Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Blacklisted American Magician Became a Hero in Brazil

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–64 of 64 posts

Re: A Blacklisted American Magician Became a Hero in Brazil

#61

Post by mrandish »

jackthetab wrote: post #11
metalliqaz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen P&T's show in Vegas a few times, and I've seen many of their TV appearances. They do explain how illusions work, but they don't spoil other magicians tricks. They will do an old classic, show it from the "other side", and then while you aren't paying attention they pull off something new, giving no explanation for that one.

I just saw an interview with Penn wherein he stated that they have been thrown out of The Magic Castle, et. al for revealing tricks. Given their popularity, I'm sure they've been allowed back in. :-)

I used to hang out with Penn back when I was a castle member and he never mentioned that to me. I guess it's possible that happened but it would have been a very long time ago. The Magic Castle was founded in the late 1960s by two brothers, Bill and Milt Larson. Since then it has gone through quite a few different regimes. There was a brief time back in the 1980s when P&T were first breaking nationally when some older magicians made an issue about what they heard the P&T show contained (most hadn't actually seen it themselves). But this was a minority of magicians, mostly older hobby-types, and never the working pros. Every club tends to have some older cranks who focus on policing hall passes or whatever. If P&T wanted to go to the Castle in recent decades they'd be gladly welcomed. I'm pretty sure Michael Close, who's been the senior technical coordinator running the behind-the-scenes of P&T's Fool Us show for many years was on the Magic Castle board of directors at some point.

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.

Re: A Blacklisted American Magician Became a Hero in Brazil

#62

Post by BobaFloutist »

mrandish wrote: post #54
jrochkind1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was still pretty boring TV, honestly. Being in the audience in person was probably more thrilling. As a child, it seemed like a stupid trick to me even without knowing how he did it -- that's it? I guessed some kind of mirrors or something. Maybe I wasn't smart enough as a 9-year-old to realize how hard it would be to fool the in-person audience? It didn't seem hard to me.

I watched it when it originally aired and agree it was surprisingly unimpactful on TV. Interesting backstory: I know someone who worked on the creative team for that TV special and while developing new illusion concepts, they brainstormed the idea of making the moon disappear from the night sky (as verified by a live audience augmented with astronomers with telescopes and a laser). However, they realized the concept…

Disclaimer: I'm not super into magic, and I don't know what David Copperfield's "flying" looks like.

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.

Re: A Blacklisted American Magician Became a Hero in Brazil

#63

Post by mrandish »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #62
mrandish wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched it when it originally aired and agree it was surprisingly unimpactful on TV. Interesting backstory: I know someone who worked on the creative team for that TV special and while developing new illusion concepts, they brainstormed the idea of making the moon disappear from the night sky (as verified by a live audience augmented with astronomers with telescopes and a laser). However, they realized the concept…

Disclaimer: I'm not super into magic, and I don't know what David Copperfield's "flying" looks like. 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 ide…

> probably just thinking "Well it's wires somehow, I just don't know how,"

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.

Re: A Blacklisted American Magician Became a Hero in Brazil

#64

Post by ahazred8ta »

bigbuppo wrote: post #13
DocTomoe wrote: post #6

Considering for some years now, Penn & Teller's whole act is basically exactly what this guy did, I'd chalk his shunning down to him trying to protect his identity (yes, in the last episode, he dud reveal himself, I know... but I suspect that was not entirely voluntary.)

P&T's whole deal is revealing the low-hanging fruit in frutherance of the greater trick. There are some circles that shun them for revealing things, but they're still respected by those same groups, and are well-liked all around. Why? Penn and Teller respect the artform. Valentino just went around being a dick about it, with complete contempt for the craft. That's the difference. Seriously... his deal is magicians li…

Critics have been spoiling tricks for thousands of years. (Bel and the Dragon is in the Bible)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel_and_the_Dragon#Bel

Post reply on HN