Magic Is Dead, page 30
* For modifying well-known cards, like Bicycles, a magician could, for example, implement the Farmarx System. “The areas to be blocked out are the four daisy patterns, two at each end of the back,” Kirk Charles instructed in Hidden in Plain Sight: A Manual for Marked Cards. “There are eight petals and a center dot in each daisy. These nine spots are filled in to represent the values and suits of the cards. The daisy on the left signals the values, while the daisy on the right signals the suits.” The Farmarx System uses shape to discern value—petals left unblocked in the shape of an A represent an Ace, for example—but loads of other image-based languages can be used for a common brand like Bicycles. All you need is the right color ink to illicitly modify a deck that anyone could have lying around their house. “Harry Riser suggests using Pelikan Drawing Ink, No. 3, Vermillion,” Charles continued, referring to red Bicycles, “and No. 10, Prussian Blue,” for blue Bikes, “applied with an 00000 sable or camel artist’s brush.”
* Malek requested I not use his name for fear the guy “would probably get killed.”
* Some theorize that they were gunned down by police and the murder-suicide plot was planted by local authorities.
* In an occupational twist, Dickson is also an air defense artillery warrant officer for the United States Army, tasked with pushing the button on the THAAD missile system in Guam if North Korea were to lob a ballistic missile at the island.
* His first was a false-shuffling technique put out earlier in the year through Xavior’s company Lost Art Magic.
* Art of Magic was overseen for many years by Elliott Terral, a dapper magician and fashion aficionado from Louisiana who became a close friend of mine.
* Cheating at cards likewise holds an element of intrigue in today’s mainstream culture. In 2017, for the fourth season of Penn & Teller: Fool Us, Richard Turner duped the famed duo with a gambling demonstration, including second-dealing and false-shuffling. He even let the guys shuffle the cards and subsequently dealt Teller four-of-a-kind kings in a hand of Texas hold ’em. The catch? Turner is blind. (The performance racked up over four million YouTube views and landed on the front page of reddit; Turner was also the subject of the acclaimed 2017 documentary Dealt.) For his one-man show In & Of Itself, which ran in New York City throughout 2017 and 2018, innovative young-gun magician Derek DelGaudio incorporated an anecdote of a card cheat, using the metaphor of a wolf to introduce his skills with a deck of cards—including the infamous middle deal, where cards are dealt from the middle of the deck. In 2016, New Jersey–based magician Mark Calabrese (who eventually became a friend of mine) was featured on VICE’s cable television show Black Market—masked, with his voice distorted; Mark told producers this wasn’t necessary, but VICE made him do it for added dramatic effect—where he talked about deceptive tactics used to cheat at underground poker games. His identity was never revealed by VICE, and no one knew that the guy talking about stacking the deck is also a well-respected member of the magic community. And so, almost all current mainstream gambling demonstrations are conducted by magicians, not reformed card cheats.
* Andrei, a master card handler, worked behind the scenes of Now You See Me and Now You See Me 2. One of his main contributions was to guide the cast during the heist scene in which Dave Franco steals an all-powerful computer chip, affixes it to a playing card, and flicks it through the air to Jesse Eisenberg, who then hides it up his sleeve. We’ll get more into consulting for Hollywood and television shows later.
* At the club later that night, Pandrea slipped into a booth with three girls and offered to show them some magic. He began talking to one of them when, all of a sudden, she dropped her head and started puking, a fountain of pink slime crashing onto the seat. (Fruity drinks were two-for-one at the bar.) Her friends didn’t seem to care much, and they didn’t help her as she heaved. As the girl continued to vomit on the floor, Pandrea looked up at me, shrugged, and started performing for the two other girls. They squealed at the illusions and completely forget about their sick friend, who was now fully passed out at the other end of the booth.
* It’s so hard that there’s even an alternative: Lazy Rise. “If you’ve ever wanted to perform Raise Rise but don’t want to break your fingers,” inventor Chris Mayhew boasts in the effect’s advertisement, “this is the perfect trick for you!”
* Robert-Houdin’s influence is still acknowledged: Ramsay has the orange tree tattooed on the backside of his left forearm.
* The sole copy of his book, written in the 1920s, was lost for more than forty years before being discovered and subsequently shared with a few hand-selected magicians.
* Some magicians have filed fake patents in the hope of throwing off pirates, and David Copperfield has even planted fake explanations online.
* At another infamous dinner party, Malini got into a long discussion with his guests about the supernatural and claimed he could bring beings back from the dead. Just as the entreé was served, a whole turkey on a bed of potatoes, Malini stood up, announced he’d prove it to them, and stabbed the turkey with a fork. The featherless bird sprang up, ran the length of the table, and scurried out of the room. The guests were in complete shock. It’s unclear whether they still held an appetite after that, or what they ended up eating as a main course.
* For Chris Stanislas, however, magic failed to quell his internal demons. In September 2015, the California-based member took his own life shortly after releasing his first and only book, which Madison published. “He was like a brother to me,” Madison said. They shared both passion and pain. Also a reformed card cheat, Stanislas developed a move where he could swap an entire deck during a poker game. Called T.U.T., it was the basis, and title, of his book. “He invented these moves to feed that beast,” Jeremy Griffith told me. After Stanislas passed away, the52 initiated a fund-raiser to cover the cost of his funeral. Even in death, his card, the Four of Hearts, still belongs to him.
* I also got to meet David Blaine during this trip. Blaine invited Madison and Ramsay to his office, but said, because I was a journalist, I couldn’t come up. He was editing his 2016 special, Beyond Magic, wanted to show Madison some footage, and was nervous that a reporter would leak the details. When they were done, however, we all met at a bar. Blaine, cap pulled low over his eyes, asked me which magazines I wrote for and how I came to know Ramsay and Madison. I told him I was writing a book about magic. He sipped his whiskey and said, “I look forward to reading it.” He quickly put down his glass, turned, and walked out. It was very strange. Ramsay later told me that, up in the office, Blaine made them sit in silence and watch over and over again the scene in which he regurgitates a live frog for Dave Chappelle. “It was the most awkward hour of my life,” Ramsay said.
* My friend Matty, who once crashed in the guest room for a few months, named the space “Shit Sandwich” because it’s directly above our bathroom and directly below that of our upstairs neighbor. All these years later my roommates and I still refer to the nook this way.
* Magicians normally make a 25–50 percent commission for a download, depending on the company. It is not uncommon, too, for a retail outlet to negotiate that the creator transfer the effect’s intellectual copyright to the company in exchange for placement on their online store—no doubt a long-game strategy in case the trick goes viral and a famous magician offers to purchase the exclusive right in which to perform it. I have heard a few horror stories about naïve magicians getting screwed over by this stipulation.
* Ramsay likewise pressured Peter McKinnon, a photographer and cinematographer from Toronto who also worked for Ellusionist, to start a photo-and-video-themed channel. Peter, energetic and affable on camera, quickly rose to stardom and left the magic world behind. He currently has more than two million subscribers and regularly collaborates with Casey Neistat, one of the most iconic creators on the platform. Some of his most popular video ideas, however, are those in which he consults Ramsay for help.
* This sociological phenomenon is called parasocial relationships. “We can feel a strong relationship, and feel like it’s a two-way relationship, with a brand or a celebrity or an influencer, when really it’s a one-way relationship,” Ben Parr, author of Captivology: The Science of Capturing People’s Attention, told New York magazine. “Social media specifically has increased the parasocial relationships we have with people, by making us feel like we’re seeing the personal lives of our favorite people. And so we feel like we actually know them when we actually don’t.”
* I have concealed the sender’s identity for privacy reasons but I have not altered the message, for spelling, grammar or clarity, in any way.
* Larry will be hiding his new card in all his future films, starting with The Predator. Go watch the movie. Can you find it?
* Cat also consulted on fellow the52 member Shin Lim’s winning performance for the finals of America’s Got Talent.
* Legend has it that Talma, after being cornered by muggers and told to hand over all her money, made dozens of coins appear out of thin air. The robbers freaked out and ran away.
* Simon Cowell was also, coincidentally, a regular at Laura’s mother’s club in the 1980s.
* Magicians use words to create a captivating and congruent narrative for their performances, but they also employ dialogue to divert attention. “Magicians merrily exploit the fact that attention-grabbing information from one sensory system leads to enhancement of attention in another,” write Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde in Sleights of Mind. “Thus a magician’s rapid-fire patter serves to increase how intently you stare at the actions he wants you to look at.”
* You must be asking yourself: how can the spectator choose a specific card if you’ve already swapped it with the signed card and it’s sitting in the box? Simple: you use a duplicate. Transposition effects almost always use a duplicate object to make it seem like it magically disappears from one location and appears in another, but there’ve been two the whole time and, at the end, one is merely hidden, in the deck or otherwise.
* Reaching for the box (the big move) covers the top-change (the small move). Misdirection is not necessarily forcing someone to look one way while something secretive happens elsewhere. Force-focusing, or directing your attention to a specific thing at a specific time, even if it’s in the same location as the sleight (as we see here with my trick), is a more widely used and effective approach. Neurologically, this is called sensory capture, but magicians refer to it as passive misdirection.
* Madison had been for years trying to get Doug to accept an invitation into the52, but Doug was wary about getting a tattoo on his finger. He performs regularly for the Saudi royal family (he speaks fluent Arabic) and worried about how they’d react—they are some of his best-paying clients.
* He fooled the famous duo. The routine is on YouTube—check it out.
* Doug requested that I not reveal the company name for fear that other magicians will steal his exclusive effects. Truth be told, a few magicians have already tried to copy Doug’s trick, and he has since set up a security system that alerts him whenever another user is trying to utilize his code for their own means. A word to the wise for magicians reading this: don’t steal Doug’s effect. You will get caught.
* Doug performed this same effect for a six-minute CNN documentary about his tech-fueled magic. It’s a great segment—check it out.
* Doug and Madison, two of Blaine’s closest confidants, can also be seen in Blaine’s custom decks, their faces replacing those of the court cards.
* In addition to being close friends, Madison worked with Blaine for years. He helped develop new routines, worked on-site for private performances, and spitballed ideas over the phone. During one memorable trip to Miami, Madison told me, Blaine gave him a paper bag stuffed with $50,000 in cash as payment.
* The first customer to solve all the puzzles in the box found, on his doorstep, a 1930s Underwood typewriter with a personalized note from J. J. Abrams challenging the winner to create more mystery and wonder in the world.
* Asi Wind, another well-known consultant, was also featured on the show.
* As you can see, most magical effects can be made from simple materials; it’s showmanship and execution that bring the tricks to life.
* His typical response: “Dude, I’m fucking married and I have two kids. I don’t give a shit what my shorts look like.”
* Adam himself has a backstory equally interesting to that of Ramsay, Laura, or Madison: He was busted in a DEA sting for selling weed. “I can still see that fucking badge clear as day,” Adam told me. The agency, however, chose not to charge him. Realizing life was precious, he quit his dead-end job and dedicated himself to magic. He never again heard from the agents, and the crime’s statute of limitations recently lapsed.
* A memory is a flawed and fickle thing; it’s only as good as your last retelling of it. You may recall bits and pieces of a trick’s structure, or the magician’s behavior during its performance, but it’s unlikely you can construct an entirely accurate portrait of what really happened. Moreover, in great magic, a sleight does not exist in a vacuum; the moves compound onto one another throughout the routine. The effect does not live solely within a single switch or palm or cull, but rather the combination of a series of different moves that lead you toward the climax. The routine’s process is itself a piece of misdirection, the hallmark of a successful effect.
* This little touch was given to me by Tony Chang (the Ten of Hearts), who was at the convention and also lives in New York City. Tony is a legend when it comes to magic theory and the nuances of routine, and taught me a lot about these small moments, and how they can elevate an entire performance.
* The trick is hosted on Magic Stream, Ellusionist’s subscription-based streaming platform, which is like Netflix for magic tricks. You pay twelve dollars a month and get unlimited access to their library of tutorials. Even if you aren’t a member you can watch my trick’s trailer.
* Another magician said over Twitter that he liked the trick but couldn’t handle how tight my shorts were in the video.
* We also went to a swanky cocktail bar where Jason Sudeikis saw us playing with cards, approached us, and said he was also a practicing magician. He was with his girlfriend, Olivia Wilde, and of course we all traded tricks.
* Danny Garcia, the famed consultant, and Garrett Thomas, a master at sleight of hand, became the Jokers.
Ian Frisch, Magic Is Dead
