Steve Dacri?s new close-up show received very favorable reviews from the Las Vegas Review-Journal yesterday.(Read article here). The paper notes that unlike the big illusion shows in Vegas, it is very difficult to generate income from a close-up presentation.Mr. Dacri may just the idea.
The Review-Journal credits Mr. Dacri as ?a veteran sleight-of-hand artist who for years was a frequent performer at Caesars Magical Empire, a themed attraction that had its own small theater dedicated to close-up magic.?Now, he and his wife Jan areinnovating again byperformance ofclose-up magic in the back room of Sazio?s restaurant inside The Orleans Casino.
With the kind of questions every close-up magician hopes to hear, the paper pays its respect to the very accomplished Mr. Dacri:
“How does he get those signature foam balls — he calls them ‘Martians’ — into a person’s closed fist without that person feeling it? How did he move those silver dollars from one fist to the other?
“Don’t try to figure this out, you’ll just get a headache,” he advises his audience.”
Mr. Dacri is one of the truly good guys in Magic and has contributed so much to our Art.It?s nice to see that he?s not only still contributing with a new show format in a town that claims to have seen everything but that the town is giving him the props he deserves.
The Review-Journal finishes the positive critique thusly:
You know you?ve made it when Barbara Walters interviews you.You?ve at least made it in Barbara?s eyes and that?s saying something, I guess.
She will do her best to make her guests cry, laugh and generally praise her on this week?s ?Ten Most Fascinating People of 2003.?
Who can forget when she got former Ed Sullivan Show stalwart Topo Gigio to sob as he confessed that he felt manipulated by his former partner and creative manager, Maria Perego?
Won?t we always recall the great sense of joy we felt when we watched her dine anddance with,and then drunkenlygrope, a leering Don Knotts?
Well, this week, Barbara brings her interrogation talents to break the will of Beyonc? Knowles, Jennifer Lopez/Ben Affleck and Siegfried and Roy.(There are others but you get the picture).
With great sensitivity, ABC promotes the broadcast by telling papers:
There is an old tradition in the news business, that when there’s no news, put a picture of a “pretty girl and her dog on the cover.” We don’t need her today, though.
Sometimes the Magic news just isn’t there.I comb the wires looking for stories and if I don’t find anything, I just make it up.(See, November 12, 2003 edition of the page where the top story is, “Houdini Returns From Dead: But Cadaver-Like Appearance Scares Young Audience in Kid Show Debut” or August 3, 2003, “Uri Geller Opens Shop as Orthodontist: But Cadaver-Like Appearance Scares Young Patients”).
But today is special.Today the news is full of good stuff for people who love Magic.For instance, check out the Sarasota Herald Tribune ? where my father was a writer a few years back ? for a great article on Michael Barron and his ability to change his clothes in a quarter of a second.He tells the paper the theme of his act ? so it doesn’t appear to be just a regular strip off all your clothes and put on new clothes routine:
“It’s about a janitor, and I’m cleaning up after a birthday party and I find a birthday cake that is all mangled. I make a wish and it doesn’t happen, so I go away,” he said in a telephone interview from Chicago. “Then it explodes in a flash of light, and I become this hot-shot guy in a zoot suit with money flying everywhere. Literally, in a quarter of a second, I’m in a different costume.”
TO: George Robinson Haenchen, Viking & Collector’s Workship
Hi George:
I’m sorry to learn that Jam Magic of Crossvile, TN is advertising two of your Collector’s Workshop items, Gift of Time and Miracle Cassette Prediction, in the new issue of Magic Magazine.
As I say in my article in the November issue of The Magic Circular, the inventors should speak out when they see a rip-off of their products. They should contact the magazine editors to tell them about “the what and the who”, and ask that the offending ads be removed from their magazine.
Phil Willmarth is one editor who has always refused ads that contain known rip-offs. But Phil rightly says that an editor cannot know of every trick’s origination and cannot therefore recognize every rip-off. None of us has this total knowledge. So it’s up to the inventors, or those who retain the proprietray rights of effects, to notify everyone…magazine editors, Ethics Committee chairmen of the magic societies, and the internet forums.
Remember, with the internet there is no place to hide.
If Jam Magic wanted to advertise the rip-offs in The Linking Ring or The Magic Circular in England, and you asked that the ads be refused, I’m sure they would want to know and would quickly comply.
I’m sure you know Tilford’s ads are now out of The Linking Ring starting with last month’s November issue. It seems like it woud be so obviously fair for the other magazines to follow suit. It is wrong for them to now benefit with possibly more and larger ads from Tilford in their own magazines. They surelyknow that the main clout we have in fighting the rip-off trade is to try and get the rip-off builders and dealers out of our magazines and out of our convention dealer booths. They may find that the majority of the magic inventors will soon advertise only in the magazines that comply with fairness in this growing problem.
On Ring 2100 todaythere was agood question, “Why is Terry Bergen, the curator of the Outagamie County Museum in Appleton, Wisconsin, so adamant in her desire to expose Houdini’s number one trck, Metamorphosis.
In the Houdini display, a part of the whole museum, she wants to have a sub trunk there with the gimmick exposed, and allow children of all ages to crawl in and out ofthe trunkto “get the feel” of Houdini’s tricks. She says this will be “educational” for everyone, and education is her purpose at the museum.
She hasn’t a clue as to what magic and magicians are all about, why we keep our secrets to protect our illusions and tricks, that keeping our secrets is absolutely essential if the general public is to enjoy our magic.
You would think it would be obvious to her, or to anyone, that if you know there is agimmick in the trunk, you are no longer going to be mystified. No matter how good the presentation, if you have been told the secret, there will be no delight, wonder or astonishment. But Ms. Bergen obviously failed her Class 101 in magic. And yet she is the curator of The Houdini Museum…thus my designation of Ms. Bergen as “the wrong person in the wrong job and the wrong time”.
I was fortunate to get Mark Wilson and David Copperfield to devote some of their valuable time and each speak with Ms. Bergen for over an hour by phone.
Mark and David both said she was a “stone wall”. Her ego was not going to allow anyone to change her mind from her “brilliant idea”.
There have been a number of Wisconsin magicians who have talked with her, also many letters from around the world. The more letters she got the more she disliked magicians. How dare they intrude into HER domain.
We finally realized the only approach would be to try to convince the various business leaders in Appleton, those who fund the museum (like the Convention and Visitors Bureau and others who try to attract people to Appleton) that it would be wrong to defile Houdini by exposing his secrets to the general public.
Ms. Bergen then became enraged at magicians trying to “steal her funding” .
Yet she thinks nothing of “stealing magician’s secrets”. So what started as a rational and respectful attempt to educate her as to the magician’s code of ethics simply failed. So the gloves are off now, and we are cordially hoping to convince “the higher powers that be” in Appleton that it would be to their advantage and to the museum’s advantage to respect the magician’s code.
Their are a handfull of dedicated Wisconsin magicians who are spending a good deal of their time and talent in this pursuit. And the presidents of the major magic societies have also made contact with the wiser business people in Appleton. Let’s hope that we all win this one for the the art of magic.
Recent Comments