A Thing of Wonder: The Mind + Matter of Jerry Andrus (2002)

Overview

This elegantly crafted and inspiring profile is affectionately devoted to magician, inventor, poet and polymath Jerry Andrus, best known as one of the world's greatest 3-D illusionists. Andrus, who died three years later in 2007 at the age of 89, was a polymath and autodidact whose restlessly inquisitive and spritely mind finds generous expression throughout the film. The film follows Andrus through his “Castle of Chaos” home in Albany, Oregon, where he shares his inventions, muses philosophically about the nature of human fulfillment, and articulates a kind of ethics at work in his magic-making. “I can fool you,” he says, “because you’re human.