The Rawness

Radar Magazine asks “Who Killed The Movie Star?“. It’s an article that ties in pretty well to one I wrote about the newest and most important type of celebrity of the modern era, The Tabloid Star. Radar Magazine points out:

For most of the century…having the right name on the marquee?be it Chaplin, Garbo, Grant, McQueen, Schwarzenegger, or Hanks?has been the most cruc predictor of a film’s success.

No longer. The past year has seen more falling stars than the skies above Roswell. Since 2007, with the notable exception of Will Smith, whose upcoming tent-pole flick Hancock is enjoying some of the best prerelease buzz of any summer film, virtually every star of note has tanked at the box office, sending a collective shiver down the industry’s spine. Tom Cruise, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, Reese Witherspoon, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Ben Stiller, and Will Ferrell have all starred in movies that made less than $40 million domestically, far from the magic number?$100 million?that’s become the standard measure of a successful release. Outside of their tried-and-true franchises, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Cameron Diaz, and Johnny Depp have fared little better, topping out, in some cases, at less than $70 million. Same thing for the presumably unbeatable duo of Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, whose widely praised political romp, Charlie Wilson’s War, took in a scant $66 million.

In 1995, Jim Carrey was paid $20 million for The Cable Guy. For his next comedy, Yes Man, he’s receiving nothing up-front and shares in the profits only if there are any (Photo: Getty Images)

“We’re in a cycle where stars aren’t as important to a film’s success as they used to be,” says Variety editor in chief Peter Bart, echoing a May cover story in the Hollywood Reporter. Between 1990 and 2000, roughly two-thirds of the top 10 grossing films each year could chalk up their success to star power; since 2001, that number has declined by more than half. “There was a period of time when studio marketing departments could count on just hiring a movie star to open a movie,” says producer Lynda Obst?casting, for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger in the absurd Kindergarten Cop, and Julia Roberts in the aggressively mediocre Runaway Bride. “It’s not so easy anymore,” she adds.

Accordingly, movie star paychecks aren’t what they used to be. In 1995, the rubber-faced Jim Carrey was the first actor to be awarded a $20 million contract?for the ill-fated Cable Guy. (Soon after, Sandler, Smith, Cruise, Schwarzenegger, Willis, and others were commanding the same price.) At the time that Columbia Pictures made him the offer, the funnyman had never had a flop. Since then, he’s had plenty. As a result, Warner Bros. just financed his next comedy, Yes Man, with a very different sort of deal: Carrey will receive zippo up front, but is entitled to 36.2 percent of the movie’s profits … should any materialize.

Face it: The movie star as we’ve come to know him?an actor who can reliably put butts in seats on opening weekend?is dead.

Then the article goes into reasons why this may be the case. Culprit #1? The tabloids:

THEY’RE JUST LIKE US! So why would we pay $11.50 to watch them?

Call it death by a thousand crotch shots. The incredible success of the weekly tabs, an innovation credited to Bonnie Fuller, the former Us Weekly editrix (who went on to bring her dark magic to Star before stepping down in May), has reduced the movie star to someone who’s “just like us!” And if they are mere mortals?as we’re forever being reminded, one Starbucks run at a time?who needs them? By chronicling an actor’s every bad hair day, sartorial screwup, and debased love life, the tabs?joined by TMZ with its nightly curbside ambushes and Perez with his doodled penises?have ripped the veneer of glamour from one matinee idol after another, exposing the sad, unbalanced, attention-starved creatures underneath. As a result, we’ve adopted what Hollywood historian David Thomson calls “a bitter, acidic, vengeful attitude toward the stars.”

To see the carnage Fuller has wrought, look no further than former box-office golden boy?now perpetual superfreak?Tom Cruise. Or recall the horrifying fate of the original Bennifer, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, who were poised to become Hollywood royalty and instead watched helplessly as their careers were shredded by the tabloids (granted, the couple all but invited the harpies into their bedroom, but still). In 2001, the year before they began dating, Lopez was the first star ever to have the country’s No. 1 album (J.Lo) and top-grossing film (The Wedding Planner) simultaneously. That same year, Affleck starred in the blockbuster Pearl Harbor, which grossed a gargantuan $198 million. In 2002, the duo hooked up and proceeded to hijack the media, flaunting their relationship in music videos, magazines, and a prime-time television special. After their breakup in 2004, blamed on “media scrutiny,” both went into virtual hiding for years. Now he’s bleeping Jimmy Kimmel, and she’s bleeping Marc Anthony. Ouch.

Like I said in my blog post, using tabloids to gain exposure seems to increase your fame and buzz, but actually destroys your primary career. It makes you too relatable to the masses thereby taking away much of your mystique. We all know how flawed many of our past matinee idols were, but we usually found out long after it mattered posthumously. At the time we didn’t know Marilyn Monroe’s demons, were unaware of Rock Hudson’s sexuality, were clueless about Joan Crawford’s child raising techniques, were oblivious to JFK’s affairs and Elvis’s drug habits, and Jayne Kennedy’s sex tape wasn’t readily available for purchase by the masses. Their handlers guarded their secrets religiously.

And this level of insight into celebrity lives leads into the other reason tabloid exposure hurts the stars: the lurid details of their real lives form narratives become more compelling than the fake narratives they create onscreen. The details of Lindsey Lohan’s train wreck of a life, along with the cast of outrageous characters that come along with it like her parents and sister and lovers, are much more interesting and fascinating than any of the characters or storylines I’ve seen described for her recent movies. When the truth becomes more fascinating than fiction, people will choose the truth. Compare this to old newsreels of past matinee idols where they strove to create the illusion of a glamorous but relatively bland drama-free personal life that paled in comparison to the roles they played on the screen. Why pay $11.50 to see a celebrity act out a fake story when you can keep track of their real life stories that are a lot more salacious, fast-paced and outrageous for a fraction of the price? The movie roles almost seem to be a distraction to audiences from the more compelling drama that is the actor’s real life shenanigans.
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Remember when I linked to this video of Madonna emasculating her husband?

Now it turns out they may be getting divorced. No surprise there.
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I also declared that the Pete Wentz/Ashlee Simpson pregnancy may be the highest concentration of douche genes ever seen in a single human being, a long-awaited (dreaded?) messiah of douchedom even. This latest public statement by Pete Wentz just confirms my worst fears:

Dad-to-be Pete Wentz has a confession: He’s made out with dudes.

He tells Out magazine he first smooched a guy when he was 16 or 17, probably on a dare.

He experimented again around 18 and 19, he says.

His last same-sex make out?

“A long time ago,” Wentz, 29, says. “Probably when I was 22?”

The Fall Out Boy bassist ? who wed Ashlee Simpson in May ? puts all his experimenting in perspective.

“When I said that I make out with dudes, there was a slight sense of sexual rebellion in that,” he tells Out. “And I probably even made it a bigger deal than it was.”

Lordy, has edginess ever come off as more forced and contrived? Do people really still get impressed with stuff like this at this point?

What’s he doing in this picture? Is that supposed to be a sneer or something? I remember when punks and alt-rockers actually used to be fuck ups. I mean, real-deal fuck ups. Not normal, suburban whitebread clean cut kids trying hard to seem fucked up and edgy in order to emulate their punk heroes from decades past. The traditional symbols of rebellion from bisexuality to tattoos to piercings have been so co-opted and resold that no one even takes them seriously as symbols of rebellion anymore. Even asexual hipster geeks now have more sleeve tattoos than heroin and meth-addicted z-list metal road bands, but instead of the tattoo making them look edgy they just end up sucking the cool out of the tattoo. With every new tattooed and pierced Pete Wentz and Joel Madden that hits the big time, the more douchey that old punk aesthetic becomes. No amount of tattoos and piercings and spikey hair will ever erase this level of lame geekiness:

Remember that old Sesame Street sketch “One of these things is not like the other?” Read I Need More, the autobiography of Iggy Pop or the book Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (An Evergreen book) by Legs McNeil and then watch that clip again and tell me which one it is.

I’ve become convinced that the most edgy, daring and rebellious show of the past decade was actually 7th Heaven, because it was probably the only one that was willing to go against the mainstream grain and didn’t care how much criticism and backlash it got from the masses. People think it was mainstream because it was uncynical and focused on family values and religion and morality. But mainstream simply means what the majority finds socially acceptable, and nowadays with the widespread pornification of pop culture, the majority of entertainment celebrating piercings, the pornstar aesthetic, debauchery, binge drinking, promiscuous women and tattoos the idea of a repressive society is now a myth, if anything our current problem is that our society is too permissive. It’s probably the most daring thing that will ever grace Jessica Biel’s acting resume.

If being punk rock is about going against the grain and doing stuff that actually shocks and outrages people, I think Charlton Heston with his unabashedly pro-gun and outspoken conservative views as a member of the ultraliberal entertainment community and the scorn it won him probably made him one of the most punk rock celebrity in recent years. I’m sure he’s garnered more scorn, shock and outrage from the mainstream than Good Charlotte, Green Day and Fall Out Boy combined. Madonna doing another statement against Christianity and sexual prudes? *Yawn* Brigitte Bardot bashing Muslims and multiculturalism? That’s “punk.” Kirk Cameron suddenly becoming a born-again christian at the height of his fame is way more “punk” than Wentz and his homo makeout sessions.

Now my problem isn’t that I think that clean-cut goody-goody geeks don’t have a right to make rock music. I’m all for it. But don’t go around trying to portray yourself as this gritty, edgy bad boy because you aren’t fooling anyone worth fooling. Be yourself. Live what you know. It’s one of those things I always liked about Will Smith, even when his music wasn’t my cup of tea. The guy was ridiculously comfortable in his own skin and never tried to be anything he wasn’t. He did wholesome rap ditties about high school, the suburbs, his parents and trying to meet girls. And this is during the height of West Coast gangster rap and East Coast afrocentric rap when everyone thought you had to be either a stone cold gangster or a black revolutionary to have any validity in hip-hop. And people embraced him for being true to himself and he spun that sincerity off into one of the most illustrious Hollywood careers ever. It’s probably why he’s one of the few A-list actors left that can make a move huge just by attaching his name to it. It’s a beautiful thing to behold.

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For all the flak Paris Hilton gets, deserved and undeserved, I give her credit for one thing; she has basically created a new type of celebrity: the tabloid star. The tabloid star is not the old model of stardom where someone appears in the tabloids because of movie, music, television or fashion stardom. This type of celebrity is always primarily considered an actor, musician or fashion designer. They just happen to appear in the papers a lot. No, the tabloid star is a new model where someone gets work in movies, television or fashion because they appeared regularly in tabloids first. Instead of being entertainers and fashionistas that end up as constant tabloid stories, they start off as constant tabloid stories and parlay that exposure into entertainment and fashion work. And the patron saint of this new category of stardom is Paris Hilton. For better or worse, she’s basically changed the nature of the fame game more than anyone else in recent history.

Sure there were people who got well-known off reality shows in the past, like in the early seasons of The Real World, but they would never become regular tabloid fodder. They just earned more appearances on Real World followup shows. After Paris Hilton hit the scene though, people realized that it was possible to get constant tabloid exposure and greatly increase public awareness of yourself without having any notable accomplishments beforehand. And then the floodgates opened up as tons of wannabes and used-to-bes went out of their way to appear and be photographed at any major event where paparazzi would be and aspiring socialites even started hiring publicists.

The reason for this is simple: there are simply too many outlets out there devoted to celebrities. We have a ton of channels now thanks to cable. Hundreds of channels. A lot of those channels have a celebrity gossip show. One channel, E!, is solely devoted to celebrities. Two if you count the current incarnation of VH1. Then there’s the rise of celebrity gossip magazines. Then there’s the blogosphere, where celebrity blogs are proliferating and are among the most popular blogs. Anyone with a celeb obsession, a PC and too much time on their hands can create a popular celeb blog with an immediate following. So when you have this many outlets to cover celebrities, how do you fill up all that space with content? By generating celebrities! This is why we have the rise of the B-lister and C-lister and why the fame and accomplishment threshold for appearing in tabloids has been lowered so drastically: there simply aren’t enough A-list notable celebrities to fill up all those shows, magazines and blogs. You need to start scraping the bottom and getting people from The Bachelor. Paris Hilton took advantage of this media climate and staked her claim to fame.

These seem to be the main routes to becoming a tabloid star:

1. Be born obscenely rich or be related to a famous icon. (Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie)
2. Be a nobody who gained notoriety on a “storyline” reality show (Omarosa or anyone from The Hills or Laguna Beach)
3. Be a relatively new entertainer trying to catapult their fledgling entertainment career into mainstream success (Lindsey Lohan, Jessica Simpson, anyone from Making the Band)
4. Be a formerly huge entertainer trying to resuscitate a flagging career (Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, anyone who has appeared on Dancing with the Stars)
5. Any combination of the above four categories (Brooke Hogan)

The major drawback to being a tabloid star though is that once you become one, it’s extremely hard to be taken seriously as anything else. This is the big folly of anyone who tries to become a successful entertainer through appearing on storyline reality shows and continual tabloid appearances. They become pigeonholed as tabloid stars and end up stuck going back and forth between tabloid appearances and reality shows and never get a foothold into the A-list arena. Sure they may get occasional cameo appearances on TV shows or a small role in a cheesy movie, but they’re always that reality or tabloid person that just happens to be in a TV show or movie. Paris Hilton will never be truly considered an actress or a pop star, no matter how many movies and songs does; it will always be about the novelty of a tabloid star doing a movie or a song. Lauren Conrad will never really be taken seriously as a fashionista either. Winners of America’s Next Top Model will never actually be taken seriously by anyone in the modeling industry except for the judges. Winners often complained that after the show, when they got sent on castings, people kept telling them “Oh, you’re that reality girl” rather than treating them as a bona fide fashion model.

The winners of American Idol get bona fide success as artists, but keep in mind that (1) American Idol isn’t a storyline reality show and (2) they don’t usually go out of their way to appear on the tabloids, Page 6 or the blogosphere every minute of every day after winning. If anything, I have a feeling that their handlers try to keep them from getting overexposed after they win and instead rush them to the studios to start recording.

Jessica Simpson, after the success of her reality show Newlyweds, tried to keep the fame game going by becoming daily tabloid fodder like Paris Hilton. She appeared everywhere she could. As her exposure grew and she became a household name, she really seemed to believe that she was on the path to music stardom. Yet people still don’t flock to buy her albums. Instead they keep flocking to the magazine stands to read her latest personal exploits. Tabloid stardom, instead of becoming a means to an end, has just become an end.

Similarly Lindsey Lohan and her publicists, seeking to help her make the jump from niche Disney teen queen to household name A-list movie actress launched a tabloid barrage. She appeared on every red carpet, hot nightclub, awards show and celebrity event…basically any place where paparazzi were guaranteed to be. She did outrageous things to guarantee she’d receive salacious reports in the tabloid press. And as far as increasing her fame, it’s totally worked. But how long will it take you to name the last three movies she was in? And did you see them? Now try to name her last three tabloid scandals. I’m sure that’s much easier. Her tabloid career ended up overshadowing her legitimate career. Sometimes people even forget she’s supposed to be an actress.

Brooke Hogan is another good example. It’s easier to remember her last tabloid buzz (her dad applying suntan lotion to her) than it is to remember the name of any of her singles. If she wants to get legitimate pop success, she’s going about it the wrong way. She’s more likely to just end up with a string of VH-1 reality shows and a bullshit fashion line for tweens. Britney Spears and Whitney Houston crossed the threshold from legitimate pop stars to tabloid stars and are now trapped in that role. Brintey can sell papers much easier than she can sell albums now, as opposed to Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera, who don’t generate as much nonstop tabloid fodder and therefore can still be primarily known for legitimate pop careers. The acting career limbo of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes right now shows you how much their media barrage a few years ago helped their careers. Katie Holmes ended up with tabloid stardom instead of movie stardom while Tom Cruise’s box office pull has plummeted. Amy Winehouse is currently a music industry darling, but if she keeps up the tabloid exploits I’m sure her music career will eventually suffer and be replaced by tabloid stardom.

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are two actors who endangered their blockbuster acting careers by courting the tabloids too much. If you notice, they’ve both seriously scaled back their publicity hounding considerably and have done their best to get their past tabloid notoriety to die down. Both their careers are still suffering from that tabloid period.

What’s the human nature lesson here? Repeating someone else’s actions will earn you the same results and reputation as that person. People thought they could take the publicity route of a Paris Hilton by acting like airheads, seeking out and posing for every paparazzi in site like an obvious publicity whore and constantly generate salacious fodder for tabloids by appearing drunk in public, partying, drinking, drugging and making sex tapes, yet somehow avoid the loss of respect and the bad reputation that comes along with it. People do this all the time in their everyday lives. They adopt the questionable behavior of others because they want the benefits that come with that behavior, but for some reason they are surprised when they also get the same negative side-effects that come with that behavior. Similarly, in the case of rising stars, washed-up celebrities and nobodies trying to duplicate Paris Hilton’s lifestyle and publicity whoring, they got the positives (increased buzz), but also got the negatives that come with it (worse reputation and the inability to be appreciated for anything but appearing in tabloids and reality shows).

In your life, whenever you see a person benefitting from a certain behavior and you want to model that behavior and receive the same benefits, make sure you also understand all the negatives that person receives from that certain behavior because you’re sure to receive those too. Too many of us suffer from what’s calld optimistic bias: we perceive ourselves to be invulnerable and unique and therefore immune to the same risks as others. Surveys consistently show that people always believe they can chain smoke but be less likely than the average chain smoker to receive cancer, that they can try highly addictive drugs but be less likely than the average drug user to get addicted, that they can drink and drive regularly but be less likely to get into an accident than the average drunk driver, that they can engage in high-risk sex behavior but somehow be less likely than others to get pregnant or get VD, that their marriage is immune to the possibility of divorce, even after hearing sobering divorce statistics…the list goes on and on and on.

Optimistic bias is why there will always be another Eliot Spitzer scandal with politicians, even after tons of earlier politicians have been taken down by sex scandals. Or why people will still engage in pyramid scheme behaviors despite all the evidence that they are scams that bankrupt the average participant. Or why rock stars will do the fast life of drugs, sex and booze that is the foundation of every Behind the Music special yet still think they’re immune to the eventual downward spiral and rehab stint that happened to everyone else. Or why a woman thinks she has that “magic pussy” that will allow her to be the exception when she marries a guy who has cheated on and left every woman he’s been with before her. Or why women date pro athletes and expect to be the only athlete wife whose husband remains faithful and avoids groupies. These are people who all repeat the behavior of their predecessors to get the same benefits, yet believe they’ll be immune to the same negative effects.

Always remember that you’re not as special as you think you are.

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New York women are among the most fashionable women on the face of the earth. They are also among the least stylish. Confused? If so, you aren’t alone. You’re just among the many people who confuse stylish with fashionable.

To have a personal style is to have a statement you want to make with your clothing. You use your body as a palette and try to make your outfit into a work of art. Thought goes into a personal style. There are three “yous,” you as you see yourself, you as others see you, and you as you want others to see you. The aim of an impeccable personal style should be to bring these three yous as close together as possible. Questions to ask include: does this outfit match the personality I’m trying to convey? Do I have the attitude and mindset to pull it off? Is it showing the right amount of originality, yet is it not so out there as to become a freakshow? A good personal style takes into account the right amount of risk vs. safety for any occasion. A good personal style also takes into account what works for your body, especially your weight, skin tone, height and muscle tone.

Which brings us to fashion. There is a reason why the term “dedicated follower of fashion” exists. Because being fashionable is strictly about following. It doesn’t matter if the trend is ugly, if it doesn’t go with your personality, if it’s not flattering to your body shape, if the color that is in season does not go with you at all….all that’s irrelevant when you’re trying to be fashionable. Fashion is about checking your mind in at the door and slavishly keeping up with what other people are wearing. You’ll rock the ugliest, hard to match handbag if it has the right name splashed on it. You will rock Audrey Hepburn skinny jeans despite having a pear shape. You will put on the latest revealing low cut jeans despite having huge muffin tops. You will wear ballet slippers to work even though as an adult working in an office it makes you look like a child no one should take seriously (then you cry sexism).

For example, look at the dress at the top of the post.

Somewhat sad news. Chess champion Bobby Fischer is dead. The story of his life is one of great triumph followed by great tragedy:

Fisher went on to become a bizarre, shadowy figure (hence the irony of the title of the 1993 movie about a child chess prodigy, Searching for Bobby Fischer). Over the years, his eccentricity seemed to blossom into full-blown madness as he railed against the United States, went on anti-Semitic tirades (although his mother was Jewish) and was essentially in exile from the U.S. after breaking sanctions by playing a match in Yugoslavia.

Too often, in the world of competitions, a person reaches the pinnacle of his or her life at a very young age. And nothing after that can ever match what they did at age 30 or 25 or even 18. That’s tough. But if they handle the reality with grace and intelligence, what they did in their youth can be a springboard. In the case of Fischer, who was on top of the world at age 29, it didn’t have to work out the way it did. Chess isn’t that kind of game. You can be superb for years. In fact, Fischer was. But there were other things going on — invisible demons is the best way to put it, I guess — that contributed to making him a victim of his own early phenomenal success.

Long, long before the end, Bobby Fischer had lost himself, never to be found again.

I find the contrast between Fischer and a later American chess champion Josh Waitzkin to be fascinating. Josh Waitzkin was the subject of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer and also had his problems with early chess celebrity. But unlike Fischer, Waitzkin is very well-adjusted and a lot less eccentric. He has given up chess, but is now a world champion martial artist and author.

This story reminded me of this piece, where I talked about how loving something motivates you to master it, but mastering it too well, or solving the mystery, causes you to stop loving it. I called it the mystery/mastery paradox. You have to mentally reframe the challenge in order to stay engaged. Like once you figure out a game inside out, you change your focus to beating other masters of the game to stay engaged. Once you beat the other masters of the game, you may focus on spreading your fame or writing books about the game. It’s still about the original game, but only tangentially. I think this is what led Michael Jordan to try baseball for a while.

I don’t know much about Bobby Fischer’s life, but maybe he didn’t cultivate anything besides chess. From what I know, it was an all-consuming passion for him from a very young age. Maybe when he fell into his own mystery/mastery paradox and it stopped being fun for him, he had no other outlet to switch to, because being so consumed with chess from so young never allowed him to figure out his identity outside of chess.

At some point, however, it seems Josh Waitzkin did figure out his identity outside of chess. He explains it in this NY1 profile he did:

About ten years ago, to escape the phenomenon of, “Hey, you’re the ?Searching for Bobby Fischer? guy!” he spent a year living in Slovenia and traveling around Europe.

And he came to a realization.

“Transitional moments were affecting me in chess and in life. And when I took them on in one, it helped me with the other,? said Waitzkin. ?And so that became my manner of studying of chess, which was to look at my psychological being was manifesting itself over the board. So that kind of led to this way of thinking about chess, life, tai chi, the martial arts, in a manner which was basically looking for thematic interconnections, as opposed to looking at one art at a time.?…

“I didn’t grow up learning chess or competing in a protected environment,? says Waitzkin. ?I grew up kind of in a raw environment and that’s been kind of central to my life in all these things, because life as a competitor is brutal.”….

“It caught up to me, and I started to become externalized through the chess, which was very sad, very sad,? says Waitzkin. “When you?re defined by something from the age of six on, the idea of letting that go and redefining yourself completely, it?s naked and raw and terrifying.?

But the transition was eased when the Columbia University graduate discovered tai chi, and his new passion resulted in an international championship in 2004.

Now his goal is to use these two parts of his life to create a multi-disciplinary learning center for kids.

So he went from competitive chess to martial arts champion. And note how, as he masters martial arts, he already sets up his next challenge, his plan for a multi-disciplinary learning center for kids. I think this technique he has of setting up his next challenge ahead of time shows how he’s able to avoid the mystery/mastery paradox. He realizes when he’s falling out of love with something and as he masters it, he sets up the next challenge for himself.

I also think that’s why celebrities like Michael Jackson, and Bobby Fischer go insane once they achieve their goals. They only focus on mastering one thing, and once they achieve it and naturally start to fall out of love with it and it just becomes a grinding job or crushing responsibility, they have nothing else to channel their energy into. They hate what their doing, but they also love the security blanket of knowing they have an area they have mastered and are afraid to leave it behind despite how unfulfilling it has now become.

Not being prepared to channel your energies into something else is also what I think contributes to the alcoholism of the guy in this story who turned his hobby into a job, along with other people who turned to substance abuse after they turned their passion into a career and hit the top. The problem wasn’t turning their passion or hobby into a career, it was not being prepared for what the void that would come up once they mastered that hobby (doing something for a living is the ultimate form of mastery I think). They became victims of the mystery/mastery paradox.