This Is Hollywood?

Health insurance is a month-to-month, nail-biting agony, since nearly everyone depends on Motion Picture insurance through their respective unions, but in Hollywood you have to get 300 hours of work in every six-month period to qualify for it, and 300 hours of work is getting harder and harder to come by. Moviemaking is a fraction of what it was 10 years ago—or five, or two—and TV work is scarce on the ground since producers turned to short-staffed, nonunion, profit-intensive reality programs. The many micro-entrepreneurs grind their teeth and hope they get enough work to retain one employee on their books so the insurance company won't yank their small-business policies. And none of the 23 children had better get sick if one of those policies lapses, because God help you then.

Roger's effects shop has a lot of empty desks these days. He recently laid off his longtime right-hand man, whose wife lost her job right afterward. They have a 2-year-old with a heart condition and nightmares about missing their $1,200 COBRA payments. Marcus, our technician neighbor, scours the Internet daily for work; last week he found a studio facility hiring technical people in Dubai. His wife doesn't know whether to dread his applying or dread his not. As for me, I've fought since our youngest was born to work at home, and I've been lucky so far. But between the death throes of episodic TV, the faltering economy, the lure of out-of-state tax incentives for producers and a threatening Screen Actors Guild strike, jobs in L.A. have grown sparse enough that I, like many others, expect to dust off my suitcases soon, though the prospect of three or four months at a time without tucking in my little boy makes me heartsick and weary.

Yes, gone are manicures, gym memberships, premium channels and lawn-mowing guys. Gone are eating out, kids' karate lessons and buying organic at Whole Foods. Gone for parents are new clothes, dental appointments, dry cleaning and babysitters. Long gone are plane tickets to see grandmothers, contributions to college funds and little checks to charities.

Such losses, many of them, are petty things. But we recognize them for what they are: canaries in our coal mine. As Santa Lucia goes, so goes the country. In the gathering twilight, we, the downwardly mobile, nurse our cheap wine, watch our precious children, set our shoulders and pray that the things we do hold dear are not leaving us for a lifetime.

Brown lives in Los Angeles, Calif.

© 2009