Our first Interview is still an important read! Simon is a very knowledgable and seasoned performer! We've learned a lot from my interactions with him...
Interviews by name:
David Roth - Marvin Berglas - Todd Diamond - Six - Kevin Parker - Daryl
Simon Lovell - Paul Carpenter
Simon Lovell
Interview with Simon Lovell at Fantasma Magic on January 17, 2007...
David: What was your childhood like and how did you get into magic?
Childhood? Quiet, shy, reserved...Had a grandfather who was a professional card cheat con man. And he taught me how to con people, and that developed my personality. Parents didn't approve, black sheep of family, right in between the lines. So, not a great, brilliant family relationship, but my grandfather was fabulous.
David: So how did you make the transition from conman to magic?
Easy question, I gave up being a conman and needed to make a living. I had learned these funny little card tricks and things, and that's all they are... funny little card tricks. But I had the personality. So I became more of a comedic performer, but because I had these little skills sets I spent a lot of time learning, I kind of incorporated those into it. And now it's developed into an off-Broadway show, it's the story of my life. It's the story of how I fell in love with magic, how I fell out of love with magic, and then fell back in love with magic, how I fell in love with the little dividers at the supermarket, and along the way, several hundred women.
David: How did you end up here, in the US?
Ah... actually, it's very easy. You go to an airport... get on a plane... and it takes you there! It's fantastic! No, actually, I'll tell you what happened... I'd done a lot of stuff in England that I'd really wanted to do, like the TV and getting published and all that kind of stuff. And I'd run out of things to do. I thought, I want to start all over again. So I came to America and basically started from scratch. I thought it was a much more interesting lifestyle to do that. And luckily, and not many English people do, but luckily became recently successful and I've adapted to the American way. So now, it's dangerous for me to go back to Europe, because now they see me as an American. But that's ok. There's a huge difference between the two...comedy in England is much faster. You have to slow down in America. And not just for George W.
David: There's a lot of George W.s...
Oooh yeah. Thank goodness. I'm not talking just a George W. But yeah, it took a long time and I've been very pleased with the results and I love America. It's a fun country and the opportunities are bigger because there's more spaces to work.
David: When did you consider yourself a professional magician?
I'm not sure I actually do consider myself a professional magician. But I would guess the definition is that you make, if not all of your money, then the majority of your money from performance. Which would limit the number of professional magicians, or indeed, comedians there are on the planet because so many do other things as well. You know, and that's why I wouldn't say I make 100% of my money from performance, because I do the writing and the DVDs and stuff like that. And that's all and good, but I do make the majority of my money, certainly about 75% of it, simply from performing. So I guess that would count me as a professional. Although, I don't consider that to be an important thing to be. As most of the magicians, the great, magical innovators in history have not been professional. Even in the last century, Larry Jennings, not a professional, Ed Marlo, not a professional, Dai Vernon, not a professional, and these are names revered in the magic world but none of them were professional magicians. So I'm not sure that that's an important thing to be.
David: How much time to you spend practicing your talents?
I used to an awful lot! When I was much younger, I would spend hours upon hours upon hours. These days, not so much, because I think it's not important to know all the new stuff. The young guys around the table here can fool the hell out of me with magic because I don't study and practice new stuff. What I tend to do is pick the eight moves that I need, and I'll practice those. I don't know any of these flippy-whippy things the kids are doing...or any of that stuff. I can do a nice control, a nice double lift, a nice pass...pretty hot second deal and bottom deal... and a few other bits and bobs, that's pretty much all I need for the show and that's all you need to do. It's like doctors, you know, when they specialize? You don't see them practicing other forms of medicine. So I decided what I needed to do for the show and that's what I do. I still putz around with some odd little things every now and then...but to be honest, because magic's kinda part of my job... when I'm not working... I'd rather be doing other stuff. I like to have time off. So practice wise, a couple of hours a day, maybe three hours a day.
David: How often do you change your material?
Very rarely, it takes a long time to put a new piece in. The problem with magic performers, not all, but some, or many, actually most, is that they learn the trick and they think that's the end of the journey. So I've learned the moves, I can get the card where it needs to be and that's it. And they don't realize that's only the start of the journey! Ya know, you go to a doctor, I keep bringing doctors in to it, maybe I'm in a doctor mood today. All doctors are supposed to be able to cure you. But some doctors are more popular than others. And why is that? Is it because they can cure you, because they have the medical knowledge? No, they've all got the medical knowledge... I'm hoping most of them have, anyway. The reason you go to one doctor over another is what he puts around the medical knowledge, and that's the time. It's not about the trick, it's about the performer. So you have to work on the theater of the piece, the presentation of the piece. And the joke has to be intrinsic to the trick. I hate joke, trick, joke, and trick. The jokes have to be intrinsic to the flow of the material. It has to have a synergistic flow. So when you're designing a routine, and it might take me two days to design what I want to do with the cards, or a piece of paper, or a pen or whatever it is, but it'll normally take me about a year before I will put it into the show. I think the fastest anything has gone into my show was about eight months. That's because I'll play with it, tape it , and look at it... and one of the things I'll do a lot, is I'll take the prop that I'm gonna use with it, and I'll put it on the floor where I'm gonna trip over it. So I have to walk around it, and it's there and it's irritating... to have a nice clean floor and its right in the middle of the floor and it irritates the hell out of me, but it makes me think about it. And I'll look at it from different angles as I'm walking around it. I'll be watching TV, and I'll look down and see it there, it'll make me think of something else, and it may relate to something I saw on the TV or not... But it takes a long time before I'll put a new piece in.
That having been said, I do improve a lot, in the stand up show. I am quite renowned to drifting off into uncharted territory.
David: What made you start into the show format? I find, a lot of magicians get started through close-up magic.
Actually, I don't do much close up these days. I didn't start as a close up magician; I started as a stand up. The close up came afterwards. I'm getting to an ever-advancing age, close up wasn't really around when I started. Everybody did stand up.... in the working man clubs, comedy clubs and at parties it was always stand up. Close up didn't really hit England until 1975-76, as a viable source of income. Then I started doing a little restaurant, in 1976, Amy's Bistro was the name of the place. And that was one of the first places in England to have close up magic on a regular basis. Most magicians these days do close up magic because that's the market. Ya know, there are less and less places to do stand up and now, most magicians would agree, 90% of the gigs you're offered are walk around close up.
David: What is Simon Lovell's Strange and Unusual Hobbies about?
Strange and Unusual Hobbies came about quite by accident. It's an off-Broadway show, which is a very cool thing to have. It's actually the longest running one-man off-Broadway show in New York City history. Wall Street Journal called it a "Dazzling 90 minute show!"... They were trashed, but that was ok. There is a bar in the theater, and it's used extensively by most people... including myself! The SoHo Playhouse is where Monday Night Magic used to be. The owner saw me there and he really dug the show. He said I had the basis for a one-man show there, if only I could be more vile and disgusting, and bring in controversial subjects. I told him I was actually pretty tamed down for Monday Night Magic, I did have that show. At that point they were developing the whole underground area of the SoHo Playhouse, which is where my show is, at the Huron Club. So I was in right at the development stage, telling them where to place the bar, where to place the stage, what color curtains, what kind of lighting... so, by accident, the whole room was designed around my show. And from the time that we had the initial discussion to the time we opened the show, it was about four weeks, and it's been running ever since. Totally by accident, but there's this saying," If you're in the right place, at the right time... and people always quote this saying, "You're so lucky! You're in the right place at the right time." There is, however, a caveat to that. You got to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right talent! I could take you down to a street corner where Woody Allen's gonna walk by. It doesn't mean he's gonna spot you and put you in his movie, unless you're good. Is there a vague amount of luck in being in the right place at the right time? Maybe. Or do you create the right place at the right time? I think the second option is more viable. Ah, God, I've got all serious.... I hate that. (Takes a sip of his beer)
David: What do you want the audience to take from the show?
Oh, see, now that's a great question! Most entertainers will tell you they want to entertain the audience. I don't want that at all. I don't think that's important. I don't even think that's a sensible option. You see, and I wish I could remember who said this, but I won't so what the F*ck. An entertainer gives the audience something that they want. An artist gives them something that they need. I do more of what I think they need, than what they want. Because what they want, you can buy at the supermarket. You can get some cheese whips, Oreos and a six-pack of beer, sit down and watch a $3.99 movie on Playbo... excuse me, Pay-Per-View and be reasonably satisfied. But "reasonably satisfied" is not the same as going to Tavern on the Green, or Tao, and having a fabulous meal that you might not quite understand, but it fulfills you in much greater ways. I'm a great believer in both ignoring an audience and caring about them deeply. I ignore their wants, and give them what they need. I think that an artist should give an audience something that they really need, even if they don't realize that they need it. And even after the show they don't realize that they needed it, and they walk out thinking, "What the f*ck was that?!" Then maybe later on they'll realize that they needed it.
David: What are your plans for the future?
You mean tonight? ah, six-pack of beer... Playbo... I mean, Pay-Per-View movie...No, plans for the future. Retire. I enjoy writing much more than I enjoy performing these days. I'll probably write for a bit longer, but live performance, like when this show is done, I think that will be the last lock on it for a time. I don't do lecture tours and stuff like that. I'm doing Blackpool this year. I like doing that. It's a one off, I fly in, do a lecture, do a couple of close up shows, go home.
David: Do you have advice for aspiring magicians out there?
Seek immediate psychiatric advice! No, be yourself. You can't let the magic rule you, you have to rule the magic. And the tricks aren't really important to being a magician; they are a vehicle for people to see that you're a magician. The real magician is the guy that gets inside your head with the stories and the mindf*cks and stuff like that. The real magic is not what you do, but what they percieve you as having done. So, you can do magic without doing any tricks at all. You listen to a great story teller; they'll create magic in your head without doing any tricks. And that's the greatest form of magic there is. Unfortunately, there are very few great story tellers, so you have to hook up the magic tricks along the way, but the tricks are just the road bumps, to say, "Hey, I'm doing magic." See I don't give a sh*t... If the card I signed ends up in a guys wallet. I don't care, because that's not what I would be doing if I were a real magician. And that's what you have to think: If I were a real magician, what would I be doing? Well, I'll tell you what I'd be doing! I'd be on a Swedish beach with a 19-yr-old, gorgeous, slim blonde, while I suck down an inescapable, un-empty able bottle of scotch whiskey, that wouldn't give me a hangover while my beautiful apartment slowly filled with hundred dollar bills. If I were a real magician, that's what I would do. We're not talking Harry Potter; point your want, Squidge, Hermione's turned into a cat! It would be Squidge! Hermione's turned into a Playboy center spread, and is laying on the floor, legs akimbo. (David: I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to type that up!) Akimbo, A-K-I-M-B-O.
So the first thing is, discover who you are. Or discover who you want to be, maybe. Second thing is, learn how to talk. How many magicians do you know that go,"Uuuh..." Then, don't be a copy of other people, because then your just a pale imitation of somebody else's art. I can give you a copy of a Picasso painting, it'll be worth $12, and that'll be the price of the frame. Next to the real Picasso painting, will it look the same? But the price tag on the real Picasso will be $30 million. Why? Because one is a copy of the other. It's the old first to market theory. So you have to be yourself and be first to market with your character, your personality and all that. Then choose the tricks, the tricks aren't anything. You only need four or five tricks. I do an hour and twenty minute show; I think I do four tricks, maybe five. Of course, cut the word 'f*ck' out of the show and it goes down to about forty minutes.
Merlin had what? One or two? He had that old sword in the stone thing, that was a pretty cool one... he had the killing of Mordrid one, that was a bit vicious, but that's pretty much it! Grow a beard.... You look at the really good magicians, and I think that's one thing Vernon had absolutely right... you want to be a world class magician, you want to learn two or three tricks and that's it. Just learn them better than anybody else. You have to put them together with character, personality and all that kind of stuff.
On that note, moves you definitely need: a control, some sort of shuffle where you can shuffly-shuffly cutty-cut the cards and still control it, double lift, that's it! You want to make a living with cards, that's all you need. Want to learn something a bit friskier, learn a palm and a force. Now you're in the top 10%. Then you can just putz around with flourishes, which look great. If you want, learn an Elmsley count, or a Jordan displacement, commonly called the Jordan count, which it's not. You can learn all that stuff along the way. OR second dealing or bottom dealing if you want to get as fancy-pantsy, sleight of handy as me. You don't need it. Eddie Tullock was one of the most successful trade show magicians of the second half of the twentieth century. He could do a classic force and a top change. That was the only thing he knew. That was it. He made fortunes. If you said to him, "What's a double lift?" He'd go, "Is that when I hold both my hands on the stripper's ass at the same time?"
David: I spent thousands of dollars on tour learning all kinds of moves and tricks.
It's a little bit like karate though. You watch a white belt, and they're doing these very simple moves and stuff, and of course the black belts are beating the living sh*t out of them. And then they learn all these moves. But then they get the black belt level and they look a lot like the white belts. Because they've learned all the moves, but they've taken away all the ones they don't need, and kept all the ones they do. So they look as if they're moving quite simply. But because they've studied through all that and then divested themselves of what they didn't need and concentrated on three or four of the really strong things, they look the same but they know what they're doing. The difference between a white belt and a black belt is that the white belt is doing the moves, but not knowing what they're doing, and the black belt is doing the same moves, but knowing what they're doing and with the background knowledge of other stuff as well. It's the same with card magic or coin magic. You can practice these moves and look like an idiot, but kind of half-ass do the tricks. But you look at people like David Roth, who doesn't do tons and tons of hard moves with coins anymore. In fact, as we talk all the time, he's trying to simplify. But he does them perfectly, because he's chosen three or five moves that are his black belt moves. (Michael, a karate guy, agrees with him. It's on tape...)
I don't really like the term magician or entertainer. I always nip back to artist. Anyone can be a magician, we're sitting in a magic store, you got $200, you can buy an act of the shelves. Does that make you a magician? No, that makes you a guy that can do tricks. Big difference.
David: What is some advice on working gigs?
You learn more form bad gigs than you do from good gigs. You want to just work everywhere. If you walk into a place and you think, "Oh my God, I can't work this place! It's going to be really frightening!" Work it! You might die unmercifully, they might hate you, but you'll learn a lot from it. I remember doing a gig in Hartford, Connecticut, of all places. Man, the career was on a total rise there. It was as a lesbian motorcycle pig roast. I walked in and thought, "I am probably going to be the pig roast!" It's one of those ones that was golden. I was booked to do a 45 minute stand up, I did 2 hours and 24 minutes and they loved it! I was quite proud of the fact that afterwards, they gave me one of their jackets... which means I'm actually an official lesbian.
More advice!
In performance, you don't aim for the lowest common denominator; you aim to the highest common denominator. You don't want your higher levels to drop; you want your lower levels to come up. And that's what's cool. Drag people up for the ride; don't drop people down for the ride. I could rant off about this; it's why people are programmed to fail in life. People are programmed to fail in life because they have parents that teach them: go to school, go to college, and get a job, preferably a union job (where you have a boss). The boss makes more than you and that's your life.
David: Someday you become the boss...
And then you have another boss. People are programmed to fail. The way that people succeed is by getting rid of all that bullsh*t and say, "I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do, and I'm gonna pull everybody else along for the ride with me." Do you want to be the f*ckee or the f*cker. You know the lovely saying, and I'll probably say it wrong, but I say it in a vaguely enough way that most people will recognize it. If you want to be successful, never follow the well-worn path through the forest. Drift off into the wild grass and create new paths for people to follow you. People will knock you for it, tell you you're an idiot, they'll tell you your insane. Like people in Network marketing or in real estate; There are people around who have made fortunes. Other people will say, "Oh, no, you can't do that, it's a scam, it's a stupid, it's pointless!" You know why? Because these are people with bosses, and they're programmed to fail. "You can't possibly be a successful Entertainer, you know one in a million make it?" Well, if you ain't in the race to start with, how could you possibly win it! Is it a harder race than working at McDonald's? Probably. Is it a harder race than being a top heart surgeon? That's getting to a little more level freeway, there. But, if you don't aim for Mars, you can never land on the moon. If you aim for Mars, and you land on the moon, you've done pretty well. If you aim for New Brunswick, well, you'll be working at McDonald's. I aimed for Saturn, where did you aim for? Ummm... Springfield. How did you do? Well, I nearly made it. My car ran out of gas on the edge of the city, but I actually walked in and got a job at a bar. Good for you! Well, I'm sitting here and I've got $20 million in the bank because I'm on f*cking Mars! You have to take risks, man. You get what you risk. You play life safe; your income will be safe. You live life safe; you'll live in a two bedroom house, 2.1 children, 3.1 cats, half a dog, and a reasonable car. You aim for everything, you can crash and burn. But, if you make it, it's the greatest feeling in the world. You live your dream, and living your dream is what it's all about. It's about doing what you want to do, and having the choice to do what you want to do. See, I can choose to drink this beer... because I can. I can choose if I want, to buy a bottle of champagne down the road I can choose to get a car service home or whatever. It's like a game of twister. Sometimes you twist yourself into a bad shape, sometimes a good one. You never know until you spin the dial. Life's to short to play it safe. The more you put into life, the more you get out of it. Let me give you a really good piece of advice. There are a number of words you should eliminate immediately from your vocabulary. Hope is one of them. Don't say maybe; hope, possibly, might... Just say, "I will." Set a date to do what you want and then you'll do it. Hope, maybe and possibly are bad word and you should put them out in the cornfield. Will, definitely and now. Those are the words you want. People are too pansy-assed about life. "I think I might do that tomorrow..." Ya know? "I think I'm going to take up procrastinating... tomorrow."
