JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

I spent most of last week in Vancouver, British Columbia, taking a

close look at the underbelly of network television programming. The

experience was both fascinating and exhausting.

I was visiting my brother-in-law, Dan Angel, who had the great good

fortune -- and corollary misfortune -- of having two shows make it to

weekly network television simultaneously. Good fortune because it

represents the successful culmination of 20 years of hard, dedicated,

creative and often despairing work on the fringes of the entertainment

industry. And misfortune because it has required almost superhuman energy

to meet weekly production deadlines for both shows.

This is rather like trying to sustain two marriages in the same city

while retaining one’s sanity, patience and cheerfulness. Dan has managed

it because the Hollywood culture has yet to dent his stability, creative

focus, lack of ego or quite remarkable sense of kindness and decency.

The two shows Dan and partner Billy Brown -- who remains in Hollywood

to work with writers cranking out scripts -- are producing are called

“The Fearing Mind” and “Night Visions.” The former goes on Fox Family’s

cable network this month, the latter on the Fox network early next year.

Primarily writers, the Angel-Brown team first sold “The Fearing Mind”

script to NBC, which financed the production of a pilot then chose not to

pick it up. In the ensuing months, Angel-Brown created and sold “Night

Visions” and were sent to Vancouver to produce 26 episodes. Then Fox

Family unexpectedly bought the earlier show, and the team was suddenly

buried under a cornucopia of success.

That’s what I ran into when I arrived in Vancouver and asked Dan if I

might tag around with him for a few days. Two turned out to be all I

could handle. You’ll understand why if you follow me through one of those

days.

It started with a plastic cup of coffee and a muffin on the run before

Dan and I met his driver, who took us to an 8:30 a.m. casting session for

the upcoming “Night Visions” episode. There we met actor Bill Pullman,

who is both playing the lead and directing that show. A casting director

fed lines to about three dozen actors competing for a half-dozen parts. I

thought they were all good, but I began to get restless about 1 p.m.,

when it was clear there was no lunch in the immediate game plan.

We finished about 2:15 p.m. and headed for the studio where “The

Fearing Mind” was filming. On the way, Dan called his secretary and asked

her to have some sandwiches waiting for us. We wolfed them down, went to

the set where we schmoozed with the actors and director, watched a scene

being filmed and then stopped by the buffet adjacent to the set, as

required every six hours by the union. It was 4 p.m. and raining hard

around the edges of the buffet awning. This damp fare -- I was told --

was lunch.

Our driver then took us to the “Night Visions” studio a half-hour

away. Dan makes this trip twice a day, using the time to take care of his

phone messages en route. The show was filming on location, so sometime in

the early evening -- after Dan dealt with a host of production problems

-- a new driver took us to a Vancouver sugar-refining plant being used as

a setting for a chase scene in which a young woman is trying to get away

from a bad guy who wants to kill her.

The plant floor was several inches deep in black dust, and the cast

and crew were all wearing surgical masks. I was supplied with one, which

quite illogically reminded me that the effects of my only food that day

had long since worn off. Two hours later, we finally settled down to a

drink and dinner, and at 11:30 p.m. we were back in Dan’s apartment

watching that day’s filming, dropped off by messenger. This, I

discovered, was not an unusual day.

If I seem here to have fixated excessively on eating, I must admit

that it was frequently paramount in my thoughts. Breakfast is unknown in

this regimen, and the studio buffets come at hours so odd that appetite

has either become numbed or satiated by junk food. None of this seemed to

bother the people involved in this work, and it occurred to me that if I

were able to sublimate my appetites to my creative juices, I might write

better.

I was also taken with the absolute necessity for people involved in

any aspect of the arts to refuse to allow rejection to defeat them. The

waiting rooms of the casting studio were filled with eager and hopeful

actors, most of whom would be rejected that day, and quite likely on many

other days. Yet, they were solid professionals, all -- it seemed to me --

quite capable of handling the role that only one of them would finally

get. I’m sure this goes on in other lines of work, but not -- I suspect

-- with the frequency and personal intensity experienced by writers and

actors.

I came home exhausted from all this vicarious effort, determined to be

more dedicated to the novel I’m trying to write and resolving to spend

less time thinking about food and watching sports on television. If I can

stick to this regimen only a few weeks, it will be well worth the air

fare to Vancouver.

* * * * *

In my column about Measure S, known as the Greenlight Initiative, I

was guilty of an unintentional error that was called to my attention

rather gently and that I would like to correct here. I left the

impression that whenever Greenlight kicked in, a special election at

public expense would have to be held. This is not correct. The issue

would be voted on at the next regular election unless the private

interests involved want to pay for a special election.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.