This is a new feature at iTricks, where we will pick the brains of some of the most important minds in magic via email. We could think of no better first subject than Teller. Questions were devised by a team of volunteers including Zachary Messer, Demetrian Jr., Dezrah Blinn, Richard Belotte, Jonny Zavant and Travis Lopes. We’d like to thank Teller for his wit, wisdom and patience.
Our questions are bolded, his answers are plain text. Enjoy.
Reportedly, it takes you and Penn around 2 years for an effect to go from conception to stage, and some effects like Shadows can take decades to perfect. What is that process like? Where does the original concept come from, how do you stay dedicated to it for so long, and how do you know when something is ready or that it will never be?
Some effects are as quick as a month. Most at least 4. Some up to two years.
Then they get in the show and get polished and rewritten.
There are no secrets. We put in the time and thought. We like working on this stuff. It gives us pleasure.
We take an idea as far as it can go by talking and writing it down. Then often we get into a rehearsal space and force ourselves through it from beginning to end to see if the overall sweep of it has potential. At this point we’re not at all worried about whether the trick works, just about whether the idea seems to have the right kind of meat on its bones.
If it requires props, we build the first ones very roughly. No point in doing finished work when you’re still at a rough outline stage. Most props need to be built once in rough, then once in finish, then revised in finish.
Sometimes an idea is comprised of many little ideas that go together.
Then each part gets its individual development, while you try to keep track of it all at the same time.
MUCH, MUCH MORE AFTER THE JUMPWhere does the original concept come from? All different directions. Sometimes it’s conceptual (e.g. “When an audience member is onstage and testifies to the validity of a trick, how worthwhile is that testimony?”) Sometimes it’s from the everyday world (”Airport security is giving up fundamental rights for specious safety.”) Sometimes it’s just daydreaming and fanciful play that gets organized into plot (”Shadows” was that way.)
Most good ideas have multiple dimensions, though, and we’re always looking for that. If an idea has a surprise twist to it, that’s generally a good sign (it means there’s enough of an idea for a reversal to matter).
If the idea is beautiful, it’s easy to stay devoted to it, just as it’s easy to want to keep having sex with the same beautiful person. In fact, I’ve fallen for as many beautiful bad ideas as I have beautiful bad people. You have to know when to break up (or throw out the idea.)
Something is ready when there is something filling every beat and Johnny Thompson and Mike Close can’t spot flaws in the execution of the trick. You know it’s not the final version, but you know you can get through it without embarrassment. It’s good to “hammock” an uncertain new bit between two secure old bits, so you come into it with confidence and get rescued immediately if it crashes and burns.
What is the most bizarre or outlandish place you’ve found inspiration for an effect that made it to the stage?
So far as I can recall, it never happens that way. We’ve gotten our best ideas while driving, in offices,
while swimming, while reading, while drinking TV, in diners, in our workshop. Inspiration generally happens during conversation, but not always. Our job is partly to come up with ideas. This is work.
Out of what need do you think magic was developed?
Magic as we know it is a highly ethical form of deception, a form of play in which the deceiver and deceived agree to the terms of a playful conflict. There’s considerable evidence that prior to Reginald Scot, the form blurred into everything from outright fraud to the kind of fuzzy fence-sitting some mentalists still practice. Modern magic is a mimesis of an impossible action that looks so much like reality that the audience is put into a state of pleasurably uncomfortable imbalance when they seem to be in the presence of what they know cannot exist.
To my mind, magic has no more to do with fantasy than any other art form. I can easily see a case for saying that movies are fantasies turned into pictures. But magic is different. It constantly invites us to test what we see against what we know. Its subject is not fantasy, but reality, examined through contradiction.
And with all the modern convinces of TV, Movies, international travel, the internet, etc. do we still have the need for magic, and if so then why then have we more or less been relegated to the realm of “cheesy entertainment”?
Magic is often considered cheesy because it is very often cheesy, to wit:
1. The same effects are repeated over and over again by one hack after another.
2. The pieces have no content apart from the trick, which is arbitrary, unappealing, and free of beauty, wit, and content.
3. Magicians are generally ugly, unfunny, unoriginal, badly dressed, and copy one another’s lame material in routines that deserve the name “routine.” (Here we see the effects of the much-vaunted “old wine in new bottles” tradition.)
4. Magicians address the audience as though the magicians are superior beings. Many people resent this, believe it or not.
And yet the art has survived — which indicates just how hungry the human species is for the intrinsic fascination of the art.
Brick and mortar stores are on the decline, the magic club community is aging and the proliferation of magic information on the internet have all led to the decline of traditional apprenticing relationships in magic.
I know brick and mortar stores are declining, but isn’t there a huge online community that we’ve never had access to before? So instead of dropping into your local magic shop, suddenly you can chat routinely with some magician in Denmark or Alaska? Until I was in high school, I had no mentors to speak of. I lived off of books, experimentation, and daydreaming.
How do you think this growing lack of one-on-one guidance will influence magic as an art, and what do you think the community as a whole should do to address it, or is it even a problem worth addressing?
Well, it’s wonderful to learn from one another. It’s the pleasantest thing in the world. But the presence, for example, of iTricks sure suggests that we are more, not less, in communication with one another. And we will always seek out one another in person. Magic is a form that exists only live.
We’d again like to thank Teller along with everyone who helped us with the questions. If you’d like to help contribute questions for the next iTricks Q&A, please follow @iTricks on Twitter.