Presto Change-O

Other than the usual youthful fascination with the simple magic tricks one could buy at novelty stores, I never had a burning desire to be a magician, never assembled a costume, never gave myself a name, like the Amazing Giovanni, never performed at kids' birthday parties. I became an actor instead. It's the same thing. When a magician makes a coin disappear, nobody really, down deep, believes the coin actually vanished into thin air. You know it's somewhere, in a pocket, up a sleeve, somewhere. What captivates us is the illusion that the coin is gone, only to reappear later inside a hard boiled egg. The magician is aided by the fact that people want to believe. With acting it's the same thing. Nobody goes to a movie and thinks Johnny Depp is an actual pirate, or Meryl Streep has become whatever. We're not fooled. We know it's Henry Fonda there on the screen, not a Joad. What astonishes us, when it's good, is the illusion of transformation, and the skill of the actor to pull it off. It's why people have such an amazingly short memory when it comes to the sincerity of politicians. Every time a political campaign comes around they want desperately to believe their favorite candidate, whose success depends largely on his ability to create the illusion that he's actually going to keep his promises this time around.