The cosmetics world and mentalism are both arenas of deception, but I suppose the difference is that mentalists and magicians are more honest about it. People tell me I have good skin, and I tell them the magic secret is E45 cream: cheap, cheerful, and very effective.
I always wanted to go to the Chavez school but I could never afford it when I was growing up so a lot of my learning came from magic books and watching other magicians. I was also very lucky that I had a couple of really good magic teachers.
Magicians are typically introverted; they don't tend to work with others, but I work with software programmers, composers, designers, so it's a very diverse group and the result is always more interesting than something I could have done by myself.
Magicians will always tell you the trick is the most important thing, but I'm more interested in telling a story.
I was the youngest member of the New York International Brotherhood of Magicians. It was me and a bunch of 60-year-old Jewish men.
For centuries, magicians have intuitively taken advantage of the inner workings of our brains.
I was considered a comedy magician. And - how do I put this without sounding egotistical? - it didn't take me long to realize that comedy magicians usually couldn't do comedy or magic.
Dai Vernon, the greatest sleight of hand figure in the history of the art, rarely performed. But he invented magic and had an enormous influence on the whole range of sleight of hand. And so often, the magic he was doing was to fool other magicians.
To obfuscate the reconstruction of the effect - when a magician is fooled by another magician doing magic. In my career that's not been the major passion, but it's been the passion of a number of my mentors. The crowning achievement for them would be to create magic good enough to fool other magicians.
Like every art form, there are jealousies and angers and competitiveness in magic. But there's camaraderie among magicians, whether you perform it for a living or you're an enthusiast.
