Dear Bonnie,
Really not sure who to ask for advice like this, I hope you don’t mind.
Today had a very unpleasant exchange with someone who does crew and equipment for feature films. I mistakenly placed an unethical ad on Mandy.com looking for an all-female crew. He decided to email me in an incredibly rude, insulting, disrespectful way. I emailed him back in as professional and gentle a way as possible, saying thank you for telling me, I’d removed the ad (he threatened to report me for placing an illegal ad), and that perhaps he didn’t need to be so incredibly nasty to me.
He responded even more nastily, saying short films don’t count for crap anyway and being a producer of theatre and short films for over 20 years doesn’t count anyway.
I am torn between thinking that if I say anything about him publicly, it will only bring me down. But I really want people to know NOT to work with him. Why he has gone out of his way to be so incredibly evil to me is beyond me.
I’m happy to forward the whole email exchange (three short ones in total) to you if you want to see what I’m saying. Do you think I should say anything on Hollywood Happy Hour? Or report him to IATSE or to SAG/AFTRA? Post on Facebook/Twitter? Or just send peaceful prayers to heaven and let it all go?
Thank you,
Tamar Kummel
I’m sorry this happened. 🙁 Boo… mean people! But they’re out there.
I look at it this way: When someone is brutal, mean, condescending, a bully (whatever), I look at WHAT they said to see if any of it has value (sounds like he did have something of value to teach you; you pulled the ad and learned a lesson in preferential hiring being advertised) and I throw EVERYTHING else away. Because EVERYTHING else was not intended to be helpful, instructional, supportive of a fellow artist, nada. It was meant (for whatever twisted agenda) to make you feel like shit.
Let it go.
You answered respectfully (and you really don’t even have to answer bullies, unless you just enjoy the discourse; I tend not to), you pulled the ad, you moved on.
He — being a bully — saw your reply as an open door through which to walk and spew more negativity into your life.
So, you can choose to give him another second of space in your life (which includes choosing to do things like post about him on HHH, report him to the unions, bitch about him on social networking sites, etc.), knowing he THRIVES on the attention and will come back at you harder than he already has (You do realize you won’t silence him by feeding him attention, right?), making you feel worse and making you spend MORE of your creative energy on this jaggoff *or* you can choose NOT to give him another second of space in your life.
Easier said than done, of course, because like most creative people, you are curious about the human mind and we always wonder WHY someone behaves in such a way (I figure we’re trying to be better storytellers, and that’s why we analyze these weirdos and try to empathize, so we can depict them in our scripts, in our acting, in our storytelling, whatever). But he’s clearly got an issue that is WAY bigger than your ad, which is why I suggest — when I see Internet bullying like this — a course of action that goes like this:
Disengage (if you ever engaged at all, which, of course, in this particular situation you’ve already done), and every time your brain wants to lap back around to giving him attention (or you’re tempted to write him back or to write about him or to even think about him), remind yourself that you have more important work to do. You have a script to write. You have a project to shoot. You have an audition to prep. You have a fanbase to build. You have an empire to run.
Letting someone whose issue is SO not about YOU take up real estate in your creative brain is to celebrate their poison. Stop wanting to do that. 😉 You’ve got more important work to do.
Every time your brain wants to argue that it’s not fair he should get to treat you so badly and not “pay” for it, let that go. If he’s a jerk, others are experiencing that and they’re not going to continue working with him. There are VERY few people in this industry who get to celebrate HUGE careers with loads of wonderful work if they are flat-out assholes. Everyone likes to work with good people. Assume this dude is off his meds and that maybe you brought some joy to his sad little life for a moment, because he was able to abuse you in an email. LET IT GO.
When the goal is helping bring joy to everyone’s lives, you realize you did him a favor by making a mistake in your posting: You gave him something to rage against, and clearly he lives a life in which he needs that. 🙂 Now move on and focus on what’s important: YOUR WORK.
Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!
Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/001466.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.