hi, i saw a comedian/magician perform a trick where he asked audience members to think of a celebrity. he randomly asked a girl who she thought of and she said martha stewart. he then went through a series of baby photos he pulled from a manila envelope as a joke but in the end he flipped one over and it was laminated with ‘martha stewart’ written in big marker letters. i am almost %100 sure the audience member wasn’t planted and didn’t know the guy. i don think he had time or a marker to write the name down while flipping through the baby photos either. any idea how this is done? thanks
Without seeing the trick, I would guess it goes something like this:
The magician looks through all the gossip magazines and does a google search for the most popular people of the time. He then adds a few others who are and always will be popular. For example if I was doing the trick right now, I would have to have signed pictures of President Obama, Michelle Obama, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, etc. He then picks an audience member likely to be of the age or social class to pick one of the celebs he has a signed picture of. If the person picks someone like Postmaster General Francis Granger, the magician would make a joke and move onto another likely person, spreading patter the entire time. When the person he picks comes up with the name of a person the magician has, he will shuffle through the baby pictures and come up with the person who was named. I am making it sound simpler than it really is, but this is the general idea.
SSG Schwartz
OK - variation on a theme here. I was recently in Vegas and saw Penn & Teller (which by the way is amazing and well worth attending).
They did an excellent trick as part of their spiel on hot/cold readers and the scams they pull. At the start of the show they had everybody come on stage and sign an envelope. The envelope was then taken off stage.
Midway through the show they (rightfully IMO) started attacking fake psychics and explained they would show us a mixture of cold and hot readings. They brought the envelope back on stage still pinned to the white board. It remained untouched for the rest of the sketch.
They passed round an armful of what the said were joke books - maybe 10-15, all at least an inch thick - and had them tossed amongst the audience. This looked pretty haphazard and random to me and I was watching carefully.
After about a minute three people held onto the books. I’ll ignore persons one and two. The third person was asked to stand up, pick a random page and joke and read out all the joke bar the punchline.
As they started reading Teller opened the envelope and started to unfold a very long sheet of paper. Whilst doing this the audience member read out the start of the joke and just as he stopped Teller finished unfolding the paper which of course showed the punchline!
The paper was letter sized in height but about 6 feet across. It was onion skin and the writing was sufficiently bold to show that there couldn’t have been a backup punchline on the back.
The joke was something semi-rude about prostitutes, the audience member was a middle aged man and the book he picked from was at least an inch thick. I didn’t see any attempt at steering the book towards the man. I definitely got the impression he was part of a larger group, which would seem to suggest against him being a plant; unless of course part of his trick was to ingratiate himself with the people nearby for this very purpose.
I don’t think you can assume the guy was going to pick a risque joke as I honestly don’t think he was targetted when the books were distributed. Sadly I don’t recall whether he was handed one book or many. I’m also unable to recall with 100% certainty whether a large number of books were shown on stage, and then a small number circulated but I am 90%+ confident that a good number were circulated.
So, any ideas how he did this? His very brief chat with the book holder wasn’t long or varied enough to convey much information. Bar asking his name and making a few jokes I don’t think anything of substance was said.
Having just read this back I realise there are quite a few unknowns. I’ll ask my GF when she gets back whether she can clarify anything.
t.
Caught the same show trmatthe did about a year and a half ago. IIRC, they didn’t just pass out the books, they asked the audience to keep passing them from person to person until they said to stop, then went ahead picking a person to pick a joke, etc.
We had the same reaction – that it really didn’t look like a plant. But is it possible that they put out enough books to be sure that one would eventually end up in the hands of an accomplice, keep an eye on him/her, and call “stop” at the right moment?
Great show, btw.
What makes you believe this? Did you know the audience member personally?
Regards,
Shodan
I doubt most (if any) magicians rely on a plant. There just generally isn’t a need.
My guess would be that of the three books, only two were a real joke book. And then the punchline of all the jokes in the third is the same. There might only be 5-10 jokes in the whole thing, repeated over and over.
The person holding the book won’t have time to really analyze the book until after the mic is off him, and probably he won’t at all.
I saw that show last week and they did the same trick. If I recall correctly, the third joke was indeed something prostitute-related. Could it be that multiple jokes had the same punchline? I can’t remember the actual joke either.
What I was impressed by, was that even though I knew they were simply doing cold/hot readings, they did them really convincingly… To a point where if I didn’t know psychics were BS, I might start to believe in good ones.
Penn talks about the trick and how they do it (and how someone purposely messed it up) here: http://crackle.com/c/Penn_Says#id=2472314&ml=o%3D12%26fpl%3D360812%26fx%3D
My guess is that every page in the book was exactly the same so no matter what page he picked it would have the same punchline. I saw a really great episode of **Columbo **once that used the same technique.
I remember getting some type of Pen & Teller magic book from years ago that came with a mini-book that was used for tricks.
You would give the book to someone and have them read the first line off of any page they wanted after you had drawn an image.
You were supposed to draw a circle with straight lines coming off of it.
Although the first line on every page was different the all alluded to the same image:
-the sweltering sun hung high in the sky that day
-he had squished the multi legged bug flat
-the helicopter pilot peered down into the top of the volcano
-the bullet pierced the window
-a primative satellite like sputnik
I saw a magic show on television once (taped outside) where they had a participant concentrate on the name of a friend. Within seconds a taxi drove by with the name of that friend written on the door or fender. This happened a couple of times.
The names on the taxis were simple and common: Chris and Dawn. They probably filmed several episodes before they got the two that worked out right.
I’ve seen versions where they take a real book- say, they borrow an audience’s copy of Harry Potter or whatever- and they ask the person to pick an unusual word from a random page. Naturally, they guess the word. Any idea how that one’s done?
An important thing to keep in mind about magic tricks is that when an audience member describes the trick, they always leave out some details. And without those details, it’s impossible to know how any particular trick was done, since there are typically dozens of completely different ways to achieve any given vaguely-described trick. A good magician might even combine several of these techniques into a single trick, or perform the “same trick” three different ways to keep anyone from catching on.
As an example, consider the oldie-but-goodie “Pick a card, any card”:
The person picking the card might be a plant.
The magician might be seeing the reflection of the card in a window behind the person, or in the person’s glasses.
The cards might be marked, such that the magician can tell what it is from the back.
The deck might consist of 52 copies of the same card.
The magician might have the audience member put the card on the bottom of the deck, and then use a trick shuffle to keep it on the bottom of the deck.
The magician might arrange to have the card put in the deck next to some other card he knows, and then use a trick shuffle to keep it next to that other card.
The magician might arrange for the card to be put back in the deck upside-down relative to the other cards.
The deck might be beveled, and the magician might arrange for the card to be put back in the deck backwards, such that the edges stick out a little.
The magician might have an “out” for every card, such that if you say “Two of spades”, he’ll ask you to look at the envelope stuck to the bottom of your chair, but if you say “Ten of hearts”, he’ll pull down the window blinds to reveal a paper there, etc.
The magician might just guess blindly. On the 1 chance in 52 that he gets it right, he looks absolutely amazing, and the other 51 times, he just segues into a joke that he had prepared instead.
Any of these methods would work, and they all have subtly different details if you’re watching them. But in all cases, the audience will later tell their friends, “I picked a card and he knew which one it was”.