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End Credits

How I Broke Up with Hollywood

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

What happens when you land your dream job and everything you've been working toward becomes a complete nightmare? This is Patty Lin's story. She climbed the ladder as an award-winning television writer (often the only Asian person in the room) only to be confronted by discouragement, burnout, and toxicity.

Ever since Patty Lin retired from television writing at the ripe age of thirty-eight, people have asked her: "Why would you quit such a cool career?" Especially when they find out she worked on some of the most successful shows in television history. But what if achieving your professional dreams comes at too high a personal cost? That's what Patty Lin started to ask herself after years in the cutthroat TV industry. One minute she was a tourist, begging her way into the audience of Late Night with David Letterman. Just a few years later, she was an insider who—through relentless hard work and sacrifice—had earned a seat in the writers' rooms of the hottest TV shows of all time.

While writing for Friends, Freaks and Geeks, Desperate Housewives and Breaking Bad, Patty steeled herself against the indignities of a chaotic, abusive, male-dominated work culture, not just as one of the few women in the room, but as the only Asian person.

Funny, eye-opening, and sobering, this inside-Hollywood story will resonate with anyone who has struggled with their work and on their life journey. And it will inspire others to listen to their inner voices and know when it's time to get out.

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    • Booklist

      August 1, 2023
      Patty Lin grew up as a creative child who loved television. In college, despite her Taiwanese immigrant parents' hope that she would pursue a more stable career, she interned at the Late Show with David Letterman. Later, in the 1990s, she worked an administrative job at the Late Show and dated a Saturday Night Live writer. Still hoping for a more hands-on, creative role, she wrote scripts in her spare time. She found an agent and took the leap of moving to Los Angeles. Over the next decade, Lin worked long hours in competitive writers' rooms, often as the only woman of color on staff. With stints on Freaks and Geeks, Desperate Housewives, Friends, and Breaking Bad, Lin rode the highs and lows of Hollywood. Yet the years of rejection, impostor syndrome, and abusive work environments took their toll, and Lin began to realize that her career was grinding her down. A meditation on ambition and pain from a talented, engaging writer, Lin's memoir provides an inside look at an often-glamorized career.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      August 18, 2023

      Lin writes a straightforward memoir of breaking into television writing and her decision to leave the business. Her career includes working on the Friends and Freaks and Geeks television shows. Although she earned an Emmy nomination for Desperate Housewives and two Writers Guild of America nominations for Breaking Bad, she doesn't pull any punches about the unpleasant and chaotic working conditions under creators Marc Cherry ("an awful boss--demanding, unprofessional, and not very nice") and Vince Gilligan ("all he cared about was his show. Not the people who worked on it"). She writes that what drove her from the business was the grueling hours, the egotistical bosses, and the political and dysfunctional aspects. There is plenty in this book to show that writing for television is not an easy career, and the people in control can be cruel. Fans of these shows will be interested in the glimpses the book offers into their writing rooms. VERDICT This will be a good fit where celebrity and industry memoirs circulate well.--Emily Kubincanek

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      August 1, 2023
      A former TV writer recounts her years working in the business. "Ever since I retired from television at the ripe age of thirty-eight," writes the author, "people have asked me: 'Why would you quit such a cool career?' " Lin, a former staff writer and producer for shows like Friends, Freaks and Geeks, and Desperate Housewives, shares her mostly negative experiences in "an unhealthy culture filled with damaged people who both perpetrated abuse and accepted it." With a few exceptions, notably her stint on Freaks and Geeks, the author's tenure as a TV writer was unsatisfying. "On my first day as a television writer," she writes, "my boss used me to fuck over one of the other writers." Years later, her outlook remained unchanged: "I'd been through some harrowing shit in my career," but on a specific day during her time with Breaking Bad, "I hit a new low." Lin acknowledges she was paid well while exposing the countless unsavory aspects of the entertainment industry. "We all became worker bees," she notes, "writing disembodied scenes that would get stitched together into a Frankenstein of a script." When she attained the level of producer, she had "to deal with problems I used to be sheltered from. And by problems, I mean actors." The author effectively illuminates the loneliness she experienced as the only Asian writer in the room, "buckling under the pressure to represent my entire race," as well as examples of "the culture that allows men to behave badly." The weakest parts of the narrative focus on Lin's long-term relationship, which ultimately failed, and include tepid revelations such as, "It takes two to tango." A year after leaving the industry, she began this book "as a therapeutic exercise." It's clear the author's writing process was cathartic, but her audience may be limited to fellow former TV writers and those interested in the behind-the-scenes goings-on of that world. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but the book is heartfelt and candid.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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