The David Mamet movie House of Games was about con artists, and Mamet hired Ricky Jay as a consultant (Jay ended up acting in the movie as well). Mamet asked Jay to come up with a con for the movie, but Jay didn’t want to use an existing con because there’s a code among con artists (similar to the magicians’ code) that you don’t reveal the secrets of your trade. It’s not so much that Jay was a con artist himself, but he knew a lot of con artists and had learned a lot from them.
So Jay invented a new con for the movie. Here’s how it works: a guy goes into a store with a stack of dollar bills and asks a clerk if he can do an exchange for a single twenty-dollar bill. His explanation is that he needs to mail the money to his sister. The clerk hands the guy a twenty and gets only nineteen dollars in exchange. While the clerk is counting the bills, the con artist makes a show of putting the twenty in an envelope and sealing it. When the clerk discovers there are only nineteen singles, the con artist apologizes and hands the envelope back to the clerk in exchange for the singles. But the twenty isn’t in the envelope; the con artist has palmed it. The con artist walks out of the store twenty dollars richer before the clerk has a chance to open the envelope.
Some time after the movie was released, Jay heard about a guy who was pulling the same con in real life. It turned out to be someone who had no previous criminal history, but was so impressed by this particular con that he decided to try it himself. Apparently he did it for several months before getting caught.
That article is what I came in here to share. A good read, to be sure.
I actually got to be one of his volunteers on stage once. He was doing a memory trick, where there was a huge chess board, standing vertically, and the other volunteer asked him complicated square root questions. He would answer and then tell me which light to throw on the chess board, playing a game with himself at the same time. Oh, he was blindfolded.
Hell of a talent, and I never forgot those sunken eyes when he turned upstage, shook my hand, and said “Thank you”. RIP Ricky.
He was the greatest. I hope he has been passing on his skill and artistry to the next generation as his mentors did for him.
I saw the video of Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants on TV, and several years later was able to bring a number of friends to see the show live in Washington DC.
It’s a great movie. I saw it when it hit Netflix streaming a few years ago. He talks about how he got Slydini to teach him a trick/move by showing him something he hadn’t seen before. Ricky Jay did a card toss(boomerang style) and…at great risk of not catching it, he decided in the last second to catch it behind his back. He talks about how foolish it was to risk losing a Slydini secret just to show-off, but he coudn’t resist.
A sad loss. One of the greatest card magicians and an expert in the history of magic and legerdemain. I loved his acting too, especially in the movies of his good friend David Mamet. Check out House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner, both movies dealing with confidence tricks.
Now that I watch a few feeds of him on Youtube; I’m getting a ton of Ricky Jay suggestions. If you get a chance; check out the one where he’s on stage with Doug Henning and Michael Landon! What a time to be an ‘adult’! Ricky Jay’s hair is so freaking long it covers his chest! What’s also funny is how much mileage he got out of the shtick of throwing the boomerang card, and cutting it with scissors; and the 4 queens trick. Great showmanship; but I think he used that exact same bit for 20+ years!
Ricky reused lots of material lots of times. I’ve watched at least a dozen videos of Ricky since learning of his death, and heard him say “Well on the way to the luckiest night of my life,” many times. He used it in the 52 Assistants show, and often tossed it out in other situations.
There’s a 1990 clip of Ricky on Letterman (I think it’s his first appearance on the show) where he does the four queens. When he does the Victorian bit with the verbose and elaborate patter, Dave becomes visibly impatient and antsy, probably because he expected quick and flashy tricks and not a long and wordy monologue. I was actually embarrassed for Dave, because his mugging and eye rolling, which the director frequently cuts to, completely upstages and distracts from Ricky’s clever work. It’s a shame he didn’t have a little more patience and understanding of what Ricky was trying to do. I think he gained a better understanding by the time of Ricky’s later appearances.
Count me in as a long-time admirer, really mourning his passing. I discovering him watching his 52 Assistants show when it aired on HBO and immediately became a fan, especially as Steve Martin’s tribute alluded to he was as great a historian and educator as he was a magician.
I was lucky enough to get tickets for one of his presentations at UCLA ~8 years ago, absolutely marvelous with not only the card tricks, mental abilities and slight-of-hand but even more fascinating origin stories of skills, tricks, and cons. One of our group pointed out David Mamet a few rows in front of us to make it even more special. One classic Ricky Jay moment - he was doing a mental trick and was trying to get a woman from the crowd to pick a sufficiently large number. After a little back-and-forth, the following was said (please visualize his typical quick response w/ non-emotional expression):
Ricky Jay: “Let’s say a number large enough you might think it’s my age.”
Woman: “How about 74?”
Ricky Jay: “You flatter me Madame.”
One of my friends summed it up for me best when saying that if you could have a dinner conversation with anyone from the history of the world, Ricky Jay is an easy top 10 choice if you’re a fan of prestidigitation. Or as I say even just if you’re into the history of dealing from the middle!
I would think there might be an enthusiastic audience for a documentary on Ricky Jay that gathered a number of the videos discussed in this thread—the talk-show appearances, film of Jay’s shows, excerpts from some of his movie roles, etc.
I know I’d love to see one. This was a unique human being. A film tribute would be welcomed by many.
I own a copy of Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, and read portions, but not all of it, years ago. I don’t have any firm recollections, but it wasn’t so compelling to me then that I took the time to read it all. But that may be more a commentary on me than on Ricky’s writing.
It looks like many of his books are out of print and used copies are commanding very high prices. (I wonder how many of the high prices I see on Amazon today have gone up since his death.) I know Cards as Weapons has long been quite rare and expensive. I bought a digital copy of it online that was listed as being legit, but obviously wasn’t. I contacted Ricky to let him know it was being bootlegged, and offered to provide info about the bootlegger if he wanted to pursue him, but he seemed resigned to the fact.