Larry Wilson Interview About Comedy & Magic # 274

Larry Wilson, a seasoned comedy magician with over thirty years of experience, has captivated audiences with his dynamic performances on television and at renowned venues like the Magic Castle. Specializing in close-up magic, Wilson expertly blends humor and illusion in acts such as his "cocktails and conjuring" routine, emphasizing the importance of meticulous rehearsal and live audience feedback in refining his craft. He values the opportunity to experiment with new material in intimate magic clubs, viewing these settings as creative laboratories where he can discover the comedic timing crucial to his routines. While Wilson embraces the experimental nature of smaller venues, he notes the necessity for polished, bulletproof material in corporate settings, where the risk of trying untested tricks or jokes is too great, highlighting the unique challenges faced by comedy magicians compared to stand-up comedians.

(00:00:57) Timing and Misdirection in Comedy Magic Shows

(00:05:27) Perfecting Magic Tricks Through Extensive Rehearsal

(00:10:36) Bulletproof Acts for Corporate Environments

(00:19:23) Refining Performances Through Audience Engagement

Larry Wilson's Company: The Wilson Method

Transcript

Announcer: 0:04

This is another episode of stand up comedy. Your host and emcee celebrating 40 plus years on the fringe of show business stories, interviews and comedy sets from the famous and not so famous. Here's your host and emcee, Scott Edwards.

R. Scott Edwards: 0:21

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another in a series on the art forms comedy and magic. And again joining us in the studio, very talented and professional comic magician. He's been in the business for 30 plus years, done television, the magic castle, concerts, lots of live shows and even has cocktails and conjuring a very special and intimate close up show. Ladies and gentlemen, my good friend Larry Wilson. Larry, thanks for coming back to the studio.

Larry Wilson: 0:51

Well, with that kind of audience response, you can't keep me away.

R. Scott Edwards: 0:56

So Larry.

Larry Wilson: 0:57

Yes.

R. Scott Edwards: 0:57

How long does it take to develop a trick from start to finish? So let's say when you, you hear or discover a new trick and I know every trick is going to be a little different, but I'm talking about taking it from the discovery to paid professional performance.

Larry Wilson: 1:15

Well, there's a great disparity between all this because of course I found stuff of notes I've made from 30, 40 years ago where I didn't even really know exactly where it was going to go, but it was just an idea. And then later on I sort of go, oh, I could use that thing from way back in the mists of time. You know. On the other hand, there's some things that happen very quickly, come together very quickly.

R. Scott Edwards: 1:46

So other than the unusual, hey, I wrote down something and I discovered it five years later. If somebody said, hey, you should put this card trick into your act, how long do you practice that trick before you feel comfortable to present it to an audience? And then once you present it to the audience and you're, you're starting to write the comedy, you know, in general.

Larry Wilson: 2:12

See, this is so funny. You have this idea that the magic comes first and then the comedy. Let me tell you about, I was talking in an earlier episode about silent bit. I was trying the silent bit was because I had an idea that it would be very funny if you had a member of the audience or maybe you've even seen this where somebody says, I have a deck of cards, I want you to pick a card and when the magician turns, there's one card in the deck that's a jumbo card, right. So it's ten times the size. Right.

R. Scott Edwards: 2:49

That's the joke side joke.

Larry Wilson: 2:50

So that's the psychic. Right. But I thought wouldn't it be funny way to do something like this? And why, why Would that help or what would that be? And it occurred to me, and this is what I've been working on. Now, by the time this airs, maybe I'll be doing in front of an audience. I don't know, maybe I'll never do it. I don't know. But I've been rehearsing this. What I thought was there's a routine where you have two cards that are similar and one that's dissimilar and they can be, you know, two aces and a jack or whatever. But I was just thinking, the idea is that you show them to the audience and you turn them around, mix them, and the audience can never guess where the odd card is.

R. Scott Edwards: 3:38

Almost a three card Monte.

Larry Wilson: 3:40

It is essentially like three card monte, but there's sort of a stage size version instead of the Monty, which is done on a tabletop. This is, you're holding them up. So I show you there's two aces and a jack. Now I turn them away from you, I mix them up, I pull out one card and turn over and show you it's an ace. Well, that means the remaining two cards must be an ace and jack. Now I set that card face down, I mix the other two cards, I try to, you guess whichever one, you guess, you're wrong. I, I turn the other two cards around. Now they're both aces. And the card that you're sure was an ace, I turn around is now a jack. Well, now that's straight magic. That wasn't particularly interesting to me. I thought, oh, you know, it'd be funny if I had some sort of easel or stand that I set the cards on and did some stuff. And the cards are about 12 inches tall maybe. And so I mix them up and of course the audience can't get it. I go, you know what, let me make this easier for you. Now I whip a cover off of the easel and you realize it's not an easel, but it's like a three foot tall card of the odd card. So now I take the two small ones that are similar, I turn them all so the backspace noddings, and there's one that's 10 times the size of those and it still changes.

R. Scott Edwards: 5:10

Yeah, that would be very magical and funny because of the sight gag.

Larry Wilson: 5:17

Right?

R. Scott Edwards: 5:17

So. But again, as you are, Larry, you kind of skipped over the basic questions.

Larry Wilson: 5:22

There's a reason for that. Scott, some of this is not really your business.

R. Scott Edwards: 5:27

No, no. You mentioned rehearsing a trick just for the, for common people like me that don't do magic if you're learning a new trick. If somebody, Joe Blow, is learning a new card trick. And I know it's always different based on the trick and based on the talent of the person.

Larry Wilson: 5:43

Sure.

R. Scott Edwards: 5:43

But in general, I assume that you have to rehearse a trick so many hours or weeks or months, and then when you. Before you present it to an audience, it's. Okay. I should explain why I'm asking this, and I'm so sorry. We've kind of really gotten more conversational than, than sharing information. But my point was a standup comic can come up with an idea, go on stage and try it, and then he might do that idea five times, 10 times, 100 times before he gets the actual timing and the verbiage just right. And he's performing it to an audience the whole time. But it's basically rehearsing a bit until it's perfect or at least it's working. And even then they still vary it. In magic, what would be the conclusion?

Larry Wilson: 6:34

No, you're absolutely right. And that is a big dividing line between stand up comedy and comedy magic. This thing I was just talking about with this, these cards, it took me about two solid days of rehearsing to get the mechanical elements of the trick down. Now, what you're saying about timing, about presentation, you're exactly right. I won't know until I do it in front of a live audience. And I know, I simply have learned by experience not to expect it to be perfect. The first.

R. Scott Edwards: 7:18

Oh, few. Everything has to be worked. Yeah, right.

Larry Wilson: 7:21

So somebody asked me just recently. There's, there's certain. There's been a huge explosion recently of small clubs around the country that never existed before about specifically for magic.

R. Scott Edwards: 7:36

Oh, really?

Larry Wilson: 7:37

Yeah. You know, there's a mystique in Folsom and in Salt Lake City and in La Jolla, California. And there's.

R. Scott Edwards: 7:49

And this is basically a magic dinner theater.

Larry Wilson: 7:52

Well, some of them have dinner, some of them are just clubs. Most of them, I think a lot of them do have dinner.

R. Scott Edwards: 7:57

But it being your point is instead of pure standup clubs or a theater, it's. They're magic based.

Larry Wilson: 8:04

Well, but particularly, you know, they're not. You know, I used to work. I still do actually, occasionally, but not as much. I used to work a lot in Las Vegas. But that business model of big stars having opening act, you know, when I would open for Sammy Davis or for Ann Margret or for the Pointer Sisters or Smokey Robbins and people like that, that's all gone. The casinos decided. Nope, we're not going to pay for that. And so the big star said, well, we're not going to pay for it. So guess what? There are no opening acts anymore. Some people have said, you know, they were surprised that they actually could come see me working in like there's a little club in Martinez, California called California Magic Theater. Well, it's a fantastic room and the people there have built like a shrine to magic with all kinds of incredible memorabilia there and they have great performers there. For me, it's a laboratory environment.

R. Scott Edwards: 9:11

Oh, what would be. I'm going to give it. Because this is about comedy, magic. And I'm the comic guy and you're the magic guy. In the comedy business. You're talking about the difference between a showcase club like the Improv or the Comedy Store, where it's act, act, act, 10, 12 acts a night and they're trying out and working out material. It's like rehearsing, only they're getting paid or 25 bucks or whatever it was, the scale, as opposed to my clubs, which were what are called Standard 3 Act Format Theater type shows. And then you could take it to the next level where it's an actual stage theater show. But for magic, what you're saying is instead of being at the Magic Castle, which is small theater produced magic, this club and Martinez allows you to kind of experiment, like a showcase room.

Larry Wilson: 10:06

Right.

R. Scott Edwards: 10:07

And work out stuff.

Larry Wilson: 10:08

Although to be fair to these people, you know, I'm not going to do something there that has been worked out to the point that it's entertaining and enjoyable for the audience. But places like Mystique, like California Magic Theater, there's a, there's a bunch of them. There's a place in Nashville now called the House of Cards and Chicago Magic Lounge.

R. Scott Edwards: 10:34

I didn't know about all this. It's fascinating.

Larry Wilson: 10:36

They're opening all over and it's a great, great place to be able to work out and break in new stuff and experiment with it. Because I do a lot of corporate work. Companies hire me for their annual sales meeting after dinner. They're going to have some entertainment or they're coming into someplace to have a convention and they want whatever that is. I'm only going to use bulletproof material there.

R. Scott Edwards: 11:08

Yeah, you're not trying new stuff. It's like going on tv. You're not going to experiment?

Larry Wilson: 11:13

No, of course not. So that's a different kind of situation. But like I was saying about this routine I was talking about with these three card Monty kind of effect, mechanically, it took me a Couple of days to rehearse it to the point where I felt like, oh yeah, I can do this mechanically. But that's really just scratching the surface with it. Then it's me trying to find the beats in it. And those comedic beats might come really fast sometimes. I'm not embarrassed to tell you, sometimes I've thought I had it perfectly worked out and I was completely wrong.

R. Scott Edwards: 11:54

Well, that's what trial and error is all about. But I would also think you also, there's one extra thing that both comics and magicians would have to do is that once you have a new bit, whether it's a trick or a comedy bit, where does it fit in your show?

Larry Wilson: 12:08

Right. Well, and that's a really interesting point. I can sometimes feel the rhythm of what it is this a rising action moment or is this a falling action moment?

R. Scott Edwards: 12:23

Interesting.

Larry Wilson: 12:24

There are some routines I do that are very high energy, really crazy, you know, crazy visuals, crazy interactions happening. I can tell the other that are more calm, that are a little bit more seductive, where you don't see exactly where it's going. So sometimes I can feel that. And quite frankly, again, Scott, as is the hallmark of my career in my life, dumb luck plays a huge part in this.

R. Scott Edwards: 12:56

Well, I was just gonna use the analogy. I used to be a Spin Records as a DJ back in the disco days. Yes. I just aged myself. But when you have an audience, usually it's a post dinner nightclub audience and you, you want to entertain them. Dancing, you can't play fast music all the time.

Larry Wilson: 13:17

Right.

R. Scott Edwards: 13:17

You start off with a couple slow songs and a couple kind of medium based songs and you build to a crescendo. In the disco days, we would end up with rock and roll. You know, we would start off with the disco stuff that anybody could dance to and would end up with maybe the Stones or the Beatles or something that you have to really be enjoying the music because it's not gonna go with whatever you're dancing, but it builds the energy. So in a comedy show, obviously you have to grab the attention of the audience. You kind of plateau and entertain them for a while, but you don't leave the stage without having some sort of. It's called a closing bit, but a crescendo of energy. So thank you, good night. Just like almost a musician does. I mean, I think everybody in entertainment has that in mind.

Larry Wilson: 14:04

Absolutely.

R. Scott Edwards: 14:05

So in magic or comedy and magic, it would be the same thing. So if you develop a new trick and it takes you a few days to get the mechanics, it's going to take you maybe so many, you know, 10 times on stage to work out the pattern and the timing. But even in all that, you have to figure out where, energy wise, it fits into your show.

Larry Wilson: 14:26

Absolutely. And you know, there is no hard and fast rule of this, of course, because what I'm doing more than anything, I'm listening to the audience because I frequently have found things that I didn't think were funny but the audience thought was hysterically funny. And if I wasn't paying attention, I would have missed that completely. And frequently the audience just said, oh, no, this part is really funny. I thought, oh, I didn't get it. But like, that's. They're right, I'm obviously wrong. It's like passing the hat. The audience laughs uproariously at something. It doesn't matter what you think. Obviously, that's the funny part. So, you know, when you talk about going on and doing this on stage, I want to work out the mechanics. I want to be able to do what I think is a baseline of funny routine for this. But that's really just a starting point. And what I'm really trying to do is get it up on stage so I can hear what the audience is telling me.

R. Scott Edwards: 15:42

So that's fascinating because that is. And of course, there's a reason it's the same, because it's all about performance. But same in comedy. You're gonna tell a joke a certain way, you might do a different timing, you might change a word here or there. You know, that's how you. And it's all based on audience reaction. And it was so funny. Just a quick story analogy. Back in 1984, Garry Shandling was working for me, and he goes on stage, he gets the audience up to a nice level, and he goes, hey, I'm doing the Tonight show on Friday. I need to work out some new material. You guys okay with that? Well, the audience loves that kind of behind the scenes thing.

Larry Wilson: 16:26

Oh, my God.

R. Scott Edwards: 16:26

So he pulls out three by five cards and he's written down some jokes. And he goes so. And in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the audience laughs and he goes, oh, well, that's a keeper. And then the audience is like, well, they're into it, you know, and then he does another one and it gets a titter. And he goes, well, that one's done, you know, and then. And he went through, I don't know, 10 jokes that he was planning to do on the Tonight show. And using the audience and the audience reaction in a live showroom like My club was. The audience was helping him decide what to use, how to say it, what verbiage worked, and he was experimenting. Now, of course, this is Garry Shandling at the peak of his. Not his career, because he went on to TV and movies and his own shows, the Larry Sanders Show. This was back before he was famous, but he was already a class A headliner. And so as soon as he got done with that, he went right back into his material, built him up to a crescendo and boom, the big standing ovation at the end. But it was fascinating for the audience and for me as a producer to see him right in front of an audience, which you normally couldn't do, but in a small club in Sacramento, you can get away with. Maybe for magicians, it's Martinez, California. But you can work out something because that's what it takes.

Larry Wilson: 17:50

Yes, but now, Shanley had tremendous self confidence to be able to do this. I'll do that, but I won't tell them that's what I'm doing.

R. Scott Edwards: 18:00

In other words, that's part of the magic.

Larry Wilson: 18:02

Well, that's also because of that element of magic suggests mastery. So I won't say to them I'm trying out something new because then they'll watch me differently.

R. Scott Edwards: 18:16

Oh, that's interesting. So we've now just discovered a difference between comedy and magic.

Larry Wilson: 18:21

Oh, absolutely.

R. Scott Edwards: 18:21

In the performance.

Larry Wilson: 18:22

Absolutely. So much, you know. Now, I have to say, in truth, I've seen comics who can sell a joke that isn't particularly good just by their confidence and by their force of personality. I think of a couple guys I'm not going to mention by name, but I know you know who they are, and they can take the thinnest material, what my friend from Kentucky used to call dime thin material, and they can score really big with it. Well, in magic, because I may be using the comedy, and this is something we haven't actually touched on yet. But I'm gonna throw this in as a free bonus for you because I like you, that's why. Well, thank you. Of course, I frequently will use the comedy to create what we call in magic off beats.

R. Scott Edwards: 19:23

Oh, they're part of the distraction.

Larry Wilson: 19:26

Absolutely. Or more precisely, it is distraction, but more precisely, it's misdirection.

R. Scott Edwards: 19:32

That's a better terminology. Right.

Larry Wilson: 19:34

And the only reason I make that distinction is because I do some stuff. You know, I think very highly of myself, Scott. I think I'm one of the better magician performers in the world. And it's not because of technical skills with magic. I Think it's because of my communication skills, because I can do things. And this makes it particularly hard for the audience to see how the magic is done. Because there's nothing being done. It's how I'm speaking to them, how I'm communicating. I can move them in directions and lead them in directions without them being aware. That's what's happening. A perfect example.

R. Scott Edwards: 20:26

That's a master of the craft right there.

Larry Wilson: 20:27

Well, it's just having survived this long and not being dead, I picked up a few things as I was going along. One of them is if I have some secret piece of business to do. For example, let's just say I have to steal something from a pocket of mine without the audience seeing me steal it. Or it could be the opposite. Could be me ditching something if I wait until the audience laughs to do becomes more invisible.

R. Scott Edwards: 21:00

Because the comedy, the laughter is part of the misdirection.

Larry Wilson: 21:06

Right.

R. Scott Edwards: 21:06

They're not focused on your hands because they're, you know, they're laughing and breathing differently.

Larry Wilson: 21:13

But even more than that, psychologically, it's very hard to be on guard while you're laughing.

R. Scott Edwards: 21:20

Interesting.

Larry Wilson: 21:21

When you laugh, you drop your guard. And it's usually laughter comes from the shock of surprise.

R. Scott Edwards: 21:28

Right, Right.

Larry Wilson: 21:29

You know, whatever the joke may be, when we make the connection and laugh, our guard is down. That's when I want to do whatever dirty business I have to do. And it makes it really hard for the audience to see me doing it because psychologically, their brain is saying, nothing's happening now. We're just laughing now. Too late.

R. Scott Edwards: 21:58

Yeah. That's when the magician takes advantage. Well, Larry, that's fascinating. Well, tell you what, ladies and gentlemen, that ends another in this series on comedy and magic as an art form that work together, they entertain the masses. Thanks, Larry, for joining us today. We'll be back with another in the series soon. Thanks, Larry.

Announcer: 22:15

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