iTricks contacted the biggest names in magic to hear the stories behind their first paid gigs. Here is Rudy Coby’s Tale.
My first paid Magic gig was for a birthday party when i was 9 years old. It was for a friend of my Mother’s and all the kids were much younger than me.
Even then, I took my Magic VERY seriously – I wore a black turtleneck sweater so I looked like James Bond and I was doing a manipulation act that I recently beat Jeff McBride with at our local ‘Magician of the Year’ contest in Middletown, New York. He performed a far superior manipulation act using only coins and dollar bills and clearly was better than me, but I had a Zombie ball routine and a bit where a rabbit was stabbed with an appearing cane, so obviously I was the Magicians’ choice (I still don’t think he forgives me for this)
Anyway, the pre-school age audience were jabbering about during my Multiplying Billiard Balls into painted Zombie Ball routine – clearly these little bastards didn’t recognize that I was the ONLY Magician performing Ron MacMillan’s extremely difficult routine in the greater Upstate New York area.
I stopped my cassette tape mid-routine, took the 10 dollars that I was pre-paid out of my pocket and informed the pre-school audience that they didn’t deserve to see a Magic show because of their disrespect. I marched out with my little suitcase packed – despite the pleadings of the birthday part kids – and got into the car my Mother was sitting in outside waiting to take me home in.
My attitude hasn’t changed in 30 years: Magic deserves respect. If it isn’t there, you have your Mother drive you home.
ps – I’m currently working on something that will make people respect Magic. It is something so good my Mother won’t have to be idling the car outside in case it sucks.
Thank you very much Rudy Coby for sharing your story.
As they gear up to reveal their big lottery prediction, Singapore’s JC Sum and Magic Babe Ning have received a ton of attention for the mentalism stunt. Although known for their larger scale illusions, they seem to have hit on a cerebral cord with their latest venture.
They were nice enough to answer a few questions from iTricks via email.
- How did you get the idea for the stunt?
JC: Like many magicians, I actually thought of doing the lottery prediction (specifically the 4D in Singapore’s local context) midway in my career. I guess this would have been about 2002 when I first developed a full mentalism show. However, I had no avenue to do this. Fast forward to early 2009. A couple months before this, Ning & I teleported 3 spectators across the Singapore River in 2.5 Seconds so we ran an informal Facebook poll asking friends and fans what they would like to see us perform next. A large percentage said a lottery-type prediction.
We originally pitched “The Impossible 4D Prediction” to the Singapore
Tourism Board in Mar 2009 for the Singapore River Festival that was to be held in end-Jun 2009. They chose our “The Impossible Record: 15 Illusions in 5 Minutes” instead. So, we waited till now to present our version of the lottery prediction.
- What is the reaction locally to a mentalism effect like this in comparison to big visual illusion spectacle like you’ve done in the past?
Ning: The reaction with public and media has been awesome! While this might be the smallest scale stunt we have done, it has achieved the most amount of buzz in both traditional and new media. Not only did the psychological illusion make news headlines, the term “magic babe ning” was the #1 most searched item on Yahoo Singapore on 21 Jan 2010. But, we also know that it is all our previous mega illusions that gave us the “celebrity” and credibility for people to be interested in us attempting this prediction.
- You guys seem to have quite a following in Singapore, any plans to tour or perform in Europe or America?
JC: Plans have already been in the works since last year so let’s hope the stars are align for us to bring our magic to the U.S. this year!
As they perform for packed houses at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Barry and Stuart were nice enough to answer a few questions from us here at iTricks. We thank them for their time. Enjoy.
Our questions are bolded, their answers are in plain text.
- In your first series, ” Magick”, you played a bunch of recurring characters. Will we ever see any of them return?
B: Possibly, we certainly had lots of ideas for developing these characters further, but we haven’t really found another vehicle to bring them back just yet.
S: We certainly still play around with characters and disguises – as you may have recently seen when we pretended to be a Russian psychic and a paranormal scientist for an online trick for the BBC.
- Many of your routines play with the concepts of narrative, where does that come from?
B: I think that we were initially frustrated with the lack of motivation in most magic routines and plots. Why on earth would someone want to eat razorblades? Why would they swallow thread? How the hell did they discover this phenomenon? So we like to come up with stories and plots that make the props and the actions make sense.
S: We were fascinated with the idea of taking ego out of performing magic. We do not like the classic status of the magician as Man of Power, who can do all these wonderful things that you cannot. We took that and turned it on its head, so that the magic was not a power for our characters, but was rather a curse.
B: We often achieve that by having narrative twists so that the performer doesn’t always come out on top every time. Like our character of the homeless magician, who did magic that no-one could see, or Diego the hustler who was a great swindler but always ended up losing more than he gained.
S: A particular favourite was Suicide Boy, who desperately wanted to die, but his magical powers caused him to fail in his suicide attempts. For example, when he tried to hang himself, his neck unfortunately just magically penetrated the rope. A scene that was deemed so dark that it was censored by the channel from the final cut.
- What are your biggest influences outside of magic?
S: Films, mainly horror films and in particular a lot of foreign horror films. We like short stories also, classic tales and the cautionary children’s tales from the Victorian era. We also like unusual music and instruments that either don’t look like instruments or make weird sounds. We just can’t help but incorporate these sorts of things into our routines.
B: Our show this year makes use of both a Theremin and a Stylophone as well as some of the weirdest and funniest music we’ve found on old vinyl records over the past few years.
Hear what the boys say about the realm of “good taste,” if they ever hope to crack the American market and how important dark comedy is to their act AFTER THE JUMP
He’s a mentalist, a card magician and has produced some of our favorite magic television… ever. Anthony Owen works to bring Derren Brown, Barry and Stuart, Pete Firman and Ali Cook to televisions in the UK and to computer screens via YouTube around the world. Now he talks to Justin Robert Young about how you can find your niche and define it as well as much, much more.
Scam School host Brian Brushwood talks about the importance of being 8 years old, the logic behind magic on the internet and then grills the host Justin Robert Young with his own questions. If you don’t already know that Brian is just a killer guest then now is the time to start.
Finally, an interview for folks who didn’t decide they wanted to make magic their living at 14. Paul Draper is a Las Vegas staple who has an incredibly interesting story and some great thoughts about what it means to be a professional.
Our 2008 iTricks Trick of the Year winner sits down and tells us about his very rough childhood, self-reliance and when to know when to ask for advice.
We originally pitched “The Impossible 4D Prediction” to the Singapore