Magic Is Dead, page 17
After talking for more than an hour in his kitchen, going through what I needed for the article, Shaq said he wanted to show me the rest of his home. We checked out his movie theater and indoor basketball court. Then he took me down a hallway to his trophy room.
“This room is for my father,” he said, referencing his stepfather, Phillip Harrison, who passed away in 2013. Framed jerseys hung on the walls, photographs of Shaq playing on various teams perched on tabletops, trophies from high school and college lined display cases. A photograph of him and his father beamed from across the room. He stood there in silence for a moment and shifted his weight from left foot to right, hands on his hips.
“My father is the man that made me who I am today,” he said.
I nodded. “I know what you mean.” I took out my cell phone. “I wanted to show you something,” I said. I held out my phone, showing him a photograph of the framed jersey, the two ticket stubs underneath. My mother had sent it to me just before I came.
“A long time ago—I was just a kid—my dad brought me to meet you. I was a huge fan, and he surprised me with tickets for the game and we sat outside your hotel forever, waiting—it was freezing!—and then you walked out and signed my jersey. It was surreal.” Shaq smiled and took the phone from me. “My dad died when I was thirteen,” I continued, “and this is one of my best memories of him. It meant so much to me that he took me to meet you. I know this really isn’t part of my job now, being here, writing about you. But the jersey—it’s somewhere at my mother’s house—is still framed, just like that.”
“So, we have known each other for a long time, then,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“Yes, I think we have,” I replied. We stood next to each other in silence, his hand still resting on my shoulder.
He turned to leave the room. “It’s strange, what a father will do for his son, and how that affects them later,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently,” I said. “Even though he died, it’s like I’ve been searching for something to show me that I’m still a part of him, in a way, that I’m still his son, even though so much has changed.” Shaq nodded, a gentle tip of the head, and I knew he didn’t have to say anything else. He understood what I meant.
I walked out to my car to leave and it started to rain. I turned on my rental car’s windshield wipers. It was a twenty-minute drive to my hotel, in downtown Orlando. The air was dense, and steam oozed from the pavement. When I arrived, the rain had slowed, and I was hot, so I decided to go for a swim. I took off my shirt and dove into the empty pool. I thought about my conversation with Shaq and how, despite being one of the best athletes of all time, and a by-product of his father’s influence, he was still searching for a true version of himself. Maybe that’s why he dipped back into music, I thought to myself. And maybe that’s why my mother went back to poker. But for me, I had, at that point—before I found the magic thing—likewise been on a quest to find my place. People spend their entire lives searching for the radical event, the epiphany, that finally reveals the truest version of themselves. Thomas Pynchon once wrote that everyone has an Antarctic. And I hoped, one day, that I would find mine.
I stood in the shallow end of the pool for a while. I swam from one end to the other and, after gasping for air, wiped the chlorine from my eyes. I rested my elbows on the pool’s deck, my back resting against its lip. It had stopped raining. The clouds were gray along the horizon but, coming from the far side, a stream of color beamed out of the darkness. A rainbow carried itself across the sky.
I sat there in silence, looking up.
16
Spies, Snitches, Skullduggery, and Scheming
Inventing a magic trick is hard.
Your brain has to be wired a certain way to fully grasp illusion—not only in how to build an effect and choreograph all its moving parts but, even more important, to understand how a spectator will interpret it. Will it be magical or merely a clever trick? Like any muscle, it takes time to train your mind to think in terms of trickery and deceit. Even then, some magicians work on effects for years before performing them publicly.
In the weeks after the Buffalo meet-up, during the cold, dark approach to winter in Brooklyn, I spent many hours sitting at my desk thinking about what type of effect I wanted to create. I knew how powerful some tricks could be, and that my new crew of friends had themselves invented some real jaw-droppers. But how could someone like me, with no discernable history in magic, come up something from scratch? I felt like a high school band member trying to write a symphony. I had a sense of all the tools needed to create a song, the various sounds that when combined could create something beautiful, but it would take time—and no small amount of luck—to transform random squeaks and grunts into a cohesive tune.
I knew what types of effects I enjoyed the most. I loved tricks that include random information freely chosen by the spectator, or when the spectator themselves dictated the narrative of the effect. Pandrea’s dazzling trick from the Blackpool convention, with the ace of hearts, came to mind, or when Ramsay later pulled me aside and performed in that barroom basement, the queen of hearts laid gently on my palm. I also enjoyed the ones that had a twist ending—being led down a road, thinking I knew what was going to happen, only to have the reveal be the exact opposite—that the entire premise of the trick was an illusion in itself. These routines left me with an experience completely different than what I envisioned and therefore transformed into something entirely more profound.
One trick that Ramsay had performed for me over dinner in Blackpool, a perfect example of a twist ending, instantly popped into my head. He had me pick a card and put it back into the deck. He shuffled and gave me the cards, instructing me to cup my hands around the stack so they were hidden from view. Then he reached in between my fingers and pulled out my chosen card. I was stunned. What a great trick! How did he know exactly where it was in the deck? He held my card in front of me and, with a wave of his hand, the card vanished. “What would you say if I made the entire deck disappear, too?” he said.
“Well,” I responded, “I don’t think you can do that because I’m holding the damn thing in my hands!” He just smiled and nodded. I opened my hands. I was no longer cupping a deck of cards. I was holding a block of glass.
Magicians have invented some truly incredible illusions. Back in magic’s golden age, French magician Jean Eugéne Robert-Houdin, who built ingenious mechanical props, became renowned for his exclusive effects, performed only by him. One of his most famous mechanical inventions was the Marvelous Orange Tree. The effect began with Robert-Houdin borrowing a handkerchief from an audience member and rubbing it in his hands, the crumpled fabric becoming smaller and smaller until it disappeared. Onstage sat a table adorned with an egg, a lemon, and an orange. He then told the audience that the handkerchief was now inside the egg, which he held up for all to see. Instead of cracking it open, he rolled the egg in his hands until it also disappeared. He then peered at the lemon. “The egg is now in the lemon,” he explained, grabbing the yellow fruit. He also made it disappear, saying it was now inside the orange. He then grabbed the orange and rolled it between his hands. The fruit got smaller and smaller until it became powder cradled in his palm. An assistant brought out a small orange tree rooted in a wooden box. It was placed on the table. The magician poured the powder under the box and lit it on fire. When the flame’s smoke hit the tree’s foliage, the leaves fluttered and slowly revealed flowers. After a moment, the flowers disappeared and small oranges sprouted in their place, rapidly growing larger and larger while still attached to the tree’s branches. Robert-Houdin invited two audience members onto the stage, who plucked the fruit, peeled it, took a bite, and confirmed that they were in fact real oranges.
The reveal, however, was a work of art. Jim Steinmeyer describes it in Hiding the Elephant: “One orange remained at the top of the tree. Gesturing with his wand one final time, he commanded this orange to open. It split into two sections, revealing the borrowed handkerchief tucked inside. Two clockwork butterflies, flapping their tiny wings, appeared from behind the tree, lifted the corners of the handkerchief and spread it open in the air as the magician took his bow and the curtain closed.” Routines like this set the standard for magic moving forward.*
Exclusive effects became a benchmark for all magicians, and everyone clamored to invent (or secure the exclusive right to perform) unshared material. Halfway through the Penn & Teller show I saw in Vegas, Teller took the stage by himself. A large red ball sat motionless on the floor next to a wooden bench. I craned forward in excitement. I had heard about the Red Ball act. It is one of Teller’s most famous effects: a gorgeously simple routine where he tries to train the ball like a pet. The ball levitates and bounces around the stage—but Teller never touches it. It’s as if the object has a mind of its own: fickle, disobedient, running amok as Teller desperately tries to keep it under control.
Penn & Teller have never shied away from revealing the secrets behind some of their tricks, especially if divulging the method will make the audience’s experience more memorable. “If you understand a good magic trick, like if you really understand it down to the mechanics and the core of its psychology, the magic trick gets better—not worse,” Teller once said. And so, in 2017, Teller went on This American Life and did just that: he told the story behind the Red Ball.
He sourced the idea from an old, out-of-print book written by Nebraska-based amateur magician David T. Abbott,* who only performed his effects for private audiences in his living room (Houdini was a regular patron). After reading the book, Teller became obsessed with an effect where Abbott floated a golden sphere around his parlor.
“I like stripping things down to absolute simplicity,” Teller told Ira Glass, host of This American Life, “and it seems like a ball and a hoop and a person is about as simple as you can get.” Teller sought out Abbott’s book and began learning the methodology and performance techniques of his predecessor, adjusting them as he saw fit for his own character and style. But one thing seemed fairly obvious in how the act came together: the ball was on a thread. To claim otherwise was almost an affront to the audience’s intelligence. “We see that the ball is on a thread; we can see how it’s done,” Glass narrated on the show, “and at the same time it totally looks like he’s this sorcerer who enchanted this inanimate object into obeying him.”
Watching Teller perform onstage in Las Vegas, and knowing full well that an invisible thread was involved, I couldn’t help but feel the same—not because I was being fooled, per se, but because after supplanting the feeling of being straight-up duped, I saw a principle of magic that is very hard to implant into an audience’s mind but is something that, with the Red Ball, Teller seemed to transcend: The deception is no longer encased within the method, but in the transparency of the presentation. It’s a way to break the fourth wall of magic—to boil down an effect to its utmost simplicity, almost to the point where how it’s done is obvious—while still holding on to a core element of its intrigue and beauty, the almost undefinable characteristic that morphs a trick into a piece of performance art.
In true Penn & Teller fashion, the trick wouldn’t be complete if they didn’t somehow, at the end of the routine, punch you square in the jaw. When Teller was finally able to train the rogue ball, Penn stomped onstage holding a large pair of scissors. He grabbed the string by which the ball was affixed, raised it up into the air, and cut the thread. The ball fell to the stage, bounced a few times, and went still.
This level of transparency, however, is rare. A trick’s secret is normally vehemently guarded from the public—and other magicians. And it is here that we enter magic’s dark side. Trick stealing and blatant espionage have been rampant problems for more than one hundred years. In the early twentieth century, Harry Kellar went to great lengths to obtain the secret of John Nevil Maskelyne’s Levitating Lady trick. Maskelyne was quickly becoming one of the most lauded stage performers in the world, and Kellar, who was still performing stale illusions from years past, saw that his influence was on the decline. Kellar snuck backstage with the hopes of eyeing a special apparatus or unique orientation of mirrors. He bought tickets to numerous shows and approached the stage during the illusion, looking desperately for a clue. Maskelyne knew Kellar would try to turn a stagehand into an informer, so he hired an actor as a double agent, paying him to pass Kellar false information. Kellar never fell for the trap and eventually bribed Maskelyne’s real assistant for drawings of how the trick worked. They met in the dark of the night and swapped secrets for cash. This undercover operation, however, was only the tip of the iceberg regarding the lengths to which people would go to steal the methods behind famous illusions.
“A great trick, like a great song, should be an inspiration,” Jim Steinmeyer told Esquire in 2012. “It should lead you to other things that are also wonderful. That’s what happens in literature, and it happens in music, and it happens in art. But in magic, they don’t do that. They just take it. You would hope that what you do inspires, but instead it just inspires theft.” When I hung out with Penn Jillette in Las Vegas, he described the matter in more blunt terms. “In music, they cover songs, but in magic they steal,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, as if it were a fact of life. “And sometimes they change a trick just enough not to get busted.”
Spies, snitches, skullduggery, and scheming still exist. In 2017, during a performance of his incredibly popular off-Broadway show In & Of Itself, Derek DelGaudio saw a cell phone propped up in an audience member’s jacket pocket, possibly filming the show. The man turned out to be another magician. Another magician was also caught filming the show and was asked to delete the footage. “I’m kind of living my childhood fantasy of creating a Willy Wonka factory,” DelGaudio told the New York Times after the incident. “And now we have real-life Slugworths trying to steal our gobstoppers.” Both magicians were told to leave the show and were blacklisted from future performances.
Sometimes, however, trick stealing escalates into a full-blown lawsuit. In 2012, Teller discovered that Belgian magician Gerard Dogge was performing Shadows, a signature effect where a rose is dismembered when Teller cuts its shadow with a knife. Dogge was also selling the trick’s secret to other magicians for $3,000. Teller confronted Dogge, but the Belgian illusionist sensed an opportunity. He allegedly demanded over $100,000 to stop performing the trick. He had kidnapped Teller’s secret and was demanding ransom. Teller didn’t pay the cash and instead filed a lawsuit.
Journalists picked up on the drama and TMZ ran a story titled “ROGUE MAGICIAN IS EXPOSING OUR SECRETS!!!” Instead of accepting his position in the lawsuit, Dogge instead dodged authorities and bounced around Europe. He was eventually served, but it took two years for a judge to make a determination. “While Dogge is correct that magic tricks do not fall under copyright directly, this does not mean that Shadows is not subject to copyright protection,” U.S. district judge James C. Mahan wrote in his ruling. “Indeed, federal law directly holds that ‘dramatic works’ as well as ‘pantomimes’ are subject to copyright protection, granting owners exclusive public performance rights. The mere fact that a dramatic work or pantomime includes a magic trick, or even that a particular illusion is its central feature does not render it devoid of copyright protection.”
It’s true that magic tricks can’t be copyrighted. In 1983, Teller filed his effect as a piece of theater, which allowed him some semblance of legal protection. Most everyday magicians, however, do not have the funds to copyright their work under this interesting loophole or sue someone who may steal an idea from them. Magicians are also able to file a patent for a piece of equipment used during a routine, but that largely defeats the purpose of protecting a secret. In order to file a patent (which is a public document), the magician has to reveal how the apparatus, and therefore the trick, works. The secret therefore must be revealed for it to be protected.*
There is currently some hope for magicians wanting to protect their hard-earned ideas. Congress is debating whether magic is a “rare and valuable art form and national treasure,” and is therefore eligible for copyright protection. The 2016 bill was spearheaded by Republican Congressman Pete Sessions of Texas, and David Copperfield is a supporter of the legislation. Since the election of Donald Trump as president, however, the bill has stalled. In January 2018, it was referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where it has since languished.
From my experience, however, the honor system largely prevails today among young magicians. The ethical standard is to hit up the originator for permission if you are going to build upon their effect in a definitive way and release it publicly. Normally, when a magician asks for permission to use a certain move or method, and credits the inventor properly, there’s no issue. Creators and performers just want credit where credit is due. There’s also an element of pride in the exchange; if you are the creator who gets recognition as an influential magician (Dai Vernon was the guy in the twentieth century in this space), your reputation is only enhanced. It’s a strange caveat for an art defined by its requirement to deceive: be honest.
I knew I wanted to create a card trick. That much was certain. I didn’t have the resources or experiences to build a complex gimmick or prop, like Robert-Houdin or Teller, but I had a personal history with cards, was becoming more capable, and had the time and dedication to work hard. I also had a secret talent not afforded to most magicians: I was a storyteller. My job as a journalist is to not only inform the public but also weave information into a captivating narrative. You need a compelling character, a dynamic plot, a jaw-dropping climax, a satisfying takeaway. I knew all these elements could be embedded into a magic trick. I just needed to craft my tale.
