Celebrated Card Thrower Ricky Jay Keeps Them Close To His Vest In New Documentary
By Steven Pate in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 5, 2013 8:40PM
Deception is one of the most hurtful things humans inflict on one another. Nobody likes being lied to or tricked. Unless we are told about it in advance and it is done very well, in which case we pay good money for it.
Take the species of magic show trickery known as "sleight of hand." The difference between wanting to deck the guy who lifted your watch and giving him a standing ovation is that the deception is fun when we know it's coming, and that makes it much harder to execute, and thus doubly impressive. Anyone familiar with the work of Ricky Jay can attest to this. As the most celebrated sleight-of-hand practitioner working today, Jay's card tricks and card throwing are the stuff of legend, but it is his disarming volubility, his willingness to describe the trick he's playing on you even while he's doing it that makes his tricks' execution so gratifying.
Stocky, middle aged and sporting a tidy beard, Ricky Jay at first glance appears these days more like middle management than magician, but that's straight from the conjurer's bag of tricks: misdirection, focusing your audience's attention on something irrelevant to the trick itself, is essential. In his celebrated stage show, Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants, he eschews the histrionics of the stage performer and settles into the role of learned raconteur. Who just happens to be able to do seemingly whatever he wants with a deck of cards. Or a coin, or ball, or lemon, or block of ice.
His moves are so effortless and his tricks so elegant that the pleasure in their success is exquisite, but it is his that wonderful, erudite patter that makes him such an ambassador of the art of magic. Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, a new documentary about Jay opening Friday, places him where he is most comfortable: as an artist supremely aware of his place in a long history of performers.
Deceptive Practice captures Jay's relentless search through magic's dusty history and the teachers from whom he learned his trade directly. As an author himself who relishes the lore of his craft and its colorful characters, it becomes clear that he holds most dear the transmission of its arcane knowledge from teacher to student, master to protege.
From his first public appearance at the age of four, performing tricks at a policemen's picnic, to his elder statesman status, where he is regularly consulted and featured by Hollywood directors for his prodigious prestidigitation, Jay's career is fascinating. While many are celebrated teachers, magicians are notorious gatekeepers, and Jay is no exception: when it comes to his private life, his cards remain close to the proverbial vest (you won't learn much more than in Mark Singer's celebrated New Yorker profile from twenty years ago.
Though you will see plenty, won't learn any new tricks from Deceptive Practice. Yet anyone familiar with Jay or interested in the history of sleight of hand will appreciate his elaboration of the mentors he credits with fostering his passions. We loved the clips of a much younger Jay performing his act in the 1970s, and working a fantastic three card monte routine with Steve Martin on the Dinah shore. This is a reverential movie about a performer that doesn't take us back stage. That's okay though, we want the illusion to last.
Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay opens Friday, June 7 at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave.