mentalist – MagicShow.Tips

David Hoy Biography

When I got married 23 years ago, the lady who ran the chapel mentioned she went to college with a magicians. I asked if she remembered who it was and I got the standard, “You wouldn’t know who it is”.

Then she said the name “David Hoy!”

She told me several stories and one that stuck with me (not sure why) was about David’s cards. He always had cards with him, but no one was allowed to touch them. Everyone knew that. Then one time a new kid saw David’s cards sitting on a table and shuffled them! David blew up at the kid and it was the talk of the campus for a week!

I got her a copy of David’s mass market biography. When I bought one for her, I bought one for me. That was 23 years ago and it’s been sitting on my shelf and I’ve never read it. Well, I’m took it with me on this trip and I’m going to read it!

Hope it’s good…

-Louie

Working With Cool People!

One of the challenges working as a magician is that it can be a very solitary experience. You travel alone and frequently perform alone. The other night I got to work with Brian Ledbetter, who I’ve known for years. It was great to BS in the green room.

In my off seaon (not summer) I’m usually working by myself, so this was a nice change. Gigs with friends are the best and I look forward to them!

-Louie

Dunninger Epherma!

We bought a house a few weeks ago and are moving. One of the fun things about moving is finding things that I had forgotten that I had. This tie clip turned up!

This tie clip belonged to Joseph Dunninger! I have that a few other things that were his. I need to figure out a way to display it, for now it’ll sit on my desk!

-Louie

Dunninger Estate Items!

As a collector of old props, I love finding truly unique items. Last month these items that belonged to Joseph Dunninger popped up on a used magic FB group and I snatched them up!

I got the items you see above and a copy of the email from the original seller. Things like this are hard to price as the lineage of them are hard to track down to prove they were Dunninger’s personal items.

That said, it’s not impossible. There could be a picture somewhere Dunninger wearing the tie tack or the cufflinks and that would prove they were his. It’s a long shot, but the story is great, and they are cool to have in my collection!

-Louie

What is Magic Exposure?

Oh man, so yesterday I posted a routine for a card split routine. Part of the routine you expose a double envelope and it got me thinking about what is exposure. To me 99% of the magic that’s exposed doesn’t matter…well doesn’t matter in the context it’s exposed. I think magic that’s exposed in the moment it’s being done is the 1% that matters.

Ok, now for some of my general thoughts on exposure. I think magicians are the worst at exposure. They routinely give away “secrets” during their shows without realizing it. How they do it is when they cancel methods. For example, simply saying “no stooges” or “we haven’t prearranged anything” in a mentalism routine exposes a viable method.

Other ways things are exposed unintentionally through cancelling methods are things like, “check out the box, there’s no trap doors, mirrors, hidden assistants…” That tips three methods right there. Or at the end of a prediction when the magician/mentalist tears apart the envelope and says, “there’s nothing else in here” also exposes a method.

In the card split routine that I posted, I’m exposing a double envelope. I’d argue this method is exposed by soo many performers in the context of cancelling methods, it’s really not a secret. Also, it’s a logical method for any audience member to think of, to have an envelope with more than one prediction in it. That’s why it’s a common thing that magicians or mentalists expose to eliminate a method.

If your trick relies simply on an A/B prediction where the mystery hinges upon you simply opening one side or another of an envelope, your trick probably isn’t very magically sound. You need to add a lot more layers to your trick to make it a decent trick.

-Louie

Nightmare Alley…

Last night my wife and I went out to see the movie Nightmare Alley. It’s about a guy that ends up working in a sideshow and learns to be a mentalist, who ends up making it fairly big, but then gets involved in some shifty stuff and his success ends up crashing down.

It’s interesting what you focus on when you see things in your industry portrayed in movies. The little thing that drove me nuts was in the sideshow scenes, the banners weren’t tied right, or well. When I worked with the sideshow last summer, I would have had to retie them all if I did them! It’s a small detail, and hardly anyone would fixate on that.

The other thing was the mentalist’s name in the movie was Stanton Carlisle, who is a mentalist and I have a couple of his books. I did a little bit of research and it looks like he insists that’s his name, and he didn’t take it from the book Nightmare Alley. Stanton would have been about 20 when the book came out.

Oh, here’s the trailer for the movie:

We had a good time at the movie, check it out!

-Louie

Some Documentation…

Back at the end of October I had won some of Al Koran‘s ashes from the Ken Klosterman auction that Potter and Potter did. About a month ago they arrived,. I got a display, a sealed deck of Al Koran cards and a vial with some of his ashes.

Recently I got a shipping notice from Potter and Potter and I had to wait a few days for the mysterious package to arrive. It was documentation from Ted Lesley about him giving Ken some of the ashes and a little bit about the story behind it!

This letter wasn’t part of auction’s listing, but it was very cool of Potter and Potter to send it to me when the letter turned up!

-Louie

Al Koran…

A couple of weeks ago at Potter and Potter‘s Ken Klosterman auction I managed to win one item. It was Al Koran…well some of his ashes and a sealed deck of his cards along with a display.

If you don’t know much about him, here he is on the Ed Sullivan show:

Al invented Ring Flite and the Medallion, both tricks I’ve done a version of during my career!

-Louie

Learn About Your Props…

There are some amazing tricks in magic, one of them is the lottery prediction. It’s the answer to the question everyone gets (even if you aren’t a mentalist), which is “can you tell me the winning lottery numbers“.

There are a lot of solutions, and the best I think is Cesaral’s CUPP. The cool thing about that is at the end the audience is left with a physical lottery ticket they can keep. Right now I think there are several that use a picture of you holding the lottery ticket. Honestly I don’t think this has the impact of a physical ticket, because the easiest way for an audience to guess how it works is actually how it works.

This picture came across my facebook feed of someone doing a digital lottery prediction:

Here’s the problem with it. He’s using a prop (lottery ticket) that everyone is familiar with, but he’s using it wrong. Tons of people play the lottery, it’s a very popular game and because of that people know the rules. In Powerball you can only play numbers up to 69 for the first five numbers. That means that the 85 on that ticket would be impossible to play. Then the last number, the 99 is in the power ball position, which you can only play up to the number 26.

There have to be people who notice that. It’s a simple thing to fix by giving people a number range. I did the lottery prediction in my show for a couple of years, it’s not hard. That little bit of realism makes the trick soo much stronger.

That’s something that drives me nuts, when someone uses a prop to customize their show, but they know nothing of the prop. Look at how most people do the mismade flag…it’s very disrespectful to the flag.

If you use a prop that is something in real life, learn about it!

Adding a Bonus Trick

It’s the little things that when people notice, I think it elevates your show. Before Darren Brown’s show, I noticed some posters in the theater that seemed out of place. Well, they played a role in the show, but their role wasn’t really IN THE SHOW, but after the show. They reinforced something that happened.

There was a very cool moment for some of the people that attended the show as we were leaving the theater. When walking down the stairs from the balcony to leave the theater, people noticed the posters and started commenting on how they were a part of the show. It was almost like the people got a “bonus trick” on the way out of the show.

I’m a huge fan of things that tell your audience that it’s not a bunch of tricks you threw together. That your put thought into your show. The easy way to do that is through call backs, when you reference things that happened earlier in the show later in the show. In magic, you can do more that just reference, they can have a role in what happens later in the show. Darren Brown’s show has this happen in the body of the show, but using it for something that people notice while they are leaving the theater is GENIUS!