"It Is Written"

 

In the old Sinbad movies, some bearded actor always said, “It is written”. Like on some ancient scroll somewhere, there was some ultimate law or rule that was the gospel by virtue of the fact it was merely “written”.

Nothing is written.

I’m an artist by trade. My mom was a fashion illustrator. My dad was a Hollywood actor/stuntman. I developed a love for both art and movies and storytelling really seemed to be in my blood.

I made my career as an artist, but I kept bringing my screenplays to my dad. I needed his approval for some reason. We’re all hard-wired to our parents, I guess. But, that was the roadblock. I believe my Dad’s fear of being overshadowed by his boys, kept my brother and me down - so obvious now in hindsight for so many reasons.

The pandemic, the above realization, and the support from my wife, Kim, and good friends, have allowed me the time and permission to write again. I had such a great time. It was way too much fun. I drenched myself in Masterclasses and allowed my story the time to bake in the oven. The process was magical - I can’t say enough good about it. A feature horror film screenplay now exists, and it’s completely exhilarating for me. I feel like I just emerged from a bunker.

But it’s surprising to me how, in the eyes of a few, doing something different like this, doesn’t seem to be okay. “Why?” I ask, thinking, is it written that I can only be an artist? Hell, no. Maybe it’s a telling reflection of what those people couldn’t achieve themselves? I’m no therapist, but if that’s true, it’s sad.

Here, I want to share my excitement, and instead, I’m either told to dial it back or not to be taken seriously. Talk about dealing with the forces of negativity, man. Maybe the Universe is trying to tell me something. Thank God for professional industry screenplay coverage tossing me out a few positive tidbits.

The bottom line; I’m left not knowing my own worth as a writer. So I entered some competitions and I wait. I wait for validation. Or humiliation. One or the other is coming, but nothing is written.

Magic!

My earliest memory of being introduced to magic was when my dad returned home after having been gone for six months working on Hatari in Africa. He arrived home with a large white box from Burt Wheeler’s Magic Shop on Hollywood Boulevard. It was a deluxe magic set. Now, this was not a present for my brother or me. My dad had bought this for himself! Here’s this six-foot-four, badass stuntman who just returned from hunting the most dangerous animals in the world with John Wayne, and what does he do? He buys himself a magic set! Ha!

If I was smart I would have threatened to tell his stunt buddies about it and he probably would have given it to me to save himself the embarrassment. But I was not smart, I was six. I was also the best audience in the whole house because he could trick me with no problem whatsoever. I was amazed at all of his tricks and the box filled me with a sense of wonder like no other thing I could have ever imagined. This box was the gateway to all of life’s greatest mysteries as far as I was concerned. It held the secrets to the whole world and the higher up the shelf he hid it from me, the more I wanted it.

My father’s tricks tortured me. There was this “India Vase” that poured a seemingly unending amount of water. My dad made up an entire story about a tribe of thirsty soldiers who were traversing the Sahara Desert with no water left and only this magic man among them to produce water with the wave of his hand whenever they needed a drink.

He would also place two little, blue, foam rabbits in my closed hand that would make babies and multiply magically. There were the Linking Rings, a rope that would magically get as rigid as a stick, the Hindu Coins, and, best of all, was Glorpy, the ghost who lived in a handkerchief! Glorpy would rise up by himself and somehow vanish into thin air when my dad lifted the handkerchief! This tore my brain out. I wanted to know the secret so bad it actually hurt my head to think about it.

There had to be a law against such child abuse. I remember going into my dad’s bathroom while he was taking a bath and begging him for a peek inside the box. He finally looked me in the eye and said, “You really want it that bad?

I said “YES!” with resounding confidence. I’ll never forget this moment; he looked at me and slowly smiled and said, “Okay, I’ll sell it to you.” I thought,

What?? Sell it to me? I hardly knew what money was. The concept of money was so strange and completely unfamiliar to me. He wanted ten bucks for it. It might as well have been a million dollars. It seemed so unattainable and futile that my hopes and dreams were dashed to pieces.

I left the steamed-up bathroom dejected and sweaty but not before my dad did another mind-blowing magic trick for me from the bathtub. And, by the way, who takes magic tricks with them to take a bath I thought?

But strangely after that, I seemed to be offered a dollar here and a dollar there for chores around the house that I usually didn’t get paid for. I started doing the math and it was actually adding up. Saving up ten bucks for the secrets of life started to make good sense to me. The closer I came to my goal, the more I wanted to help out around the house. I was a regular little workhorse.

It had caught on around our neighborhood that my dad could do magic. Our neighbors, Harold and Lorraine, had a daughter, Carol, who was turning sixteen and having a birthday party with all her friends over. On the spur of the moment, they invited dad to come over to entertain at the party. They didn’t know he had been drinking while watching a football game and was pretty much in the bag.

He arrived with his magic box of tricks wearing a black cape. I came along for the ride to see him in action in front of a crowd. He did his usual tricks that, by now, I

had pretty much seen a dozen times or so. The girls were all amazed and he was eating up all the attention he was getting. I think at that moment in time if you asked him if he wanted to go professional, he would have said yes.

But then he said he was going to hypnotize Carol. What? What was he doing? This wasn’t part of his routine. At least not any routine I was ever privy to. Carol excitedly sat on the arm of her couch and my dad situated himself across from her. He borrowed a medallion on a long necklace from one of her girlfriends and began to swing it in front of her from side to side. He told her, “Keep your eyes on the medallion. Your eyes are getting very heavy. You’re getting very sleepy.” And sure enough, she seemed to really be going under. I was fascinated by how quickly it all happened. Had my dad hidden some mysterious talent from me all these years? At that moment, I got my answer when Carol passed out and fell backward off the arm of the couch, and hit her head on the floor. Her friends screamed in shock. Her mother ran to her, yelling, “Oh my God, Carol! Are you okay, honey!?”

Carol was out cold and drooling like a wet fish. My dad desperately tried to laugh it off and backpedal out of the awkward situation. They got a bag of ice for Carol’s head was quickly developing a nasty lump on it. She groggily came to as my dad quickly packed up his magic tricks and took off, leaving behind looks of disdain and confusion.

He had gone from hero to zero in a heartbeat and left without having cake. His magician days went up in smoke like flash paper. That was the day my dad gave up magic and passed the torch over to me. Yes! The magic box was finally mine. I still had to cough up the ten bucks, though.

The magic set consisted of the kind of tricks that if you read the instructions, anybody could do. There are basically three areas of magic. 1) Tricks anyone can do; 2) Tricks that involve dexterity skills, like sleight-of-hand or prestidigitation and 3) real magic. (If you believe in that.) Real magic is that stuff you see in the movies—the dark forces. Whether it’s real or not, I don’t care to know because it usually involves opening a door that can never be closed again. No thanks. I did almost cross this line once but I’ll get into that later.

The kinds of magic consist of close-up magic, parlor magic and stage magic, all involving different proximities to an audience.

When I was about seventeen, I was introduced to sleight-of-hand or close-up magic. For me, this was love at first sleight. I was six again. Michael Hutton, a friend from high school and the manager of Lil’ Elmo, my band, offered me lessons and I was a sponge. I soaked up everything Michael would teach me and I began building a library of magic tricks. Coins, cards, ropes, and impromptu magic—I loved it all. In fact I still, to this day, carry several Kennedy half dollars with me and an East African copper coin and my color-changing knives. This type of magic takes tons of practice to pull off.

Misdirection, patter and presentation all play an important part in close-up magic. Anyway, I became obsessed with it—annoyingly so. After I started working at NBC, everyone became a target for me to fool or perform to. There I met John Shrum, the Art Director for the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. I did a lot of the art and graphics for The Tonight Show.

I got to know John quite well. John was instrumental in my magic journey as he was also affiliated with The Magic Castle in Hollywood. I was too young to become a member because you have to be at least twenty-one to join and I was only eighteen. John asked me to illustrate the poster for their annual It’s Magic! show. It’s Magic! is a big stage show held yearly by The Magic Castle and I was so honored to be asked to do it. (All my posters currently hang in The Parlor of Prestidigitation at The Magic Castle, which I couldn’t be more proud. This job became my gateway into the private club for magicians and their guests. By the time I was 21 I had done several posters for both John and Milt Larsen, the owner, and I bartered my way into a life membership that normally cost big bucks to attain. I was very lucky.

50th-anniversary poster for The Magic Castle’s “It’s Magic!” show

While I was at NBC, another Art Director named Ray Klausen approached me about doing magic at a huge $400-per-plate charity function at The Beverly Hills Hotel called The Bagpiper’s Ball. He asked me to do it a year in advance so I couldn’t say, Gee, wish I could but I’m busy on that date. So I committed to doing it. All he originally needed was a roving magician to do close-up magic during dinner— no problem.

Then he came to me later and told me the theme for the evening was going to be Magic and would I be able to do a stage illusion. Well, stage magic never really appealed to me because there are so many ways to trick someone thirty feet away. The challenge for me is being right up in someone’s grill and blowing their mind.

So, I had to find someone who did stage magic to help me out. There was this arrogant guy named Pat who worked at the local Magic shop and I asked him if he could help me out. He did stage magic and said he would but he wanted to get paid. I was doing this for free, as it was a charity event, but I got Pat paid as he wished.

We settled on Houdini’s Metamorphosis as the illusion we would do. During rehearsals, Pat would lock me in handcuffs inside a tied sack, then lock me in this large trunk. He would then stand on the trunk and pull up a sheet covering both him and the trunk and on three I would pop up and lower the sheet, unlock the trunk and reveal Pat locked in cuffs inside the sack. That’s what was supposed to happen, anyway.

We were to have two lovely female assistants on the night of the performance. Pat was to hand the key to the trunk to one of them and her job was to later give it to me so that I could unlock it, revealing Pat. During rehearsals, the assistants were not present, so Pat would just put the key in his vest pocket.

The night of the performance came and The Beverly Hills Hotel was packed. This was an elegant, black-tie event with a full band and a lineup of top-notch entertainment kicking off with our magical illusion.

Pat and I successfully pulled off the close-up magic part of the evening roving around the dinner tables and performing with no problem. While guests dined I would do card and coin tricks, vanish cigarettes and produce half dollars from dinner rolls. It was a blast.

Then came the main attraction—the illusion. The lovely assistants joined us and Pat got on the mic and began presenting the illusion to the audience. He locked me up in cuffs, put me in the sack, and then locked me away in the trunk. Through the muffled sounds of the trunk, I could hear Pat charming the audience. Everything was going according to plan.

I was doing all the secret stuff I can’t really discuss here or I would get tracked down by the members of the Magic Castle and really be locked away in a trunk. He handed the mic to one of the assistants, jumped up on top of the trunk, pulling up the sheet around him, and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Houdini’s Metamorphosis! One, two, and three!” Pat ducked down and I popped up revealing Pat had vanished. The audience applauded and loved it. I grabbed the mic and looked to the assistant and asked, “Can I please have the key?” Bewildered, she said, “He didn’t give me the key.”

“Well,” I said, “Maybe he gave it to the other assistant.” I approached the other assistant and asked her the same question. She too, replied, “He didn’t give me the key, either.” There I was, in front of maybe a thousand people or so, waiting for me to open the trunk and reveal Pat. So I began to vamp.

“Wow, nobody has the key,” I said. The audience laughed thinking it was all part of the show. Inside I was thinking, WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO!? Then, I remembered Pat putting the key in his vest pocket during rehearsals. So I approached the trunk and said,

“Let’s see if Pat has the key.” I put the mic to the trunk and the muffled sound of Pat’s troubled voice could clearly be heard. “What the hell’s going on?!” Again the audience laughed, thinking it was all part of the show. I replied, still vamping for the audience, “Well, Pat we’re looking for the key. Is it in your vest pocket?” I pointed the mic at the trunk and then clearly audible came his reply, “OH MY GOD!” He put the key to the trunk in his pocket. The audience roared with laughter. Instantly, I realized this was the out I needed. I bowed and said, “Thank you very much!”

I quickly ran up to half a dozen large men near a front table and asked them to quickly get up and help me out. They all picked up the trunk with Pat inside and carried it off stage. Everyone thought it was part of the show.

When I opened the trunk backstage, Pat emerged

with his arrogance now a bit more tempered. I just smiled at him and said, “Well done, Pat.”

In 1976 when I finally did turn 21, John Shrum arranged for me to visit The Magic Castle officially as a member. I had been there several times delivering my posters to Milt Larsen, but this was official.

I brought a date with me and she was duly impressed. We had dinner there and during our dining experience, a round, old magician approached our table. I immediately recognized him as the world-famous Albert Goshman. Now, in magic circles, Albert Goshman is to magic like Paul Newman is to movies—or salad.

He explained that John had sent him as a surprise for my maiden voyage to The Magic Castle. He sat down at our table as I told my date how lucky we were to be graced by this master magician’s presence. He proceeded to blow our minds with his famous salt and pepper shaker routine followed by a sponge ball routine that I have never forgotten to this day.

For years I had heard that The Magic Castle had the most extensive, private magic library in the world. But it was only available to regular members and I was an associate member. In the coming year, I did another It’s Magic! poster for Milt and was granted a regular membership in exchange for my artwork. The minute my status was changed and I got my new card I went to The Castle with one thing in mind, the library.

The reason why I wanted to visit the library so badly was that I had heard it contained a locked bookcase that housed books on real magic— the dark stuff that was taboo to dabble in according to most magician circles. But, I had to admit: this fascinated me to no end. I had to see if it was there. I didn’t know what I would do if it was, but I had to find out for myself. I was just so thrilled to finally have access.

The castle is not only a private club for magicians and their guests but it’s a formal club requiring suits and ties for men and gowns or evening dresses for ladies.

So there I was, dressed to the nines by myself in The Magic Castle private library. There were several large, round felt-top, padded tables for practicing tricks surrounded by bookcase after bookcase of magic books. The secrets were mine. I had come a long way since that white box of tricks I had bought from my dad for ten bucks when I was six.

I slowly scanned the huge antique bookcases. All eight volumes of Tarbell’s books were there. The Stars of Magic, featuring the professor of magic, Dai Vernon, Books on Houdini, The Royal Road to Card Magic, Modern Coin Magic, the works. You name it, they had it—even very old books on magic from all over the world.

My eyes fell upon an ornate, antique bookcase filled with old books. I approached it and found it locked. This must be it, I thought.

On the fourth floor in the Castle are the production offices. I asked an older woman there about the locked bookcase and if I could open it. She looked me up and down and then slowly said, “Okaaaay.” She opened her top desk drawer and held up an old antique key. It seemed to sparkle in the light. She laid it carefully in my hand, looked at me, and said,

“Please, don’t forget to return it,” I assured I wouldn’t.

I had it in my hand now. I was so close. My mind was reeling with wonder as to what I might find. I reentered the library with the key in hand and slowly approached the bookcase. It had two, ornate, beveled glass doors. I felt a bit clammy and wanted to loosen my tie. I did, and then slipped the key in, and turned it. It clicked and unlocked. I slowly opened the squeaky cabinet door. It smelled of dust and some other vague scent I couldn’t pinpoint. This was the moment I had waited for. I figured I would pick a doozy since I had my freedom of choice. I found a book entitled, Demonism and Spiritualism.

I carefully pulled it out and walked it over to one of the tables there and sat down. I opened the book to the first page, which was blank. The next page carried a small block of copy on it that read: If your interests do not solely lie in what you believe to be the content of these pages, do not go any further. I stopped. These words were meant exactly for people like me. My throat was dry and I tried to swallow but couldn’t. I slowly closed the book, put it back, locked up the bookcase and returned the key. I have never been up there again.

Now I know why the private magic library upstairs at The Magic Castle is private. Suffice it to say, I am just fine with a few cards and coin tricks.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692341226