It's Tuesday
night in the loftlike performance area semi-hidden behind Meltdown
Comics' retail floor, and a crowd of more than 60 in neatly arranged
chairs intently watches the show's youthful host, Justin Willman. He
disappears behind a large black cloth, then asks an audience member to
name a fruit. When a woman blurts out “banana,” Willman instantly drops
the cloth to reveal himself in a comically outsized banana costume.
He
then tosses out a beach ball to determine the next audience
participant. It happens to be a young child named Winter, who helps
Willman create a random tweet: “Playing Marco Polo with Antonio Banderas
in Florida.” The illusionist then reaches to a secured metal box
overhead, pulling from it a piece of paper. Written on it: the very same
tweet.
Willman, 32, clearly has the nuts and bolts of magic down.
But he might also be described as an “alt-magician.” At his live
monthly variety show at Meltdown Comics, he brings in other equally
adept magicians, as well as top comedians and music acts, mixing in a
spirit of whimsical fun and a disarming goofiness with the sleight of
hand.
The vibe is as much Pee-wee's Playhouse as it is David Copperfield.
“If
there's anything that's 'alternative' in what I do,” Willman says
offstage, “it's a healthy sense of irony and self-awareness. It spoofs
the magic that doesn't know it's being silly. You know, the animals, the
fog machines.” He's all magician, but he's also part comedian.
Magic
is a competitive field, but Willman still speaks of a “brotherhood” of
professionals whose work he respects. Onstage, he eagerly introduces the
night's first guest illusionist, Ben Seidman, a youngish blond fellow
fresh from Vegas' Mandalay Bay Casino.
Seidman starts with some
banter: “If a homeless person approaches you on the street, just
out-crazy him.” He contorts his face into a grotesquely funny
expression, then goes into his first round of disappearing-object
tricks.
Next, a young duo called David & Lehman takes the
floor. The act involves guessing the exact number an audience member is
thinking.
Participants in this year's Hollywood Fringe Festival,
the two trade in a somewhat dry, preppy-collegiate shtick, their
interplay reminiscent of the Smothers Brothers. But it's their
successful mind-reading trick that delivers the biggest punch.
Later,
in a coffee shop near the Hollywood Hills, Willman dissects the way
that his cadre of irony-drenched young performers is shaking up the
protocol and formality of the magic world.
“Rob Zabrecky, who just won the Magic Castle's 'Stage Magician' award,” Willman says, “he's like a Tim Burton, Addams Family
character. The true pros — a great bar of excellence — is that the most
memorable thing isn't gonna be the 'trick,' it's the personality. It's
an art form where people unfortunately think that you could buy the
trick, the talent, in a magic store.”
Willman has been careful to
craft a personality every bit as indispensable as his bag of tricks. A
St. Louis native, he was doing a hybrid bicycling/rollerblading stunt at
age 13 when he flew over the handlebars and wound up in a cast for six
months. He spent much of that time in the hospital.
In keeping
with similar such “tragedy-leads-to-triumph” stories, Willman was
visited in the hospital by a wandering magician who did tricks for the
bedridden kids.
Quickly obsessed, the wide-eyed youth asked his mother to help him acquire some store-bought tricks.
“In
St. Louis, there was a half magic shop, half adult-novelty store,”
Willman recalls. “And my mom picked me up a magic instruction book.
After I got out of the hospital, I took magic classes at the half-magic,
half-dildo store. It was the first thing I was really good at — better
than average at. And it was a good conduit for my personality. I didn't
know how to have conversations with girls and so forth.”
After
graduating from Boston's Emerson College — and, in his last year,
participating in the school's unique internship program in Los Angeles —
Willman moved here to give professional magic a shot.
As Justin
Kredible, he soon made a living doing private shows — birthdays, bar
mitzvahs, parties — sometimes as many as eight gigs in a weekend.
The
lucrative college market followed, leading to 150 campus shows a year.
That made him one of the busiest magicians in the country.
“I was
able to do the show I wanted to do,” he says of the college-gig years.
“More risque, with adult themes and such. Crowd work was a really
important element there.”
Even now he could pass for an undergraduate; his college fans could be forgiven for assuming he was younger than they were.
These
days, in a return to his roots, Willman himself regularly visits
Children's Hospital. He also hosts two shows on the Food Network — Cupcake Wars and Last Cake Standing — which have nothing to do with magic but utilize the performer's skills at easygoing-yet-snappy improvisation.
The
television shows guarantee bigger audiences at his live appearances —
he recently played a busy week at Hollywood's prestigious Magic Castle
and now is entrenched in the super-lucrative corporate market.
They
also give him the freedom to pursue his live-magic dream goals: a large
touring show leading to an extended residency in Vegas.
“For the
average person, when it comes to magic, there's one guy,” he says.
“They'll think of Criss Angel or David Blaine. They don't realize the
variety, the level of depth out there.”
He points out that a
magician is the one performer who can literally visually transcend
reality. He shares as proof a classic anecdote of Lance Burton getting
mugged in Vegas, using sleight of hand to pull out seemingly “empty”
pockets.
“Here in Starbucks, if I reached into one of their CDs
and pulled out a $20 bill and paid them with that, it'd be a great
gift,” he says.
And then Willman shares his all-time favorite postshow compliment: “I hate magic, but I love your show.”
Justin will be performing at Club Nokia on September 29 with a new show called Justin Willman: Tricked Out. Tickets go on sale July 27 and are available at ticketmaster.com.
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