In my blog yesterday, I discussed M.Night Shyamalan’s cinematic output.
But, thinking about it since then, I have concluded that the posting may really be about the challenges of achieving too much too early and then having to follow that success.
In music there is a cliché about the “difficult second album”.
I think of “To Kill a Mockingbird”, written by Harper Lee in 1960. She won a Pulitzer Prize for that novel (which I very much enjoyed) and then wrote nothing else with the exception of a few short essays. Now I am not really in a position to speculate about the reasons for this, but it is conceivable that she found it difficult to follow her initial success.
I am also reminded of an interview where George Michael said (as I recall) that he had to come to terms with the fact that he might never write anything again which is as good as the Saxophone break in Careless Whisper which he wrote when he was only 17 years old. That must be a difficult mental adjustment to make.
It must be so much easier to accept having a career where you “learn your craft” and increased experience yields better results.