JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

My stepson, Erik, phoned his mother recently from a closet at Warner

Bros. studio in Burbank. He was in the closet because he was packing

files and then helping to move them to another location. This gave him a

great deal of time to think.

So he called his mother on his cell phone and told her that he had

decided that this kind of working life was not for him, and he had come

up with a plan to avoid it. He would call later to explain the plan to

his mother and me.

Erik had the misfortune to graduate from Occidental College last June

as a theater major with career interests that didn’t lend themselves to

quick prosperity. While the doctors and lawyers were going on to graduate

school with the promise of future prosperity and the computer programmers

and engineers and corporate types were sorting through offers that I

would have found awesome 20 years after I graduated from college, Erik

had to deal with the dilemma always faced by those who try to make a

living from the arts: how to support oneself until creative work can be

turned into some measure of commercial success.

I dealt with a similar problem many years ago. When I got into the

work force after World War II, I spent seven years as the public

relations director of an industrial trade association -- mostly hating it

-- before I was selling articles, written late at night and on weekends,

to national magazines frequently enough to support my family. So I

empathized with Erik. Up to a point.

He had found a job a few weeks after graduation as a production

assistant -- which means a gofer with a title -- for a group of TV

writers at Warner Bros. The job disappeared when the TV show was

canceled, which threw Erik into the “Temp” pool at Warner’s. He took this

as an act of God, freeing him to write and seek acting jobs while living

on his savings. He was jolted out of that temporary euphoria when he

inadvertently backed into the car of a mildly hysterical lady who turned

a few bumper scratches into a $700 repair bill.

Since Erik is pledged to take over his car insurance next year, he

paid this himself rather than inflate the cost of his insurance, which is

just normalizing six years after another accident for which he was at

fault. He read to us proudly a letter he wrote the woman he had hit --

who refused to get a second estimate -- which we advised him not to send.

It was full of self-pity at the plight of the poverty-stricken student

trying to gain a foothold in the real world. Not his best writing.

Paying for this accident threw him back into the work force and a

series of temp jobs that ended in a closet where he came up with a plan.

His reasoning is impeccable. Since he has no ambitions in any fields

other than playwriting or acting, any job he would take would only be a

temporary expedient until he could survive in his own working world. And

since he found what he regarded as mindless labor an absurd waste of

time, the only solution was to acquire a large sum of money quickly that

would make it possible for him to devote all his energies to the work he

loves. And since bank robbery is not one of his skills, he had to turn to

another activity only slightly higher on the social scale: the TV show

“Survivor.”

That was the plan he explained to us. He would do an end run around

manual labor by getting himself on “Survivor.” If he wins the million

dollars -- which he fully expects to happen -- he can start his own

theater company. If he’s thrown out of the group sooner, he will win a

much smaller cash prize but also get exposure on the late night talk

shows that will enhance his acting career. So it’s win-win for Erik once

he is selected.

We have been wary of shooting down such expectations ever since he

told us at the age of 10 that he was going to get into SCR’s “Christmas

Carol” -- and did. The competition is somewhat greater for “Survivor,”

but he is every bit as confident. He turned his creative juices into

filming an audition that he brought home to show us last weekend. His

mother -- who loses her critical judgment under such circumstances --

thought it was funny, but I was appalled, which may be just the ticket

for “Survivor.” Erik will be notified in early May whether or not he made

the first cut and must appear for a personal interview.

I felt it important at this point to tell him about the months I spent

in my late teens loading steel castings on freight cars at the local

General Electric plant and hauling wheelbarrows of concrete up a rickety

platform elevator during the construction of a group of silos. I told him

that such honest labor was not denigrating and had contributed a great

deal to character-building that carried me through a war and -- even

worse -- a spell in public relations.

He listened, more or less, and said there was no war going on right

now and helping people move their files not only didn’t build character

but was a ridiculous way to spend his time. He explained that he had been

in the work force now for almost a year, and that was plenty of time to

determine that it really wasn’t for him. So if we didn’t mind, he’d just

take the million from “Survivor” and turn to his own line of work.

I told him I wouldn’t watch “Survivor” even if he was on it, and he

said that was OK as long as I came to his plays. So that’s where the

matter stands until the first week in May. He’d better make that first

cut or he’s going to hear the story about the steel castings again. And

again.

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

appears Thursdays.