Working with difficult people....

Working with difficult directors has become a bit of a speciality for me over the years.  Most of them you wouldn't know but I did work with Terry Gilliam who was incredibly difficult but I did really enjoy working with him which I shouldn't have.  I wouldn't work with him again as he took so much handling over the 5 months I worked with him I had to lie down for a month afterwards.

I am in South Africa working just now and I am working with a director that on the surface comes across as being really nice but becomes really horrible under the lightest of pressure and stress - I am pretty tough and can take a lot of crap but over the last few weeks it has been really stressful and I have had to take so much shite but I do give back and when I have to deal with people who are rude to me I usually give back the same attitude that I am being given.  I wish I could calmly shut my mouth and accept being treated like shit as I do believe in treating people how you expect to be treated yourself so being rude back to this director isn't how I like to be but I have to retaliate some how, don't I?

So how are we supposed to deal with people like this in life.  I wish I could do my grounding exercises and be bigger than the situations and sometimes I can rise above it but sometimes I just can't let people get away with speaking to me or anyone like that.  The crew I work with will tell you many stories of when I have stepped in to defend them from bullying or rude behaviour.  It is just not acceptable.

One production I worked on the Director was a real bully and couldn't even be bothered to remember the crew's names on a 9 week shoot.  He had been treating the crew really badly and I kept telling the producer he needed to do something about it but the producer was weak but a nice jolly chap so he didn't do anything.  After a few weeks of this behaviour I witnessed the Director viciously screaming at the producing and pointing in her face and telling her she was a fuck up and that she had fucked up his film - now this woman had nearly had a nervous breakdown closing finance on the film and she absolutely did not deserve this treatment.  I told the weak producer to get out there and sort the director out but he just went out and watched the director continue to verbally abuse this producer who was crumbling as every second went by so I got off the Dining Bus, apologising to the crew as what I was about to do was going to get me sacked and I went up the the director and told him that he had no right to speak to anyone that way and that he had to back of and if he didn't I would take my crew and head back to glasgow.  He turned to the two producers and asked if they were going to allow me to speak to him like that - they shrugged their shoulders so he turned to me and started pointed his finger in my face so I told him in no uncertain terms to get his finger out of my face I then turned and walked back to the dining bus to a huge round of applause from the crew.  I didn't do it for the applause but someone needed to step up and stop this bully.

I didn't get sacked as the producer was worried the crew would leave the job so I stayed and the director didn't speak to me for the last 4 weeks - not a great way to work but at least I didn't have to speak to him again and he stopped bullying the crew so what i did worked.

I also left a job last year because of a hysterical lunatic treating my crew like shite and ended up in a huge confrontation because I stepped in between the lunatic and my coordinator.  My coordinator is a really hard worker and very sweet and absolutely didn't deserve the treatment she was getting.

I really don't regret my behaviour in these circumstances but I do wish that I didn't react so badly to this behaviour - if I was calmer in the way I deal with this would I make more impact?  I don't know but one thing I know is that I hate confrontation, I hate having to mirror these idiots behaviour but I am the personality I am and as I get older I probably get worse!

So I suppose even though I wish I could deal with these difficult people in a different way, I have got this far in my career and my life because of the way I deal with these people I just wish there was a less confrontation way of doing it.

I have another couple of weeks working with this difficult director and after that I get to work on a lovely film with lovely people, that god for that!!!

suzxxx