Sean Hannity Show - On The Job Podcast: A Brush with Fame
Aired: 2019-06-05
Duration: 13:53


=== Investing In Success (01:45) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:06]  On the Job is brought to you by Express Employment Professionals.
[00:00:11]  Express Employment Professionals is a leading staffing provider that employs nearly 600,000 people annually across more than 800 franchise locations in the U.S., Canada, and South Africa.
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[00:01:08]  Welcome to On The Job.
[00:01:10]  This season we're bringing you stories about people finding their professional stride by virtue of who they know.
[00:01:16]  Whether it's breathing new life into an age-old profession, taking the reins in a family business, forging your own path with a new idea, or landing the perfect job doing something you'd never before even considered.
[00:01:30]  Avery Thompson grew up in Long Island.
[00:01:32]  Today he's a writer and radio producer, but his past is fraught with jobs that span the globe and made him into the person he is today.
[00:01:41]  He was a ski lift operator in Colorado, a line cook in Zurich.

=== Summer Job Hell (10:56) ===

[00:01:45]  He's bailed hay in New Hampshire.
[00:01:47]  Today, a story from his early life as he pursued his dream of being a filmmaker.
[00:02:00]  Like most 20-year-olds, I had delusions of grandeur.
[00:02:10]  My particular delusion was that I was going to be a film director.
[00:02:15]  And not just any film director.
[00:02:17]  I wanted to be the next Orson Welles.
[00:02:21]  But with little to show besides some zany, no-budget student films, believe it or not, no studio had yet handed me a blank check.
[00:02:30]  So if I intended to direct my next film, I would need to fund it with my own money.
[00:02:36]  In other words, I needed a summer job.
[00:02:47]  I quit golf caddying after two days.
[00:02:51]  FedEx didn't think I was overnight box order material.
[00:02:56]  To work at the local movie theater would have been too large a slice of humble pie.
[00:03:02]  And so I called my friend Matt, another film buff, and complained about how the world didn't recognize my genius, how my talents were being squandered looking for a job.
[00:03:15]  Then Matt said, well, we can work for my brother.
[00:03:19]  He owns a landscaping company in the Hamptons.
[00:03:23]  The Hamptons, I repeated.
[00:03:30]  The following Monday, Matt and I talked about movies for the whole two-hour drive out to the Hamptons.
[00:03:37]  And as the roads gave way to leafy lanes and mansions rose above tall hedges, I knew we were exactly where I needed to be.
[00:03:46]  Here were the people that would change my life.
[00:03:49]  These people had taste, they had class, connections, but most importantly, they had the money I needed to direct my masterpiece.
[00:04:00]  I could already see myself smoking a cigar and yelling, action.
[00:04:08]  So you can imagine my shock when we pulled up to a barn and were told by Matt's brother to get in the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of weather-worn Latino men.
[00:04:22]  For the first few weeks, Matt and I met no celebrities.
[00:04:26]  We attended no parties.
[00:04:29]  We worked like dogs as rich old ladies eyed us suspiciously from curtained windows.
[00:04:35]  We dug trenches, we built fences.
[00:04:39]  We were told to work faster and talk about Fellini less.
[00:04:45]  And all the while, no one recognized the geniuses toiling in their backyard.
[00:04:51]  No one even brought us lemonade.
[00:04:54]  Despite being the future of filmmaking, Matt and I were being treated like a bunch of day laborers, except by our co-workers, day laborers, who didn't appreciate these two pale giants who talked about wide-angle lenses and stopped every now and then to drink water.
[00:05:13]  And worst of all, these co-workers wouldn't take us to lunch with them.
[00:05:19]  Instead, every day on their way to some secret Latin food layer, Matt and I would get dropped off in the village of East Hampton, quite possibly the richest, poshest town in America, where the only thing we could afford was pizza.
[00:05:35]  And not even good pizza.
[00:05:37]  Because let's face it, wasps don't know how to make pizza.
[00:05:44]  So every day, we ate crappy pizza.
[00:05:48]  And let me tell you, for a New Yorker, few things are worse.
[00:05:54]  But one thing sustained me that summer.
[00:05:57]  For all the blisters and backaches, I held out hope that it was only a matter of time before I met the right people.
[00:06:06]  One day Jerry Seinfeld would need a new walkway, or Robert De Niro would need his roses cut back.
[00:06:13]  And somehow, I figured, that would be all it took.
[00:06:24]  But that didn't happen.
[00:06:26]  As the weeks wore on, Matt and I talked at films less and less.
[00:06:32]  We started crying more and more.
[00:06:35]  And just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, we got the job from hell.
[00:06:44]  Our task was to paint a quarter-mile fence wedged between two strands of overgrown hollybushes.
[00:06:52]  Now for those of you that don't know, hollybushes have little prickly thorns.
[00:06:58]  And as a grown man, I don't have a problem saying that thorns really hurt.
[00:07:03]  So the only way that Matt and I were able to paint this fence without bloodying our backs was to jam a piece of plywood in there, lean against it, and brush just in front of us.
[00:07:14]  Which worked, some of the time.
[00:07:22]  When it didn't, if we tripped or got a little tired, then the hollybush would shove us against the fence that we had just painted.
[00:07:30]  And that happened a lot.
[00:07:32]  By lunchtime, Matt and I were covered in green paint.
[00:07:37]  I mean, covered, head to toe.
[00:07:40]  And when the truck arrived to pick us up for lunch, the Latino guys can't help themselves.
[00:07:46]  They slap their knees and laugh big, gold-toothed laughs right in our face.
[00:07:52]  And then they drop us off in the center of East Hampton.
[00:08:02]  We'll get back to the story in a second.
[00:08:04]  First, a word from Express Employment Professionals.
[00:08:09]  A strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done.
[00:08:13]  This is you.
[00:08:14]  But to get an honest day's work, you need a callback.
[00:08:18]  You need a job.
[00:08:20]  Express employment professionals can help.
[00:08:23]  We'll connect you to the right company.
[00:08:25]  We're committed to your success and never charge a fee to find you a job.
[00:08:30]  Express knows jobs.
[00:08:32]  Get to know Express.
[00:08:33]  Find your location at ExpressPros.com or on the Express Jobs app.
[00:08:41]  And now, back to our story.
[00:08:45]  Before we can even climb out of the truck, people were staring.
[00:08:49]  Not that I blame them.
[00:08:51]  We were two life-sized G.I. Joe figures.
[00:08:54]  And as such, our mission was to reach the public restroom to wash this paint off.
[00:09:01]  Except when we get there, the paint doesn't come off.
[00:09:08]  And I want to reiterate, we are covered.
[00:09:11]  Matt, who is 6'4, bore an uncanny resemblance to the Jolly Green Giant.
[00:09:18]  I looked more like Gumby.
[00:09:22]  So Matt called his brother, who informed us the paint thinner would take it right off.
[00:09:28]  But we were on Main Street in East Hampton, whose shops weren't exactly stocked with paint thinner.
[00:09:34]  So then Matt's brother says the gasoline would do the trick.
[00:09:39]  Yeah, gasoline.
[00:09:42]  So Gumby and the Jolly Green Giant go walking through a living J. Crew catalog in search of a gas station.
[00:09:50]  Let me tell you, being laughed at by a bunch of our day labor co-workers was one thing, but to be laughed at by people wearing boat shoes and pastel pants, that's a pain that sticks with you.
[00:10:07]  After a few blocks, Matt and I find a gas station, and then we start rummaging through the garbage because, obviously, we need something to put the gasoline in.
[00:10:18]  We find an empty Gatorade bottle beneath a rotten sandwich and then pump 30 cents of gas into it.
[00:10:26]  And then we pour the gas all over us.
[00:10:32]  And I know what you're thinking.
[00:10:34]  That's not a good idea.
[00:10:36]  But this story doesn't end with self-immolation.
[00:10:40]  Well, not literally.
[00:10:46]  Because as Matt and I stand in this parking lot, our bodies covered in a toxic smear of gasoline and paint, one of the most beautiful cars I have ever seen pulls up beside us.
[00:10:59]  And we look up to see a familiar face.
[00:11:02]  Gray beard, round glasses.
[00:11:06]  I'd know that face anywhere.
[00:11:08]  That's... that's...
[00:11:09]  Steven! Steven!
[00:11:13]  Matt yells at Steven Spielberg.
[00:11:23]  And Matt, who now resembles the creature from the Black Lagoon, starts running toward the car and screaming at him.
[00:11:30]  Stephen!
[00:11:32]  Stephen!
[00:11:34]  Now I don't know if Steven Spielberg saw us or not, but I do know that he didn't stop.
[00:11:41]  He kept right on going.
[00:11:43]  But Stephen didn't go far because down the street we see his brake lights come on.
[00:11:50]  Come on, Matt shouts, running back to the pump for more gas.
[00:11:54]  Pump more gas.
[00:11:55]  Stephen's getting pizza.
[00:11:56]  can catch him, but I don't.
[00:12:05]  I may have been only 20, but that summer I learned that no amount of gasoline would help Steven Spielberg or anyone else see through to the genius underneath.
[00:12:18]  Instead, I walked over to the little convenience store attached to the gas station, bought a Snickers bar for my lunch, and I decided, screw movies.
[00:12:30]  I'm going to be a writer instead.

=== Produced By Otis Gray (01:12) ===

[00:12:41]  This piece was written by Avery Thompson and produced by me, Otis Gray.
[00:12:46]  You can find more of Avery's work at averyhompson.com.
[00:12:50]  We'll have a link over on our website, expresspros.com slash podcast.
[00:13:17]  Thanks for listening to On the Job, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals.
[00:13:22]  Find out more at ExpressPros.com.
[00:13:24]  This season of On the Job is produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures.
[00:13:29]  Our executive producer is Sandy Smollins.
[00:13:32]  Our producer is Otis Gray.
[00:13:34]  The show is mixed by Matt Noble at the loft in Bronxville, New York.
[00:13:38]  Find us on iHeartRadio and Apple Podcasts.
[00:13:42]  If you liked what you heard, please consider rating or reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
[00:13:48]  We'll see you next time for more inspiring stories about discovering your life's work.