Entries Tagged 'General' ↓

In recognition of the new High Definition Television in our household, as well as the addition of a Blu-ray player, I set my mind to cataloging 20 films that I have viewed repeatedly (and that will demand future viewing). Films that for a multitude of reasons resonate with my aesthetic sense.

These films are not the greatest films ever made. They are not even (necessarily) high art. They are simply films which — time after time — have proved their worth to me by consistently delivering on their promises.

I’ve limited myself to one film for each director in an effort to diversify the selection.

Here they are in the order they came to mind:

• The Godfather – The film I’ve watched more than any other. Visually beautiful, superb acting, and concise storytelling. Coppola at his best. If I wasn’t limiting myself to one film per director, I’d naturally add the Godfather Part II with Robert Di Niro.
• The Graduate – The epitome of what I call the “Male Chick-Flick,” which (as I define it) is a plot involving a young man, content with his life, who drifts along until meeting a woman who gives his life meaning and inspires him to greater things. The woman’s character is generally thinly written as she is merely the catalyst who inspires the protagonist to action.
• Raging Bull – I’m not generally a Scorsese fan, but for me, all his themes come to life in this film. Plus Robert De Niro playing Jake La Motta playing Marlon Brando playing Terry Malloy, is not to be missed.
• Birdy – Alan Parker’s quirky film about flying, freedom, and passion, with Nicholas Cage and Matthew Modine.
• What’s Eating Gilbert Grape – Another “Male Chick-Flick,” with Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio (when DiCaprio was still willing to take risks as an actor and hadn’t become so meticulous about managing his image).
• Miller’s Crossing – A Cohen brothers film and another gangster film. I ought to confess that the gangster film is my favorite of all American film genres. I’ve seen them all. From Paul Muni’s Scarface to Dustin Hoffman’s less probable Dutch Schultz.
• Midnight Run – Not high art, but hits all the right notes. Charles Grodin’s dead-pan performance perfectly complements Di Niro’s no-nonsense bounty hunter.
• American Beauty – Sam Mendes’s tribute to the Artist who sees the truth where others are beguiled by lies. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure. But don’t worry…you will, someday.”
• Comedian – Jerry Seinfeld exposes the toil and the insecurity behind the act of creation. The real work revealed.
• Brazil – The ultimate dystopia film. The cameo by Robert Di Niro makes me feel like this list has suddenly become an homage to Di Niro.
• Seven Samurai – I could have listed a dozen films by Akira Kurasawa that deserve inclusion. This is my favorite. Not a single wasted shot.
• Wings of Desire – Wim Wenders incredible film about the beauty of mortality, the joy of engagement, the preciousness of life.
• My Dinner with Andre – The film I’ve watched the most after the Godfather. But it’s likely that you need to be involved in the theatre in order to enjoy watching two men sit and talk over dinner for 2 hours.
• In America – Like “American Beauty” this film shares the conceit of seeing truth through the lens of a character’s hand-held camcorder, but this time we see the world through the eyes of a young girl immigrating to America. And Samantha Morton rocks.
• Mishima: A Life in Four Acts – Paul Schrader masterfully reveals the life of Yukio Mishima through theatrical stagings of his writings, black & white flashbacks, and a dramatic act of pen and sword.
• Do the Right Thing – Spike Lee’s fable of racial tension and misunderstanding in the midst of a heat wave.
• Punch Drunk Love – An unexpectedly great performance from Adam Sandler and some unexpected off-kilter camera work from Paul Thomas Anderson (and another example of the “Male Chick Flick”).
• Blue Velvet – The American small town with picket fence facade hides something strange and disturbing just beneath the surface. The quintessential David Lynch film.
• Broadway Danny Rose – When I lived in California I would spend Thanksgiving weekend watching KCOP’s Woody Allen Marathon, so I could have included many other Woody Allen films on this list, but BDR makes the cut for “Acceptance, Forgiveness, and Love.”
• Princess Mononoke – Really, all the films of Hayao Miyazaki should be listed here. Only animation could begin to capture the fertile vision of Miyazaki. The worlds he creates are unlike any other in the cinema.
• Face Off – Enter the hyper-violent world of John Woo. Fluttering doves and machine gun fire. Plus John Travolta and Nicholas Cage give uncanny performances as each other’s characters. (Ignore the chase scene at the end which was tacked on gratuitously at the behest of the producers I’m sure.)

I’ve lost count, but I think that’s 20 films. Maybe someday, I’ll expand the list to 100 films, though I’m not sure what I (or you) would gain from such an exercise. These 20 films provide a decent cross-section of films that have made their mark on me, and that have influenced my work and my life.

I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while; it turns out it’s harder to write than I had anticipated.

My friend, Frank Georgiana, died on November 22, 2009, at the age of 74. He was an actor and director in the Colorado theater community. You can read about his life here in the Denver Post.

I served as stage manager for a number of his productions with the Boulder Repertory Theater. And from Frank, I learned what it means to be an artist.

As stage manager, my job was to set the stage, lay out the props, coordinate lights & sound, make sure actors were in place for their entrances, communicate with the box office, play the occasional walk-on part, and clean up and repack after the show. In general, I was charged with making sure that thing ran smoothly behind the scenes — dispensing band-aids for unexpected cuts, safety pins to mend torn costumes, and once even arranging a trip to the hospital for someone who was having a heart attack.

Frank and his wife Ernestine had lived in New York and had seen more theater than I could begin to fathom. Oftentimes, after the stage was set, we’d break for a light dinner and Frank would tell us stories about the productions he had seen.

Frank and Ernestine witnessed Peter Brook’s groundbreaking production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 1970. And not just any performance of the show — they were present at the legendary performance in which the scenery caught fire. As the crew worked to put out the fire, a tremor of panic began to ripple across the audience, but moving quickly, the actor John Kane (staying in character as Puck) came down to the footlights to reassure the audience that they needn’t be afraid, the fire was a very small one, however, if anyone were the least bit frightened, they were welcome to excuse themselves and wait in the lobby with his solemn promise that the actors would not continue until everyone had returned to their seats. As a theater student I found reference to this production in my textbooks, but the story never came to life until I heard Frank and Ernestine tell it.

Frank would bemoan the fact that the raising of the curtain at the start of a show had lately fallen out of fashion. He felt it was crass to have your set on display before the play even began, cheating the audience out of the feelings of anticipation they receive while they wait for the curtain to rise. He told of a music and dance revue in which, after the orchestra had completed the overture, the curtain rose six inches and stopped, revealing a pair of tap-dancing feet. Then the curtain inched up a little further and two more dancers joined in the rhythm. Creeping up further the curtain revealed a half-dozen, then a dozen, then two dozen dancing legs joining the fray. By the time the curtain had risen to waist height, the stage was filled with hundreds of feet tapping out a furious clatter. And finally, when the curtain rapidly ascended to reveal a spectacular stage full of costumed dancers, the audience let loose with a roar of approval.

Another favorite story of Frank’s was of his seeing a play that featured a peculiar actress: young, frail, and mousy. The actress sat silently in a chair upstage, while all around her, the other actors drove the action of the play. But there was something compelling about her presence; Frank’s gaze was drawn to her like a magnet. Although she said nothing and remained confined to her chair, he couldn’t stop watching her. Then suddenly, as the first act came to a close, she convulsed in seizure and fell to the floor. And the audience erupted with screams of pandemonium, so riveting has been this actress’s performance. The actress was a very young Sissy Spacek.

More important than the stories, however, was Frank’s commitment and devotion to his art. A point that comes across only mutedly in the Denver Post article is that Frank held himself to the highest standards for all his work in the theater. He wasn’t on stage to feed his vanity. He wasn’t there to collect a paycheck. He was there seeking perfection. He could see clearly the deep power of theater to affect an audience, and he set the very highest standards for himself — and for those around him — as he embarked to bring his vision to life.

Working backstage on one of Frank’s productions would catapult me into a state of alert vigilance. I was always fearful of letting my guard down, of making a mistake. And while Frank was quick to anger and showed no tolerance for mistakes, it was not his anger that put me on edge.

What made me anxious and vigilant was that after all the time Frank had invested in bringing the production to life, after all the toil the actors had put into making Frank’s vision a reality, I could sense that he had brought us within striking distance of giving a perfect gift to the audience. And I was keenly aware that the slightest lapse of attention on my part could mar the production, could rob the audience, and could undermine all that we had worked to achieve.

Not everyone could endure the fiery heat of Frank’s passion, but for many of us, working with Frank brought out our best. Working with Frank made us fervent with the desire to create something beautiful, perfect, and worthy.

Working with Frank brought me to realize that I had been a dilettante, that my expectations had been too meager, that I needed to set my sights much higher.

He never settled for less than perfect. He was an inspiration.

Goodness! It started out as a brief break from blogging, which turned into a hiatus, that then evolved an extended absence. Now here I am, almost a year later, returning to a derelict blog, dusty and cobweb-ridden.

During my absence, I’ve continued to think about blogging (observing and reading the bloggings of others) and I’ve begun to develop with a better sense of what I can accomplish, and what I’d like to say about magic and life as a variety arts performer.

But rather than generating a mammoth post expounding upon what I intend to do, I think it best simply to put the plan into action.

So with that, I’ll close (for now).

Worked a holiday party for a law firm at the Denver Athletic Club on Saturday. About 40 people (law firm partners and their spouses) at a well organized event. My job was to entertain from 6:00 to 7:00 as the guests mingled over hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. Dinner was served promptly at 7:00 at which point I packed my bags and headed home.

The lawyers were a fun group to work for and as new people would join a group, I would get called back to do some magic for the newcomers. Times like these, it’s good to have a deep well from which to draw, so that those who were there for the first round will see something fresh — and can’t inadvertently tip the ending to the newbies (”Oh, you’ll like this! I have no idea how the card ends up in his wallet!”), thus spoiling any surprise.

One very important tip for events of this type. Make sure you have a special piece of magic to show the boss. It needs to be strong and it needs to be quick. Naturally, since he or she is your benefactor you would be remiss if you didn’t show them a good piece of magic. But more importantly, it must be quick — like 2-minutes quick. You need to be able to get in and out without monopolizing their time.

At a company function, everyone is going to be jockeying for position to have an audience with the boss. So you won’t have long with the boss before his or her attention is drawn elsewhere. True, if you win them over, they might ask to see more magic (and you should be prepared to oblige), but don’t assume that you’ll be able to complete your 15-minute, 3-phase routine, with the show-stopper ending.

Get in there. Hit ‘em hard. Hit ‘em fast. And be prepared to bow out and let someone else visit with the VIP.

Well, it’s not often that you get to do magic for a 90-year old’s birthday party, but that’s what I did yesterday. Straight from the airport (returning from Las Vegas), I headed over to the Governor’s Mansion for Will’s 90th Birthday party.

For the past month Denverites have seen billboards and other advertisements causing them to ask, “Who is Will?”

Well, at yesterday’s party, Mayor Hickenlooper officially revealed that Will is — in fact — Good Will Industries of Denver. And that for the last 90 years Good Will has been helping at-risk youth, and disabled and disadvantaged adults in the Denver community to achieve self-sufficiency through work.

The event featured local celebrities, donors, and people who have benefited from the work done by Good Will.

What made the magic work so well for this event was that, Alison (the event planner who booked me) took the time to give me the background on the event and on her organization so that I could prepare magic specifically tailored for the occasion. I love working with event planners who take the time to ensure that all aspects of their event work together and complement each other. In this case, I was able to create a card trick in which a playing card magically transformed into a birthday card (for Will), and I was able to create another piece of magic that allowed me to talk about the great things that Good Will has done for Denver over the last 90 years.

Event planners who just hire a magician to do generic magic are missing a great opportunity. If you have a theme or message, make sure it’s reinforced and supported by everyone who contributes to your event.

Returned today from my bi-annual trip to Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is, of course, the magic capitol of the world these days, so it’s the place to be if you want to meet other magicians and see what’s new in the industry.

I got to see Jeff McBride’s show, Magic at the Edge, at the Palace Station. Jeff is a seasoned performer and I never fail to learn something new from watching how he manages his audience. I have come to believe that there is no BIG secret to explain how a performer establishes rapport with his or her audience and builds trust and connection. Instead a connection is made (or unmade) through a thousand little details: how you enter, the timber of your voice, the placement of your feet, how you gaze out at the audience, the gestures of you hands. If you do a thousand little things well the audience begins to feel that they can trust you to entertain them. If you do even a handful of things poorly, you will lose their confidence and lose your audience. Jeff attends to the details.

Afterward I went to Jeff’s magic nightclub the Wonderground and got some great ideas on how to perform in those difficult venues where the music is loud and the lighting is low. With the new low-voltage LEDs, it has become even easier to bring your own light source to close-up performance. If you perform visual magic, poor lighting will rob your magic of its impact. Your audience needs to see clearly in order for the magic to register. Like the stage actor, the close-up magician needs to be sensitive to the available light. I also saw some nice stage manipulation routines (performed silently) adapted for close-up that would be invaluable for those times when the band (or DJ) is so loud, you can’t talk to your audience.

I was pleased to meet a very inventive magician from Washington D.C. named David London (like the bridge). David is one of the few people I know who is thinking about what it means to be magical — rather than just thinking about how to do magic. He creates theatrical worlds in which his magic can take flight, and where his whimsical characters can come to life. If magic has any future, I trust that David will be in the avant-garde.

Magician & Performance Artist, David London

In addition I found time to meet and/or reconnect with some online brethren like Marco Fide (Italy), Nakul Shenoy (India), John Crippen (Mexico), and Alan Franzenberg (Modesto, CA).

Together we learned and shared enough thoughts and ideas to last me another six months (at which time I’ll have to plan another working vacation to Las Vegas).

Here’s an odd subject for discussion, but one which some magician will find useful.

I’m not one who generally makes endorsements but I highly recommend the services at Big O Tires.

Here’s my story: Several years ago, before I became a full-time professional magician, I trusted my car (and my tires) to a small local mechanic in Boulder. When it came time to get new tires, he saved me some money by replacing my tires with a no-name brand of tires. He assured me that the quality was as good or better than the big-name brands — and he was right. The tires were great and I saved a little money.

Some time passed and I moved from Boulder to Denver. And then one evening, while driving home during a snow storm, I had a flat. Because the snow affected how the car handled, I don’t know how long I had been driving on the flat.

I took the car to my new mechanic to see if he could fix the tire, but as expected, the tire was a lost cause. The real shock came when I was told that my new mechanic didn’t carry the no-name brand of tires. And my dismay was compounded when I called several other shops, only to discover that no one carried the brand of tire I was driving on.

I would either have to take my car up to Boulder (to the mechanic who originally sold me the no-name brand of tires), or I would have to replace all four tires.

Even though a trip to Boulder would have saved me a good deal of money (albeit at great inconvenience), I decided I wanted new tires and I went to Big O Tires to get them.

Here in Colorado, we have a lot of Big O Tires around the state. Currently I live about 1.5 miles from a Big O (I now live in Lafayette — a relatively small town). And there are probably 60 locations along the Front Range.

They’re open 6 days a week (closed only on Sundays) and they open at 7:30AM which means that I can get service on Saturdays and early mornings if I need to.

(If anyone knows of a tire store in Colorado with more locations and better hours of operation, I’d love to hear from you.)

Plus, if you buy your tires from Big O, they’ll fix your flats for free.

As I mentioned above, I chose Big O Tires, before I became a professional magician, but now that I rely on my car for my livelihood, I’m even more pleased with the decision.

One Friday (September 19th to be exact), I went out to the theatre, and when I returned to my car, my tire was flat. I was booked for two performances the next day (one at 12:00PM and one at 5:30PM) so early Saturday morning, I stopped by my Big O Tires, and had my tire fixed in less than 30 minutes (I had rolled over a nail).

No hassle. No cost. No worries.

As a performer, I depend on my car to get me to my gigs on-time and ready to perform, so I think Big O Tires is great. If you’re not doing magic as your full-time profession, this post may seem a bit lame (and my apologies to anyone who doesn’t have Big O Tires where they live and work). But I hope that someone out there can use my recommendation, because someday it could save your butt.

I was invited to participate in a fund raiser for the American Heart Association held at the Theater of Dreams in Castle Rock. My long time magician friend, Joe Givan and his wife Carol, operate one of the hidden gems in the Colorado magic scene, a theater devoted to the performance of magic.

I first met Joe when he worked behind the counter at Zeezo’s Magic Castle in the now defunct Cinderella City shopping mall (I, meanwhile, worked at the rival Top Hat Magic Shop). Later, Joe would go on to open the Magic Works in Denver, a bar that hosted a bevy of Colorado’s top magicians, and which induced me to head downtown every weekend to get my magic fix. And once, I even participated in one of Joe’s scary Cthulu-themed midnight magic performances, held in an abandoned warehouse in LoDo (back when LoDo was a place you would NEVER go to after dark), but that’s a whole other story…

So I was excited to be working with Joe for his “Magic Mania Variety Show,” alongside with nine other magicians (including Dave Elstun, Marty Wayne, Cliff Tiffany, Shawn Preston, Mark Strivings, Eddie Goldstein, and Gene Gordon). Each of us were given a 10-minute slot to do what we do best, so I chose to perform the Cups & Balls, one of the oldest pieces of magic on record, and the piece I use to close my corporate show. The fact that this piece of magic is over 2,000 years old is a testament to its effectiveness.

And it was fun to perform for my fellow magicians. Because work keeps us all busy, we seldom get to attend each others performances. So it was a rare opportunity to see what they do and to show off, in turn, what I can do. But of course, the real reason we were all there was to raise money for the American Heart Association, and I believe we sold out at least one of our two shows.

Performances were on Friday and Saturday night, however, I had to duck out early from Saturday night’s performance (and skip the curtain call) because I had a second performance up North, back in Lafayette.

A couple were celebrating their anniversary and wanted to do something special for their guests, so I provided “mix & mingle” magic for their friends and family (about 60 people all together). So in a matter of hours, I went from Lafayette, down to Castle Rock, and back up to Lafayette, before heading home for a good night’s sleep. Good thing I keep a couple PowerBars in my glove box, because some days there’s no time to take a break.

Got my new website up and running, and thought it would be a good time to begin blogging in earnest.

I spent the previous evening with Mr. Sacamento, talking about scripting for a couple pieces of magic (and discussing the films he has been watching as he tries to find inspiration for the play he’s trying to write).

Writing for magic is difficult because in order for magic to be magical, there must be a tremendous amount of exposition. At the risk of boring the audience, each step must be clearly explained.

“Please examine this box. Is it solid? Are there any secret openings? Is it completely fair and normal? Is it empty of all smoke and mirrors? Good. Then please examine this deck of cards…”

And thus the show grinds to a halt while the magician demonstrates that everything is fair. The examination of props holds little dramatic interest. And there is a real danger that the audience will fall asleep before the grand conclusion can be achieved.

On the other hand, if you skip too lightly over the “proving phase” (or in the nomenclature of Christopher Priest, the “pledge”) then the magic is ultimately compromised. Because if the box was not empty, if it contained smoke and mirrors, if there was a trap door, then the outcome is severely undermined, and not very miraculous.

Finding ways to engage the audience, so they are intrigued by the “pledge,” so that each successive test tantalizes the mind (”If everything is fair, then how will the magician succeed?”), will test the skill of the best writer.