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Bill Hallahan Inner circle New Hampshire 3222 Posts |
On this page of Famous West Virginians (A), there's mention of your television appearances and also mention of you being named one of the "100 Most Influential Magicians of the Century." It also tells about your performing at George Bush's inaugural ball. I've also read that relatively recently you were chosen as "Man of the year" by your alma mater, West Virginia University. And the list of magic-related awards you've won is amazingly long.
However, aside from events involving your family, which I'm sure dwarf all other experiences, I would think that winning the Gold Medal for Close-Up Magic at F.I.S.M. in 1983 was one of the biggest moments in your life, and probably what first launched you into the magic spotlight. Could you please relate any stories about that? Where was it held? What was it like? How nervous were you?
Humans make life so interesting. Do you know that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to create boredom. Quite astonishing.
- The character of ‘Death’ in the movie "Hogswatch" |
Michael Ammar Creative Spotlight Guest 83 Posts |
Hi Bill,
Winning at FISM was a big moment, no doubt about it. Going through that was a real learning experience in a lot of ways. For example, I was so focused on being ready that it gave me a very distinct goal to occupy my mind with from the moment I woke up until I laid down to sleep at night. A very clear, well defined time frame for working on something specific. The interesting thing is that once I returned home from the competition, rather than floating on cloud 9, there was actually a sort of empty feeling. I had forgotten to plan for what I would do next! I was so focused on being ready for the competition, I forgot to make the event itself just a stepping stone to other things I wanted to do. I made the contest an end in itself, rather than a launching pad for action that I would take following the event. So for a couple of months, it felt weird to be living with my main event behind me, and nothing particularly compelling to do that afternoon. Now, here's something interesting... I was cleaning up my videos a couple of months ago, and found one that I had never watched before because it was in PAL format. A neighbor, Joe Foglia, does sound for the sitcom SCRUBS, and he offered to transfer the video to DVD for me. He called when it was playing to describe what he saw, which turned out to be a film of my FISM competition from 1982! The competition took place in a small room with only the judges and a few lucky people, such as Dai Vernon, allowed to sit inside along with a film crew that projected the competition to a large screen for a large audience in another room. This was a copy of my performance from that camera! We are just now putting it as a bonus chapter on my LIVE At the Magic Castle lecture DVD, which will be available in about 4 weeks. I'm thinking about making it available to watch from my web site, but I don't think I'd be able to do that until sometime in June because of my travel schedule. But it's funny that you should bring it up, but isn't that a cool piece of footage to run into 24 years later! |
SOHA Regular user NJ 178 Posts |
It would be really interesting to be able to watch that footage.
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