by Steve Spill
When I brought up the idea of being superstitious, he said he was only superstitious when it came to luck. Actually, despite all the telepathic and psychic phenomena he felt he experienced, what he really said was that he wasn’t superstitious at all, but I suspect he had his fingers crossed when he said that. We conversed about aesthetics and technology and music and women, holding opposite views, though I don’t know which was Bill’s and which was mine, and I think that both of us at times became a little confused about that.
We talked about how magic tricks looked one way when they were really another way. This led to discussions on misdirection outside the realm of the magician. Bill said that magicians’ principles of misdirection and trickery might be among the techniques used by governments to manipulate the media and by churches to hide truths from the flock, and that the magic of magicians could be used to accomplish a laundry list of other sociological atrocities. But Bill appreciated the fact that what he considered to be devious methods could be used ethically by a magician to entertain audiences.
Bill entertained me with his guitar and loved watching me perform every card trick I knew. There were no tricks with cards in Bill’s repertoire, but watching him cut and shuffle the deck, it was obvious to me he had some inherent manipulative skill. By the end of the week I was able to teach him, and he was able to master several basic sleights. Bill took a lot of notes on how those few sleights could be combined in various ways to perform a number of different baffling tricks. He said it was like knowing a few guitar chords that could be combined to play different songs, and he was right.
The first time I worked with the esoteric deadpan king of one-liners, Steven Wright, a teenage David Spade who was destined for “Saturday Night Live” and sitcom success, was the emcee. We were all at Finney Bones, a Phoenix club owned by comedy magician Michael Finney. What was most surprising is that Steven had just had a hit comedy album, had just done an HBO special, and was about to embark on his first national college tour.
So what was he doing at a tiny club in Phoenix? Working on new material, that’s what. This was his laboratory. He was constantly writing jokes, and by his own estimate, only one in ten of his bizarre one-liners was a winner. Steven would read joke after joke off his lined yellow pad of paper, and if the audience didn’t respond, he’d cross the joke off the list. His slow, dry, low-energy, lethargic delivery wasn’t a device for his act. Steven talked like that all the time.
The man said he was committed to the idea of living for today, for now, in the moment. His life appeared to be uncomplicated and serene, concerned with neither yesterday nor tomorrow. At this point he was a high-income individual, yet he claimed to have no apartment or home.
I believed him when he said his only possessions were a few shirts and jeans, which he was constantly washing.
Steven spent a lot of time in the comedy condo laundry room while his clothes were being cleaned. Not sure if it was the great cycles, round and round, beginning and end, or if it was the sounds of the washing machines, or if he ever physically jumped into a dryer for a spin, but Wright said the process put him in a meditative state. Apparently Steven also liked to play the laundry room change machine, turning dollars to quarters, quarters to nickels and dimes, and nickels and dimes back to quarters. There were better odds than a casino.
I’ll always be happy that I once knew sarcastic, nostalgic, reference-slinging politico Dennis Miller. I wasn’t one of his close friends, but he always made me feel like one. I worked at clubs with him many times, and I happened to be working in New York when he did one of his first shots on the Letterman Show. I accompanied him to the taping, and after, I was with him when he got the great news that he’d be moving from LA to NYC to do Saturday Night Live.
What people want to know about Dennis is what made him do a 180 from what was perceived as a liberal reputation to his more recent conservative political opinions. I can’t answer that. What I can say is that he always acted hip and casual—but behind that was a steely sort of personality, like if he ever had decided to be president of a Fortune 500 company, he could do it.
At the peak of his SNL fame, Dennis did a show with Dana Carvey at Caesar’s Tahoe, while I was in the resort next door performing at Harrah’s Tahoe. Between shows I met him in the casino as his audience was exiting the showroom. I was amazed by what happened, or rather didn’t happen. I thought Dennis was about to be mobbed by fans wanting photos or autographs. Instead, people stood back and just watched Dennis. They were quiet and respectful. If it had been Carvey, he’d have been mobbed by loving fans, but not Dennis. The people looked at him with admiration, but they didn’t come too close.
I was walking with him through the casino and he was telling me a story when a guy came running up and asked for an autograph. Dennis said quietly and gently, “You don’t want that,” and he kept walking and talking with me. The guy wasn’t angry—he just stood smiling and watched us walk away.
A promotional company booked me as part of a summer-long series of comedy nights in Los Angeles pubs and bars in front of a sign advertising Metaxa, an exotic Greek liquor. In an effort to raise human blood alcohol content, Metaxa shooters were available for a dollar and you got to keep the shot glass, which displayed the Metaxa logo.
I had no interference as far as my act was concerned, but part of the deal was to use a bottle of Metaxa in one of my tricks, but not to drag it in, to make it seem natural. I of course, said “no problem,” but added, for some stupid reason, that I hated the taste of the stuff. To my surprise the guy who hired me said, “Me too.” An empty Metaxa bottle, substituted with cold tea instead of the brown alcohol, worked fine for my Grab & Stab trick.
Stuck in a piece of wood were four hunting knives. “Each of these knives has been fitted with a long, sharp-edged metal blade, and each of these knives is a deadly weapon. I am going to have someone take a close look at these, so you can be certain that the knives are real. Sir, would you stand up for just a second? You look like you might be familiar with knives . . .”
This got an amusing response when I picked a tough or macho-looking guy, which was always done when possible. Next I showed a fifth knife, which appeared identical to the others, but was a fake, one where the blade retracted into the handle.
“Although this pointed weapon is the same size and weight as the others, it won’t stick into the wood, and it doesn’t cut, because it has a phony blade that allows you to do stuff like this . . .”
I pushed the knife up my nose, since it was a plastic fakeroo, the blade retracted into the handle, but it looked like the five-inch blade went up my nose. I yelled “Ooooo . . .” The audience laughed and screamed and then I said, “That’s always a crowd pleaser. Don’t worry, I’ve never been wounded . . . severely.”
Next I had the volunteer drop all the knives, including the fake one, into a clear bag made out of very thick vinyl. “Four knives with long, sharp-edged metal blades, one phony one. See if you can keep your eye on the phony knife.” I shook the bag vigorously and you could plainly see the knives were hopelessly mixed.
“The name of this game is Grab and Stab! Yes, I’m a fast talker, but I also have the gift to grab. In a moment, I will thrust my hand into the bag, which is dangerous in itself, and the first knife I grab, I will heave into my chest. Aren’t you glad you came tonight? I’ll grab a knife at random as fast as I can, and I’ll do this with such speed, that if I fail to grab the phony one, there will be nothing I can do to rescue myself . . . so I’ll take my applause now!”
There were laughs and cheers, and then I quickly grabbed a knife and stabbed it into my chest, and it stuck. The audience was stunned for a fraction of an instant looking at the knife clearly impaled in my chest. I screamed, “Aahhh! Give me another chance . . .”
“Don’t worry, I’ve found that a little drink of Metaxa now and then makes a little magic.” See how naturally I mentioned that without dragging it in? I pulled out the long knife and grabbed my bottle of Metaxa.
“Watch closely.” I drank a big swig off the bottle, and a long stream of Metaxa squirted out of the supposed knife hole in my chest. “Enjoy the refreshing taste of Metaxa! It’s a great disinfectant!” How about that? A perfectly natural use of Metaxa in a magic trick; I felt so clever.
After a week on the job, my contact at the promo company had the unpleasant assignment of telling me that I was fired. I had been accused, unjustly of course, of denigrating my sponsor’s product. Reports had gone to local Metaxa execs quoting me as saying in my show that “I hated the vile taste of the stuff so much it made me attempt suicide.” This absurd information was picked up and then thrown back and forth by active tongues. It was like the game of telephone, where one person whispers a message to another, which is then passed through a line of people, and when it gets to the end a bunch of errors have accumulated in the retellings.
I pointed this out and was trying to salvage the ton of money still due on the eleven remaining weeks of my contract, but my arguments were useless. The promo guys said the Metaxa people didn’t like me, or my knife trick. They delicately suggested that they had many other clients besides Metaxa, and that if I didn’t play rough they would reward me for my good sportsmanship. So I signed an agreement to settle my contract for seven hundred fifty dollars, much less than I had expected to earn that summer.
When I got home, on my cassette tape answering machine, there was an urgent message to go back to the promo office right away. Well, I thought, they didn’t waste any time getting me another gig. I drove back. They had made a staggering error in the release I signed, agreeing to settle my contract, not for seven hundred fifty dollars, but for $75,000! They showed me how a typist had made the mistake and conceded that no one had noticed the wrong amount.
I was an unknown quantity to the promo company and they must have had a moment of panic, wondering what I would do about it. I kidded them a little, but I signed a new release that took them off the hook. Twice in one day I had been a good guy. I was sure my friendliness would pay off, and that they would phone me. And I was right.
True to their word, I got a call the following summer with an offer for another series of comedy nights. We did a deal identical to the Metaxa one, but for Phillip Morris, and the company was happy with my work. Yes, they were a despised organization, their products had warning labels, they were losing lawsuits to lifelong chain smokers with lung cancer, and TV banned tobacco commercials, but, at the same time, cigarette vending machines were very popular, you could smoke indoors everywhere from libraries to grocery stores, and luminaries from Johnny Carson to rock stars to movie idols made smoking look cool and sexy.
My shows were in front of a poster of the then-famous puffing rugged cowboy known as the Marlboro Man. Bar patrons got free butt samples and the product placement in my show was a variation on The Lemon Trick.
I borrowed a dollar bill and the owner signed his name on it. The bill vanished at my fingertips, then a cigarette was broken in half and the signed bill was found inside. Without dragging it in and making it seem a natural intrinsic part of the trick, I bucked the anti-smoking trend by mentioning that medical science had discovered Marlboro’s prolonged life, and that the savings are substantial if you buy them by the carton.
Some shows you do for love, others for money. If you can do both at the same time, that’s the best, but usually, unless you’re in a better financial condition than I’ve ever been, you have to make a choice. Most times if it pays nice money, like these Metaxa and Marlboro gigs did at the time, you take it.
At Rumors Comedy Club in Winnipeg I did a variation of the old color-changing handkerchief trick, using women’s silk panties. I told a story about a girl I knew who was bad at doing laundry—her white panties would come out of the wash green, next wash they’d be yellow, then magenta . . . she’d say it was the phosphates, the water was full of lime salts, and so on. After the show a pretty redhead came up to me waving some black panties and asked if I could magically change them to pink? I asked her if she came prepared with the panties in her pocket, and she bent over to show me that she hadn’t.
Dai Vernon once showed me a postcard I had written to him from Las Vegas. I didn’t remember writing it, but he kept it because he liked it. It said, “From here I go to Minneapolis. I always spend my Februarys in Minneapolis.”
I used to play at the Rib Tickler in Minneapolis, where they sold barbecued ribs with the jokes. Yes, the weather was cold. The first time I got off the plane, the sun was shining and I said to the guy who drove me, “What a nice day.” And he answered, “It sure is. The sun is shining and it’s only sixteen below.” What he didn’t say, was that the wind chill factor made it feel like twenty below . . . in dog years that’s a hundred and forty below.
So, one night I’m onstage at the Rib Tickler, doing a bit called the Insurance Policy. A selected card vanished and then reappeared in my shoe. There was a problem, though. The selected card was the King of Hearts and the card in my shoe was the Three of Clubs.
In a panic, I said, “Someday someone’s gonna pick the Three of Clubs, and this will be a really good trick . . .” Then I said, “No worries, I’m covered by an insurance policy.”
I took out a pamphlet that had Magician’s Insurance Policy written on it, unfolded it, and read aloud the conditions of payment as well as the fine print, “. . . covers performing magician against failure from warped cards, faulty fingers, rambunctious spectators . . .” as I read, I kept unfolding until the policy was poster size; when turned around, it showed a big blow-up of the selected card, the King of Hearts.
Sitting alone in the audience, watching me intently, was a guy who didn’t seem to be a comedy club regular. For one thing, he was drinking milk. Comedy clubs don’t usually do a big milk business. That’s the reason he had caught my eye during the show. So it was interesting to see this man swigging milk while everyone else in the room was happily making a sincere effort to raise their blood alcohol content. He seemed to enjoy what I was doing, but he wasn’t falling on the floor with laughter.
To this day, after a show I always make myself available to the audience, and nowadays am delighted to shake hands, take a snapshot, or share a minute or two with anyone who cares to. I’m good at it. Not so much so in my comedy club days when it was a bit of a dreaded chore. I did it, but was not always wild about—and most certainly lacked the skill set to properly handle—the extended annoying chatter.
After the show, Mr. Milk came up to me. He seemed to be a very serious man and I imagined that to him comedy and magic were just forms of frivolity. But he was very pleasant, told me he enjoyed my performance, and he shook my hand firmly like he meant business. As I was bidding farewell to others, he continued to stand next to me, like he wanted to speak further. After everyone left, he did.
“Steve, I’m in town with the Prudential Insurance convention and . . .”
“I’m not in the market for any insurance.”
“No, no. I want to buy your magician’s insurance policy trick.”
I politely declined, but this guy wouldn’t give up, “It’s a trick I can show clients, a great icebreaker for me . . .”
“Sorry, I need it for my act, and I can’t get another one right away.”
He took out a thick bankroll, “I’ll pay anything you want.” Suddenly the room felt a little icy. This guy wasn’t gonna take “no” for an answer. I felt it along my spine, like the wind chill factor. “Here’s the money, now give me the policy.” Sound a little like the, “Here’s the money, gimme what I want,” boy named Kevin Grant who bought the Dagger Chest from Femia’s Party shop? That’s what I was thinking, too. Great minds think alike.
“Okay, the secret is, your clients need to pick the King of Hearts, because that’s the card printed on the policy. It’s called forcing a card. Here’s an easy way to do that; start with the King of Hearts on top of the deck . . .”
“Don’t give me that phony baloney, I want to do it like you did, take a card . . .
”
“You don’t get it, the fact is . . .”
He insisted, so I took one. Milk Man unfolded the insurance policy and showed me the blow-up of the King of Hearts. “Is that your card? No? What? What do you mean no? In the show you said the policy covered you for any card.” I quickly explained it’s just a trick. But this guy believed it was some sort of real magic insurance policy. He was crushed that the trick was a trick.
“Do you mean to tell me it always shows the King of Hearts? That’s no magic, and it’s certainly no insurance.”
“You were certainly impressed when I did it in the show, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking now.”
“That’s when I thought the policy provided a real service. What kind of insurance covers you for only one card in the deck?”
Pointless wastes of time, like that Milk Man incident, made me averse to mingling and making charming small talk with other minglers and charming small talkers. Despite that fact, however, I’ve always continued to be accessible after shows, but I’m still not a big schmoozer or even a boozer. Senator Crandall said he had nothing against the people in his audience individually, but rather it was just when they gathered that he didn’t like them. I’m the opposite—I love audiences, but individually, sometimes they can be a pain in the drain.
Audiences are number one, except when they treat you like number two.
Fortunately, my decades-old comedy club meet-and-greet phobia has softened to save my butt. Today at Magicopolis I’m no longer the clever young comedy club guy. I’m his older, smarter descendant who understands that questions, offers, conversation, hugs, kisses, clapping backs, autographs, taking photos, gimme five hand-slaps, fist-bumps, and shaking hands are audience compliments akin to applause. It’s a pleasure to meet those who like my show and I always make sure to wash my hands before I eat.