Jack

Your Café bio mentions lecturing and we know you session at conventions & with friends privately but do you work any commercial venues (bars, private parties, corporate events, etc)?

Thanks!

Almost nothing since I was in my thirties. Unless I have to make someone happy. I try to get Steve Mayhew to do it, and that usually works! He's quite the pro, really gets them laughing, tells them I'm better than he is, and I get all the credit!

Almost no corporate work. A few years back I did a "hands double" gig for a DVD that the "Magic, The Gathering" Company (some kind of gaming outfit, very strange to me) released to sell and explain some new game. Stephen Minch got me the gig. All day filming with a local celebrity (Pat Cashman) who played a mad scientist, lots of waiting around, but great food, and it paid very well! Grueling though. I had to hide behind the mad scientist, and his two "extra" hands would pop out and start doing fans, cuts, and various flourishes. That was me! In the credits, I'm told, It says, "Snappy Hands"- Jack Carpenter. I've never seen the finished product- anybody seen it?

Only other corporate gig I've worked was for a movie company that hired me to entertain extras, staff, etc. during the filming of the movie "The Sixth Man". Again, it paid well, and I got my wife and a couple of friends to be extras in the crowd!


When I was young however, I did quite a bit of restaurant work, and even managed to talk a proprietor or two into letting me sit at a table, and do my thing. (The Card Shark!) Malls were coming into existence and I got a few gigs sitting in there and pretending to be Martin Nash. This was before VHS existed, and before everybody who had a deck of cards and a VCR was a "Professional Magician". Steve Ehlers and I worked various venues (restaurants, bars, NCO club) in Upstate New York when we were kids in the Air Force. Remember the "Monopol" Steve?

I still persued venues (even restaurants for Christ's sake) for my gambling act well into the late 80's, but by then the saturation was even then well entrenched. I had good success with clubs; The Italian Club, Rotary, etc. It's hard to make money (which is the point) when you're competing with half-way (and I do mean "half-way") decent guys who will take a walk around gig for 25 bucks and all they can eat, and real shows for a 100 bucks.

It's sad but necessary, but it's not the public's job to be required to know the difference between a guy who can really stack two hands of poker with a riffle shuffle and a guy who does a magnificently entertaining job of pretending to do so.

I am not demeaning people who are out there working SEMI-professionally as magicians- in fact I have tremendous respect and admiration for the GOOD ones that are out there doing it. But I have TREMENDOUS respect for the full time professional close-up workers out there that manage to pay the bills. Utterly amazing. They are very, very hard workers, (but they make it look easy) and it's no joke. Pure hard work, and they've got to be constantly at it.

Bill Malone is probably the best example I can think of. A true top card manipulator. But he is rare. Most professionals don't have a lot of time to create, and invent, and continue learning. But he pulls it off. Just pure talent and energy. And he's been doing it a long time. There are plenty who do it for "a time", and move in and out, but very few make their living 100% with a deck of cards. Talent without the energy is not enough, and vice-versa. Let's be honest. You can be one of the best card men in the world, but if you don't have the business acumen and be willing to sacrifice, (and real talent) have a rich aunt!

But I do like performing at some of our local pubs now and then. Couple of Royal Crowns and a deck of cards. . . Can't touch me then!

-Jack

Dear Mr. Carpenter
Does your full-time job give you any inspiration for creating your routines? Do you come up with a lot of ideas during the day. How do you keep track of all your material?

Take care

John

1. Never.

2. All the time!

3. Not very well. (That may be for the best though, John!) I try to publish or release the good stuff eventually- hopefully somebody will keep track of it! Truthfully, I wish I had done a better job in that area- because sometimes I'm itching to remember something I had accomplished quite a bit of work on, because I'm "re-interested" in it, and I have to reconstruct it.

I tend to work in separated spurts of creativity, usually obsessing on some plot for months and then I peter out, and come back later- sometimes where I left off, sometimes on some tangent I discovered while trying to solve the original problem.

Since I don't keep written records, (until I think I've made an inroad) this can be a problem sometimes.

But now, I have the wife shoot a lot of stuff, and save it. That's gonna work out fine I think- I will be able to go back a year from now and see what I thought was worth working on at the time.

Problem solved!

Interesting question, John, Thanks!

-Jack

Jack again thanks for sharing your past with us.

Tony

Yes Tony, a sordid past indeed.