How to succeed in our grim new nightmare world

I had that one drawn out experience long ago. I got an email from my cousin who I think had sent the same email to everyone he knew. He had a friend who was doing a made-for-YouTube zombie video. Okay, I'd help. I went over there. Of the people there, I was the only with a job and, it turned out, the only one who owned a video camera of any kind. They were broke and clutching at straws hoping to get some YouTube money rolling in.

The video never got made. The auteur behind it had the idea that he should draw everything out as long as possible so that people would drop out and he'd finally be left with a dedicated core group. He actually said that. Because you need total dedication to make a two minute amateur video.

But this sort of thing, turning to the movie business out of financial desperation, isn't that unusual.

Kyoko Kagawa said in an interview that a lot of Japanese movie stars just after World War Two had gone into acting because it was the only job they could find. How many child actors worked to support their families in the only profession open to them? Jimmy Lydon, the teen actor who played Henry Aldrich in the 1940's, started acting because his alcoholic father abruptly decided to quit working.

Something to think about as the world spirals into global depression.

George Carlin decided to quit comedy and go into acting. He was going to go to Hollywood but first had to pay off his debts, so he performed as many stand-up gigs as he could find and inadvertently became a comedic powerhouse.

I wonder if you get better results doing it for the money than you would acting out of some deep-seated neurotic need. The Criterion Channel is showing the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis but not Ed Wood, Jr.

It could be the Taoist principle of Wu Wei in action. Wu Wei is "not doing". Passive achievement. I heard that this was a western misunderstanding of the term, but it's the idea that you can do a lot better if you don't try so hard. You can perhaps produce greater art if you're not trying to produce art at all and to just make money. And you might make more money, too.

Jimmy Lydon will be 97 next month.