A Blacklisted American Magician Became a Hero in Brazil
wsj.com
wsj.com
"I lend you 10 bucks yesterday for you to buy lunch, today I see you are wearing a new shirt. Explain that Mr. M"
Watching the explanations on the other hand is fun.
To me it's like watching a trailer vs watching the full film.
Of course there are probably a couple of clueless amateur magicians somewhere out there who will spout about this guy but it's not how the vast majority of us feel. Anyone who studies and understands magic on a serious level already knows they can take the exact same techniques you saw exposed on that show and fool you silly with them the next day.
I know this is true because I've seen a top notch magician like legendary Spanish card worker Dani DaOrtiz perform for a roomful of very experienced professional magicians at a magic conference and completely blow their minds. The best part is that he used a technique that every person in that room already knew! In fact, the majority of those pro magicians have studied and performed it themselves for years - and were still fooled. A layperson seeing a 60 second drive-by expose on a TV show of a single implementation of one of thousands of techniques has zero impact on a good magician.
Make a space shuttle disappear[0], or hide an elephant. The TV show revealed all those to be fake and were in fact - paid audiences. My little brain trusted that they weren't paid and wanted to know so bad how the space shuttle disappeared.
Overall the TV and the internet helped push magic to exactly where it is today. Amazing, talented folks who even when you know how it's done, it's so good - it's magic.
This is indeed true. Those who look at magic as merely a puzzle to be solved are really missing out on the beauty and wonder of it. After a lifetime of studying magic, I know how almost every effect I see is done. Sadly, knowing how they are all done is the worst part of studying magic deeply. The best part is being able to appreciate really great magic on deeper levels.
Growing up near the Magic Castle and traveling to magic conferences over several decades I've had the privilege of seeing some of the greatest magicians in the world perform live. At the highest levels, great close-up sleight of hand transcends finger flinging dexterity and becomes all about timing, tone, pace, body language and other subtle cues which combined control the focus of the audience in stunning ways. One of the best I ever saw live was the legendary Albert Goshman, who died in 1991. By the time I met him, Al was in his late 60s and his hands were so arthritic he could barely grip his cane. Yet, somehow, it didn't matter. I watched Goshman perform at the Magic Castle dozens of times. I knew his entire act by heart, beat by beat - and it fooled me silly every time.
Al's signature routine was the Salt Shaker trick. A coin would magically appear underneath a salt shaker sitting on the table. That was the entire trick. But it kept happening. Over and over. Nothing else was on the table, no cover, nothing. And you never saw him put the coin there. The entire audience would just be burning that damn salt shaker with unblinking stares. There was no trick to it. It was just a normal salt shaker. The table was a normal green felt-covered poker table sitting under a bright spotlight with the audience at the table right alongside Al. The shaker, coin and table could all be borrowed. It didn't matter where you were or how close. You could even stand behind him.
Al's gnarled, shaking hands clearly weren't doing any sophisticated slight of hand. The only magic on display was Goshman's Jedi-like ability to control the attention of the entire audience, which he honed over decades of performing this one routine. I heard from older magicians that there was a time decades earlier when Goshman relied more on sleight of hand but he got so good at mind control, the trick still worked even when Al's hands no longer did. Toward the end of the trick he'd point out that maybe all that salt was keeping you from seeing when the coin arrived under the shaker, so he would replace the salt shaker with a clear water glass placed upside down in the middle of the empty table. Then he'd warn you he was going to put the coin under the glass. And, somehow, he managed to still do it when you weren't looking. Which was freaky because everyone in the audience would realize the coin had appeared under the glass at different moments. Then he'd proceed to do it again. And again. For the finale, a giant 3-inch coin bigger than the glass appeared under the glass. The coin was so big, the glass was actually sitting on the coin! The stunned silence usually lasted a good 15 seconds before the standing ovation.
Unfortunately, the effect of the unique misdirection ability Goshman developed over decades is largely muted in videos of him performing, So, sadly, the sheer mind-fucking visceral impact of that trick died with Goshman. A lot of good sleight of hand specialists could do every move in Goshman's act, probably better than Goshman could, but the clear glass - others could do the trick - but it only fooled people when Al himself did it. I've seen a lot of world-class close-up magic over the years, but that... that was special.
It's an interesting thought that a magic trick concept can be 'too amazing'. I think the Statue of Liberty was still 'too big' of a concept, at least for a television performance. Copperfield's illusion titled "Flying" is also really interesting in this regard. As both a magician and magical inventor, I think it's a terrific effect and Copperfield presented it beautifully. It's also one of the more difficult effects I've ever seen him do, both technically and physically. It's visually stunning, yet it just doesn't seem to have as strong of an impact on audiences as it should.
Levitating a person has long been one of the most challenging and popular stage illusions. Over the last 150 years it's been done dozens of different ways - with my personal favorite being the Asrah levitation invented by Servais Le Roy and first performed in 1902. Arguably, the Flying illusion, which was invented by legendary illusion creator Johnny Gaughan for Copperfield, is the ultimate 'perfect' levitation. It achieves levitation in its most ideal, unconstrained form yet somehow fails to 'connect' strongly with audiences. Understanding why it doesn't is one of those fascinating puzzles magical inventors debate over beer. Sometimes figuring out if you should do an effect is even harder than figuring out how to do it.
I think probably it's just too similar looking to easier tricks. A magician/enthusiast can appreciate the craft of the trick and the difficulty in executing it, a naive audience member is probably just thinking "Well it's wires somehow, I just don't know how," which is less exciting than "Wait I genuinely have no idea what on earth is going on here I could have sworn that ball was somewhere else."
We see singers and acrobats and circus clowns "flying", and while I'm sure it's vastly less impressive to anyone that knows what's going on, from four-hundred feet away it just doesn't actually look all that different.
My other (very speculative) suspicion is that I think object permanence is a pretty old, primitive part of our brains. They've done studies showing toddlers, and even a lot of animals, get confused when you clearly demonstrate violations of object permanence (e.g. put a ball in a tube and have it come out the other end, then put in another identical ball and it doesn't come out). I suspect tricks that make an object disappear or transport or duplicate or some other seeming nonsense have an easier time having a big impact because they're legible enough to impress a dog, and an audience full of cocktails isn't that different from a dog, when you get down to it.
Edit: and you said levitating has long been a very popular illusion, so maybe this wasn't the case in the past; I would suggest maybe modern audiences are just more familiar with wires/stage "flight" from other performers, or even, like, The Matrix. But again, I'm speaking from no knowledge, just thinking.
Yes, I agree this is likely a big component. It's interesting to ponder why "less pure" versions of levitation get bigger reactions. You can see Flying here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=112EIHu5gFc. What I like about the Flying illusion is that it is basically just a guy dangling on a wire. The artistry is in how Copperfield packages the presentation from the story-telling upfront to elevate the significance to the 'proof points' to eliminate audience suspicion like passing hoops over him and flying into a human sized glass fish tank with a lid (which each involve a lot of cleverness). It must've taken an enormous amount of practice to develop the body control that transforms it from "a guy dangling on a wire" to someone flying gracefully.
> object permanence is a pretty old, primitive part of our brains
Indeed. This is why close-up coin magic has always been my focus.
I hadn't heard that. It also strikes me as a little odd since both of those effects can be done for real so there's no good reason to cheat in that way. Houdini popularized the elephant vanish as part of his stage show over a hundred years ago and Copperfield vanished a Lear jet from an airport tarmac in one of his early TV specials. The jet was completely surrounded by blindfolded audience members who were holding hands. I know how both were done and neither relied on a stooge audience.
Streaming video and social media have been mostly terrific for the art of magic as there's a tremendous amount of excellent performance material now widely available. Even more importantly, anyone interested in learning magic can access very high-quality instruction videos. There's also interactive instruction with top notch magicians available one-on-one and in groups via Zoom. Growing up I got to see magic once or twice a year on TV and when I wanted to learn how to do it the local library had exactly three magic books. Fortunately, I happened to live in the Los Angeles area, auditioned for the Magic Castle and got accepted as as a junior member (a kind of apprentice program), where I was mentored by some of the greatest magicians of the 20th century and had access to the world's largest magic library. I was very, very lucky because 99.99% of teens interested in magic had nothing like that. Today, there's so much great magic readily available the only problem is curating what to see and learn.
The downside of streaming video magic is there's an entire generation of magicians who've only performed alone in their own house via recorded video clips. This has led to some oddly perverse outcomes. Not having a live, interactive and unpredictable audience eliminates a huge part of the challenge of magic. Some of the sleight of hand effects I've seen from Youtube-only performers only really look great from the exact angle of that one camera shot. Also, nailing some high-difficulty sleights every time can take years of practice but when you can make dozens of attempts and only post 'the good one', it's a different thing than repeatedly doing it five shows a night. Magic is really about solving for constraints, so having infinite 'backstage' time to prepare one effect as well as being able to 'cleanup' afterward hidden from the audience is profoundly different than creating a non-stop sequence of different effects while surrounded by a live audience looking wherever they want, whenever they want.
As a magical inventor, the thought of creating a new magic effect solely for the context of one-stationary-camera, single-effect-per-clip with infinite attempts is like shooting fish in a barrel. It removes so many constraints it's almost not even interesting from my perspective. It's like those amazing demo scene graphical demos on a 1987 Amiga 500. They're amazing because they create those effects within the constraints of the Amiga 500. Creating the same visual effects on a Geforce 5090 is hardly the same challenge. My Mom wouldn't understand why and, in much the same way, a non-magician may not understand how some Youtube magic isn't the same challenge as creating the same effect in an unpredictable, uncontrolled live context. And I'm not even talking about video editing tricks or special effects. Performing a single trick exactly one time (out of dozens of attempts) for a 'one-eyed' single-person audience whose head is locked down on a stationary tripod at one angle and who is blindfolded immediately before and afterward is, for many types of magic effects, as big a difference as that Geforce 5090 is to an Amiga. Both the Geforce and Amiga demos can look equally impressive but the skill, artistry and challenge are vastly different. I also suspect creating the demo on an Amiga vs 5090 was a lot more fun because it's a much more interesting challenge.
Given their popularity, I'm sure they've been allowed back in. :-)
The Magic Circle still asks them to donate items to their museum, despite refusing their membership.
The Magic Circle is quite different. It's not generally open to the public and is, frankly, quite old fashioned. It was only very recently that they even started permitting female members. For that reason alone I doubt that either Penn or Teller would ever want to go there. They'd probably be more likely to actively protest against the Magic Circle (at least until recently).
It would make more sense if perhaps P&T were "uninvited" from the UK's Magic Circle, which is a very different, much smaller and entirely unrelated private magic club. The Magic Circle only very recently started allowing female members, so I'm pretty sure P&T would be delighted to be banned there.
Otherwise, I don't think the issue is spoiling it for audiences as the craft and presentation style count as much or more than the trick itself.
Seriously... his deal is magicians lie? You mean it's all an act? What a revelation. At no time in the last few thousand years has anybody in the history of the world ever figured that out. Nope, none at all.
He got famous because everyone loves magic, and even more when you explain magic tricks
But most importantly, and what the author fails to mentions, it was because at that point in time anything on TV got famous, because TV was the only visual media we had that was "free"
https://www.folhadelondrina.com.br/geral/pf-multa-e-da-oito-...
Mentioning him as a “hero” in Brazil is quite an overstatement but whatever, but then the article goes on to bash and generalize Brazilians and paint him as a “rare” honest person that’s been lauded for it? I’d guess no one I know even know he lives in Brazil.
As a Brazilian, it has always been about a cool show that showed you cool new things, so he’s well known just like tons of other celebrities that grow beyond the US, and that’s it.
Retirement Plan Z (if everything else fails): Work as a messenger in Brazil. They're hiring.