Houdini's Magic Movie Ticket

Unless you're prepared for it.

Many are aware of "The Spielberg Effect." A young, inexperienced actor works with a director so brilliant that the film created is a masterpiece, earning the actor and director rave reviews, and skewing the actor's expectations for future projects and directors. Then Spielberg moves on, putting more brilliance up on screens everywhere, while the actor fends for himself working with normal, mortal directors. Nothing quite fits. It's like being a basketball hero, and then getting married to an alcoholic, becoming a salesman, and living the rest of your life in mediocrity. You find yourself wishing you had never "peaked," if only to rewrite your definition of "Hell" from "life as it is now" to "life as it might otherwise be."

The Spielberg Effect helps young actors peak before they're experienced enough to understand it. Without a proper context and framework to interpret the event as being extremely rare, they think, "That was easy!", and adjust their behavior accordingly. That shift can and often does prevent a repeat of such brilliant success, and eventually the actors end up with shattered hopes of similar glory (with the exception of Harrison Ford).

If you're a young actor who just signed to do a Spielberg film, and you'd like to be adequately prepared for the coming changes that could otherwise destroy you're mind, just call 555-1234 and order my brand new system, for only $99, 99, 99, 95!

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