dk_the_magician: Hi Doc, I’m still adding and hunting for stuff to add to my repertoire, questions is it’s hard to add new stuff as I know the stuff I do are winners and are audience proven.
So are you still adding stuff and how to you go about adding them and do you have any hard and fast rules about new effects (for example instant reset, angles etc)

Darren

Doc Eason: I am always on the lookout for new material. And I love to have a few new things to play with.

The most recent adds (that are now ‘part of the repertoire’ ) ... I am having tremendous fun with Josh Jay’s Overlap gimmick( although it isn’t really ‘his’ ...he is the one however who has brought it to the front again...) I parlay this into a couple of tricks on the Malone videos-a production of four of a kind and then they turn face down...it is not a pick a card trick -the audience just watches but their jaws drop open...

The wonderland bill is another relatively new one.

One of the reasons I LOVE the bar ( and one of the reasons I will miss it when it finally closes.) is the ability to work in new material. It is a tremendous laboratory... the perfect place to experiment with lots of stuff.

The best criteria for whether I want to add something to the act is the crowd reaction... I look for the crowds reaction to a trick or routine to see if it is something I want to work on or simply drop...

After this many years, I have an innate sense as to what might work or not.

Resetting is not high on my list of criteria. If the effect is strong enough I don’t care too much if I have to dip behind the bar and throw a few cards in order.. I use the line... “I’m not setting these cards up ... I am just putting them where they need to be.” which gets a laugh... then I follow it with, “Don’t worry, it’s a trick, you’ll like it.” and then I false shuffle the dickens out of the deck to make it look like I was just doing it for the joke... in this way I set up a trick right in front of them, make a joke and get a laugh, throw them off kilter, and fool the hell out of them. What could be better?

I will be honest... I am not adding a lot of stuff to the act... at this stage of my career, I do what I do and keep it at that. Besides, if some patrons come in to see me work and I do a whole lot of new material, they will invariably say at the end...”yeah, but could you do the lemon trick (or the card on the ceiling)... it would be a lot like people seeing Mullica and after a whole set of kick ass magic, they would say ”yeah but he didn’t eat the cigarettes!”

BTW while performing at FISM I really only did the card under the glass over and over... that is what they wanted to see. And it was fun to do it for the likes of Hans Moretti, Magic Christian, Dominique Duvivier, Jack Avis, Johnny Thompson... no -it was more than fun -it was as good as it gets.

Adding new material keeps thing fresh for me... but the crowds want to see the old stuff...

dk_the_magician: Thanks Doc, love the idea of doing a performance tape only, I'm sad to say I have not seen the one done in 1990 but will add it to my wish list.

Darren

MagicTom: I should point out that I started performing magic in public in a bar where I worked, just doing the odd trick, then I discovered your Bar Magic Videos Doc and they changed my outlook on magic and changed the way I perform and vastly improved both my repertoire and style.

I notice on another post you say your new DVD is performance only, my question is why you have decided to do performance only. I have never seen a bad review of your Bar Magic videos and while I can see your new material will be yet further inspiration I feel so disappointed that we won't be seeing more insight into your wonderful act.

Will there be Bar Magic 4? Or another such video?

Regards,

Tom Rose

Doc Eason: Great question...why do I produce a performance only video project... ?

What do you need to know the secrets for?

I am not being flip when I say this...honest...

I am guessing you have never seen my lecture... at one point I make the statement ...the trick is not the thing... ...in my mind it isn’t “the thing”. The magic we create -isn’t in the trick...it is in the space between us as humans...so as long as we are all having a good time and that we are enjoying the time together...

If I take your question literally, I might extrapolate that the “inspiration” you got from my tapes means you learned a bunch of tricks from my tapes...yes? I would rather inspire you to use the videos as a starting point not the end point.

Have you ever seen my first performance only video ... shot in 1990.?. I was advised that it would never sell in the magic market because it doesn’t have any explanations on it... it wasn’t a “teaching” tape but - I came to understand that it was a LEARNING tape... so many other elements were emphasized rather than the “how to”...well, no one was more surprised than me when it became a runaway best seller. Lessons on how to manage the bar patrons, how to interact with the other bartenders, how to think on your feet, were all shown as opposed to ‘taught’. Let’s face it ... most of the magicians bought it for the lines... but the workers in the crowd understood it to be incredibly valuable because it showed a real crowd with real reactions to some simple tricks.

I have had discussions with a few people about re releasing this original video as a DVD with some commentary ... so to obliquely answer your question, yes there may be other DVD projects in the pipeline.
I have a couple of projects in mind that will appeal greatly to the workers in the crowd... like yourself, it sounds like.

But first, I have to sell a few of this new DVD... (More than a few now that the snafu has occurred) I have to recoup a little on this project before I undertake another one!

I don’ t mean to disappoint you by not including the how to part. I will be happy to discuss any details you need to know about the tricks. I just didn’t want to clutter up a perfectly good video with boring explanations. ( I also would like to sell some of these to my loyal bar patrons.. who don’t need to know how they’re done.)

On the ‘bar bet’ routine that I do, I show an alternative ending with a different audience...in one of these scenes a sharp-eyed spectator can see the ‘moment’. I thought I would toss this in for folks like you... I was surprised when several people said it blew by them again ...even when they knew what to look for... !!

Don’t be disappointed... there is a lot on this DVD that you can learn from...

doc

MagicTom: Thanks for the interesting reply Doc.

I don't think my question was very clear, it was sort of 2 points in one, firstly that your Bar Magic videos gave me the 'inspiration' to further in magic, i.e. in the bar I now learnt how to manage, nay rule the crowd and although I perform effects from the series there is no way I can perform them without significantly changing some of aspects and particularly patter, simply because English and American audiences are vastly different.

I didn't actually manage to get to your lectures, but I did get a copy of the notes, they make for an interesting read.

Your points on the performance only video do interest me, I think it is a superb idea; no doubt I will be buying it. I myself find it hard to visualise effects from books so to watch them on screen really helps. I think it is also crucial for new people (and experienced magicians) in magic to see how to perform for a crowd. I have seen several highly (technically) skilled magicians bore a crowd to death with a dull and lacklustre performance style, indeed most magic videos fall into this category. So to hear that a video like this is available is good news, thanks for the reply Doc,

Regards,

Tom