Fired Up About Downsizing: John Wells on “The Company Men,” Job Creation and the American Precedent

The new film “The Company Men” takes a hard look at the hard times facing the American workforce, offering an unflinching examination of the human cost of the “Great Recession” effectively putting a face, and giving a voice, to the millions of workers commonly reduced to statistics by headlines and TV talking heads.

The film tells the story of three high flying executives at TSX, a heavy manufacturing and transportation company: Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper) and Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones), whose lives, and lifestyles, come crashing down as they find themselves unexpected victims of a massive corporate downsizing.

As their stories unfold, it becomes clear that each man has lost more than a job, but also, the very core of their own existence, creating a ripple effect which impacts their families, lifestyles and own sense of self-worth.  Moving on means redefining, and reevaluating, what really matters to them, as husbands, fathers, and as men.

While the characters are fictional, their circumstances are universal, according to John Wells, the film’s writer and director, and serve as a powerful reminder that, for job seekers and the people who care about them, “you are not alone.”

Monster recently spoke with Wells (Third Watch, ER, The West Wing) about his new film, the changing world of work, and what the future holds for the American worker – and the American dream.

MonsterThinking: Your depiction of downsizing and its effects on employers and job seekers is extremely realistic; so much so that the film can, at times, be painful to watch. What sort of background research went into writing this script?

John Wells: I started writing this script a couple of years ago, so this was before social media, like Facebook, even existed yet, but one of the first things I did was to go into the chat rooms that were around at the time for people who had been laid off or downsized and just put a bunch of feelers out there.  It was as simple as me basically saying, “I’m a writer and I’m thinking of writing about this, can you give me some anecdotes?”

The response was overwhelming; the online community out there was very involved in kind of wanting to talk about and think about these issues.  I think in that first weekend I received a couple thousand replies.

From there, I reached out to people directly and started following up over the phone and through e-mail, but this was over three years ago; I think it would be interesting to see what the conversation would have been like if social media was in the picture when I was going through the research process.  One thing’s for sure: it would have meant a lot more engagement and a lot less e-mailing.

MT: Tell us a little bit more about the conversations you had with layoff victims when you were researching the project and how those were reflected in the final version of the film.

JW: Almost everything that’s in the film came from real stories that real people told me.  One of the scenes that moved me the most in the film came from a story someone told me about their biggest fear after being laid off had to tell their family what had happened.

He didn’t want to worry his children, so they kept it hidden, but of course, kids are pretty perceptive and after a few weeks, his son came home one day and asked him what was going on.  His son’s response was, “You lost your job?  That’s it?”  He seemed really relieved.  As it turns out, one of his friends from school’s parents were getting divorced, and he was afraid that was what was happening to his family, too.

That’s one of the most recurrent things I kept hearing, and one of the things that makes it to the film, is that sense that your family and friends are going to gather around you, and the way you connect with others is really going to get you through this.

When we were testing the film, we’d ask audiences, you know, “who here’s gone through something like this,” whether directly to them or indirectly, through a family member or close friend, and every single hand would go up.  We now live in a world in which every person, every family, has gone through this experience.

No matter how aware you are about how deep this recession is, and how many people have been effected by it, I think that there is still a sense that losing your job is something you should be ashamed of, and that to have something so painful happen to you, you must have done something wrong, even if you know intellectually that’s incorrect.

When we were testing the film and asking audiences what they liked most about it, every time we had a screening, at least one person would raise their hand and say, “I like feeling that I’m not alone, and this film helped me realize that that I’m not the only person who’s going through this, and the things I’ve experienced didn’t just happen to me.”  It gave them hope.

MT: One of the main stories in “The Company Men”  involves the conflict between executives Jim Salinger (Craig T. Nelson) and Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones), who seem to embody the struggle between people and profits.  In today’s business environment, what can executive management do to reconcile these competing motives and what message do you hope leaders get from watching this film?

JW: In writing the script, I interviewed not just people who had lost their jobs and were looking for work, but I also interviewed a lot of executives, and that basic conflict was what they spoke with me about over and over again.  I think businesses obviously have a responsibility to both people and profits, but there’s got to be some place in the middle.

In this culture, we have to give businesses the opportunity to look out for and value the people working for them over the long term, even if it means reducing some of their profitability in the short term.  Companies are starving for resources, and those aren’t just credit resources.  They’re human resources.

Psychologically, when you talk to workers, it seems that people are frankly a little shell shocked and don’t feel their company is going to look out for them, and they’re absolutely going to take the opportunity that’s in their best interests, not those of the company.  And that’s going to cut into the short term productivity and long term profitability of American business.

MT: Is there any way businesses can be proactive by starting to demonstrate their commitment to their people and retain their talent?  Or is it too late?

JW: There are companies out there that did the right thing and made smart decisions and chose to do right by their people.  There are companies whose executives, leaders from every division, got together and determined that while there would be cuts to all these other things, the one thing we’re not going to do is let one of our workers go.

And while there might be some mumbling and grumbling internally, you know, about that, about how expense accounts and all these other things have changed, but once this started up and people saw the depth and started realizing how big this thing really was going to be, then the employees said, ‘wait a minute.  These people are really looking out for me and my best interests.’

That creates a tremendous amount of loyalty, and companies really need to start thinking again about how they’re going to take care of the people who work for them.

Think economics: it’s all about demand and supply.  There’s more supply out there right now than there is demand.  That’s the perfect moment where you can show your employees that you really care about them and they will stay.  When things get back to normal, and you have the capacity to start building your business again, you’ll have the people you need when you need them.

MT: John, you were the show runner for The West Wing, so we’ve got to ask: what would President Bartlet do to solve the current employment situation?  Any advice he’d give the current administration in the White House?

JW: [Laughs] Well, I can’t speak for Jed Bartlet, but here’s what I think.  We need to have a conversation that hasn’t happened in this country, which is, the forces of globalization, and I’m not trying to demonize it, but it’s the reality of what happens in a free trade environment in which information and goods easily cross borders.

We’ve undermined what became the basis of what became the middle class, particularly coming out of the Second World War.  The industrial base of the rest of the world was effectively destroyed, and had an extraordinary amount of clout which allowed us to create this extraordinary middle class.

Manufacturing and industrialization allowed us to take these workers, who might have had specific technical job skills but not necessarily educational skills, and gave them the opportunity to have a car, to have a house, to have all these things which have become, together, the basis of what we expect in America.

Well, that industrial and manufacturing base has now, for the large part, become extinct as Japan rebuilt, Europe rebuilt, Asia rebuilt, all these other places which are now the sources for most of our goods.  But the conversation we haven’t had is, “what replaces it?”

So, I think what Jed Bartlet would be talking about is, obviously, education, but also, the understanding that we need to retrain an entire workforce to move from industrialization to innovation, and entrepreneurship, to continue to be the leaders of the world moving forward.

But he’d believe firmly that we still could.  And moreover, that we will.

The Company Men opens in theatres January 21.

For more information, check out the film’s official site at http://companymenmovie.com or on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TheCompanyMen

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