Millionaire producer keeps it real

Producer Greg Garcia said he spent the month of the writers’ strike serving customers and cleaning the toilets at an unnamed eatery so he could relate better to his audience, rather than the Hollywood glitrerati.

‘This wound up a really positive thing,’ he told the Hollwood Reporter. ‘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.

‘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.’

And when he left the job, he gave a colleague who he had befriended a $10,000 cheque, leaving them ‘confused, then excited. It was just something I felt I wanted to do,’ Garcia said.

He said the restaurant bosses were initially wary after he revealed his real job, fearing he was planning an expose. But Garcia added: ‘After we spoke, they felt good about the whole thing. And so did I.’

Published: 17 Feb 2008