I'm pulling away from the curb because I dropped my son off to college.

We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work.

Okay, so today's topic comes from my Hollywood days.

It is something I learned about when I worked in Hollywood that I think is applicable to magic.

It's a concept called Same, but Different.

So I'm going to explain what that is, and then I will explain how it applies to magic.

Okay, so when I worked in Hollywood, I was a writer.

So one of the things that writers need to do is what's called a pitch.

Basically, you get in a room with somebody, usually an executive, a studio executive, a network executive,

somebody that can green light your project, meaning somebody that can go, yes, we're going to make this,

and give you the thumbs up.

There is a tool when you are pitching that is quite popular.

It is called the three beat.

So here's what a three beat is.

What you do is you say,

popular thing number one, popular movie or TV show number one meets popular movie or TV show

number two. So, for example, let's say I'm pitching a brand new TV show. And I get in there,

I go, okay, my project is, The Office meets Jurassic World. It's an office, it's an office comedy, but the people work at a biology lab cloning dinosaurs.

The idea of a three-beat is, look, my idea is like these two different ideas.

So, hey, there's a chance of success because the things

I am like have been successful. But I'm combining them in a way that makes something new and

fresh and different, something that people haven't seen before. It is same but different. Now, in Hollywood, one of the big

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