I Lie for Money
Page 1
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Copyright © 2015 by Steve Spill/Magic Concepts, Inc
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spill, Steve, 1955-
I lie for money : candid, outrageous stories from a magician’s misadventures / Steve Spill.
pages cm
Summary: “In this funny, irreverent, unique, eccentric memoir, magician Steve Spill reveals how he managed to survive decades inside a rarely profitable, sometimes maddening, but often deliciously rewarding offbeat showbiz profession--magic!”-- Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-63220-492-9 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-63220-862-0 (ebook) 1. Spill, Steve, 1955- 2. Magicians--United States--Biography. I. Title.
GV1545.S75A3 2015
793.8092--dc23
2015008849
Cover design by Rain Saukas
Cover photo credit Sal Taylor Kydd
ISBN: 978-1-63220-492-9
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220-862-0
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
To each person that buys this book and encourages others to do the same; Adam and Irena Wrobel for having a daughter with a contagious zest for life named Bozena who makes my life make sense; to that daughter of course; my parents, Sandy and Shirley, for birthing me with the best of each of their qualities; boyhood magical mentors who added what was between their ears to what’s between my ears; Bob Sheets for giving me my first best jobs; Penn & Teller for their generosity and inspiration; Asuka Hisa for engaging me to speak at the Santa Monica Museum of Art about my journey as a magician—the seed that grew into this book; Mark Miller for getting me to Julie Ganz at Skyhorse Publishing who shepherded the passage of my manuscript into book form; Magicopolis staff both past and present; and to anyone who has ever bought a ticket to one of my shows, I appreciate you all.
“Steve Spill is one of the greatest magicians that’s ever lived. Fact. I Lie for Money is the most entertaining book about magic ever. Double fact. If you don’t buy this book, there will be a big hole in your life that you will never fill, a void that will haunt the rest of your days until you cry out in the night, ‘WHY DIDN’T I GET THE MEMOIR THAT CONTAINED ALL THOSE AMAZING STORIES ABOUT MAGIC?!’ Triple fact. The choice is clear.”
—Adam de la Pena, creator of the hit animated series Code Monkeys
“Steve Spill is one of my favorite storytellers. The man has pioneered more venues for magic than anyone I know, and along the way, broken lots of new ground as a comic, magician, bartender, busker, club owner, and now raconteur—and that’s no lie!”
—Joel Hodgson, creator/star of Mystery Science Theater 3000
“A fantastic read packed with hilarious anecdotes and juicy tales of outlandish antics. Who would have thought the life of a family entertainer could be so wild?”
—Michael Larkin, NBC Digital News Producer
“A ridiculously entertaining book about [Spill’s] life and adventures as a journeyman magician trying to make a living from his art.”
—Jack Shalom, segment producer, Arts Express, WBAI
“A unique eye-opening account of the backstage life of a fiendishly funny magician.”
—Kirsten Sheridan, Oscar-nominated screenwriter and film director
“Every person on the face of the earth who wants to laugh out loud and be amazed should read I Lie for Money.”
—Dustin Stinett, GENII Magazine
“I Lie for Money opens a secret door and lets the reader enter the almost unknown—and often misunderstood—world of the professional magician.”
—Brooks Wachtel, Emmy-winning writer and director
CONTENTS
Introduction
I Used to Open for The Eagles, Now Sting Is Opening for Me
PART ONE: FIRST BEST JOBS
The Jolly Jester
The Lemon Trick
Busking
When Bob Was Bess and I Was Harry
PART TWO: WAY BACK
A Leads to B Leads to C
A Fifty-Cent Deck of Cards
The First Time I Advertised My Magic Show
The Legend of Cardini Lives On
PART THREE: BECOMING MYSELF
The Magic Castle
Men I Have Loved, My Eight Favorites
My First “Hand Job”
Dr. Q’s Hypnotic Act
World’s Greatest Magicians at the Magic Castle
Carter’s Magic Cellar
PART FOUR: FUNNY BUSINESS
Comedy Clubs
Timothy Leary’s Brain
Trials and Errors
PART FIVE: ODDS & ENDS
Lions and Tigers and Birds! Oh My!
When Tricks Go Wrong
Out of Africa
PART SIX: AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
Yes I Cannes
More Asians
Mr. Exec
PART SEVEN: MAGICOPOLIS
Groundbreaking to Grand Opening
I’ve Got The Show Right Here
Table of Terror
Doubt of the Benefit
Brushes with Greatness
How Joan Rivers Gets Me Laid
Backward
Introduction
“It is very difficult for a magician to deceive intelligent people without prevaricating. So everything I say is not true; this is true or I would not tell you so.”
Karl Germain, a master magician considered by his peers to be one of the finest that ever lived, uttered these words. Germain, who lived from 1878 to 1959, also famously said, “Conjuring is the only absolutely honest profession—a conjuror promises to deceive and he does.”
Being the classy guy that he was, when Germain described the performing art of magic, he avoided the words “liar,” “lying,” and “lie.” He also justified his deceptions for the sake of art, like the person who does a nude scene in a movie for the art of it (okay, maybe not exactly like that). Anyway, when not writing this book I am a magician who is proud to lie for my art, but I also do it to pay the mortgage. When I first started, I had only two dollars in my pocket, and look at me now, I owe thousands. I am a professional.
Other fact re-constructionists and reality stylists lie to their wives that there’s no other woman, or lie to the other woman that they don’t have a wife . . . or promise to pay you back out of their next paycheck, or tell you they’re from the government and are here to help you. The magician is an extraordinary breed of liar. In fact, there’s not another creature on earth that would lie to make you think a coin is in their left fist when it’s really under the saltshaker.
Buried alive and living, transforming nubile young girls into savage tigers, floating humans, sawing women in two, vanishing elephants, appearing persons, mind reading, teleportation, time control, dangerous Houdini-inspired escapes, walking on water (actually, that one’s not a big deal, if you know where the sand bars are)—each and every one of those feats are magicians’ lies, designed to amuse audiences by making them feel their eyes are pairs of liars, and that their brains are lying to them too.
As you read this book you will question why any sane person would do some of the things I’ve done—like swallowing sewing needles, stabbing myself, having someone pull the trigger of a gun pointed at my face, or being chained to a metal table and allowing a burning rope to drop thirty-nine sharpened steel spikes on me from fifteen feet above. Because I’ve done this stuff doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do it. Even if you think you know how to do these things safely, you’d still be a bonehead to try them. Leave it to me. I’m an expert.
The trick of our trade is to alter perceptions with dyslexic displays of honesty that range from tiny little manipulative untruths to big, fat, in-your-face, lies. To be a professional magician is to be an expert at dispensing disinformation, duplicity, hypocrisy, distortion, deception, and fakery without any of the guilt or unpleasant consequences. And we enjoy the thrill of getting away with it. Many of the defects you were taught to avoid in childhood are the very qualities that become your virtues as a magician. True practitioners of the craft do the same sort of things up front and above board in the name of entertainment that most governments do secretly in the name of espionage.
There may be some performing arts better than magic, and some may be worse, but there is nothing exactly like it. In his book, House of Mystery, that genius of deception, Teller, wrote, “In real life, effects have causes. In good magic, effects have fake causes that are beautiful or funny or thought provoking. That’s the idea of magic: connecting a cause with an effect by means of a lie that tells a greater truth.” Doesn’t that sound cool? Also from Teller, “When a magician lets you notice something on your own, his lie becomes impenetrable. Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself.”
Since performing magic is largely about lying, it makes sense that I’d be a magician; I’ve always largely loved to lie. In school I used to turn in book reports about books that didn’t exist. Phony stories, fake authors, all made up by me. If a teacher questioned me about one of my bogus books, I’d say I got it at a swap meet, granny’s garage, or it somehow mysteriously appeared on my doorstep.
Although my mind tells me I’m half my present age of sixty years, in reality I have spent better than fifty years, as man and boy, turning tricks. Yes, I’ve been a magician for a very long time. No, I did not go to high school with Harry Houdini. Nor do I have cloven hooves or wear a top hat to make room for my horns. My best work is probably still ahead of me, but herein lies the details of my long and mediocre career to date. The places I’ve been, the people I have met—from Santa Monica’s beach sands and Adam Sandler to South Africa east of the Great Kei River and Joan Rivers—getting up in front of crowds, hanging out with celebrities, illiterates, intellectuals, jungle natives, insurance salesmen . . .
As a magician I have functioned at just about every known type of affair. I have run the gamut. I have performed the same day at a bon voyage party in San Pedro and at a circumcision in Oxnard (fortunately, I was able to do the same act at both occasions). What I am is a laborer, a worker, and what’s written here chronicles achievements that have turned me into something less than a household name, but have made me a very happy man.
Even though I know you can’t live in the past, it’s nice to have one, and this book is a welcome opportunity to put into words the past that lives in me. My job has always been to make people see and experience things they cannot see and experience in their own lives. And despite all the money or accolades or whatever else being a magician brings you, there is nothing else, not a thing in the world, that can ever compare to making an audience happy. Even if you’re atheist, you can’t help, for that one brief moment, believing in God. The purpose of this book is the same, to spread joy and wonder and make you happy . . . OK, that wasn’t entirely honest—I also hope to maybe make a few frogskins in the process.
This is not an unabridged autobiography. Although I’ve known me a long time and am well acquainted with myself, I don’t pretend to remember and assemble every important thing that happened to me until now. I best recollect certain bits and pieces, and of those my aim was to leave out all the boring stuff. One of the first lessons I learned as a magician was that the audience doesn’t care how you feel; they care how they feel. If people wanted to see, or read for that matter, something that made them feel bad, hospitals could sell tickets. As I said when I broke my ankle onstage during a show in Chevy Chase, Maryland, “What ankle?” When you buy a ticket to see a performance, the entertainer owes you your money’s worth. Same with a book, well, it is in my book.
Memory is like a fun house mirror. Its distortions reflect bad stuff in a thinner form than that in which it originally appeared, and good things in a wider aspect than they deserve. I’ve tried to beat down my vanity, but anyone who writes about himself is apt to fall into the magician’s habit of peeking at the deck to find out where the aces lie. This tome is my fist full of aces. In other words, my life is an open book with a bunch of the pages stuck together; included are only what I consider the most surprising, relevant, interesting, or funny parts of my journey as a magician.
And by the way, I’m not above rearranging my experiences to improve a story, like when my shows absolutely sucked. If I told you that at times I was the worst magic act ever in the history of the world, I’d be lying—I wasn’t that good. But when you’re in love with what you’re doing there’s no shame in failing; you’re resilient, you bounce back quickly from failures, you’re always willing to take risks, and you don’t put yourself down if something doesn’t work out. I’ve usually managed to learn something from the defeats, but hardly anything from the victories.
Part of the reason I wrote this book was to share with those who wish to craft a self-directed creative life—be it an actor, painter, writer, comedian, magician, or whatever—and describe how one can survive in rarely profitable but rewarding professions. You may not become a bazillionaire, but you can be a winner. Nobody makes a living as a magician by accident. You gotta want it pretty bad. Success comes by enjoying the journey, hard work helps you improve, and when you’re obsessed you make your luck. At the moment I am neither the best nor the worst magician, but perhaps the luckiest.
The important thing to know about me is that I lie a lot. That’s the truth. But, usually, when I lie, I admit it. I’m a very honest liar who stole that terribly clever “Honest Liar” phrase, along with other ideas, from George Burns . . . making me not just a liar, but also a thief. Lying and remixing stolen bits and pieces of other’s ideas isn’t just for magicians; it’s for everyone. Like David Bowie said, “The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.” The trick is to take a tiny bit from a lot of sources to create something new and different. But enough about stealing; the fact is, everything you’ve read in this paragraph is a lie, which proves what a truthful man I am. If I tell you something is a lie, you know it’s the truth. But when I write about my life, I don’t lie. I don’t have to. The truth is unbelievable enough.
I USED TO OPEN FOR THE EAGLES, NOW STING IS OPENING FOR ME
I gave the audience the finger with both hands and disappeared. I was a proud nineteen-year-old magician and wasn’t going to get booed without returning the insult. It was the first time in my young career that I learned what it felt like to really fail on stage. At the time I was unaware of any rock concerts, besides the ones I was doing, that had a magician as an opening act; maybe there was a reason for that? The unruly crowd booed so loud, it was unbearably embarrassing, and although you can’t really die from embarrassment, it de
finitely can feel fatal. I’m still trying to forget that show when I opened for a band called Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids at Colorado Springs Municipal Auditorium.
I had been a master opener in a plethora of rock nightclubs, so it was an easy matter in my mind to just chalk up my larger venue concert failure to the overcrowding and late start time. But apparently that wasn’t it, because my next huge event didn’t go any better. When I opened for Paul Revere and the Raiders at Bakersfield Civic Auditorium, the band’s manager told me, “Your first talent isn’t going to be comedy or magic, kid, it’s going to be taking rejection—just don’t let it get you down. You’ll never see me letting rejection get me down. It might get me down, but I won’t let anyone see it.” I wanted to kick that manager in the nuts, but I didn’t. From start to finish, the entire life span of my ill-fated Highdini act was a scant two years.
Most of you have never heard of me. My name is Steve Spill, and I am a magician who is very well known to those who know me, and completely unknown to those who have never heard of me. Those who know me are other professional magicians, a few fans, and some residents of Santa Monica, California, where I’ve been producing and performing magic shows since 1998, in a theater I designed, built, run, and named, Magicopolis. Producing and performing magic shows was nothing new to me in 1998, but designing, building, and running a theater were.
As a lifelong magician, one of my desires in terms of the design and build was that every person in the audience could see me from head to toe at every moment, and ideally that I could see each and every face in the crowd. Too many times I’d worked venues where people seated beyond the first row only saw me from the waist up. And I wanted the spectators really close, so even from the furthest seat from the stage a coin or the face of a card would be clearly visible.
Flash-forward fifteen years, to November 5, 2013, and last night Sting was my opening act at Magicopolis. When I say Sting, I mean THE Sting, the sixteen-time Grammy Award-winning musician. He performed songs from his new album, The Last Ship, and from the forthcoming Broadway musical of the same name. I could hear the deafening applause as Sting finished his set and waited in the wings before he introduced me as the star of the show at Magicopolis. I know you’re just dying to find out more about my gig with Sting, but I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait. I want this first chapter to have a little suspense.