Happy February 1. It is still winter. January was a blur of days and days below zero and evenings watching movies on Netflix. I’m not surprised to see I didn’t keep up my twice a week blogging schedule because, well, there isn’t much to say this time of year.
Thank goodness for the movies. This time of year our local multiplex fills with Oscar-nominated films, and when we can convince ourselves to go out in the cold, we are treated to the likes of Llewyn Davis and American Hustle. On nights we are not motivated to get out into the cold (i.e., most nights) there is Netflix.
Last night after Steve went to bed, I stumbled on the documentary Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay. I first heard about Ricky Jay in about 1995. I was living in Chicago and my first husband and I went to a friend’s house. She had a piece of art on her wall (or was it on her fridge?) related to Ricky Jay. It may have been an announcement of his one-man show Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants. But in my memory it was a piece of original art, framed, that consisted of a small collage of some kind of old-fashioned, classic magician artwork.
This documentary celebrates Ricky Jay’s great talent as an illusionist, but it also tells the story of his mentors, some of the great magicians of the 20th century, guys that go all the way back to early vaudeville. His first mentor was his grandfather, Max Katz, an accomplished amateur magician who brought young Ricky into the Manhattan apartments of great magicians. He took magic lessons the way many of us took piano lessons, even taking a train into Manhattan from his New Jersey home for his weekly appointments.
And he practiced like a classical musician. Shuffling and cutting cards for hours and hours. Inventing an “effect” that met a challenge given him by one of his mentors.
Most of us enjoy magic but think it’s kind of cheesy. Who wants to be tricked? What’s with the tuxedos and sexy assistants? Why are we so surprised they can deceive us when they told us that is what they were going to do? But this film, and Ricky’s art, is not about doing tricks on stage. What is most wonderful are the two instances in the film when individuals tell the stories of illusions he did specifically for them, in a natural setting. I won’t give away the stories, but I will say I was as moved by the story as if the illusion was done for me.
And watching the film, one is drawn to what it means to be a magician. The title of the film says it all– it is to deceive. Backstage at one of his shows, he tells the producer that there are several first rate card sharks in the audience. The world of someone who can cut and manipulate cards is one of hustlers, gamblers, thieves and liars. And what impressed me the most about Ricky Jay was his privacy. This biography does not probe or analyze his childhood, personal life, or personality at all. You can almost see it as a condition of making the documentary. The film is about the magic, and any details of his life are throw-aways, footnotes. We can feel him directing our gaze away from those facts even as they lodge in our heads for later.
Magic is a particular kind of entertainment. And this film is very entertaining. The stories of his mentors, Slydini, Cardini, All Fosso the Coney Island Fakir, Francis Carlyle, Roy Benson, and particularly Charlie Miller and Dai Vernon, are endlessly entertaining. And I could watch him shuffle cards for hours. Not a bad occupation for a cold winter’s night.