I have had nine movies made (credited and uncredited), business has been abysmal from about six months before the November ’07 writers strike to…oh, say, today. Tomorrow. Next week. The foreseeable future.

I weathered the strike, as I had weathered a previous career dry spell.  But the weathering, ladies and gentlemen, is over. I’m looking for a real job. But as I awaken to the lifeless moonscape that is the present economy, I have to wonder: what was wrong with me that I didn’t start looking for one sooner?

I know most of the answer to that. I had it in my head from a young age that being “talent” was an end in and of itself – if you can make 100 percent of your living off said talent, you win.  That’s how my grandfather did it as a commercial artist.  That’s how my cousin Molly Picon, legend of the Yiddish stage, did it.  That’s how my TV producer cousin Bruce has been doing it since the ‘80s.

A very short time ago, I wasn’t certain whether this notion of purely being a screenwriter was more important to me than my marriage. Two things changed that in a hurry. The first was news that a paying gig I had been counting on wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. The second was our checking account balance.

It’s not like I’m giving up. The dream burns stronger than ever, but it has matured. I think I have a very good chance of being a top screenwriter one day. But this goal has to stop getting in the way of day-to-day prosperity.

That’s why I spend pretty much every hour applying for jobs, thinking about applying for jobs, compulsively checking my e-mail and going to karate.  All those projects I’ve been developing—the TV show, the spec script, this, that, the other thing—have started to feel Not At All Important.

A temp agency recently sent me an e-mail telling me they didn’t have any jobs in my field. I wrote the agency back and was like, I don’t want you to find me work in my field, I want you to hook me up answering phones at some law office! (Like the freakin’ Elite Staffing Career Agency of Century City is gonna hook me up with an MGM remake.)

I guess this is the point where I should say whether there has been any reward in this whole process, if there is anything positive the reader can take away.  Actually, there are a few things. The first is, though this whole crisis has been a strain on my marriage, my wife and I are probably more on the same page as to what we want out of our relationship and our lives than ever before.  It’s also forcing me to be more entrepreneurial and to find ways to earn money aside from those big writing paydays that can be few and far between.

My manager is relentlessly upbeat about my career and advises me it’s only a matter of time before I hit it big. So no, I don’t think I will end up under a bridge, selling my vital organs to pay for my meth habit. I think I’ll make it. I think my wife will make it. I think one day in the future (perhaps even the near future) we’ll even save enough money to go on that Hawaii vacation.

But at the present, things are scary. My days have are filled with pointing and clicking and typing and calling. As of today, the only two job offers I’ve gotten—both from that bottomless pit of false hope and despair known as Craigslist—are a pyramid scheme and an invitation to commit some sort of international money scam. I wrote the guy back and I was like, I would happy to tutor your son, but I do not feel comfortable wiring $5,000 to the U.K. via Western Union.

So that’s my story.  I hope you had more fun reading it than I’m having living it.  And who knows, maybe there’s a movie or TV show somewhere in there.  Otherwise, I guess there’s always the pyramid scheme.

Editor’s note: The day this story was published, the job Helford had been waiting for since April came through. Call it fate…or Recessionwire magic.

Ross Helford is a screenwriter living and looking for work in Los Angeles.  He is also looking for teaching work.

Tags: job-hunting, media, personal essay, The Working World