Job lets him travel just for the scenery.

• Position: Businessman Dean Kennedy

Dean Kennedy and his brother, Bob, run a set-building shop in Winston-Salem, but their attitude is more hippie than Hollywood. The brothers compare their work ethic to Ben and Jerry's. The similarity is strengthened, Dean Kennedy says, by their woolly appearance. "Hair's never been a problem for us."

In a business that is job-to-job, their company is aptly named. Freelance Staging Inc. employs a core of four and up to 12 depending on the workload, and the brothers work as free-lancers for movies themselves. Freelance Staging grossed almost $500,000 last year from 40 projects. It has provided sets and scenery for newsrooms, commercials, theaters and even roller coasters - the Kennedys worked on The Hurler, the Wayne's World roller coaster at Paramount's Carowinds in Charlotte.

Dean Kennedy, 36 and the company's president, free-lanced as construction supervisor for Riders of the Purple Sage, a Western starring Ed Harris that aired on TNT in January. He shut the 10,000-square-foot shop and took his crew to Utah for three months to build the sets, including a ranch house and a church. He earned a weekly salary and got to pick his team, including his brother. The money is nice - the set budget was $250,000 - but he says it's more important that the variety "doesn't make it a job."

The brothers grew up moving from base to base with their father, an Air Force colonel. Dean graduated from high school in Papillion, Neb., then got a bachelor's in technical theater at Kansas...