Magic Is Dead, page 29
“Can I show you a trick?” he said, showing us his cards. The deck was mangled, the cards frayed.
“Sure,” Madison said.
“Okay,” the guy started. “So, you have a six and a nine,” he continued, showing us the six of hearts and the nine of diamonds. “And, if I put them back into the deck”—he went on, trying to shove the cards into the middle of his deck, his hands shaking—“I am going to try and have them jump out.” He grasped the deck and tossed it into his left hand. Only two cards remained in his right: the six and nine. I knew this trick. It was the first magic trick I ever learned, taught to me by my mother when I was a child, between tips on how to cheat at poker.
“So, you’ve been practicing some magic tricks?” Madison said.
“Trying,” the man replied.
“Do you mind if I show you something?” Madison asked. The man looked over at me and then back to Madison. “Um, okay, sure,” he replied.
“Think of a playing card that best represents you,” Madison said, “and tell me what that card is.”
“The jack of hearts.”
“Okay, the jack of hearts.” Madison pulled a deck from his pocket. It was freshly opened. “As you can see, this deck is brand-new. The cards are still in order,” he said, fanning it faceup. “But one card is missing.” He slowed down as he spread through the cards. The jack of hearts was gone. “It’s in your deck,” Madison said.
The man looked confused. Madison motioned for him to spread through his own deck. Sitting right there in the middle was a beaming white card, sturdy and new, with Madison’s logo stamped on the back. The man turned it over. It was the jack of hearts. He stood there for a moment in stunned silence.
“Wow,” he said.
“You need a new deck,” Madison said. “Here. Take this one.” He handed him the cards. “Keep practicing. Don’t give up.”
The man smiled.
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” the man said. Madison nodded, and we walked away. A half-block down, I turned to him and said, “Do you think he knows who you are?”
Madison slowed to a stop and looked at me. “Maybe,” he said. “But does it really matter?”
Acknowledgments
I have many people to thank.
This book wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for the magicians who pulled back the curtain and accepted me as a member of this fascinating world: Daniel Madison, Laura London, Jeremy Griffith, Xavior Spade, Doug McKenzie, Alex Pandrea, Adam Wilber, Franco Pascali, Danny Garcia, Tony Chang, Eric Hu, Larry Fong, Dynamo, Penn Jillette, Eric Jones, Mark Calabrese, Shin Lim, Peter Turner, Demian Aditya, Dan and Dave Buck, Elliott Terral, Damien O’Brien, Dee Christopher, Alex Harris, Matt Whittaker, Garrett Thomas, Joel Greenwich, Wes Barker, Chris Brown, Nic Suriano, Ondřej Pšenička, Lisa de la Vega, Beau Cremer, Alex Rangel, Marcus Eddie, and Dennis Kim. I would also like to thank the countless others who agreed to speak with me for this project, and those who spent time documenting the history of magic, specifically Jim Steinmeyer and David Britland, whose work was instrumental during the researching process.
There is one person, however, to whom an acknowledgement in the back of this book does not suffice to encompass the generosity, patience, kindness, and trust bestowed upon me over the past three years: Chris Ramsay. Thank you, bud. I am eternally grateful for your friendship and guidance. It has been an absolute honor to watch you rise to new heights and achieve your dreams, and to have you be my partner in crime throughout this unbelievable adventure.
I am indebted to my sharp-eyed and supportive agents, Larry Weissman and Sascha Alper, who took a chance over breakfast on a young writer who spouted off crazy stories about a secret society, over-the-top deceptions, impossible illusions, and the art form’s promising—but highly unorthodox—next generation of magicians. Thank you for always having my back, always pushing me to think critically, and for evangelizing my idea to the publishing world.
To my lovable and diligent editor, Carrie Thornton, who butcher-knifed and wood-shaved the manuscript into its final form, reminded me tirelessly that this book is really about me, and always championed my vision and voice as a storyteller. And to the entire staff at Dey Street Books and HarperCollins: Lynn Grady, Sean Newcott, Maria Silva, Ben Steinberg, and Kendra Newton, whose enthusiasm for the book really made it come to life.
To Warren Baker and Tim Brookes, my two earliest mentors; Warren Cohen and Michael Hirschorn, who guided my career in its earliest stages; all the members of Study Hall, specifically Kyle and Enav, whose passionate contribution to the freelance journalism community has blossomed into a family; and to all the editors who helped shape me into the writer I am today—especially Jon Eilenberg of Wired, who was my earliest champion when it came to diving deep into magic’s vast underbelly, and Adam Ross of The Sewanee Review, who first encouraged me to write about my father.
To Aunt Shelly, Uncle Bill, and the rest of my family for supporting me in my ambitions; to my sister, Jillian, for always keeping me on my toes; and to Richard for being the rock when I wasn’t around.
To Casey, Steven, and Brett at the Spruceton Inn, who graciously gifted me room #5, full of sunlight but without distraction, where much of the book came into focus.
To my best friend, Patrick, for growing up with me, always being by my side, and encouraging me to be the best possible version of myself. To Nick for letting me squat in that office building when I fell on hard times. To my roommates Tom, Mike, Curt, and Jose for enduring way too many magic tricks. To Meghan for always believing in me as a writer. To my girlfriend, Julia, for keeping me sane during the writing and editing process. To Jessica, Cole, Molly, Hogan, Brittnee, Fern, Ashley, Keegan, Jonno, Bill, Alix, Daniel, Lauren, Aaron, Eric, Sam, Kenny, Jimmy, Lucas, Pambo, Jamie Lee, Gabby, Greg, and countless other friends for their support over the years. The best parts of me are credited largely to those with whom I choose to surround myself; I couldn’t have picked a better gang of misfits.
I wouldn’t be the person I am today if not for my mother’s love and kindness, her unwavering dedication to my passion for writing, and her slick and sneaky talents at the poker table. You not only taught me about cards, but also about the world—about being a man. And for that I owe you everything. I love you, Mom.
And lastly, I would like to thank my father, who gave me a life he never had, and whom I miss dearly. I wish you could read these words. I’m sorry we haven’t spoken in a while. I’ll visit you soon. I love you.
About the Author
IAN FRISCH has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, Playboy, Wired, Longreads, and Vice. He has appeared on Bloomberg Television and was a finalist for the 2016 Associated Press Sports Editors Explanatory Award. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Copyright
The chapter “By Any Means Necessary” includes material originally published in Deviations: Madisonist Edition by Daniel Madison. Reprinted with permission.
MAGIC IS DEAD. Copyright © 2019 by Ian Frisch. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Chapter opener art by Daniel Madison, Neema Atri, and S. W. Erdnase
Cover design by Morning Breath
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Frisch, Ian, 1989- author.
Title: Magic is dead : my journey into the world’s most secretive society of magicians / Ian Frisch.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Dey Street, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018048007| ISBN 9780062839282 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780062839305 (ebk.) | ISBN 9780062896643 (audio) | ISBN 9780062896650 (audio)
Subjects: LCSH: Magic tricks. | Magicians. | 52 (Society) | Magicians--Societies, etc. | Secret societies. | Frisch, Ian, 1989-
Classification: LCC GV1547 .F75 2018 | DDC 793.8--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048007
Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-283930-5
Version 01252019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-283928-2
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* Peter later got the word “Forever” tattooed in cursive script on his forehead.
* Whenever I call Jeremy on the phone, he always picks up with a lovable “Hey, boyo!”
* Tricks have been for decades a for-sale commodity; thousands of books have been published over the past century detailing methods and, more recently, these secretive and insular how-tos have made their way onto the internet.
* Calculated trickery is even utilized by man’s best friend. A 2017 University of Zurich study proved that dogs deliberately deceive their owners to get what they want. “These results . . . indicate the flexibility of dogs to adjust their behaviour and that they are able to use tactical deception,” the findings read.
* Legendary playwright David Mamet once said, “Magic is using the mind to lead itself to its own defeat. The same thing is true in drama: You set up a proposition, so the audience is going ahead of you, trying to figure out what’s going to happen next. So, at the end, just as in a magic trick, it’s surprising and inevitable—inevitable because you knew it was going to happen and surprising because it happened in an unusual way.”
* Another strange and juicy tidbit of magic’s influence in politics: Matt Patterson, a former professional magician, applied his background in deception to his support for Donald Trump while the reality-television personality and businessman campaigned for president. While a working magician, Patterson self-published a book on the craft. The New Yorker’s Peter Hessler parenthetically exhibited lines from the literature to contextualize Patterson’s political ideology: “The manual was written long before Patterson entered politics, but any candidate would recognize the wisdom of sleight of hand. (‘A good friend once told me that the only difference between a salesman and a con-man is that a salesman has confidence in his product’). In July 2016, Patterson bet a friend two hundred dollars that Trump would win the Presidency. His conservative Washington friends didn’t take Trump seriously, but Patterson believed that the candidate’s ability to connect with voters was uncanny. (‘Remember that you will be performing for people of varying degrees of education, in varying degrees of sobriety, and your routines must be easily understood by all of them’).” Patterson’s background and unique approach to politics proved successful: He held a brief stint as the Trump campaign’s Colorado regional field director and now works for conservative nonprofits in Washington, D.C.
* There are a few companies that print custom playing cards for magicians, but the United States Playing Card Company is by far the most popular. Founded in 1837, USPCC is the largest producer of playing cards in the world. They crank out 85 million decks a year—that’s roughly 4.7 billion individual cards. If you ran them end to end in a straight line, you’d be able to circle the globe ten times.
* I remember reading an old article in The New Yorker where Blaine said, “All my work is about honesty. Magic card tricks—we have to get beyond that. If magic is just magicians doing card tricks to impress other magicians—I’m not interested in that anymore. I don’t want magic that looks real. What I want are real things that feel like magic.”
* Laura’s home, a large, two-story industrial flat in northeast London, is a dream for both magicians and fetishists alike. Laura lives on the top floor—stacks of magic books, shelves stuffed with cards and other memorabilia. A portrait of Mona Lisa secretly palming a playing card hangs on the wall. The basement, in which Amber takes clients and does photo shoots, is a full-on BDSM dungeon: a catacomb of dark rooms with specific themes, including a white-walled prison cell and a doctor’s office, each with its own closet of whips, chains, and other sadistic tools. When she took me on a tour of the space, I turned the corner to find a stunning blonde woman in a one-piece latex suit. Six-foot five in her knife-sharp heels, she towered above me—I’m five-foot seven—but bent down and greeted me with a firm handshake and a gentle smile.
* Laura carried with her a small suitcase, stamped in the Union Jack and stuffed with gimmicks, that Madison later described to me as “a little box full of stupid shit.”
* Ironically, the magician who said this, Ollie Mealing, later started a beef with Madison over Instagram. He posted a photo with the hashtag #MADISONISDEAD, labeled Madison an egotistical narcissist, declared his videos “nonsensical drivel,” and called his Magic Is Dead tagline an embarrassment to the art form. Madison clapped back with a photo of an early Derren Brown promotional poster (Ollie always bragged about having worked for him, one of the most famous magicians in England) that read, in big bold letters, “MAGIC IS DEAD.”
* Houdini crusaded for years against mediums and spiritualism in general.
* Alexander Hermann, another style influencer, invented the sly-eyed and sharp-goateed devilish look that has been an equally pervasive and laughable stereotype. When exactly the fedora became a staple for magicians, however, is unclear.
* And the wealthiest; he’s on track to hit a net worth of $1 billion.
* After the vanish, an on-screen spectator wearing a priest uniform said, “I was amazed. It was there and now it’s not there anymore. I have no idea where it went.” A 2017 NPR investigation found that the on-screen audience were stooges and privy to the trick’s method. NPR also discovered that the trick was filmed at least three times. Copperfield’s team denied these claims. Regardless of the circumstances on set, folks watching at home were fooled to hell and the stunt further established Copperfield as America’s most popular magician.
* More than anything, though, the show’s success relied on Criss Angel’s hyper-cringeworthy and notoriously clichéd goth-rocker branding, no doubt exacerbated by the alt-metal music that ruled Middle America in the early and mid-aughts. I mean, I think we can all remember the opening credits, where Angel is just screaming “Mindfreak” over and over and over.
* They made him return the clothes after he got kicked off the show. Savage.
* I’m sure we all remember Breaking the Magician’s Code, first aired in the late 1990s, where the Masked Magician divulged methods for no reason other than to reveal information long kept secret.
* But, hey, the effect racked up 13 million views on AGT’s YouTube channel and advanced Demian to the next round.
* How about this for adding insult to injury: Demian had to pay $10,000 out of his own pocket for the faulty apparatus to be built.
* When MAGIC magazine’s Jamie D. Grant profiled Ramsay for its January 2016 issue, he wrote: “Chris Ramsay is what the youth of today would describe as ‘crushing’ social media with nothing more than a camera, a pair of hands, decks of playing cards, and a unique understanding of how a new art form has been created that mixes magic, cardistry, and personality. One where the fans, supporters, and spectators don’t have to leave their homes to see miracles or marvels. They don’t even have to buy tickets. The show is free, it’s on 24 hours a day, and you hold it in the palm of your hand.”
* Card-game duplicity was also prevalent in Italy, as chronicled in Caravaggio’s 1594 painting The Cardsharps, which showcases a boy hiding cards in his waistband. The painting ushered in many fine-art representations of cheating at the card table, including French painter Georges de La Tour’s 1620s masterpiece The Cheat with the Ace of Clubs, which is currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
* It’s worthwhile to note that its choreographed structure and scripted role-playing could be applied to many situations.
* A few modern-day casino scams also involved marked decks. In 1999, the Caesar’s Casino in Johannesburg, South Africa, discovered that nearly every deck used in their casino was marked by the manufacturer. In-the-know hustlers plunked down at the blackjack tables and siphoned more than $300,000 from the establishment. “When you have a new move that the casino isn’t looking for, it fools the hell out of them. They aren’t defending against it. They don’t even know it exists!” said Ron Conley, a legendary casino protection expert and former card cheat whom Jeremy and I visited during my time in Los Angeles. “If you are trying to rob them,” he continued, “that’s the optimal situation.” We sat in Conley’s living room, listened to his stories, and watched him work a deck of cards. Conley explained that, back in the 1970s, casinos started using automatic shuffling machines, which revealed opportunities for advantage play. He obtained one of the machines and fed it a few decks, with each card labeled numerically. “The way the machine shuffled, you wouldn’t see the top forty cards for hours,” he said, adding that, for blackjack, that could give a player a distinct edge against the house. A player would know how the machine thinks.
