Not mine. This is from my wife. It happened in Sejong City. I wrote the following the day it happened, which was 7 September 2018. It is kind of heartbreaking and sad and pathetic and crazy and strange all at once. It deserves to be the opening scene of a novel or feature film, really.
Ha, my wife interviewed for a job today. Most ridiculous interview story I’ve heard so far.
It’s advertised as a gig basically working on screenplays for films and TV here. She shows up and it’s the second in command of the company, because the owner of the company is in Seoul on location for a film shoot. That’s promising, right?
So the guy explains that he’s also a screenwriter, and wrote seven feature films and TV scripts that all were slated to get made, but none of them made it into production (er, welcome to screenwriting, pal). He says this left him burnt out and, at almost 40 years old, sort of done with the industry.
But then one of his high school buddies—who has also grown up to be an aspiring filmmaker—contacted him and said, “Look, my old man is rich as fucking Midas and gave me a single huge building in our city, for me to manage. He says he hates my dream of being a filmmaker, but if I can manage this building, whatever else I do with my own time is my business. So, I want you to come down to the city and work with me. Let’s make movies!”
The guy goes on telling the story: He came down, and the buddy said, “Okay, look, I’ve set up a deal with some scripts for a TV series. They’re first drafts and total garbage. You’re going to rewrite them, but you won’t get a script credit. Only the original writer, who’s super famous, will get credit.” And the dude goes along with it.
(Um…)
Then the guy goes on to explain that he holds down the fort here, while his partner/boss does all kinds of film stuff in Seoul. Holding down the fort, in addition to rewriting TV scripts for no credit, mainly involves managing a convenience store in the building being managed. “I’m his right-hand man, so I have to do it,” he says. He adds that he wishes he had more time to write, but managing a convenience store is hard work.
(Um!)
Then he starts bragging about how rich the owner’s dad is. How he’s just loaded. Which leads to him saying he’s not really being paid enough for the work he does, and he’s been fighting with the boss over money, and that demanding more money doesn’t work, but he’s seeing it through anyway, and so on…
(Um!!!)
And then he explains the position is to come in and be the ideas person. “We’re getting old, and running out of ideas and creative juice. That’s what we want you for: to infuse our company with fresh ideas and energy.” He explains it doesn’t really *pay* that much, and she likely won’t get an iota of actual credit for any of the work she does, but they “need” someone like my wife, who has experience and ideas and energy that she’s willing to share.
(Um? Also, fuck you, or at least fuck you to your boss?)
Then he shows her the “award-winning” short film that the owner directed, which got some kind of award at some kind of international art film festival. It is, of course, absolute dogshit. You know the kind of arty student film I mean: no plot, no characters, no point, no meaningful insights or ideas, nothing more than just pretty colors on the screen that bore the hell out of you, plus maybe an interesting shot that almost certainly was thought up by the cameraman, not the director. Yeah, one of those. My wife’s sat through a million terrible student films like this, and was a bit shocked that the writer guy was all, “See how great he is?”
By the end of the interview, she felt basically felt sorry for the guy; he seems like the type to get exploited time and time again forever, and like he’s so used to it he can’t even see it for what it is, but also seems to have stars in his eyes about the “glamour” of being close to someone so “rich.” It was like a peep into some poor guy’s horrible life story or something.