TVSquad

Here's a story that's bound to bring a smile to your face (it did mine). During the protracted, agonizing Writer's Guild strike, at least one Hollywood scribe chose not to lounge by the pool and wait it out. My Name Is Earl creator, Greg Garcia, decided to "get back in touch" with the TV viewers of America. He took a job at a fast-food restaurant, never letting on to his fellow employees -- or anyone else -- that he was an Emmy-winning writer/producer. As a cashier and occasional janitor, Greg spent the month of January rubbing elbows with the real world. You might wonder, why would he do it?

His answer is simple: "I've wanted to do a book about taking different jobs and what it was like to do them," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "This was the first. It may be a while before I do the second. But it's just about the fact that we live behind gates and work behind gates, and as a writer you start to lose touch with the audience. You start running out of life experience."

It was also a great experience for one of the coworkers Greg met. He gave his new friend a cashier's check for $10,000. "It was just something I felt I wanted to do." All in all, Greg benefited from his own private Sullivan's Travels (a great Preston Sturges' film from the 1940's in which a film director experiences the real world by leaving Hollywood).

"This wound up a really positive thing," Garcia said. "It didn't turn me off from fast food. In fact, it was really the opposite. The place was unbelievably clean. The people whom I worked with were great. And the work itself was fun. Really. I worked hard -- cashiering, cleaning the bathrooms. A few days in, they liked me so much they asked me to join their management team."

[via PopCandy]