We Should Talk…

My name is Andy Haynes. I’m a comedian, very occasional actor, and former mover/camp-counselor/barista/receptionist. Now, I make most of my money writing funny things for television. I’ve never written for a hit show, and I’ve never sold anything. In many ways, I’m a bad writer, and in most ways up until the last year or so, a bad employee. I never set out to be a bad employee though. I didn’t want to be distracted, annoying, or disruptive, but I was. I’ll be the first to admit it. I distract, annoy, and disrupt myself quite often.

Now that I got all that qualifying out of the way, I’m writing this because I think all of that could’ve been avoided. All it would’ve taken is somebody telling me: “Hey! Stop it, dummy! You’re being: (insert undesirable characteristic here).” But in my field that doesn’t happen. Nobody really tells anybody anything. You audition for something if you don’t get it, you don’t hear anything. You call your reps, everything is great and everyone loves you. Still nothing. You go to a meeting with producers, they love you, they’re going to regroup. The wind sweeps across the icy barren tundra of the great white north. Seasons change. You’re another year older.

Much of this radio silence is because it wasn’t good. The audition, the most recent tape, the pitch, weren’t what THEY were looking for. And that’s fine, rejection along with bad parenting are the two main reasons any idiot would get into this business. It’s a popularity contest for adults. BUT the silence, doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help the gatekeeper, and it definitely doesn’t help the would be employee, actor, comic, etc. It is easier, you don’t have to awkwardly tell someone why you don’t like them, or why they’re not good. I get it. I’ve broken up with someone over text before.

The problem is there’s nowhere to go from there. Silence is a non-information, and you can’t do anything with information that isn’t. It’s like you have box of unmarked keys and you know that all the ones you’ve tried so far don’t fit, but there’s a lot more, and the door’s still locked. Oh, and you only get to try a key a day. The person you didn’t like can’t improve on this non-information, they remain bad. Whether it’s personally or skill-wise, they don’t know why. Also, as a possible decision-maker you don’t build a stronger pool of talent, cause you didn’t say what you didn’t like. You just said no, thus creating more desperate maniacs running around Hollywood and the greater world seeking answers from a stew of self help authors, yoga studios, meditation apps, and drugs. So many drugs; illicit and prescribed.

So I suggest we go the other way, and not just in entertainment. This would be good for all of us. I think it would make us stronger, and I think this strength through transparency would make us all better artists, creators, bosses, directors, and more importantly people. Because if I knew what I’m doing wrong, or what you don’t like about me, I’d at least think about changing it. I know all my faults. Like your average self-obsessed person (everyone in our generation), I’m cataloguing them all day. So if you told me, good chance I’d go, you’re right I do do that. I hate that about me. However, if I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I know you don’t like it, I just feel bad, and I also stay bad. Keys in a box, door’s still locked.

I have two stories about this:

First Story: I used to have a dream job. I was a staff writer on a sitcom. Not a great sitcom critically, but nonetheless, I was helping write a show, that show was being made, I was making enough money to not think about money. Plus I loved my coworkers and had fun almost everyday doing it: Dream job. At the time I didn’t know it was my dream job, I also didn’t know how coveted, or how hard it was to get. Nobody really told me. It was my first and only staffing meeting. Went in, casually cracked some jokes with some people like I do in any meeting, got the job. I didn’t know until I didn’t have the job, how rare that was.

I had shown up as a stand up comedian, in a world of writers. Everyday I would do something wrong, and everyone would look at me like I said the “n word” at a vegan restaurant. But that was it, I just knew I did something wrong, but nothing more. After a while I would ask, and people would kind of tell me, but up until then, they said nothing. Cause why? That would be awkward and inconvenient I continued to mess up, not intentionally, I just was trying to do my best to be funny and relevant. I adored my boss, wanted to impress him more than anything. I did this in the wrong way. Nobody ever said anything. I’d even asked my boss, through email or in person, what I was doing wrong, and he was very non confrontational, so I’d just get a little smattering of advice, but that’s it. Otherwise, I was doing great. I wasn’t.

This culture of non-confrontation pervaded the entire show. People were unhappy with things, but no one ever said anything. Actors would fuck up jokes. Nobody said anything. Great jokes would be lost, simply cause nobody wanted to tell the talent they were doing something wrong. Instead, the joke disappeared, the show was less funny, the talent got matching monogrammed bathrobes compliments of the network and Lands End. I obviously have some resentments towards the experience, but the important information here, is the show is gone. It was staffed wall to wall with talented, funny, wonderful people, and somehow it didn’t work.

Second story, and a much different one: I used to be a daily pot smoker, and not really daily as in hourly, or half hourly. I was always high. I loved it. I knew I had a problem with alcohol, so I didn’t drink, but pot can’t harm anyone. That’s not true, but I wasn’t getting arrested, I wasn’t living on the street. I had a job, kind of a career, a hot young girlfriend, and more weed. One day I was at the Comedy Store, and I saw a comedian who is essentially the most successful young comedian right now. I was chit-chatting with him, and pot came up, and I told him how much I smoked, and he said: DON’T DO THAT. He didn’t yell it, but it was powerful. He said no one should smoke pot everyday. It was literally the first time someone said anything, and the first time I actually thought about it. I made some changes, hit some meetings, felt uncomfortable, cried, and now I’ve been sober for a year and a half. He didn’t have to say that. He doesn’t know me. He very easily could’ve said nothing, and who knows where I’d be if he didn’t. But he told me. I don’t think he felt uncomfortable, but he didn’t take the easy route, instead he told me what I was doing wrong. It sunk in, it hurt, I made changes, my life is better.

Now like I said these are two very different kinds of stories, but the common denominator is me. I was a part of them, and I was affected in two very different ways. You may be saying one is a giant production, and the other is thirty-three year old man, but I think they relate. Cause in one story information was not given. Things did not change. And many people were affected negatively. In another, information was given, changes were made, that man is “happily” writing this article right now.

I guess my overall point is why don’t we just talk? Why don’t we let people know when they’re doing something wrong, and hope they grow from it? Sure it’s awkward. Sure it can lead to some nastiness, but the alternative is you not liking something and it staying that way forever. We have this culture of letting people suck and just saying well that’s too bad, and then they suck and die. What if you told them they suck? What if they started meditating? What if they became awesome, and you loved them, and every time you saw them you knew that they knew, that you had saved their life in a small way? This may be unrealistic, this may be something you have no interest in, but I think it would help us, top to bottom, from acting to banking, cooking to skateboarding, etc. It would make us better, and it might even make us great. Now, I’m gonna continue watching the Path, but let me know if you don’t like this. That’s the whole point.