159: Gladwell & Fields - Flim & Flam

Bill Gladwell really fooled 'em. Without having an act or any performing experience as a mentalist, he boldly and successfully landed one of the most lucrative opportunities in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Bill negotiated a short term contract that led to a longer, seven year agreement headlining at the Isis Theater in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in his own one-man show entitled, "Head Case". He recently added Keith Fields, a transplanted British street performer and comedian, in the theater as a separate show, "A Brit of Magic".

For information, location, show times and tickets, please visit: http://www.iristheater.com/

As you can imagine, there is much more to this story, and here you can hear it all on this podcast. But much more than that, we have a rather interesting discussion about developing the act, disclaimers in mentalism shows, meeting audience expectations, cultural and religious differences in audiences, working comedy clubs, street performing, adjusting your act to fit your audience, "situational" based vs "target" based on handling volunteers, and more.

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Magic & Martinis' Thursday

158: Bargatze, Merrill & Corsaro - The Comedy Process

Comedy writing isn't pretty. Like making sausage, it's a process with an end product that is up to the taste of the audience to appreciate. Walking the fine edge of a razor doesn't even begin to describe it. It takes grueling hours to labor over a line that might take a few seconds to deliver while other jokes come at the spur of the moment. Creativity is a muscle and must be exercised meaning good ideas don't necessarily come easily.

Stephen Bargatze and Rick Merrill are well-known in the international magic community as comedy magicians. David Corsaro has been the longtime producer of "Time To Be Awesome" video blog. This blog features video interviews with some of the most awesome magicians in the land who talk about their magic and roads to success.

Together these three magicians create a one-time-only comedy skit that is featured as the closing act at the annual Fechter's Finger Flicking Frolic (F.F.F.F.) convention. Steve and Rick combine physical and cerebral humor that entertains the audience and leaves the attendees talking about their act for the next year.

If you enjoy this podcast, then you will love The Improv Nerd with Jimmy Carrane. This podcast was recommended to me by Eric Dittleman and I want to recommend it to you. It is hosted by a well-known improv teacher, Jimmy Carrane, who interviews some of the icons in the world of improvisational comedy. It is a fascinating podcast that delves into the comedy writing process in each episode. You can visit the website at http://jimmycarrane.com/improv-nerd-podcast/ or search for it in iTunes or your favorite podcast catching app.

An example of one of the videos from David Corsaro and "Time To Be Awesome"

In this podcast, Stephen Bargatze, Rick Merrill and David Corsaro go on the record with a "tell all" about their creative process and how they came together and work together. They talk about molding ideas, structuring the jokes, trying to appeal to the audience's appreciation of their brand of humor, "hits and misses", brainstorming, working in comedy clubs, improvisation, and more.

Magic & Martinis Thursday

A little light reading during the cocktail hour. What's on your shelf?

157: Jim Sisti - On The Menu

What was he thinking? Why would someone start a bi-monthly magic publication in the early 1990’s? Desktop publishing was in its infancy in 1990, and I mean dot matrix printing and tractor-fed printers. And when I say low resolution graphics, I really mean pixilated clip art. Wow! And then to make it even more arcane, focus on a small segment of the magic society: restaurant magic. Even at its peak, they only had 500 subscribers. What was he thinking?

But Jim Sisti had a passion and created something that will live as essential reading for the restaurant magician as the Bible of Restaurant Magic. The Magic Menu started with the September/October 1990 issue that carried on for 11 years and eventually bound into two hardback volumes. I believe Jim has a plan for the last couple year’s worth of issues to be bound sometime.

The Magic Menu led the field in educating magicians in how to be a restaurant magician. It remains the longest running and only regularly published newsletter exclusively for the performing restaurant magician. The Magic Menu included advice, tips, tricks, brilliant articles and more for the restaurant magician. Contributors included all the top workers of the day including Al the Only, Michael Ammar, Michael Close, Jay Sankey, Simon Lovell, Paul Green, Doc Eason, Eugene Burger, just to drop a few. I was pleased and honored to have been one of the regular columnists for The Magic Menu for a number of years. I was also the one who designed the artwork for the masthead for the later years of the publication.

Jim was recently an adviser for Criss Angel’s “MindFreak” TV show and now works with Richard Osterlind and seen on many of Richard’s instructional videos. Jim is not only a close-up magician but also a skilled stage performer as well.

In this podcast, Jim talks a little about The Magic Menu, but more extensively about restaurant magic and some of the ideas gleaned from this publication. Jim talks about the real secrets and talks about facts, figures and money.. In addition to talking about the genesis of The Magic Menu, we discussed Bulletin Board Services (BBS) and other early iterations of how magicians congregated online in the days of "dial-up", which was long before the internet.

If you are interested in performing in a restaurant or in a corporate strolling environment, then this is a "must hear" podcast.