ON THE WATERS FRONT a column
of information and opinion by T. A. Waters
THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN
THIS COLUMN ARE THOSE OF THE WRITER, AND MAY
NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF THE
STEVENS MAGIC EMPORIUM OR GEMINI.
Column Seven: CAVEAT VICTOR
Every year brings with it
all kinds of awards shows and ceremonies;
it is rare indeed to find a week in which
someone, somewhere, isn't being presented
with some kind of honor, complete with statuette.
This sort of thing goes on all over the world,
but the obsession with winners -- and by extension,
losers -- is a peculiarly American one. Not
only do we have Emmys, Oscars, Tonys, Grammys,
but endless compilations of Ten Best This,
Fifty Sexiest That, and The Hundred Most Powerful
Others.
Really, though, there's nothing
all that wrong with it. It allows us to cheer
the winners and feel sympathy for the losers
-- and for the television producers, it allows
for two or three hours of television loaded
with star power they couldn't otherwise afford.
(In case you were wondering why there are,
in fact, so many awards shows, that's the
answer; most of these awards are born in the
mind of a budget-minded producer.)
It's a relatively harmless
amusement, however, except when one thing
happens: the awardee takes it seriously. Look,
if you win an Olympic gold for the sprint,
it's because you were the fastest on the day
of the competition -- that, usually, is indisputable.
If you go into areas of economics -- say,
box office grosses -- given Hollywood bookkeeping,
the situation is somewhat more cloudy. STAR
WARS, for example, turned out to be quite
profitable -- but in terms of production money
spent vs. box office take, it was actually
LESS profitable that Lucas's earlier AMERICAN
GRAFFITI. It all depends on how you look at
it, what information you include or exclude.
Knowing you ran faster than
the other people in that sprint is easy; you
broke the tape. Knowing that you did the best
performance, or wrote the best book, or sang
the best song, or danced the best, is absolutely
impossible. That's something that can't be
known, by you or anyone else, and thinking
that an award proves anything at all is a
dangerous and sometimes career-destroying
mistake.
A long time ago, when I was
a kid (is that redundant?), I took part in
my one and only magic competition. This was
a contest set up by Harry Blackstone Senior
as a promotional gimmick for his show. Half-a-dozen
local amateur magicians would be put forward
by various magic clubs or dignitaries, and
at the intermission of Blackstone's opening
night performance they would each perform
a single effect or routine. So there we were,
the six of us; I think I was around 12 or
13 at the time, and next to me was the six-year-old
sister of a magic buddy, whom he'd taught
to perform the Square Circle. She did it charmingly,
and as I recall the other kids did the Vampire
Block, a Phantom Tube production, the Die
Box, and a giant Botania -- this last by the
rich kid from the fashionable Bexley area.
You may wonder what I did.
Remember, I was but a callow youth, and had
not yet seen the True Light Of Mentalism;
at this point I was doing a manipulative act,
largely out of CLASSIC SECRETS OF MAGIC, and
on the Hartman Theater stage that night I
did my billiard ball routine. The audience
voted with applause, and I won.
Of all the people there,
no one was more surprised than me at that
moment; I'd thought sure Susie (the six-year-old),
with her cuteness and charm, was going to
walk away with it. Then, as Blackstone came
over to shake my hand and present me with
my scroll and the $25 prize money, a fortune,
I realized what had happened. It was, as I've
said, opening night, and so the audience was
loaded with magicians. Of all the contestants,
I'd been the only one to do anything involving
real skill; the magicians appreciated that,
and it was their applause that had made the
difference.
Understanding that, I realized
that I had no idea at all if I had in fact
been the best performer; I might've been,
but I very well might not. Winning the contest
hadn't proved a thing to me, and I've never
entered a contest since. (Well, not entirely
true; when I was in the military I entered
the service-wide Tops In Blue contest, but
that was only to get off the Greenland ice
cap and down to sunny Newfoundland for a few
days; as I recall, I didn't even bother to
go to the second competition; after all, the
winner would have to go to Texas.)
A long time ago there used
to be a phrase employed to describe a particular
kind of act, usually consisting of card fan
productions, birds, cigarettes or candles
(or both) and the Zombie Ball: it was called
a "Chavez act." It indicated an act of the
type often produced by Ben and Marian Chavez's
College Of Magic, a school that taught many
who would become top-line professionals. The
phrase was not meant pejoratively in most
cases -- after all, one could describe Lance
Burton's early act that way, and it was with
just such an act that he won the Grand Prix
at FISM.
Reality, however, like nostalgia,
isn't what it used to be. The act done by
Lance -- as with Fred Kaps, Richard Ross and
other winners -- was a real-world practical
act, something that could be effectively done
for an audience of laypersons. As the years
have passed, however, this has become less
the case, to the point where a strong commercially
practical act often won't even place in FISM
or other magic competitions, while a cutely-
themed act, or one with bits intriguing to
magicians, will carry off the prize.
Even when a prize-winning
act in competition will also appeal to laypersons,
it may cost more to perform, transport or
operate than it could ever gain in salary.
For a few times a year, it's a miracle show,
but at a dozen or fifteen shows a week it
simply doesn't exist.
Several times in recent years,
a contestant who didn't win first prize at
FISM has been deluged with work, while the
big winner has pretty much dropped from view.
This is because the bookers who attend these
competitions are perhaps not seeing the acts
in quite the same way as the magic audience.
The above may seem somewhat
off the point, but it really isn't. If you
are trying to create an act to win prizes
in competition, if getting that trophy is
your goal -- hey, it's your life. There are
two things you should be aware of, however,
before you spend all that time: One -- the
act that will win a trophy may not be an act
that will play anywhere else -- and Two --
even when you've won that trophy, it doesn't
mean you're the best, or the champion, or
the top guy; it means that on a particular
day you won a magic contest, and it means
nothing at all beyond that.
I will be the first to admit
that in some cases winning a contest may be
useful in terms of publicity, particularly
if you can use a phrase like 'world champion'
or some such thing; nice for the brochure,
a neat tagline for the emcee. However, to
spend a significant portion of your performing
life doing something in an attempt to gain
that phrase may not be the best use of your
time. As Tony Corinda says, "It may be as
well to remember that no matter how good your
brochure, you still have to go along and prove
you're good on the day!"
Let me also point out the
dark side of getting awards or plaudits: sometimes
you get them from the wrong people. Orson
Welles called this 'the third name thing'
-- using as an example Nicholas Ray, a film
director for whom he had limited regard. What
would happen, Welles said, was that someone
would come up to him and say that Welles was
one of his three favorite directors. As Welles
would smile, the person would say, "Yes, it's
you...and David Lean...and Nicholas Ray."
Being put in company with Ray was not something
Welles viewed happily. It goes right back
to the Blackstone contest: if it had been
held a few nights later, and the lay audience
had chosen me, I might have at least had some
idea that my work had some value. As it was,
judged largely by magicians, I had no clue.
Losing the contest, of course,
might not have offered me this insight; it
almost certainly would have seemed to me that
I was making an excuse for myself. This brings
us to another problem with contests and competitions:
it's very easy to think, if you lose, that
you've done something wrong, you're not good
enough. It is just as possible that you did
something right and the audience is wrong
-- indeed, if it is an audience of magicians,
it's not only possible but probable.
No single audience -- EVEN
OF LAYPERSONS -- can give you an accurate
idea of how your act plays. There are in fact
'bad audiences,' and you might just happen
to get one. One more problem with most --
not all -- contests is that they're one-shot
affairs, and if for whatever reason you don't
happen to click with that audience, it may
produce a very distorted assessment of your
act. A good act is always evolving, and very
few of the best began in a state of perfection.
To evolve is to measure the response in dozens,
perhaps hundreds of shows, and gradually make
those adjustments that will get you closer
to your goal -- a goal which, well set, will
never be completely achieved. Perfection in
art, as in life, is more often gained in the
striving than in the achievement itself.
Unless you have some very
specific purpose in mind in attempting to
win a magic contest -- as odd as wanting to
do an entire act with bottle-caps, as perverse
as wanting to show an earlier winner that
you're just as good as he or she is -- striving
for this goal may be like walking toward a
mirage. If you win, you may get a nice plaque
and some prize money, at the cost of perspective
and self-knowledge, not to mention time. If
you lose -- then you've REALLY wasted your
time.
There are those who will
argue that magic contests are good clean fun,
something to watch at magic conventions or
your local club, no harm done. But IS there
no harm done? Is magic in so exalted a state
of perfection that it can afford to squander
the effort and ingenuity of those who might
otherwise set their sights on giving the lay
public a positive view of our art, rather
than run after a Grail that when gained is
a Styrofoam cup?
Shakespeare observed "What
mighty contests rise from trivial things,"
thus saying in seven words what I've taken
nineteen hundred to express. If we can find
a god in the details, as has been said, I
think we can as easily find a devil in the
trivialities. Striving to perfect those details
is a worthy aim -- but chasing after the trivialities
of ephemeral prizes is not.
Copyright (c) 1997 by T.
A. Waters. All rights reserved.
