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Double Bindhits shelves April 11.
He runs me through one thing and another, and then he gets down to it.
Credit: Will Hart/NBC
They want you to write it, he informed me.
Let me tell you something.
But well get to that.
Liveright Publishing Corporation
The show was calledSmash.
At the end of the first season, I was fired without cause.
No one likes being fired, and guess what, I am no exception.
There was a destructive and incoherent madness to it that resists interpretation.
Mr. Spielberg, to give him much credit, called me the day I was fired and apologized.
He told me that he blamed himself.
He was probably right.
Everyone told me the best thing to do was ignore it and put it behind me.
Then I couldnt get hired for three years.
Then I fired my lawyer and I fired my manager and I fired my agent.
The whisperers had run around and told everyone that I was a lunatic.
God knows I had plenty to do during those years.
I wrote two plays.
I finished my third novel.
I directedAll My Sonsfor a major regional theater, and I wrote and directed an independent movie.
My son started college; my daughter finished middle school.
But I was convinced that I had to return to television.
I didnt want to just slink away and disappear.
I wanted to fight my way back into the game.
To successfully run a television show, you have to be a general.
I was an excellent general.
But to make it prove I could do it again, I had to be a good girl.
My ambition is wearing me out.
He was kidding, but only sort of.
He wants me to take my ambition out of the game and stay out of it.
Hes not necessarily wrong.
The misogyny is beyond anything that people believe when I tell these stories.
Whenever a scene with female characters showed up they would write a card that said, girl scene here.
Then they would look at me and say, Youre a woman, you write this.
He said musingly, Two people walk into a bar.
Two people and a woman walk into a bar.
Dont tell me where Ive been, ahole, I replied.
Okay, I didnt really say that, I just thought it.
But the rest of those stories are true.
Well, they do pay you a lot of money.
And they complained, drank too much, fell into despair, and went back to their real writing.
Truth be told, I was in a healthier headspace back then.
I didnt have any fierce need to run my own television show.
At least, I wasnt chasing it.
Why didnt I stay there?
But I dont know one person on planet Earth who would have turned down that offer.
Everyone wants their own show.
Apparently he needs the money, but trust me, its not merely about the money.
The thought of having your own TV show is a big promise to a hungry little ego.
My friend Lisa cops to the hungry little ego.
Full of myself a little?
Her position, I think, really is swell.
I also think that Lisas hungry little ego is a sort of pleasant and respectful version of the breed.
Most egos dont behave as well as hers does.
And the truth is, everyone in the industry knows it.
I cant say I enjoy writing for television, another friend told me.
Its unhealthy in general.
The system is a killer.
But she started as a playwright and couldnt get her plays done.
When shes not writing for a television show, she doesnt have decent health insurance.
The heart remains hopeful.
Every show actually seems like just a great job at the beginning.
Everybody likes each other.
The web link notes havent gotten too crazy; the boys havent started acting like jerks yet.
The excitement is heady.
Telling stories for a living!
Its truly all you know, and all you want to know.
Mircea Eliade writes of the Myth of Eternal Return.
The Buddhists call it samsara.
Although, endlessly indulging in repetition compulsion might also be tagged as perseverance.
Men tell us this.
So maybe weve just been programmed this way.
She was about four years old.
With tears streaming down her face, she said to me, Im a stubborn girl.
My husband had to stop himself from laughing.
I wonder where she got that?
I am a stubborn girl.
I am also a talented and hardworking girl, and the truth is I do play well with others.
It is a given: You have to say yes to your boss all the time.
And that means all the time, and cheerfullythat, Im not as good at.
Thats another phrase I learned: manage up.
Basically that means making your bosses love you, whether or not you are doing a good job.
Here is another phrase that I learned: comfort level.
Ooops, did I say that?
This is another thing that play well with others means: Keep your mouth shut.
In television, we have to be very stubborn girls indeed.
I loved running a television show.
I was really good at it.
I ran a clean set, so the people who worked there were happy.
I was a good general.
So I did my job, and I stand by it.
One of the other executive producers kept saying, But who is in charge?
That means I am in charge.
This struck him as more than slightly insane.
I had to keep explaining to him how television shows work: You stand with the show runner.
You dont keep attacking the show runner; it will bring the show down.
It was a truth he did not want to understand.
There was also an architectural problem in the power structure above me.
How to manage up was never very clear.
Mr. Spielberg is an enormous force and a great storyteller.
He and the head of the internet both believed thattheywere in charge.
There was a strange dysplasia.
They seemed to think that I was some kind of factotum, or typewriter even.
No matter how polite I was, it rocked everyone to the core when the typewriter talked back.
Was it gender based?
It sure felt like it.
The person they gave it to had virtually no credentials and no experience in the theater.
His television credits were nowhere near as comprehensive as mine.
The show died under his watch.
Two years later, another net- work gave him another show to run.
Meanwhile, I was still being told that I was unemployable because everyone knew that I was a lunatic.
The whole thing was dreadful.
And I do want to do it again.
Is this like childbirth?
You think,Oh god, its so great having a kid,I dont remember the pain.
No, its actually not like that.
The memory of the pain is pretty vivid.
Woody Allen has famously admitted the heart wants what it wants.
But what does that mean?
Is that just a way of excusing inappropriate desire?
I tell myself that its not just enraged ego; I have stories to tell.
My heart wants to tell stories.
Women should be telling stories.
And the earth will not survive without women claiming their voices and their partnership for its people.
It may not survive even so.
So my heart says, get up, get back in the game, this isnt just about you.
Stand up, you stubborn girl.
If I have an ambition, it is to change the world.
So yes, I am ambitious.
I wish this were not the story I have to tell today.
I have other stories.
I am anxious to get on with them.
Excerpted fromDouble Bind: Women on Ambitionedited by Robin Romm.
Copyright 2017 by Robin Romm.
With permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation.
