by Steve Spill
That very afternoon, immediately following the groundbreaking ceremony, marked the start of our demolition. When people hear the term “demolition,” the first thing that likely comes to mind is an explosion, or the sight of an entire building crumbling to the ground. In the case of 1418 Fourth Street, it was an interior demolition that was required, leaving the exterior of the structure intact, an immense undertaking that took a week.
Transforming a former record/video rental warehouse into a theater complex required new everything, which meant removing drywall, stud walls, concrete, digging floor trenches, removing slabs, and dismantling virtually every interior part of the structure including all plumbing and electrical. The only thing that remained after the week ended was the square of concrete with Penn & Teller’s paw prints.
I wrote “new everything,” but a lot of the items newly installed were salvaged from other buildings that were being torn down or renovated, a fun and valuable tip I picked up in my youth from the Castle’s Milt Larsen. The Santa Monica building & Safety approval and plan check process took a year, which gave me ample time to collect things like ninety-year-old theater seats (originally in an Orpheum theater, then a monastery), some magical stained glass, various bits of antique hardware, old wood, a couple of Dutch street lamps, and other eclectic building supplies.
Building & Safety approval was among the first of many dozens of approvals, compliances, demands, and official requirements by various city, county, state, federal, and private entities. Weekly a plethora of inspectors monitored, measured, calculated, and tested each and every elemental increment of the new structure.
As the opening date grew near, I was hounded daily by dozens of salesmen of every sort, ASCAP demanded licensing and advance royalty payments for our future use of any music, and I was besieged by twenty-five magicians a week soliciting work with audition videocassettes and follow-up phone calls. A magic show technically does not come under their terms, but somehow as a performer I was in violation of Actor’s Equity Association rules for not signing a union contract with the theater’s owner or show’s producer. In other words, the union wanted me to sign a contract with myself. I told them I’d decided to fire myself for not signing.
Flash forward to opening night, Friday, September 18, 1998. The evening itself, clear and warm, as Santa Monica often is in September, was one big sparkle with the return of CNN, local affiliate NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX news and morning show camera crews, the LA Times, LA Weekly, Daily Variety, and several national outlets all were on the red carpet at Fourth Street for the grand opening of Magicopolis.
Long before the opening hour, an imposing throng gathered in front of the theater. No tickets were sold; the tickets for the opening had been distributed to a select list well in advance, and most of those outside who vainly tried to get in had no chance whatsoever of doing so, but they kept on trying. For the most part the crowd had to content itself by glimpsing a splattering of celebrities, kind of like law enforcement did when they kept track of mourners at mob funerals in the Godfather films. Cameras captured LA’s glitterati and opening night attendees from popular TV shows of the day like Jeri Ryan from Star Trek: Voyager, Wallace Langham from The Larry Sanders Show, Paul Provenza from Northern Exposure, and Hercules himself, Kevin Sorbo.
I welcomed the crowd and kicked off the festivities. Then, in an effort to squeeze the absolute maximum promotional value out of this momentous occasion, that opening night audience witnessed the brilliance and power of the legendary Penn & Teller. To further broaden the media reach, it was Julie Moran from TV’s Entertainment Tonight who hosted the show and allowed herself to be levitated by those bad boys of magic. Penn & Teller performed all my personal favorites from their voluminous repertoire of mind-bending greatest hits.
Strangling an innocent boy who left unharmed due to his belief in Teller’s ability to perform religious miracles, Penn playing bass while Teller exposed the complex modus operandi behind what looked like a simple cigarette trick, Teller accidentally impaling Penn’s hand with a buck knife to reveal a selected card, and a plethora of other daring, provocative, refreshing entertainments.
Penn & Teller had the audience in the palms of their hands and weren’t about to turn them loose. Over the cackling, chanting, cheering, clapping, shuffling, and stomping, Penn simultaneously ate fire and used his commanding voice to deliver a heartfelt discourse on the value of seeing magic performed live and the importance of Magicopolis. At the finish of the show I came out and made a speech of thanks to the distinguished audience. As soon as we were alone, Bozena and I laughed with tears of joy; we jumped up and down like little kids screaming, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” It was a great night and we hit the publicity jackpot with a ton of TV coverage over the next few days.
With the hokum and hype over, it was time for Magicopolis to sink or swim in the strange and muddy waters of Santa Monica. There are many people, not just youngsters, who, usually confined to TV, computer, and movie screens, have never seen a live stage performance of any kind, let alone a magic show. And one cannot fully experience the art and craft of magic through any electronic medium, as can be done with comedy, music, or drama. A woman floating on screen just isn’t the same as when you experience that phenomenon live and in person. Yet in Los Angeles, as with most venues outside of a few exceptions in Vegas and New York, the average amusement seeker is not used to paying hard-earned cash to see a magic show.
Penn & Teller on stage at Magicopolis opening night.
The opening night media support was overwhelming, but a groundbreaking ceremony attendee who was a journalist from the trendy monthly, Buzz Magazine, was quoted as saying, “It is needless for me to write about Magicopolis, in all probability the place will be out of business before the end of the year.” That was back in March 1998. Since then we’ve had the good fortune to parlay our minimal talent into a long run and have been continuously presenting shows at Magicopolis right up until today in 2015. It was Buzz Magazine that filed for bankruptcy and went out of business before the end of that year. The magazine’s June 1998 issue was Buzz’s last.
Almost everyone, I imagine, has a year that seems peculiarly his own in memory, a year enshrined where fireworks ever explode. My year was 1997–1998, during which time I experienced a feeling of self-importance, which I never again possessed.
I’VE GOT THE SHOW RIGHT HERE
Were you to attend a performance at Magicopolis tonight, it’s likely you’d witness the latest and greatest version of the ever-evolving production, Escape Reality, with Steve Spill and Bozena Wrobel—a magical mystery tour de force of sleight of hand, illusions, levitation, mind reading, disappearances, and a nail-biting Houdini-inspired escape. The show is seasoned with hilarity and danger, and without any video walls, smoke machines, lasers, pyrotechnics, or tits-and-feathers dancers.
Building that show, or any show for that matter, was like building a cruise ship—until you get it in the ocean you can’t tell if it’s the QE2, or the Titanic. For some reason, I remember captaining my first creative ships, actually rowboats—the Highdini act and my Castle close-up show—more vividly in some ways than the collaborative construction of Escape Reality, even though our long-running Magicopolis ocean liner is superior in every way. Perhaps I dwell on those early vessels, which seem so small and obscure, because those efforts were the birth of the bread-and-butter philosophy that has been woven into the fabric of my career. Namely, that magic is a vehicle that must deliver some presentational content besides the trick itself.
Before Bozena, as a solo performer, I focused mainly on comedy. The Bozena collaboration added a female actor/writer’s skill set to the mix. She had ideas, a deep knowledge of scene construction, and an expert capability of playing any character imagined. Bozena embodies the lives of beings with which I can interact—vampires, séance mediums, or even a horny man. The only character I can credibly play is an embellished version of myself.
Me about to say something stupid in front of both Bozena an
d Magicopolis.
Audiences accept the fact that women are often sawed in two or otherwise theatrically victimized in magic shows. We wanted to do that sort of trick where instead of a woman it was a man, me, that endured some torture. At the time, a magician in Texas offered to build and sell a copy of his then newly invented illusion that looked like this—a woman stood in a box with an open front so you could see her standing there. When the magician cranked some handles the top of the box lowered, the bottom heightened, and the girl’s head and feet drew closer together. This continued until she became compressed to less than 18 inches in length.
We gave my measurements over the phone and had him build the special box so that I, a man, presumably could fit in it. We wrote a very funny sketch, The Runaway Groom, as a way of presenting this clever trick. When the prop arrived from Texas I could not fit inside, but, of course, Bozena could. Instead of having the thing re-built, we channeled our disappointment and anger into humor, and a new, funnier spin on our sketch sprang to life. Sometimes dealing with adverse situations brings something better than originally envisioned. That’s what happened here when we decided to switch roles.
Besides the broad hilarity of it all, the unforeseen cool thing about me playing the bride and Bozena acting as the groom is that the role reversal actually better presents the qualities of a cheating macho groom and a manipulative abandoned bride, in a more exaggerated, poignant, expressive way, than if we did the bit as originally intended. Plus it’s much funnier.
The plot is introduced on stage like this: “I’d like you to imagine the worst day in a young beautiful woman’s life. It’s her wedding day, and her husband-to-be fails to show up at the ceremony. He leaves her standing at the alter.” On cue, in unison, the entire audience always sighs a very audible “aaahhh” sort of sound. “You’ve heard of the Runaway Bride. Now it’s time to meet The Runaway Groom.”
I left the stage and Bozena, snappily dressed as a man with an open shirt exposing a hairy chest jangling with gold chains, snuck out and started flirting with a woman in the audience.
“What’s cookin’ good lookin’? My name is Harry—Harry Chest.” She/he improvises and not only gets the woman’s name, but often her phone number, email address, zodiac sign, and location for a first date as well—until I burst onto the scene, dressed in full drag bride regalia, including a beautiful wedding dress, jewelry, bouquet, and my usual goatee.
“I see you there, trying to pick up on that smoking hot hottie hotsy totsy . . . you miserable pig!” After I smack the groom with my bouquet and turn away in an indignant pose, my fiancé says, “Good to see you baby.” I, in drag, matter-of-factly respond, “I don’t think Tootsie or Mrs. Doubtfire had to put up with this sort of Crying Game . . .”
“Oh come on baby, be my bride, give me a little kiss . . .”
“I remained celibate for you! I mean, except for Brad Pitt and Larry King. Oh, that Larry, I love getting tangled in his suspenders . . .”
“You betrayed me?”
“The thing to remember is that I stood back there waiting for you, with all my friends and family . . .” As I gestured with my bouquet, I became distracted by it. “Hey, these smell pretty good. Well, if I can’t get lucky, maybe someone else will.”
I toss the bouquet into the audience. If a woman catches it, I say, “Hand it to a man, I don’t go that way.” If a boy catches it, I ask, “What do you think I am, a cougar?” One way or another, after various adlibs, the bouquet ends up with a man in the audience, usually a handsome one. “Hey, what’s your name, you big strapping stud? He’s very cute, look at the muscles on that fella.”
Acting jealous, my groom flexed and bragged, “I’ve got big muscles too, but hey buddy, do you have a hairy chest? Come on, show us your carpet of pleasure.” They cried out from the audience egging him on, and the guy was coaxed into taking off his shirt as the crowd cheered.
“I think he waxes . . . I like the pierced nipple . . . He’s very cute.”
“Well if you like him so much, why don’t you marry him?”
I stroked my hair, batted my eyelashes, and made an innocent but seductive sort of pose, “Do you think he really likes me?” Then I pulled up my dress to show a little leg, “Oh come on baby, you know you want it.”
Suddenly I snapped out of it and got back to the issue at hand, “The thing to remember . . .” speaking to my groom, “. . . is that I stood back there waiting for you . . .” I look at the audience, “I don’t know if we should whip him, beat him, kiss him, or squish him? I think we ought to squish him!” As I say, “squish him!” two things happen—the curtains opened to reveal the torturous squishing box, and I reach into my bra and take out my falsies, actually a pair of maracas. I shake the maracas to the beat of my chant, “squish him, squish him, squish him . . .” the audience joins in, “squish him, squish him, squish him,” and my groom is forced into the box.
I put the maracas back in my bra, “They just don’t shake like they used to,” and start the squishing process, as my groom gets smaller and smaller. In sheer agony, we hear the apologetic pleas for mercy:
“Please don’t squish me. Please don’t squish me. You know I love you baby. It wasn’t my fault . . .”
“Oh yeah? What kind of lame excuse do you have for not showing up?”
“There was an earthquake . . . a horrible flood . . . my car ran outta gas . . .”
“But the limo was supposed to pick you up.”
The squish completed, Harry’s head just a few inches above his feet, the groom shouts, “My feet don’t smell so good.” The box is turned around so the audience can see our squishee from every angle. I scream, “Take a good look Harry. I want you to see how it feels to be embarrassed in front of your friends and family. What do you have to say for yourself now, little man?”
“I feel so small.”
“I think I’m gonna take the limo to Vegas!”
The curtains close and the bit is over.
While developing our show, we argued about almost every bit and piece along the way until we came to agreement. If a disagreement on any certain trick, routine, or dialogue wasn’t settled, we got rid of it. This wasn’t some rule of thumb or even discussed; that’s just how we did and continue to do it. Those opinions often changed to confront obstacles, logistic or otherwise, and we made incremental changes or dumped whole bits, as we saw fit. Debating with ourselves, and each other, the arguments over creative differences made us really commit.
With the benefit of audience feedback, after each performance we’d replay the show in our heads, figuring how to make it better and better. We spent day after day in the theater cutting and fixing and changing and switching. Our best work is about more than floating ladies, mind reading, and sleight of hand. It’s as much about what we want to say as the tricks themselves. It is about us, our lives, and our feelings. Many of the show’s best moments were initially improvised on stage.
Bozena and I are as synchronized as the parts in a watch. When either of us goes off script and does or says something different, we can follow each other without missing a beat. And whenever we hit a perfect moment the audience feels it. We also work with the reality of the moment. In a play, if a light suddenly goes dead or someone throws up in the audience, the actors keep doing the script. When things out of the ordinary arise during our show, we use them, respond to them, and weave them into our presentation. Sometimes, not knowing what’s going to happen next is a ton of fun.
Bozena and I killing time between shows.
This chapter wouldn’t be complete without an example of one of the solo pieces we each perform in the show. First up, my bit with three leaves. I’m fond of this one more for what it is about than what it is.
As I explain to the audience, “I’m twelve years old and obsessed with card tricks. The problem is that I’m not very good, and the only way I can get good is by doing a bunch of shows. My neighbor tells me that there’s a talent show every Sunday in Topanga Canyon at t
he Theatricum Botanicum. So I call up, say I’m twelve years old and would like to do card tricks. The guy says, ‘Not interested!’ and hangs up.
“My neighbor tells me, ‘If they think a few people might come see you do the show, maybe they’ll put you on.’ So at my request, friends start calling, ‘When is Magic Steve going to be appearing?’ The guy gets pestered, worn down, and gives me an audition. I hitchhike up to Topanga Canyon. The Theatricum Botanicum is an outdoor wooden stage, eaten by woodpeckers. It’s surrounded by a jungle of plants and trees. I’m soaking up the vibe.
“Oh my gosh, what an idiot I am! I left my deck of cards in the car that picked me up hitchhiking, and this is gonna be my first and worst audition ever. An angry poet and a folk singer are also waiting to audition. This was 1967, and there were a lot of angry poets and folk singers. They say if you remember the sixties you weren’t there. I was there. Peace, love, ban the bomb. So while I’m waiting for my turn, I decide I’m going to do a card trick with some leaves I picked up.
“I had, one, two, three leaves . . .” I showed three large banana tree leaves. “I take away one leaf . . .” I dropped one on the floor, “. . . and I still have one, two, three, leaves.” Again I counted the leaves slowly, and there were still three. “The theater director jumped up, pumped his fist into the air, and screamed, ‘Right on Dude!’
“I started to explain how I lost my cards, I knew this probably wouldn’t work, and the guy says, ‘No kid, that was kinda eccentric, how does that go again?’ I threw in an ‘I can dig it,’ and said, I have one, two, three leaves, this time I take away not one, but two leaves . . .” I dropped two leaves on the floor. “And I still have one, two, three leaves.