Latest / The Magic Guys / Shawn Farquhar & Jon Ornoy hang out with The Magic Guys #184

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Shawn Farquhar & Jon Ornoy hang out with The Magic Guys #184 · The Magic Guys

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  They are the magic guys that
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  was 50 correct oh hello
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  friends wow hello friends welcome to the magic guys podcast and welcome to episode
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  184 i'm your host nick k and joining me this week is daddy of the pod doug khan
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  say hey doug salutations,
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  kindred spirits.
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  And haters. What?
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  I'm just saying hi to the haters. I like to say hi to them occasionally.
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  I know they lurk. Hi. That's all. You hate Doug Kahn. They're out there.
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  No, that's ridiculous. It's a true story. We have nothing but love.
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  We have nothing but love, especially here on the podcast.
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  So thank you for being here to our friends as well. Unfortunately,
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  Josh Nobito is not here, but he does send his love in the form of boots and
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  cats bless you and just a quick shout out to everyone here hello
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  to thomas chris tim askin andrew massey it's a new name good to see you friend
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  our friend the christian magician and abundance of others dragoteer good to
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  see you nick thank you all for being here we have a very exciting guest to speak
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  before we hit off let's have a quick catch up with doug doug you are forever busy.
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  Anything exciting to report this week? Oh, yeah. I was busy being,
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  oh, I'm a little hot on the mic. Nick says, let me tune down.
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  That should be good or a little bit, a little bit lesser.
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  I celebrated my birthday. So I was being a regular muggle for the last few days.
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  The wife and I skirted off to local casino.
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  I got some poker sessions in, had a great time, made a little wife, lost a little.
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  I think our memories equal the amount we spent and I got to spend it with my best friend.
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  Love, love of my life. So that is adorable. horrible do you i was told that
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  in casinos you can't cheat with the cars but you can cheat with the chips do
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  you cheat at all you know what i no no i have cheated in a poker game where i had no.
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  Skin in the game as they say i was a dealer in a tournament at a local bar and
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  occasionally i'd throw in some false shuffles or a false deal but never where
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  where it would affect the game i wouldn't even know the card i would just bottom
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  deal to see if i could do it so that's about the
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  extent of my cheating just to try to get away with it but not have it matter there used to be a,
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  poker game among the the street performing fraternity
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  here in melbourne and the deal was that you were allowed to
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  cheat in fact it was encouraged but if you were caught if you were caught you
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  had to fork out 50 bucks into the kitty so yeah there was rumor of a game like
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  that in cincinnati when i was a young young magician they said you know these
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  guys have a poker game and it It was like Larry Pringle and Ken Beale,
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  Paul Swinford, some real heavy hitters.
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  And I can only imagine, you know, these guys really going to work.
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  What a great way to practice if you're into that. Yeah, I think so too.
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  Now, speaking of practice and practicing magicians and filmmakers,
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  we have an amazing guest on today.
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  Doug, I cannot wait to meet them. Would you be kind enough to do the intro?
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  Wow. Well, let me tell you, this gentleman and his partner in crime,
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  we'll say, have made an amazing piece of art.
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  And prior to this, Sean Farquhar, the name I'm sure many are familiar with,
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  has established himself as an icon of modern magic,
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  accomplishing things that are unheard of, multiple-time award-winning,
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  world champion, FISM award-winning magician.
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  I think he's won every award there is. He's a multiple pen and teller.
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  Fool us two or three times, maybe. We'll let him tell us how many times.
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  When you lose count, that's when you know you're doing all right.
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  And man, just let me tell you just about being in the same room with this guy at a magic convention.
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  He's the last one to leave the jam and always there helping guys out.
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  And just what a wonderful human.
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  I could keep blabbering about him, but he's here now so we We can talk to him.
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  What do you say we bring him on? Let's do it.
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  Music.
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  Hey, that's really cool to hear your eulogy in advance.
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  I lost over John just because I don't get to see him that much.
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  But let me tell you about John Ornoy. How do you pronounce your name? Ornoy.
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  Ornoy. What an amazing film you've made. I mean, sure, Sean gets the headlines
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  in these magic podcasts.
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  You're the one who did all the work. He did. He did it all. I just showed up.
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  Indeed. Now, folks, we obviously know who you guys are, but there might be a
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  very small minority of folk listening who don't know.
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  So please, John, let's start with you, good friend. Please tell us who you are and what you do.
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  I'm a filmmaker based in Vancouver. I've been working in the film industry for
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  about 25 years, produced and directed a bunch of films, but this is my first
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  feature that I've directed.
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  And yeah, it's been pretty exciting to be out here now, sharing with everyone.
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  And yeah, thanks for having us.
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  Very cool. And who's your friend? Is he a magician or something?
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  Something. Hi, my name is John and I'm an addict. I'm down to two packs a day.
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  Sorry have i left out past international president right of the international
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  president of the ibm past president of the canadian association magicians past
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  president of the pacific coast association magicians past president of ring
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  92 yeah i'm supposed to join her that's me,
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  my eye is a question off the back of that that
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  wasn't actually on my on my radar until you mentioned it but what
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  i'm very curious about is this i find that magic clubs
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  which we joked about back backstage that it's
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  basically you know most of them consist of a bunch of
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  old folk who don't particularly practice magic they
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  just want to know secrets and go home they don't really you know they just
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  enjoy that i particularly love it hold on a minute
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  we didn't go all there we're just like it's old people old people
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  what doug you were late to the chat so so
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  please let me finished okay that's right okay yeah yeah
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  and we've spoken about this with most almost every
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  magician we had in here morten christiansen being one of them just last week
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  and this is one of the things that i wanted to touch upon it seems like there
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  is gets to a point in a magician's career where they become successful and they
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  start venturing into a realm where as far as magic skills go it becomes into
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  more of an elite almost time to step into the world-class magician.
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  And I find that when people start to hit that realm, that they stop going to
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  the clubs and they stop involving themselves in that realm and they have their reasons.
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  But I feel that maybe you shouldn't, and maybe you should be a world-class magician
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  hanging out in these clubs, if nothing else, to inspire more.
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  I don't know anyone who's done that better than yourself.
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  Why do you do the magician I am today? If it hadn't been for the magic clubs
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  and be selfish to just leave now going, well, I got everything I need and it's time to go.
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  I look at the young people that when, when I was in the club and they were like
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  nine and 10, and now we're all professional headliners working around the world
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  and they are just as committed to coming back to the club too.
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  And yeah, you get the guys and the girls who are just in it to learn a few tricks,
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  but you've also got the hobbyists who love the history.
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  And I had mentors like John Gill, and he would go into the library.
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  I'd say, I want to learn a watch deal.
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  And a month later, the next meeting, he would have a Duotang folder with 400
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  pages that he photocopied from every book that had something to do with the
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  watch deal and said, I could never do that research.
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  I could never afford to do it. And here was a person spending their free time to help me.
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  What I do is little compared to what they did for me.
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  Yeah i see these professors i don't belong to a club because i'm too busy working
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  i said but you're working because you were in a club at some point and if you
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  weren't then you're very rare just really rare yeah john do you find that to
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  be sort of true in the filmmaking realm.
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  Yeah i think any kind of creative industry you're going to be standing on the
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  shoulders people above you who have been there before so yeah definitely i think
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  you can go to film school and learn a little bit,
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  but you're not really going to learn the craft until you're out there doing
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  it amongst other professionals and people who've been doing it for decades.
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  So, yeah, I think that's definitely an important part. I wouldn't say I'm pointing
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  to the point in my career where I'm passing that on yet, but I'll be there soon.
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  Hey, speaking of passing it on and related topics, Sean, you're going to be
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  at magic Texas this weekend, which is the combined society of American magicians
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  and also association of magicians.
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  And it's FISM North America. The
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  only gateway to get into go to the world championship next year in Italy.
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  Sure to be a killer weekend, but what caught my ear earlier,
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  you're also doing cause you're not busy enough.
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  The society of young magicians. Yeah.
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  They have a youth Academy and they've asked several of the artists that they
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  would donate their time to come in, teach, lecture, share workshop with the kids.
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  And you know, I don't sleep. So I have a few extra hours than most people do.
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  So I'm doing that as well.
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  I love that group. I've done it for a number of years. There's New Orleans last
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  year. I did participate in New Orleans.
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  Arlen called me up and was like, Doug, you got some time? I said,
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  for the youth, absolutely.
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  Absolutely. That's what we're supposed to do, Doug. Yeah.
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  And we're doing a screening of the film there too. Yeah, we're showing the film there.
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  So if you're in the Dallas area, you're showing it at the convention and also
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  publicly as well, correct?
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  We've got screenings on August 30th and September 2nd at the Look Dine-In Cinemas
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  in Dallas. And so we'll be there for the first show.
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  The Q&A. Apparently they can eat there. Yes, they can have a dinner.
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  They can have a dinner, watch the movie, then I do a short show,
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  and then John and I do a question and answer. It's kind of like a package.
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  If you're anywhere near Dallas and love magic, go do that.
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  I mean, you're probably going to Magic, Texas anyway, because wow, what a lineup that is.
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  It's like all FISM winners. Mike Miller, the entertainment director,
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  I think it's the best lineup.
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  He's been doing it for decades, but it's without a doubt the best lineup I've
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  ever seen them put together.
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  It's every FISM winner since like 2009. It's just insane.
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  I mean, not all, but like the ones you really like go, oh my God,
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  Eric Chen, Laurent with his piece of paper.
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  Norbert Ferrer, it's just. Norbert Ferrer. Yeah.
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  Watch him perform a thousand times. And Artem is there. It's like just,
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  it's a huge lineup of just incomparable performers.
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  Well, let's, let's circle back to this. So we are talking, of course,
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  about the movie that you guys have produced.
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  And of course, you, John, you directed, which is Lost in the Shuffle.
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  Tell our folks what it actually explores. Because to me, it's crazy fascinating.
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  And what was even more fascinating is before the show, you were telling us that
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  not only are magicians loving it, but real people.
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  Like, real ones. Yeah, that's one of the big goals of the film was.
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  I've been a magic fan of my entire life. I don't know how to do anything.
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  Thing but this you know making a documentary is a kind of way
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  of immersing yourself in a world and giving yourself an
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  excuse to spend a lot of time there and so I'm hoping
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  that people walk away from the film who are magicians with a better appreciation
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  of the art form because I think it's one
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  that does generally not get the credit it deserves and so people
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  can kind of walk away from it going wow there you know it's not
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  just you know simple things that you can buy in the store that
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  there's a lot of heart and philosophy and psychology that goes
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  into it and that these are artists who are expressing themselves
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  through this this craft and so yeah i
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  really hope people walk away with that appreciation john really
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  pulled the passion out of all of them it really it
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  shows in the film that they're all truly passionate about it and they express
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  it in such amazing ways it's just it was really heartwarming what i find really
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  interesting is this centuries-old murder mystery surrounding the design of playing
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  cards and i only say that because it's the first time it's been brought to my attention.
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  And I was unaware of this until now. Doug, were you familiar with this?
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  Well, I learned about it last year when Sean previewed the film in New Orleans. Yeah. I wasn't.
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  Yeah, I think that was definitely a very interesting part of it that,
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  you know, none of these world-class magicians that we talked to had ever really
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  looked at the design of the cards.
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  All spent so much time, you know, studying, working with them,
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  but it's something that you maybe see so often that you stop looking at.
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  And so I think it's really cool to kind of step back and really take a focus
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  and look at the cultural and sociological impacts that these very simple pieces of paper have had.
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  And then the elements of the kind of endless amount of creativity that they
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  can inspire amongst magicians.
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  I love that we sprung it on them.
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  We didn't give him any advance. We said, we're going to talk about playing cards.
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  And then in the middle of the interviews, it was like, what have I told you? And they're like, what?
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  Well, I'm just curious, before we press on to the questions that we have from
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  our audiences, I was wondering who stumbled upon finding this murder mystery and where?
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  Well, in the movie, I'll tell you all about it. But I can tell you that Steve
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  Beam put out a magic book, semi-automatic card tricks in it.
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  There's one where the Queen of Spades actually turns her head the other direction.
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  And, and that fascinated me because I thought he'd snuck in a gimmick card into my deck.
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  And then it was like, oh, everybody's deck. And I was like, seriously?
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  And I like grabbed other people's decks. Like, yeah, it's in all of them.
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  It's like different brands.
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  Yep. It's in all of them. And it just floored me. And then I went down the deep
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  rabbit hole. Why does there a one-eyed Jack?
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  Yeah. Look at that. See the queen faces their own direction. Great face.
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  Isn't that crazy? So Sean said, why is that? And that's what started the journey,
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  huh? Yeah, right there. Why?
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  And there must have been a reason. An artist wouldn't just do it out of, hey, you know.
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  And then you look and you'll see she's got these little symbols in her hands. What are those for?
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  And then you notice that she's got a scepter. And I'm thinking that's really
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  weird that a woman would have a scepter because the scepter is the power.
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  And all the other women just have little flowers in their hands.
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  It became quite cool. Even if you look into the ornate crowns on them,
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  the Queen of Spades is different from all the other ones.
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  It's just the artist really wanted to
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  distinguish her and then those little symbols in her hands that
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  was the linchpin i was in france on
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  vacation and i saw that symbol in a
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  palace and i asked some questions and didn't get any answers but
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  then at the airport i asked the janitor and
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  he explained it to me and all of a sudden everything just fell
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  into place like dominoes they represent like ferrets is
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  that correct it's like yeah they're not actually a
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  ferret they're an ermine mine or mine so i
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  don't want to go too much but the detail yeah yeah
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  and the fact that these cards that we use today like the
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  lineage of the art basically draws back 500 years
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  so there there's been an evolution and you can see in the film how the cards
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  kind of develop but really it's the same layout and the same design and a lot
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  of the iconography hasn't changed in all that time either which is really interesting
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  if no one knows why it's there yeah that that they never ever changed those
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  little symbols to me is like at any point,
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  the only people who have ever changed those things are magicians making vanity texts. Yeah. Cause.
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  You know, everyone talks about the whole, oh, you know, it's you count up all
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  the pips and it's 365 and we have 52 weeks a year and that's how many cards
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  are in the deck and the four seasons and the four suits and like 13 lunar cycles.
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  All of that is all mechanical. And I have another level to the film that we
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  weren't able to tie to say where I think the art came from.
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  But it's obviously whoever did the art, we don't know, but they definitely understood
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  putting messages in and making it very, you know, about nature and mathematical.
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  It's just the designs, looking at things like the Eight of Diamonds and how
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  in the empty space is an eight.
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  They're very talented, whoever they were.
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  And where do you think it came from? if you're
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  well it's interesting castle where the murder takes
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  place is also the resting place of leonardo
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  da vinci that's so cool wow the
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  last few years of his life as a sort of an artist in residence there
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  was a little bit after the charlotte king in our film passed
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  away but yeah it's a it's a very interesting twist
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  to the story we could talk about mention that
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  in the movie no because we can't nugget or
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  i can't put the tie together and i don't think leonardo did
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  it i think that one of his students did it because when leonardo died
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  all the students would then scatter to the winds ruan was
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  just down the road it was the perfect place for somebody to
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  go and ruan was the this economic hub
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  and they would have been making fun of it was
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  in my opinion i think it was like a parody deck you know how we make a
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  deck and make fun of another place they were making fun
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  of it and telling the story in the cards just after
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  a while they forgot to tell the story in the cards and that was
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  the one that caught because all the regions had playing cards it's
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  just this one caught on it was simple enough
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  the story probably was great and people told it and
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  the next thing you knew we had it but because
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  i can't tie it together it's just really beyond supposition at this point wasn't
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  there a time where playing cards were used as a currency we talk about it in
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  the movie it was also used for adopting of the children that was actually fascinating
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  and made It made so much sense that cards would be used for that purpose.
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  And yeah, you go into a good overview of all kinds of interesting things.
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  Yeah, for a long time, there were no designs on the back of the cards.
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  Oh, yeah, right. So people used them for all sorts of different applications.
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  Mozart used it to compose music.
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  Sean, how much of the history of playing cards were you familiar with before
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  this movie? Is this a passion of yours for your life? It is now.
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  So you find the queen that faces the other way. Is it that point that you say,
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  I'm going down this rabbit hole? Down the rabbit hole. Straight on down.
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  You know, I'd always, I played with cards. I just never looked at them.
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  Yeah, I mean, you think, I've been around them my whole life,
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  right? And you think you know a thing or two about them, but then you watch
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  something like Lost in the Shuffle and you're like, wow.
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  Yeah. What a deep subject matter that I really am not that familiar with.
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  Absolutely. And it's lovely. We read a lot of the books, just repeat what the other books said.
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  But I found books that were written basically the same time as the books that
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  we follow, and they were just discarded to the side.
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  But they had totally different solutions to them. when they talk about
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  things like the playing cards having names and they have like charles
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  on the card and he goes well all the experts will
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  tell you that's not really charles it's charlemagne and i'm like
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  then why didn't they write charlemagne they said it was too many letters i said so
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  it was okay with alexander the great it's like
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  like it's like
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  they did they well there's a great moment in
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  the movie where we're discussing it with a playing card historian and
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  he's going but it's in the book and that was his answer i'm
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  glad the editor edited out the amount of times he said it's in
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  the book and kept saying but you can make up stuff and
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  i said yeah like in the book it was like did any
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  of the magicians that you visited have issue
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  with your claim like is tamaris to want tamaris
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  that you're you're crazy it was i love
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  to tell her he said i was crazy and he also
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  takes responsibility for it yeah later he says he's the murderer so
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  we're good oh yeah age it could be right no i think
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  everybody was pretty receptive to it i kind of think that
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  you know at the end of the film it's up to you to decide whether or not you
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  think that you are interested in the theory but to me it's an expression of
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  sean's continuing evolution as an artist and i think that's really interesting
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  as well that you know this stage in his career he's still kind of diving that
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  back deep into the the origins of what he was doing and finding new creative inspiration from that.
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  You know, in magic, we never stop learning. And I think with any sort of craft
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  or art form, we never stop learning.
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  What I'm curious about is how much more have you learned about this topic,
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  the topic of the movie with cards and history since it's been released?
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  Do you actually, have you gathered more knowledge?
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  Yeah, I continue to, and I keep looking, trying to exhaust sources and find
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  more sources. I don't want to give up on it.
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  I learned stuff during the movie that, you know, people debating us on things, the history.
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  And we, there's a doctor in it that gives us a solution and says, this is his theory.
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  And I'm like, I blew his theory out of the water, but we edited it out because
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  I blew his theory out of the water.
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  I, yeah, I'm not going to stop. I would love to find that, that link to the
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  artist at some point, because nobody owns the rights to the playing card faces.
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  Isn't that wild? you can print all you can print all the faces of like a bicycle
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  playing card deck yourself minus the ace of spades and the jokers of course
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  but jokers didn't even come in until the 1800s but the regular face of the cards
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  you can print them nobody owns the rights to them,
• 20:59
  you know you said the jokers didn't come into the 1800s i'm curious do you know
• 21:03
  why they came in yeah game of euchre euchre needed something extra so they added
• 21:08
  them for that and i only know that
• 21:10
  because it went down the deep rabbit hole yeah we
• 21:13
  had the one of the silver linings of the pandemic was it gave us
• 21:16
  a lot of time to sit at home and do research so we're able
• 21:19
  to milk that pretty well were you both kind of hands-on on getting the
• 21:23
  research done with this it was john was amazing he
• 21:26
  delved deep into the french history and he would say things like you know she
• 21:30
  she was basically pregnant her whole life and i'm like really yeah she lost
• 21:34
  like six children i'm like six look at how many ermines are in her hand and
• 21:37
  he goes oh six i'm like there you go it's like Like he would point things out
• 21:41
  and I'd go look at the cards going, all right, there it is.
• 21:44
  And, and so many of them are indicated with Irmines in the background to draw
• 21:48
  the, the reader or the viewer to actually see that. Yeah.
• 21:52
  How much research as far as the timeline went into before we started shooting? Yeah.
• 21:59
  This entire process has been about four and a half years. So there is,
• 22:03
  I think it's probably about four or five months of solid research to start off with.
• 22:08
  And then taking all the kind of various storylines and figuring out how to try
• 22:13
  and at least on paper, create a narrative thread.
• 22:16
  And that became the sort of script that we used to go shoot it with.
• 22:21
  But the longest part of the process was financing and putting the money together.
• 22:24
  We did a Kickstarter campaign in 2021 that went super well. The magic community
• 22:29
  really came out for us in ways that I had not expected because I wasn't as familiar
• 22:34
  as Sean was, but Sean had the faith.
• 22:36
  And then kind of piecing it all together after that. So we filmed March,
• 22:41
  April 2023 and then edited for about nine months. And then here we are.
• 22:45
  Nine months in, notice how he glazed over that part.
• 22:49
  Can you talk a little bit about the tech that you travel with to film this thing? Like two cameras?
• 22:56
  The coolest camera ever. Yeah, I'm a tech camera guy now. You know, I'm interested.
• 23:02
  What do you use? The Red Komodo.
• 23:05
  So, yeah, being the digital technologies that exist now and the fact that,
• 23:08
  you know, the camera body is about that big.
• 23:11
  So, there were five of us. We traveled with as much gear as we could.
• 23:14
  But at every city along the way, we hired people to help us out and bring the
• 23:18
  stuff that we couldn't actually travel with.
• 23:20
  And a half a million dollars in German lenses. I know that because they kept
• 23:23
  asking me to carry it through security everywhere.
• 23:26
  They're like, the French. The French ain't no joke.
• 23:28
  How would you not trust that? It was terrifying. They would open it up and they
• 23:33
  go, what those? Oh, these are lenses.
• 23:35
  It's about a half a million dollars. If you touch them, just the solvent on
• 23:38
  your face. Oh, okay. And they would just close them back up. It was fascinating.
• 23:43
  I don't like to leave the house with my camera. I don't even know how you do
• 23:48
  that on the road. You know, multiple.
• 23:51
  6K camera. I mean, you can see the pores in my nose. A lot of heartbreaks.
• 23:56
  And a lot of heartbreak. Someone in the chat asked RJ about who owns the IP for Ace of Spades.
• 24:02
  So the answer is each company individually. When they first came out,
• 24:06
  companies didn't produce the Ace of Spades. It was a taxing thing.
• 24:09
  And so you purchased the Ace of Spades to add to your deck of cards.
• 24:13
  And there were people killed over counterfeiting Aces of Spades.
• 24:16
  But now each Ace of Spades is unique to their own company, and they own the IPs to them.
• 24:21
  Wow. And what I'm curious is, with regards to the interviews,
• 24:25
  let's talk about some of the people you did interview and what it was like meeting
• 24:28
  them and who sort of made great contributions.
• 24:32
  Everyone was a great contribution. Except for maybe the British historian.
• 24:38
  Moving the cart around to try to find the frame. Just stand still.
• 24:41
  The camera will find you. I was freaked out,
• 24:45
  Well, John said, you know, pick some people, write to them, pick your A-list.
• 24:50
  When they say no, we'll move to the next four and we'll just keep going.
• 24:53
  And I wrote, I wanted them by regions. We wanted somebody from America going
• 24:57
  back from there would be England from their France back from their Spain.
• 25:01
  So it was like, okay, I'll find these people. And, and I picked them and they
• 25:05
  all said, yes, it stunned me.
• 25:07
  And then every one of them gave of their time freely and helped us to pick locations.
• 25:13
  Richard Turner you know the best car mechanic in
• 25:17
  the world uh picked this western saloon with swinging
• 25:20
  doors and uh Texas Bob at the door oh my
• 25:23
  god you already got a picture of Texas Bob right yeah
• 25:26
  you're just missing the spurs he had spurs he really did
• 25:29
  yeah his his
• 25:32
  talk was unbelievable his demonstration of
• 25:36
  a second deal with the camera just in slow motion
• 25:39
  you still couldn't see it and his heart felt
• 25:42
  and michael vincent yep they were all
• 25:44
  like i said they brought the kind of the passion particularly
• 25:47
  michael talks about because with each of the magicians we
• 25:51
  asked them to share with us their favorite plot and we wanted to know like
• 25:53
  how they learned it and then what they've done to add
• 25:56
  it what they've added to it to make it their own and then
• 25:59
  we sean takes each one of the plots that we learn he
• 26:02
  learns and literally over the course of the time that we're
• 26:04
  traveling he's creating a new routine that we
• 26:07
  premiere at the end of the film at the castle where uh the
• 26:10
  king died so because there's no pressure there
• 26:13
  so alexandra duvivier we went to the
• 26:17
  the double fall of her family's magic theater and she presented her plot well
• 26:22
  she demonstrated 40 versions of her but you say i saw the clip she like did
• 26:27
  wild card then the next clip there's 30 wild cards she just just it was unbelievable
• 26:32
  how how creative the wild cards.
• 26:35
  Is her father still alive, Dominic?
• 26:38
  Yeah, absolutely They still do shows together And they produce the Double Vente
• 26:42
  TV An actual online TV station Wow And they have a magic shop The oldest magic shop,
• 26:50
  magic shop in the world and yeah they're still doing it
• 26:52
  all and she's touring yeah yeah she's
• 26:55
  a busy lady these days oh yeah yeah well deserved she's she asked me in the
• 27:04
  first meeting he said why me and i said i'll be honest it was between you and
• 27:08
  boris wilde for a card magician and boris is like my brother but i really love
• 27:12
  you know that you fooled pen and teller that you've come
• 27:15
  from generations of magic that having a woman's voice would be important in the film.
• 27:19
  I said, and Boris will understand.
• 27:22
  And then in the end, when we filmed at the castle, Boris surprised us by showing
• 27:26
  up as part of the studio audience.
• 27:28
  So it's like, I got them both in the movie. Yeah, I saw him there with his wife.
• 27:32
  Oh, we had lots of extra people. Raphael Benatar is in the movie.
• 27:35
  Woody Aragon's in the movie. Oh yeah, right.
• 27:37
  My friend, Christian Miro and Camilo. Yeah. There's tons of magicians.
• 27:42
  There's even a guy I don't know who, when we're on the street doing magic and
• 27:46
  he turns around and does magic for me.
• 27:49
  That is phenomenal. So as we march through, we're sort of halfway and we actually
• 27:55
  have an abundance of questions from our audience.
• 27:58
  So a few of you guys have been kind enough to send some speak pipes in.
• 28:01
  And of course, if you are listening live, you can put your questions in the
• 28:04
  comments and we'll present them. But let's kick off with the first speak pipe. Here we go.
• 28:09
  So magic guys and Sean Farquhar, this is Andy Massey from the United States, Kansas to be exact.
• 28:18
  My question for you all and specifically Sean, I know he's spent a lot of time
• 28:23
  being the IBM president.
• 28:25
  So it means mentorship has been a big thing.
• 28:27
  And what's that one piece of advice or that saying that somebody said to you,
• 28:32
  whether it be a magician or somebody else, that's always kind of stuck with
• 28:35
  you and why, for example, I had a seventh grade math teacher that always said
• 28:40
  repetition is the mother of all skills.
• 28:43
  And it's that dumb thing that has stuck with me that now is like a creed that
• 28:47
  I live by where I know there's going to be something I'm just going to have to grind.
• 28:52
  And especially magic. That's the truth.
• 28:55
  Repetition is the mother of all skills. What is that thing for you all? And Sean specifically?
• 29:00
  Thanks, guys. Love the pod. Let's go.
• 29:05
  That's a great question it's funny because it reminds me of the Warren Buffet
• 29:08
  one said you know practice doesn't make perfect practice just makes permanent,
• 29:14
  which I love. I think the one that stands out to me the most was Marvin Roy.
• 29:19
  Many years ago, he said two things that really stood out.
• 29:23
  The first he said, if you choose magic as a profession, you'll never be a millionaire,
• 29:27
  but you'll live like one, which I thought was really cool.
• 29:30
  And he told me that while we were sitting on a cruise ship, sunning,
• 29:33
  waiting to do our 10 minutes in a show.
• 29:36
  And the second he said, find the unique in you.
• 29:39
  He said, I would rather you manipulate bagels, then be a dove magician because
• 29:45
  there are a thousand dove magicians.
• 29:46
  But if you manipulate bagels, you'll be the best bagel manipulator in the entire world.
• 29:52
  I tried manipulating bagels. It wasn't good, but I still think about it that
• 29:56
  way. Yeah. You tried doing birds too.
• 29:59
  I did. I did birds for years. And it was at that point when he was trying to
• 30:03
  inspire me to be something different.
• 30:05
  He started, Marvin told me he started doing birds And he was just in a market
• 30:10
  with Norm Nielsen and Channing Pollock, and soon would come Shimada.
• 30:14
  And he said, there was no way to compete with these people, so I'll do something different.
• 30:18
  And we all know him as Mr. Electric because of that. You talk about magicians
• 30:23
  who are influential and giving of their time. He was one of them, man.
• 30:27
  Anytime I heard of him or crossed his path, he's there giving the goods,
• 30:31
  especially from a professional capacity like Marvin Roy, Mr. Electric. Yeah.
• 30:37
  He and Carol, once you met them once, they never forgot you.
• 30:41
  Carol wrote me a handwritten Christmas card every year until she passed. Come on now.
• 30:45
  That's so sweet. Yeah, no doubt.
• 30:49
  Great question. Wonderful. Let's press on to question number two, if we may.
• 30:54
  Just got a quick question. What was the hardest obstacle that you had while making of the movie?
• 31:00
  Yeah, John, what was our hardest obstacle? I would say money is probably the
• 31:04
  big one, but that's not a challenge that's unique to us.
• 31:09
  Yeah, putting together all the financing, trying to get enough money together
• 31:12
  to kind of achieve the production values that we were hoping for definitely was about half the time.
• 31:19
  When we were out on the road, we had some challenges around.
• 31:23
  There were a number of strikes happening in France that kind of limited our
• 31:27
  ability to get around. So the, the biggest kind of obstacle was filming with Juan in, in Madrid.
• 31:33
  And then our next stop was the Picasso in Amoise.
• 31:36
  We finished filming Juan at about, I don't know, 11 o'clock or something.
• 31:40
  Then they went for dinner, got, they got back to the hotel about two or three.
• 31:43
  We get to the airport in Madrid 5 30 to find out there are no flights into France
• 31:48
  at all, and we don't have any kind of leeway in their schedule to wait.
• 31:52
  So we drive 13 hours back into France, crazy.
• 31:57
  We'll clutch on, you know, oodles of maybe like half an hour to prepare because
• 32:02
  as we said, you know, we've got a plot from each magician.
• 32:04
  So we got Juan's plot like less than 24 hours.
• 32:07
  I'm driving and trying to figure out how to do something. Okay.
• 32:11
  Oh, and then we had a translator. She was awesome. We had multiple translators,
• 32:16
  but the one that didn't really understand the job throughout the filming,
• 32:19
  she kept clicking her pen while the subject was answering the question.
• 32:22
  And then she would like talk over him and we're like, no, no,
• 32:24
  no. You wait until it's finished and explain what he said so that you won't
• 32:28
  be on film. And she's, oh.
• 32:30
  And then we asked her to describe, we asked him to describe what Anne Brittany's funeral looked like.
• 32:35
  And she translated it to, he said it was succulent.
• 32:39
  She wasn't very good at translating. It was maybe just very well-created.
• 32:43
  We don't know. It could have been very well-created.
• 32:46
  Such a succulent funeral. Can we explore this real quick for a sec?
• 32:51
  Because I don't think people can appreciate the sort of money involved in stuff.
• 32:55
  And the reason I bring that up is that you could, we jokingly said last week,
• 32:58
  you can have 200 bucks, go into a magic shop and have a career.
• 33:02
  What are the sort of costs that people don't think about when making a movie
• 33:06
  of any capacity, any film?
• 33:09
  Well, you really want to try and pay people properly. I've definitely made films
• 33:13
  early in the career where it was all sort of volunteer,
• 33:16
  but you want people who are good at what they do, and those people deserve to
• 33:21
  get compensated for their time. So that's a big one.
• 33:25
  There's a few animation sequences in the film, and Jester's animation in Vancouver did a fantastic job.
• 33:31
  The animation is incredible. Yeah, Jester's awesome.
• 33:35
  It's so good. They did it as a passion project. We could never have paid them what it was worth.
• 33:39
  Whatever you paid them wasn't enough. yeah but good
• 33:43
  on you for choosing that company yeah they were really fantastic and
• 33:46
  then i think the single most expensive day we had was shooting the
• 33:49
  title sequence for the film which is i was aiming sort of for a a ballet of
• 33:53
  cards so everything's shot really close up we use a camera called the phantom
• 33:57
  flex most cameras shoot and play back at 24 frames a second the phantom goes
• 34:02
  up to 2000 frames a second i was wondering if the komodo camera did that
• 34:07
  shot because it's a giant robotic arm
• 34:10
  thing that's all programmed so you can program the arm
• 34:13
  to repeat the same move over and over again and then we had a car
• 34:16
  industry artist in there to do the moves and then he had to do the moves precisely
• 34:21
  over and over again but when you have frame rates that are that high you need
• 34:25
  a ton of light so we were just melting the poor guy like he had sunglasses on
• 34:30
  for the entire day his hands were starting to ramp up but in the end i think
• 34:33
  it It really turned out really well.
• 34:34
  It looks like a James Bond opening to me. So cool.
• 34:37
  And so you just rent all that gear for the day to do that?
• 34:41
  Yeah, that was an entire package of the crew and the gear. It all lives in one
• 34:44
  studio and normalates, you know, it was still a very expensive day.
• 34:48
  Normalates an extraordinarily expensive day, but that was another place where
• 34:51
  there's a very thriving film community in Vancouver and we were able to get some people to.
• 34:56
  Do some favors for us. Yeah, it was a really fun day. Anything that you do at
• 34:59
  2,000 frames, even just throwing the cards at the camera, it passes in real time in one second.
• 35:05
  But at the playback rate, you got to see all the kind of permutations and the
• 35:09
  cards kind of cartwheel and collide with each other. So yeah,
• 35:12
  it was definitely a fun day.
• 35:14
  I'm curious of all the things that you had to spend money on or invest in.
• 35:18
  What's the advice you would give to folks making a film? Do not compromise on cost with this.
• 35:27
  Sound i think that's one where people you
• 35:30
  know it's you didn't mention your audio solution how
• 35:33
  are you capturing audio on the set for a project like
• 35:36
  this alex yeah alex was traveling with us he
• 35:39
  had a lot of fun going through the airports every time because you know he's
• 35:42
  traveling with something to travel sits on a pouch around his neck it's got
• 35:45
  two big decks with lots of wires going in and out it's a big pain in the ass
• 35:48
  to repatch it every time you travel so he would go through security with a two
• 35:52
  big boxes with lots of wires going in and out of them looking like Like a terrorist. It was awesome.
• 35:57
  So he's on like a mic and just doing this.
• 36:01
  And labs that they're wearing. Taping them directly on my chest.
• 36:05
  I had no chest hair for 17 days. It's very special.
• 36:09
  First world problems. I have a composer friend that just told me the other day,
• 36:15
  a line that I like that was that you can have music without movies,
• 36:19
  but there's no movies without music.
• 36:20
  And we got a fantastic composer. She did a great job. Just got nominated.
• 36:24
  Just got nominated for her work. And so, yeah, I think audio is a really important thing.
• 36:29
  And also having money left at the end to actually let people know that you've
• 36:32
  made a movie because it's. That would have been good. Yeah.
• 36:36
  That's always a big challenge. That would have been really good.
• 36:38
  We started the funding with Kickstarter and it was the magic community that
• 36:42
  came out and said, we want this movie.
• 36:44
  And they funded us to our original goal on the very first day of the 28 day campaign.
• 36:50
  And we went over 300%. And it still wasn't enough to make the movie,
• 36:54
  but we knew that the community would go for it. And now we're seeing it.
• 36:58
  We're going around city to city.
• 37:00
  It's the magicians coming out and dragging their friends. And then their friends
• 37:03
  are like, oh, my God, this was great. That's really making the difference.
• 37:07
  We could talk just for a minute. Other ways magicians can support this project
• 37:10
  from home right now. You know, like.
• 37:13
  Oh, decks of playing cards. Yeah, let's go.
• 37:16
  Let's poke over to your site while you talk about it. So lost in the shuffle.com
• 37:20
  lost in the shuffle film. Yeah. Awesome. The shuffle dot film.
• 37:25
  Sean designed a really cool deck of cards for the film. That was part of the
• 37:28
  campaign. We've got about 200 of them left.
• 37:32
  And then, yeah, we collaborated with lots of other cool artists.
• 37:34
  We got some cut decks. We got the decks in the bottles.
• 37:36
  We have a couple of uncut card sheets left. So while we're traveling around,
• 37:41
  you have a lot on the site right now.
• 37:43
  Well, that says sold out. I know. Do we have two more? I found two more.
• 37:45
  You found two more. And they're signed by the artist.
• 37:48
  I sat down and made every person after the interview sign sheets and sheets of cards.
• 37:53
  And we have a few decks that are signed by everybody. The cards are really great.
• 37:57
  They're made by a playing card company I found in Taiwan. one
• 38:00
  not the one you're used to but they're better the quality
• 38:03
  is like a little lighter stock but then
• 38:06
  they're double coated so that they are smooth as silk they'll
• 38:09
  last you for years do you have a deck on you sean do you happen
• 38:11
  to have a pack i have decks sitting in in my showcase because i yeah i'll go
• 38:16
  get it john you stand or or grab would you grab my box you only got 200 left
• 38:20
  it doesn't sound like you need to hard sell these things are you gonna have
• 38:23
  more printed or i have decks inside my showcase that are already open john doesn't
• 38:27
  want to open a new one so we can You can sell it. Oh, man. Got to make that money.
• 38:30
  I made the cards. You know the traditional cut thing that everybody talks about?
• 38:35
  These are better than traditional cut because they ferrule in both directions.
• 38:39
  Nobody gets cards that ferrule in both directions. I'll put both of them on.
• 38:43
  I'm using them in the show, packing for the show.
• 38:47
  Are you going to perform your routine at Magic Texas?
• 38:52
  I'm going to do something different at Magic Texas just because of the time
• 38:56
  constraints. and everybody, I'm hosting a big FISM gala show.
• 38:59
  When you look at the back, you'll see in the design, I think it's cool.
• 39:02
  I talk about the door frame that is the claim that he died by bumping his head on a door frame.
• 39:08
  And then there's the sword and the ax where I talk about the difference and
• 39:11
  what I really think happened.
• 39:12
  And then the shield that actually triggered me when I was at the castle.
• 39:15
  So all that's built into it. Your minds are on the top.
• 39:19
  Inside on the flaps are the fleur-de-lis, which I think are great.
• 39:24
  For those people that love an Easter egg, So, uh, if you ever opened up your
• 39:28
  box on the glue line, I printed in the inside. Why did you ruin this nice tux box?
• 39:34
  Let me ask you about that fleur de lis. Cause that's in the movie.
• 39:37
  You have it on Chateau Farquhar.
• 39:40
  You chose that as like your, Oh yeah. Uh, you definitely on my house sign that
• 39:44
  says Chateau Farquhar, the house that cards built.
• 39:47
  Yeah. Which this is a, like, I just did this. I made this design with the fleur
• 39:51
  de lis in place of this. Yeah.
• 39:53
  So it's connected to New Orleans. Why is it connected to Sean Farquhar?
• 39:58
  I just love the symbol and everybody thinks it's French, but it isn't French.
• 40:02
  It goes back much further than France, back into the days of Spain,
• 40:06
  the seventh son of a seventh and how distinct they were.
• 40:10
  I just, I love iconology, the symbolism and trying to find out what it really
• 40:15
  means, what it's been accepted to be.
• 40:18
  And so for me, it's one of those ones I love to go down the deep rabbit hole
• 40:21
  to find out more about that.
• 40:23
  Same as when I went looking for the Irvines that are on the end of the box.
• 40:26
  Yeah, let's say there's a couple more highlights in this deck,
• 40:28
  right? Oh, yeah. So I would...
• 40:31
  Christian from Card Shark was the nicest guy in the world to me.
• 40:34
  He allowed me to use the thing that he adds on every Card Shark deck,
• 40:38
  the face of the cards. Oh, yeah, the jumbo pips.
• 40:40
  Yeah, I love this. And I also love that on one end, you can see how close the
• 40:45
  pip is to the ace. And on the other end, it's wide.
• 40:48
  See how it's tight? And it's wide.
• 40:51
  It's a one-way on the face deck. Oh. And it's a one-way on the back into the bricks on the side.
• 40:57
  So it's very small. But I love on the face because I can spread them out, ribbon spread.
• 41:00
  I can have somebody select a card then i close it
• 41:03
  up when they put it back in they're putting it in reverse i can turn it around when
• 41:06
  their card instantly i've never heard of that
• 41:09
  oh it's in every phoenix deck of cards since he produced them we made a really
• 41:14
  cool ace of spades with lost shuffle and then the little uh crown hanging off
• 41:18
  of it cool mother mother films down on the bottom the the the cards i kept all
• 41:24
  the additional court cards because i really wanted people to know that this is all about the deck.
• 41:29
  And then we added a couple of extra cards into it, which I think are cool.
• 41:33
  I've added this, the King of Hearts. It's Charles VIII. You get to see him,
• 41:37
  which is cool. But I also include the regular one.
• 41:40
  And I included the Queen of Spades, which is Anne. I don't know if it's in this.
• 41:44
  Or it might be in that. No, it's here, yeah. There's the Queen of Spades with Anne of Britannia.
• 41:49
  It's the only woman to be Queen of France twice because she killed her first
• 41:53
  husband. Man, she's got a crazy story, that one. Does, doesn't she?
• 41:56
  It's, it's amazing. Yeah. And they farrow like butter when they're brand new.
• 42:02
  You know how you have to work in a deck of cards.
• 42:04
  You do not have to work in this deck of cards when you, when they come out of
• 42:06
  the box, they don't feel like sandpaper on the edge.
• 42:09
  They, they are, I have a friend in Australia, Lori,
• 42:12
  he's a scientist and Lori put my cards on this macroscope and he sent two photographs
• 42:18
  and the one was standard bicycle deck of cards and it had little fibers hanging off the
• 42:22
  edge and he said these are the things we work off because when the blade
• 42:25
  cuts down it creates a little rough edge he said
• 42:28
  when i put yours on it was completely smooth all
• 42:31
  the way around and it's because of the double coating uh
• 42:34
  on the finish most finishes have stipples air cushion
• 42:37
  and that creates dirt and then your cards get all
• 42:40
  gummy interesting beached up with these
• 42:43
  ones i used the hashtag i literally took a hashtag and
• 42:46
  laid the the design down so it's it
• 42:49
  still has a wonderful air cushion finish to them they they
• 42:52
  spread super nice super easy uh really
• 42:55
  good but but they don't dirty this deck i'm
• 42:58
  proud to say is almost six weeks old what yeah
• 43:02
  i barely used it with a bicycle i get a week right if i get a week i'm good
• 43:06
  maybe two with these this six weeks and they're still doing great they're starting
• 43:11
  really interesting yeah and they have a real bounce resilient they come back
• 43:14
  again and they don't warp when i when i fly i always get so nervous because.
• 43:20
  The pressure in the planes, if you put them in your luggage,
• 43:23
  they'll actually warp the cards so they buckle and you hear that click.
• 43:26
  This hasn't happened once with these. Not once yet.
• 43:29
  You're kidding me. I've never heard of that before.
• 43:32
  Traveling in the pressure will cause the cards to bow. Oh, let me tell you the story of FISM 2006.
• 43:38
  Yeah, you tell. Mark D'Souza is my volunteer, and I did the signed card and sealed deck.
• 43:43
  And there really are sealed decks, and I'm putting a card in reverse into the deck.
• 43:47
  And so the entire deck, I don't know, is bowing this way, So when you put the
• 43:51
  card in the other way, it's bowing the other way.
• 43:53
  So when I asked Mark to cup his hands together and I dropped all the cards,
• 43:56
  the card I needed stayed in the box.
• 44:00
  And there I was with a camera right above me. John Fisher, the director,
• 44:04
  said, can we put a camera? Oh, put it as close as you want to. I'm good.
• 44:08
  I dropped them out. I turned the box to talk to Mark and Mark's eyes go straight
• 44:11
  down. He looks at me with the most alarming look.
• 44:14
  And he looks down like three times to tell me, you know, Sean,
• 44:17
  you're screwed. And I'm like, oh, my God.
• 44:19
  I took the cards back. Snuck out the card in the box, did a nice spread pass
• 44:23
  and put it in the middle so that the trick would end nicely.
• 44:25
  And it did, but I didn't win. I got a silver, but hey, I still got a silver
• 44:30
  medal. Bro, that's strong.
• 44:31
  You fix a problem like that mid competition with the camera right on top of
• 44:35
  you and 3000 magicians staring at you. It was very, very fun. Yeah.
• 44:40
  But that's what I learned, that cards that you fly with, if you don't take them
• 44:44
  on the plane with you in the pressurized cabin, the pressure is different in the plane.
• 44:48
  And you'll get those cards that go click, click, click, click,
• 44:50
  and the whole deck just bridges.
• 44:52
  The things you learn from Sean Farquhar.
• 44:55
  Right. And just one more time, where can we get those decks from?
• 45:00
  Lost in the Shuffle.film in the store section. Or if you're coming to one of
• 45:05
  our screenings, we're traveling with some stuff, too, so you can buy it directly
• 45:07
  from us. And you can get them autographed.
• 45:09
  We have sharpie magic texas right you'll
• 45:12
  have a texas we'll have a table yeah we'll probably
• 45:15
  run out at magic texas yeah people at chicago i
• 45:18
  will apologize now we got
• 45:21
  200 left they're gonna sell out there for sure yeah any more cards man yeah
• 45:26
  maybe a second edition maybe a second edition with a different color because
• 45:30
  this was the i wanted them to be as close to a stud playing card as i could
• 45:33
  and this is the stud color and the texture if you remember old studs when they
• 45:37
  They were great when Walgreens actually produced them themselves.
• 45:40
  They were awesome cards. Iconic.
• 45:43
  Yeah, really were. This is as close as I've been able to replicate.
• 45:47
  And the guy's really good. The printer is amazing. He's so amazing.
• 45:51
  Later, you guys can Google Taiwanese counterfeit ring, and you'll see his name.
• 45:58
  Well, it probably goes to a close. Let's press on with the remaining questions
• 46:02
  we have through our Speak Prime. Answer the third one.
• 46:05
  Good evening magic guys and sean it's a pleasure to say
• 46:08
  hi i hope you're having a wonderful day here is my
• 46:11
  question what advice would you give to someone looking to take magic full time
• 46:15
  how did you guys do it do you have any hints and tips to help someone like me
• 46:19
  out who's looking to do the exact same anything is greatly appreciated i'm sure
• 46:23
  it helps someone out as well as myself thank you guys in advance and have a
• 46:27
  wonderful rest of your evening.
• 46:29
  Run, run. That's good advice. Well, I had a mentor who said,
• 46:36
  Marvin Roy, you'll never be a millionaire, but you might live life equally.
• 46:40
  What would I say? I tell everybody to say, all my students, I have this acronym that I use.
• 46:46
  I say the secret of success is talent, but it's not what you think it is.
• 46:50
  It's break it down. It's tenacity. You have to be tenacious.
• 46:54
  You have to never want to give up. You have to really believe that what you're
• 46:57
  going to do is what you're going to do. And then regardless of what other people say, keep doing it.
• 47:01
  And then A, which is authenticity.
• 47:04
  You have to be authentic. You just can't go out there and pretend to be somebody
• 47:07
  else. There's only one of you. Be you and you'll be great. L, likability.
• 47:12
  If you're a jerk, then nobody's going to like you.
• 47:15
  My dad said, if you got them laughing and on your side, you can screw up and
• 47:18
  they'll still love you and they'll still follow you. So likability.
• 47:21
  Then it's E, that's entertaining. You have to be entertaining and ethical.
• 47:26
  Ethical and entertaining. If all you do is you fool people, nobody wants to
• 47:30
  be fooled. I can fool you by saying, look, there's somebody behind you.
• 47:32
  And you might look, that's not entertaining and natural.
• 47:36
  Be natural in the way you perform.
• 47:38
  Everybody says, if you really want a full person, look at how you naturally
• 47:41
  do it and then find a way to make the way that you cheat. That way you have
• 47:45
  that naturalness. Very important.
• 47:46
  And then T, did I mention tenacity? Oh yeah, I did. Yeah, tenacity.
• 47:53
  I think if you use that and you keep that in your head, you can make it. But also run.
• 47:59
  Yeah. It's not a good choice. It's a bad life choice. And if you can't help
• 48:03
  yourself, then have some talent. Run works for the film industry also.
• 48:07
  Yeah. I try to dissuade the youth. I know who asked that question,
• 48:11
  young Samuel Osborne. He's one of the helpless.
• 48:14
  He'll be doing magic. It's the end of time.
• 48:18
  Yeah. I don't do it because I want to. I do it because I have to.
• 48:22
  Yeah. Yeah. I, I, you know, I had a magic shop back in the day in the French quarter.
• 48:26
  And one day I decided I was going to ask every magician that came in for a week,
• 48:29
  that question, why do you do magic?
• 48:32
  And I, I decided this, if you have an answer for that, then it's probably not the right answer.
• 48:36
  And the only, I had a friend who answered it. That's what he said.
• 48:40
  He goes, because I have to.
• 48:41
  And I was like, that's the answer. Cause you have to, you know,
• 48:45
  not to get the checks, not to make the money, not, you know,
• 48:48
  what, I mean, there's some good reasons, but ultimately just because you love
• 48:52
  it, you know, want to magish.
• 48:55
  In the film, Juan Tamariz addresses that. And when he says, you know,
• 48:58
  up until this point in his life, he hadn't been alive.
• 49:01
  And that the day he saw magic was the day he became alive. Yeah. It was born. Yeah. Yeah.
• 49:07
  I'll agree with that. I mean, if I could bet in for a sec, I would simply say
• 49:12
  that magic chose me and it wasn't up to me.
• 49:16
  It chose me and now it's life.
• 49:20
  And I can't tell you how many times I've said to the universe, maybe I'll stop this.
• 49:24
  Maybe I'll just try to be a normal person and have weekends.
• 49:29
  And if I find someone to settle down with and be a dad or something of that nature,
• 49:34
  and then the universe goes, goes oh yeah you gotta
• 49:37
  travel to malaysia for a wedding now because you're being booked and this
• 49:40
  high-end gig and i'm like okay maybe i'll maybe i'll do it just a little bit longer
• 49:43
  like i got this yeah i can do it you can do it i happily married been with my
• 49:49
  wife 42 years 35 years married have a daughter who's just the most amazing human
• 49:54
  being on the face of the earth she was raised on the road and a well-adjusted
• 49:59
  fun person who uh never wants to be a magician.
• 50:03
  Is she involved with hidden wonders is she
• 50:05
  on the theater laurie and hannah are basically the the
• 50:08
  front we have billy schway and alex and
• 50:11
  gabriella but uh laurie and hannah are
• 50:14
  my rocks they're always there to help to make it get together unless
• 50:17
  hannah's working on a film project someplace she's in there
• 50:20
  and laurie is basically like front of house manager billy
• 50:24
  is like our host gabriella and alex are hosts
• 50:26
  as well and it's just a it's a family operation for
• 50:30
  anyone who might not know sean's in small theater in your hometown is it no
• 50:36
  it's close i live in maple ridge but it's in new westminster new westminster
• 50:40
  yeah yeah hidden wonders big easy magic experience hidden wonders dot show hidden wonders dot show,
• 50:48
  somebody every day asked me to spell show and i'm like really so is is that
• 50:54
  near the toronto area because uh i'll be flying over at some point next year
• 50:58
  and And I wasn't sure where you're going to be. I'm on the other coast. I'm on the West Coast.
• 51:02
  So Vancouver, outside of Vancouver, is where my theater is. We could talk about
• 51:07
  just that for an hour. Like, easy breezy, right?
• 51:10
  It's a cool place. There's a couple more questions, I think, before we wrap here.
• 51:15
  We filmed lots there. Oh, yeah. You'll see it in the film, too. So that's a win.
• 51:20
  Awesome. Yeah, maybe we'll have an opportunity to pop over and visit at some
• 51:22
  point and see the show. That'll be amazing.
• 51:24
  Hell and play. It's a different show every night. I did 386 of them last year, and not one was the same.
• 51:29
  Come on now. Like I said, we could talk about it for now. All right.
• 51:32
  What's our next question? Here we go.
• 51:35
  Hey, Sean. I had a question about one of your magic mentors, Jerry Andrews.
• 51:39
  He was quite the character. I'm wondering, what is your favorite Jerry Andrews story?
• 51:44
  Story what are you coming in with the character jerry was an alien anybody ever
• 51:50
  met him would believe me that i i don't i we were sitting on a park bench santa
• 51:55
  barbara the sun was coming up we talked all through the night went for pancakes
• 51:59
  we were sitting on the bench and he looked over and said you know sean of all
• 52:02
  the humans i've met you're one of the more interesting,
• 52:05
  it wasn't part of the group like he uh we were walking down the beach that night
• 52:11
  and uh we saw a little pancake place. And I said, let's go for some food.
• 52:14
  And so I crossed the road. It was like seven in the morning.
• 52:17
  There was nobody. There was a car.
• 52:20
  No car passed for the next 20 minutes easily. I just walked across the road.
• 52:24
  And then I realized he didn't. He walked all the way down to the crosswalk,
• 52:28
  waited for the light to change, walked across, walked up to me and said,
• 52:31
  you know, you broke the law.
• 52:35
  He didn't, he wouldn't tell a lie in his performances, right? Yeah.
• 52:40
  When he did the Omni deck, He created the Omnideck, and his original presentation
• 52:44
  was he came out and said, this is a box for a deck of cards.
• 52:47
  He couldn't say this is a deck of cards because it had a block of glass in it,
• 52:50
  right? And he says – and then he would remove it, and he would – unbelievable.
• 52:55
  He could never tell a lie. Most honest man ever –,
• 52:58
  My favorite story, I wasn't there, but a friend tells me that he put a coin
• 53:03
  into the payphone to make a call. And at the end of the call, the coin came back out.
• 53:07
  So he phoned the operator, asked for the mailing address to mail the coin. Oh, my.
• 53:12
  And the operator's like, just take it. He says, I cannot. She said,
• 53:14
  to make another call. He said, I cannot. Give me the address.
• 53:18
  And he mailed the coin. Yes. Yes, the nicest human I've ever met,
• 53:24
  the most honest, ethical, creative, intelligent.
• 53:29
  Yeah, I miss him. He was always uplifting.
• 53:33
  Anytime you asked him something, it was always a positive edge to it.
• 53:37
  If you ever want to go down a deep rabbit hole of joy, go just watch.
• 53:42
  On my Pumper Magic website, I have a link to Jerry Anderson.
• 53:45
  I have lots of videos that I've culled off of all of YouTube.
• 53:48
  Youtube and you can you can hear him talking about you know being
• 53:51
  fooled is a wonderful thing the mind is a beautiful thing and
• 53:54
  you're not fooled because you're a fool you're fooled because you're doing
• 53:57
  things that your brain has taught you to do it's just the natural
• 54:00
  human thing to do it's just yeah he's and and
• 54:04
  his omni deck is just the best thing ever i i
• 54:07
  still do his i do most of his effects in hidden
• 54:10
  wonders at some point in the show yeah he's just
• 54:13
  yeah i was just watching his linking
• 54:15
  pins routine the other day where
• 54:19
  was i maybe the magic magicana site i don't
• 54:21
  know if you have that clip where it's super up close and
• 54:24
  right there that little tap and the ring just melts through and the way he ends
• 54:29
  clean he does that in the hand sequence where it's in the spectator's hands
• 54:33
  and it links and then everything's there for them to examine his book on the
• 54:37
  linking rings is a master class
• 54:39
  on the pins yeah yeah i just i actually recently bought that book about
• 54:44
  four or five months ago. And it's like an encyclopedia.
• 54:47
  I've got like nine copies of
• 54:49
  them all signed. I don't know. You have some at home. I got another one.
• 54:53
  Oh, just for yourself. Just me. Oh, okay.
• 54:56
  You don't sell it at Palmer, do you? No, I don't. But I lost,
• 55:01
  I was trying to buy the rights to it and I got scooped by Murphy.
• 55:05
  So maybe Murphy's will put it out in the future.
• 55:07
  Someone needs to put together an Andrus big book.
• 55:11
  Absolutely. He's got so much little stuff scattered out. And there's on cards
• 55:14
  and control and his diagonal shift palm are just.
• 55:18
  Yeah. Yeah. The panoramic and all that stuff.
• 55:20
  Everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he is.
• 55:24
  I bought Palmer Magic to keep his name alive, and I hope people mention it all the time.
• 55:29
  So hearing a question like this where we talk about Jerry Andrews just makes
• 55:32
  my heart. Yeah, great question. We had a brother, George, who was just as alien as he was.
• 55:37
  We could also do an hour on Jerry. Yeah, easily.
• 55:40
  And we should. If the opportunity arises, please say you'll come back, and we'll take you back.
• 55:46
  And I'll give you a couple of other guests that we can talk about Jerry.
• 55:49
  I'll bring other people in that are just, yeah. I love that.
• 55:53
  I'm going to hold this. At the moment, we have an opportunity to sing his praises.
• 55:56
  Please be there. I'll be there.
• 55:59
  Amazing. Well, we have one last question before we wrap things up for the evening.
• 56:02
  Let's play the last question.
• 56:04
  Hello, gentlemen. Josh Norbito here, fellow magic guy, and really wish I was
• 56:09
  here on this episode with you all.
• 56:11
  Sean and John, thank you so much for joining us today.
• 56:15
  I hope Nick didn't tell you too much about how he used to be in a band.
• 56:18
  But my question for Sean is, I'm fascinated and love your Hidden Wonders Speak
• 56:25
  Easy Magic experience, playing every week, seems to be sold out in advance every week.
• 56:31
  But my question is, what are some of the challenges or discoveries you found
• 56:37
  from putting on your own weekly show?
• 56:42
  Oh, not that many challenges because I built the theater the way I wanted to.
• 56:47
  I built it. Like I banged every nail hammer and had friends that painted and
• 56:51
  screwed things in. And I think I might answer this question.
• 56:54
  Well, building the theater was a unique challenge.
• 56:57
  Yeah, it was literally, I took an empty space that, and I had to envision how
• 57:02
  to build a theater, found a book called, will it make a theater?
• 57:04
  And I read the book and then started and, and banked it together.
• 57:08
  Add some spare time. It was 2020. Yeah.
• 57:11
  I opened in June of 2020. There's my challenge. I opened a theater in the height
• 57:16
  of a pandemic because I thought that was a good idea.
• 57:19
  Did you begin building during the pandemic?
• 57:22
  Oh, yeah. I released the building on June 1st of 2020. June 15th of 2020,
• 57:26
  I opened the doors with a six-foot pole and lounge tables.
• 57:29
  So then they were six feet apart, all with masks.
• 57:32
  Me doing a show with a mask. It was very special.
• 57:34
  People needed to laugh. People needed to experience that. That's so cool.
• 57:38
  I opened. I was allowed 12 whole people in the theater and
• 57:41
  everybody said how does that feel I said it's the best feeling ever I was
• 57:44
  working for thousands of people just before the pandemic and I never met any
• 57:48
  of them with 12 people they all you could see the emotion in their faces at
• 57:52
  the end of it going oh my god we miss this we miss being out in community and
• 57:56
  connecting and laughing and not thinking about you know the the crap that was
• 58:01
  going on in the world at that time it was yeah Yeah.
• 58:03
  And when we got to open the old, which is only 30 people, the place went insane.
• 58:07
  And I sell out five, six weeks in advance on a regular basis.
• 58:11
  And people come back for their fifth, sixth and seventh time because to make
• 58:15
  it challenging for me, I wanted to be a challenge.
• 58:17
  I built it so that it was a choose your own adventure. I have cabinets and boxes
• 58:21
  filled with magic and people pick what they want to see. And so no two shows are the same.
• 58:26
  I changed the material. There's a challenge. I'm always looking for material.
• 58:29
  I can't, I'm not creative enough to come up with enough material to just do me.
• 58:34
  And so I'm always looking to find other people's material that's available that
• 58:38
  I can make uniquely my own. So I'm, I'm buying at a time.
• 58:41
  I've never bought more magic than I am now. Cause it's like,
• 58:44
  Oh, I need more. I need this and I need that. And it's like,
• 58:47
  Oh, there's a thing with a voodoo doll.
• 58:50
  Justification. Like you really need it. Yeah. I saw the, I saw that warehouse
• 58:55
  you have of stuff. So much crap. It's insane. thing.
• 58:59
  And I love taking an old effect that I've had for like 30 years and making it new.
• 59:05
  Yeah, I saw a boy from your hometown, Michael Dardot, Doug.
• 59:09
  He's taken the invisible deck to a whole different level by the way he presents it.
• 59:14
  And I was like, in my life, I
• 59:15
  would never have thought to present the invisible deck the way he does it.
• 59:18
  And I don't want to spoil it for everybody because they should see it.
• 59:21
  And when they see it, they'll go, what?
• 59:22
  Why didn't I think of that? It just, yeah. So I'm always picking something up,
• 59:27
  looking at it and going, what can I do with that?
• 59:29
  And going through all the toys in my garage, going, now, how do I make a trick out of that?
• 59:35
  Yeah you know i i think what's really wholesome is
• 59:38
  the intent you do things for like i mean just hearing you say that
• 59:41
  people needed to smile i think that's so beautiful but i
• 59:43
  also find that it's sort of reminding me of a memory from your film
• 59:46
  john which is all joking aside and i
• 59:49
  don't remember the line exactly but the line was something to the effect of there
• 59:53
  are happy people and there's funny people go
• 59:57
  be happy yeah it's great
• 1:00:00
  and that's a great line and i wanted to to know like who
• 1:00:03
  where did that come from because that's that's very heavy line
• 1:00:06
  the screenwriter for that
• 1:00:08
  film is a guy from sheffield england named james pickering
• 1:00:12
  yep that was a great experience working on that film as well about a young woman
• 1:00:15
  finding her voice as a stand-up comic so i think i guess my work subconsciously
• 1:00:20
  kind of comes back to people and their creativity and how how you express yourself
• 1:00:23
  so yeah i think that's just a theme i'm interested in where would i I watch this film.
• 1:00:29
  You can get it at any place where you can rent or stream videos.
• 1:00:34
  In the name of the film? All joking aside. All joking aside.
• 1:00:39
  It has one of my friends, Rich Lett, in it, who is a brilliant stand-up comic,
• 1:00:42
  and he plays this antagonistic person that becomes this amazing. Yeah, it's great.
• 1:00:47
  When they're off looking to get on Video On Demand, Lost in the Shuffle,
• 1:00:52
  they can also earmark and go, we watched two movies by John Ornoy.
• 1:00:55
  My company name is Animal Mother Films So you can find my work at.
• 1:01:02
  And y'all go look at some of the clips there. There's some excerpts that are
• 1:01:05
  not in the movie that are cinematic quality and outstanding.
• 1:01:09
  The clip from the printing press is amazing, as is the piece in the movie.
• 1:01:15
  That blew my mind. That's on our YouTube channel.
• 1:01:18
  So there are two cut scenes that you can find and watch right now on the YouTube
• 1:01:21
  channel, which is Animal Mother Films as well.
• 1:01:23
  One is what Doug was referring to. So we visited the Shuffled Ink Card Factory in Orlando.
• 1:01:28
  So in the film, you get to see kind of historical processes like the original
• 1:01:31
  printing presses that were making cars a few hundred years ago.
• 1:01:34
  And now you get to see what the modern plants look like. And then there's a clip with Dr.
• 1:01:39
  Gustav Kuhn that Doug also referenced before.
• 1:01:41
  He's a psychologist that studies the science of magic and what magic and magicians
• 1:01:45
  teach us about human cognition and how the brain works. He's so good.
• 1:01:50
  It's good stuff. Jerry would have loved him.
• 1:01:54
  Well, this episode has just been filled with the most amazing stuff.
• 1:01:58
  Gentlemen thank you so much for being here it's been absolutely wonderful but
• 1:02:02
  i think our time is now coming to a close and i think it's time that we leave
• 1:02:06
  you fine gentlemen with the final word.
• 1:02:11
  You want the final word i want the final word thank you for shining a light
• 1:02:16
  on us and spending some time if you're if you're really interested in lost in
• 1:02:20
  the shuffle please it's going to be on video on demand starting september 10th
• 1:02:23
  drop september 10th let's see a big bump you can find Find it anywhere where
• 1:02:27
  you rent or buy for streaming.
• 1:02:29
  Go watch the movie if you can't see us in person. If you see us in person,
• 1:02:33
  give John a hug and me a high five. John really loves to be hugged.
• 1:02:35
  He just loves it. It'll be awesome.
• 1:02:38
  Is that our final word? Yep. Check out lostintheshuffle.film.
• 1:02:41
  Sign up for our newsletter, and that way you can stay in the loop where you
• 1:02:44
  can find the film. The newsletter.
• 1:02:45
  Sign up for the newsletter. Keep well and busy.
• 1:02:50
  Thanks for listening. It's time for us to disappear now.
• 1:02:54
  Disappear now. But we'll see you again on the next episode of the Magic Guys.