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Behind the Scenes of a Reality Show Where Magicians Fight for Fame

August 24, 2014 Rick Carruth

By Angela Watercutter for WIRED

We know you desperately want to see what happens behind the scenes of your favorite magic competition show. OK, fine, Wizard Wars probably is the only magic competition show, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be your fave, and it’s always fun to see television, um, magic in action.

The video comes from show creator Rick Lax, who shot the footage during the making of Wizard Wars. The program, basically a reality show where magicians face off in something akin to Iron Chef (the original Japanese version, not that sorry Americanized version) but with magicians, started as an internet video made by Lax and some fellow Las Vegas wizards. After the clip made the rounds online (and possibly at the suggestion of WIRED) Syfy turned it into a series judged by Penn & Teller. “Walking around the set was surreal. Such an upgrade from my living room,” Lax says, referring to the set for his video clip…

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Cheap Trick: Most Magicians Are Lazy Hacks..

August 20, 2014 Rick Carruth

By Rick Lax for The Daily Beast..

There’s nothing wrong with recycling the tried-and-testeds of magic. Most magicians do. But it’s time to shock and delight audiences anew.

Ninety percent of magicians perform other magicians’ material. They don’t just take the tricks; they take the whole routines—the lines, the timing, the movement. Sometimes they steal proprietary illusions like Losander’s Floating Table or Piff the Magic Dragon’s Fireball Sneeze (which isn’t OK), but usually they just perform the classics. Classic tricks, classic patter, hack jokes.

That’s not the worst thing in the world. I love cover bands. Hell, I get pissed when cover bands try to slip one of their own songs in the mix. That’s when I use the restroom or grab that second drink. Popular songs are popular for a reason: They’re really good. (Or they’re performed by somebody you want to have sex with.)

Same thing with popular magic tricks. Not the parenthetical—you rarely want to bed the magician performing the trick—but the first part: Popular tricks are performed so often because they’re super-deceptive. That’s why your signed dollar invariably reappears inside a lemon. Why the salt shaker passes through the table. Why the cigarette ashes pass through your hand: They’re great tricks….

August 18, 2014 Rick Carruth

By MIKE WEATHERFORD for LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

A couple of things you will see on Syfy’s “Wizard Wars” Tuesday that you don’t see in Las Vegas:

A) New illusions created in a competitive setting, not just the same old stuffing of women into cabinets and stabbing them with swords.

B) The larger illusion that young, attractive people actually sit and watch young, attractive people perform magic in cool nightclubs.

“We did kind of build this ideal magic venue,” Rick Lax says of the latter, created in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner building that’s seen new life for film and TV production.

In Las Vegas, he agrees, “most magic shows are not set up that way. They’re not that intimate and the audience isn’t that attractive and young.”

But maybe A can help make B come true…

August 15, 2014 Rick Carruth

By Erin Ryan for Las Vegas Weekly

“You’re gonna see a puppy teleport,” Rick Lax says, too calmly. Maybe because he’s also talking about earthworm pickpockets and Spam cooking in someone’s bare hand. That’s a taste of the ferociously inventive magic on Syfy’s new competition show, Wizard Wars, the first of six episodes airing August 19. Similar to the chefs battling on Chopped, challengers on WW are surprised with items like mannequins, pirate costumes and mini-fridges, and they must devise a trick fast and perform it live for a chance to take on the “wizards” and win $10,000.

<em>Wizard Wars</em> creator and former <em>Weekly</em> writer Rick Lax, right, and Justin Flom, one of the show's resident wizards.

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