"Cards are like living, breathing human beings." "I suppose because they give you real pleasure." "You sit in a room with them for 10 or 15 hours a day, and they become your friends, particularly very lonely people." "If I could go back in history, and I can" "most like to see would be Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser, the famous Viennese card magician... who called playing cards "the poetry of magic. "" "My favorite of his many experiments- from the 19th century, an experiment called Everywhere and Nowhere." "was to speak about the state of current magic in America." "about the 20th century." "And I'm not just talking about magic." "Seven of diamonds." " The seven of diamonds." "to the seven of diamonds." "And the gentlemen on the end?" "Ten of spades." "The 10 of spades." "more books written about magic than any other art form, literally thousands and thousands of books, of books in my life about magic technique." "But I believe that the real key to learning is personally." "the sensei-master relationship in the martial arts- is by someone that you respect showing you something." "There's a level of, uh- of transmission... that's never completely attainable... just through the written word." "I've been really, really lucky to be around people... of this ongoing continuum of sleight of hand... that can be traced back many, many years- more than a century." "No." "Okay." "It's in there now." "?" "Rock-a-bye, bunny ?" "?" "La, la, la ?" "Well, my bunny has slept long enough." "Time to wake him up." "Oh!" "Well, isn't magic wonderful?" "comfortable performer from the beginning, it's because I started at such a young age." "My grandfather, Max Katz, was an amateur magician... on a pretty serious level." "from Austria-Hungary, as a small boy." "He lived in Brooklyn, as did we." "He had a Wall Street firm." "through an act of Congress." "He never went to college." "in all sorts of fairly arcane things- as I think about it now, an enormous number of things... that eventually wound up interesting me." "was to take lessons from the best people he could find." "to play billiards from taking lessons from Willie Hoppe, and he took checker lessons from William Ryan, the introduction to his book on checkers." "He was a cryptographer." "the cryptography editor of G-Man magazine." "He used the code name of M.K. Dirigo." "That was his moniker." "to teach him the things he was interested in, and at the point that I came around," "I guess he was most interested in magic." "Abracadabra, March, 1949." ""Slydini opens instruction studio." "A steady demand on his time and his skill at teaching... has caused him to open a studio... for the instruction of local businessmen magicians. "" "So my grandfather actually took formal lessons... from a bunch of magicians who were sensational, and then these people became his friends... and then became my early mentors." "Slydini, Francis Carlyle, Dai Vernon, Al Flosso- these people I got to see who were sensational." "of, uh, the great gift from my grandfather... that I got at a very early age." "I remember, as a five or six-year-old, my grandfather would bring me over to Cardini's house, which was truly amazing... was known not to associate with very many magicians." "And he was just an extraordinary act." "I only went to Cardini's twice." "He was largely schmoozing with my grandfather... but kind enough to show me some." "him showing me a reverse fan that he made- this enormous circle of space, the way he made this fan in his hand." "the greatest act I ever saw in my life." "brought me to a magic convention in Chicago... when I was very young." "I think it was the last time he ever did his act." "extraordinary combination of elements blending together." "You're clever." "You're clever." "I hide it with the hand." "Right?" "I'm not gonna put it this way." "Come here." "Watch." "Really slow." "Look." "Look." "The famous story about misdirection... is that there was a man named Abril Lamarque... who was the art editor of the New York Times... and a very well-known amateur magician... and another friend of my grandfather's." "with a wonderful gray, twirled mustache, an elegant dapper figure." "one year at the Art Directors Show in New York- a very famous show- that he was performing." "a green handkerchief which was in his hand." "Then he said that he was gonna change color." "completely empty except for this green handkerchief." "And he tucked it into his hand, and at that moment, stunning model walked across the stage behind him, and then the first words he said were," ""And now the handkerchief is yellow. "" "in fact he had done this sleight-of-hand effect." "So that illustrates perhaps more of the principles of magic... than any other story with which I'm familiar." "in his apartment in Manhattan and take lessons from him." "How formal they were, I don't know." "There was certainly no family decision." ""Now you'll take lessons from Slydini. "" "Like it was Nadia Boulanger or something." "It was Slydini." "over to his home, and it was great." "who lived this wonderfully poetic magic... and was a wonderfully artistic fellow." "He actually made me in those years, um" "He was a wonderful tailor, and he made suits that were like Spanish toreador outfits... was dyed by hand and put on with sequins." "performed in when I was a young boy, 13 or 14, you know, with penciled-in sideburns." "I then moved to New Jersey." "So when I would come in to see Slydini, from Elizabeth to Port Authority... and then walk to Slydini's house." "Slydini had this apartment on 45th Street." "It was just really entering a world... that was just so different and unusual." "I still" " You know, I can picture this vividly- sitting at this big table he had, and he would start running through this repertoire... and actually specifically teaching me effects... like Coins Through the Table, and making me practice and commenting on the practice." "It was really fun." "Practice, to me, was never anything but pleasure." "It's what I like doing." "the nicest thing to calm me down... is probably to put a deck of cards in my hand... and let me sit down for a few hours." "I've worked very closely with Ricky many years." "52 Assistants and Ricky Jay:" "On the Stem." "I would go and visit Al Flosso." "I would go to his shop on 34th Street fairly often... and watch him." "this long, narrow staircase and open up the door." "Al would be behind the counter." "He was barely past five feet tall, with these giant, thick glasses... and usually wearing shirtsleeves and suspenders... and just surrounded by this clutter." "He got me interested in the history of the art as well." "The first posters I ever bought were from Flosso." "one of the great personas of anybody performing magic- the Coney Island Fakir." "He was just a great character, coming from the barker tradition." "And he worked on the Sells Floto Circus." "I think he worked at Al G. Barnes." "a sideshow carnival magician out of Coney Island." "So now from the circus lots," "Professor Al Flosso." "I remember him making Ed Sullivan truly laugh, which was almost unheard of." "For coming up here, I'll show 'em how this is done." "is reach up in the air and get all you want." "Grab one." "In the can." "With the other hand." "In the can." "Blow in 'em before youse" "Give me your hand." "Look at this." "Put it in your pocket." "for coming up here." "I don't care for money." "Did you get it?" "I think so." "Let's see." "Well" " Well" "Hold that can with both hands." "Well, well, well." "Thank you, my boy." "think about Al Flosso without smiling." "I suppose the only kind memory" "I ever had of my parents... was that when it was time for my bar mitzvah, what I would like at the party," "I wanted Al Flosso to perform." "It was a pretty ballsy thing to ask for, performed on The Ed Sullivan Show... at Grossinger's and the Concord in the Catskills." "And they inquired and they came back to me... he was, in fact, working in the Catskills that weekend." "And he sent his apologies, but was unable to do it." "and, in fact, had hired him, and he came." "to see Flosso perform for my friends." "as I always had been." "It was really nice." "who performed that frightening ceremony... at my grandfather's funeral, of breaking the magic wand." "They were" " They were really close friends... and also, I think, Masonic brothers." "Broken Wand." ""Max Katz, 74, of Brooklyn, New York, died March 31, 1965, following a long illness." "daughter, two sons and six grandchildren, including Ricky Potash, magician. "" "Shortly before my grandfather died, one of the last things I remember him doing... was getting me together with Roy Benson... the billiard ball act, which was a great thing." "the magic Roy Benson doing the billiard balls." "which I did just for a short period of time." "But sandwiched in between Tim Leary... and Ike  Tina Turner was pretty great." "?" "Hopin' maybe she'd come back ?" "?" "Well, I've been prayin' for salvation ?" "Even though I tried to go to college, to quite a few of them- mostly to Cornell" "I would leave at various times to go out and perform." "But I remember performing on The Tonight Show... when I was still at Cornell and living in Ithaca." "of an odd thing to do- to go down to New York." "I did that a couple of times and appeared on the show." "my first national television appearance... which happened when I was still very young, sometime around the age of 20, I suppose." "And that led to other shows, as well." "And I wound up becoming a fairly regular performer... on a number of those early talk shows... and Merv Griffin, eventually Dinah Shore." "She and I got along incredibly well." "Probably was on that show 20 times or so." "is you have a tendency to watch the black cards." "totally ignore the black cards." "if you're ever going to play this game for money, and simply concentrate on the red card." "sound hard to you if you're playing the game." "But it's fun." "Let me show you how this works." "Here are two black cards, and here's the red card." "Let me do this again." "Remember." "Black, red, black." "I'll do this once more." "Red." "Where's the red card?" "Want me to guess?" "It's right here." "Well, I was doing this for Elizabeth, but... yeah, it happened to be right." "Let me do this once more." "some money on this one?" "Well, I don't" "Put some money on it." "What the heck." "Let me" " Let me" "Want my five dollars?" "I'll put 50 bucks." "All right." "All right." "That's all?" "Fifty bucks?" "Okay, 51." "Okay." "Okay." " Now you're talking." "I'll do this quickly." "I'm not gonna do this slow as I did before." "Do it as fast as you want." "As fast as I want?" "All right, it's gonna be fast." " Where is it?" " This one?" "looking at this corner?" " Yep." "and that's a good way to get the $50 back." "Wonderful." "of drifting around, I moved to California... sleight-of-hand artists in the world- and you try to create some kind of a magical effect." "And you work it out." "his acolytes off against each other." "you know, a feisty, sometimes even nasty fellow." "that that was the game, it was great fun." "But, you know, he could frustrate you." "And he also used it as a learning tool." "to tell you about somebody who did some move... was unrealizable and really wonderful, and half the time he had just made it up... to get you to think about it and do it yourself." "did show different pieces to different people." "he really was like a guru, a Japanese sensei." "He used whatever techniques he thought were possible... to get you to do your best stuff." "the audacity of youth prompted me to do." "with the way that I could boomerang cards- throw out a card and have it return to my hand." "And it's not a particularly difficult sleight." "But I did it with a sureness that he found interesting." ""I'll bet you can't do that 40 times." "Forty times. "" "And it turns out that he said when he was a kid, he would practice this over and over again." "And he said he could do it 39 times, 38 times, 35." "He could never do this 40 times." "And we were in a dark bar at the time, which, I'm sure, was part of his wager, the fact that it was kind of hard to see." "that had me absolutely baffled... that I really wanted to learn." "That he would do that against a hundred dollars... if I could do this 40 times in a row." "And so I then launched into boomeranging this card, and I remember doing it 39 times." "And then I had the 40th card in my hand, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and I threw the last card and caught it behind my back." "And" " And- And we both smiled a lot, which, of course, I will not reveal to you." "But, um, that's why I say the audacity of youth." "insane enough to risk missing learning this piece... by catching the card behind my back." "when one's in their 20s, they do stuff like that." "both the hot kid magicians in New York." "I was sort of an apprentice to Vernon." "was on the road with Vernon when I was 14... and, uh- for something like two years." "And Vernon- he could be merciless... at taunting you with some secret that you were dying to know." "He'd say, "I'm not gonna say. "" "One time we were traveling, and he said," "I've been thinking about magic all my life. "" "I said, "Yes, Professor, I know that. "" "And he said, "I think I figured out... of pure sleight of hand in a single sentence. "" "And I" " And I- "Oh?"" "I'm never gonna say that sentence out loud. "" "working on him." ""What was the sentence?"" ""Well"- But we'd argue, and he'd- "Well, maybe if you do this," "I'll tell you something. "" "Anyway, he would never tell you." "So he would get people infuriated and fascinated." "Vernon and Charlie were different in that way." "Charlie didn't like games quite the way that Vernon did." "I remember specifically one night." "I was maybe 20, 21." "working at the same magicians conference here in New York." "I think it was at the Roosevelt Hotel." "We were sharing a room." "maybe on his fifth or sixth trip to New York, a little bit later than Charlie did that night." "And I came back into the room." "And, uh- and the light kind of came through the crack in the room... and illuminated Charlie in bed, he was lying in bed with all of the lights out, holding a deck of playing cards up like this." "Even" " Even with, uh, night vision goggles, he absolutely could not see what was going on in there." "he was practicing something in the dark, uh, in bed." "Not really waiting for me." "But just not asleep." "And, uh- um- and it didn't surprise me all at once." "that I found so appealing in being able to spend time... with both Charlie and Vernon... was that they realized that... demanding branch of all of sleight of hand... was the artifice of the gambler." "Because of the idea that when these sleights and moves... were done by people in card games, they were in danger of being exposed, uh, and therefore had their own personal health at risk." "They became people who were extraordinary practitioners, able to do moves under fire- to do something under the closest scrutiny." "and the Professor spent the time to track down these moves... and learned to do them incredibly well." "So a very large part of my training... was involving the, uh- involving the mastering of card table artifice." "is just literally reach into the deck like that... and cut a group of cards." "Let's see" " Anywhere at all." "have to put them down." "Oh, that's good." "You've cut a deuce." "But in a way, you've given me the perfect opportunity... to show what a hustler could do." "Because, for instance, if I could cut a three," "I was almost as unlucky as you were." "I" " I can, by the way." "And then you'd be inclined to stay in the game." "Right?" "You follow the concept here." "the same thing." "Cut absolutely anywhere, and let's see what's on the bottom." "Well, it's another two." "and we'll see what it- Anywhere." "Cut anywhere at all." "a seven, which is a noticeable improvement in this game." "would it be possible for me to look through the deck... and beat your seven by cutting an eight?" "So, you know, this is kind of the idea." "Some people might call this hustling." "But I've gotta be honest with you." "I might want to take a chance and do this." "for thousands, I might want to try to cut an ace." "I wouldn't be messing around." "A very fashionable dinner party in England, with a lot of lords and dukes- and all these very stiff people were sitting there... waiting for somebody to carve the turkey." "And somebody said, "Well, you do the carving. "" "the fork in the turkey, and the damn turkey... and ran the length of the table." "a piece from right around the turn of the century, right around 1900." "This was a piece developed by Max Malini." "one person would take a card during the course of an effect." "So I've had a number of cards selected." "and try to find those cards again." "at this point during the show every evening," "I wonder what it would be like if I didn't find those cards." "Just a thought." "So... we'll find the next card by means of a simple cut." "the card the woman on the aisle took." "Your ace of clubs." "Your card was" "You're shaking your head." "No?" "No." "Ace of clubs?" "What was it?" "Four of diamonds." "If you insist." "a little sympathy." "You give me nothing." "Way to chill for me." "Icy." "No, fine." "Uh, you took one, I believe." "Would you be so kind as to mention it for me?" "Jack of diamonds." "out of the deck into my hand as if propelled." "Jack of diamonds." "in the South American, or Carioca fashion, if you'd be so kind as to name it." "Ace of hearts." "The ace of hearts." "Let's see." "Good." "You haven't forgotten yours, I trust." "What was that?" "Nine of clubs." "The nine of clubs, the last card." "Yeah, you didn't take one, did you?" "Oh" " Oh, in the second row." "What was yours, sir?" "Six of diamonds." "Now I'll have to find both of them." "Nine of clubs?" "Six of diamonds." "Your nine of clubs." "Your six of diamonds." "One day I drove up to the Magic Castle, sitting on the bench in front of the Castle, as he was wont to do." "And I said, "What are you doing, Professor?"" ""I'm watching people put on their sports jackets. "" "And I said, "What?"" ""I'm watching people put on their jackets. "" "To gain admission, you had to wear a tie and jacket." "of the people who arrived weren't wearing coats." ""No two people put on their jackets the same way. "" "The two of us sat there for a very long time... watching people put on coats." "a wonderful lesson in naturalness... to understand that much of sleight of hand..." "Watch. "Yotz!"" "This scares the melon." "This wounds the melon." "This ticks me off." "It's my last card." "Ricky Jay was a student of mine... at an aikido school in Santa Monica." "And he was just a very unassuming person." "He wanted to study aikido." "And he practiced hard." "He always did." "Aikido, at its higher level, does a lot of- you might say sleight of hand, because it's done very rapid... and it's done with movements that get their mind fooled." "after he was there, we had a banquet." "All the members of the school." "Ricky asked two people to give him one dollar bills." "So we gave him the one dollar bills, and he held out his hand" "And we're at this dinner table." "and he takes those two one dollar bills, and he puts them together back-to-back." "And he starts folding them like this." "And I don't know how he was folding them, getting smaller and smaller and smaller... until finally his fingers were together." "like that, and there was a two dollar bill there, and the ones were gone." "the two dollar bill to somebody that time, and I don't remember who it was." "Um, but anyway, after that it's, like, that's impossible." "and questioning him and questioning him." "And it was probably, I don't know, two, three months later." "We had just finished working out." "I was actually in the shower with the water running... from the class came over and asked me to perform something." "and I handed him two one dollar bills, and I said, "Do it now. "" "Right?" "Just like that." "And he looked at me, and he put those in his hand." "He goes, "Oh, Fred, I wish you wouldn't have done this. "" "He goes, "I'm not prepared. " And while he's talking to me, one dollar bills and does "Boom!"... and hands me a two dollar bill." "And I've kept this all these years." "But that's the one right there." "He handed me that two dollar bill, and, uh, I was just- I was dumbfounded." "I mean, I stood there for a long time just" "He acted like I wasn't even there." "the two dollar bill and just walked off." "As Stanislavski said about Chekhov" "As Vakhtangov said about Chekhov- he's devoted to that theater which he alone sees." "he has the ideal of magic in his mind... to which he's devoted his life." "perfecting it, to performing it, to researching it." "The main thing about Ricky is you watch his hands." "was I ever tempted to become a con man or a cardsharp?" "Yes." "And I guess the follow-up to that is, did you?" "I don't think I'll accept the follow-up." "image, Fitz?" "That looks great." "That framing's really good." "I gotta tell you, these images look so good to me." "from the next building across the street." "We're selling tickets there." "I'm so happy with this." "Oh, thank God." "Thank fucking Christ." "Uh, go over here to Willard, "The Man Who Grows. "" "Thank God!" "Oh, that's so good." "I'm so relieved." "I've always been very aware of boundaries with him." "I've never asked him how he does a magic trick." "conversation with him about his parents." "We don't argue about things and haven't... for our relationship that's been over 30 years, he'll disagree with me about the nature of somebody's character." "And I'll say I don't agree." "I don't think they're bad guys." "And it'll piss him off." "He has this enormous... sense of "you cannot cross the line. "" "If you cross the line, you're a goner." "It's not sweet." "I think it's that magician's reflex... of playing all the angles." "It's all about control." "He would never put himself in a situation... if he's not in control." "If you eat with him at a restaurant, his back is always to the wall." "The tension built and built and built... the BBC and Ricky were really barely talking." "In the middle of all of this, I think as a break, we went out to the Huntington Library... to try and take the tension out of it." "in a much better mood on this day." "And Ricky said to me "come on" suddenly." "He said, "Come on." "Let's go and have lunch. "" "Which was quite unexpected because... he can be quite cantankerous, Ricky." "I think he'd admit it himself." "He can be quite difficult." "And so he said, "Get in the car, Suzie." "We're going to Sunset Boulevard." "lunch together, and we'll do the interview. "" "I got in the car- it was me and Ricky in the car." "preparing the interview that we were gonna do." "And we took the wrong turn off the freeway." "And so then we had to find our way back on." "should have taken an hour or something- how long it's supposed to take- took double." "And it was fantastically hot on this day." "And I couldn't help noticing" ""Gosh, he's taking this all very well... for such an irascible man. "" "And so then we got to the restaurant, and it was the worst possible place for an interview." "It was full at lunchtime." "It had glass on two sides from floor to ceiling." "a 20-minute wait for the table." "And then we sat down at a table." "Ricky was opposite me." "And he was chatting away." "the tension there'd been with the BBC." "I think that he regretted that this had happened... to do this set piece that Paul had particularly asked for... by a 19th century magician, Max Malini, at a dinner party." "He started to tell me the story... of Malini at the dinner party, the hat, the dollar and so on." "As he was telling me this story," "I think I became aware at that moment... that he had his menu open in front of him." "So he was partly concealed behind this rather tall menu." "And as he was telling this story, he said," ""And Malini lifts up the hat. "" "At that moment, he lifted up his menu, and on the table in front of me" "I'll never forget it." "On the table in front of me was this huge block of ice." "I mean, it was about a foot square." "Really, I can't exaggerate." "Huge block of ice that you" "Later, when I picked it up, I held with two arms." "I remember I burst into tears." "And I think that shocked him a bit actually." "'Cause it was such a kind of violent reaction." "I just sobbed." "And, um" " And he said- very gentle, Ricky, in fact, for all that he growls a lot." ""I deceived you." "It's what I do for a living. "" "But, um, you know, he also" "I mean, it's a moment I'll never have again." "I'll never forget it." "It was... a kind of supreme piece of artistry... that I witnessed, that was done for me." "That's what it felt like at the time." "having known him now maybe close to 30 years, that Ricky has not shared with me." "And I absolutely have a lot of stuff... that I haven't shown and shared with Ricky." "And I think that's important." "I don't think it's cat and mouse." "I don't think it's meant to be withholding... because if there's something that one of the other... that that's the time that that comes out." "And I absolutely have had the look on my face, or I've seen the look on Ricky's face where" "I'll say or he'll say, here's, you know, told you about that might be useful." "And the other person's, you know, just like" "It's that dream that I think many people have had... you're walking through your house, but then you find a door in a room in your house... and you didn't know it was there." "is to show our work in process to each other." "in my life who I really discuss magic with... on that kind of personal level." "There's Michael, who I probably do it the most with, because I see him more often and we have a company together." "who's been backstage in my show for years and years, who's an amazing manipulator of coins." "And, uh, Persi Diaconis, who's a remarkable mathematician... as well as an extraordinary inventor of magic." "And, uh, Steve Freeman, who's the quintessential amateur, the absolute lover of the art." "And there's literally no one better at understanding... the most intricate sleight of hand beautifully." "that because I left home at such an early age... and cut off almost all association with it... that my friends have become family." "I'm incredibly blessed with remarkable friends." "And that's become the focal thing in my life." "And then, uh, I actually found a woman... who wound up fulfilling all of those needs and more." "And, uh, having somebody that I married seven years ago." "My wife, Chrisann, who's just remarkable." "A great friend." "Wonderful woman." "something that I thought would probably never happen for me." "Shel Silverstein wrote for me." "It's called "The Game in the Windowless Room. "" "Of all the games I've ever played, of all the hands I've dealt, of all the pots I've ever raked, from matchsticks to nickels... to untold wealth." "From the beckoning lights of the Vegas Strip... to the Pittsburgh roadhouse gloom, the most dangerous game I played with the man... in that locked-door, windowless room." "as the golden crown on the king of diamond's head."