I’m currently walking away from the film industry after 7 years. And the death of the ego was a HUGE part of it. Now that the strike is over officially, those feelings of being a working robot are coming back up and over the time of the strike I have been able to enjoy the small daily things of life, travel more, and spend time with my family. I love the work that I do, and it is such a vicious cycle that I’m not ready to go back to. Everything you all said is so so so accurate.
I quit my job in December, working in the writers’ room. i’m 29 and completely burned out. I had a mental breakdown over leaving this show I was on for 4 years. my body is exhausted. it’s heartbreaking for sure. worked 6 years total and very hard.
I've only been in the industry for 3 years and I'm done. Producers, PMs, and coordinators are more often than not incredibly toxic, and the hours vs the pay makes no sense. The fact that we're not allowed to sit at any point asides from our 30 minute lunch is so wrong. The hours and turnaround times are inhumane and almost all of us are lying to ourselves and others that we enjoy our jobs because we're grateful to be working. If you dare say that you want to take more than a week off to travel people will think that you're a bad worker. People miss out on living live, raising families, and taking care of themselves just for the sake of working in film. Producers always claim that there isn't money in the budget and in the meantime they're spending thousands of dollars on upscale restaurants, fancy hotels, business class flights... etc. We put up with so much abuse in hopes that one day we'll be the producer who gets to treat the people below them like shit and that's just so wrong. The glamour of working on big shows with celebrities wore off pretty quickly and I'm glad I'm leaving before I waste any more time. Older crew members kept telling me to pivot into a different industry while I'm still young and I always brushed it off thinking that I wasn't going to be a quitter, but they're right and I'm finally taking their advice.
I read your comment to my wife who ‘was’ a producer for 20 years and worked on Independent and Hollywood films. She was smiling and nodding to herself and replied, ‘couldn’t have said it any better’. She enjoyed her work, otherwise she wouldn’t have lasted for so long, but (like you) also felt she couldn’t leave because she would feel like a quitter. She said it was a Sisyphean existence of pushing a boulder up a hill made of ice. Eventually she just got tired. She loves what she does now and gets paid a fortune to do it. However we do look back fondly on those years and smile - an exhausted smile😊Thanks for sharing ❤️
