Watch ‘Wizard Wars’ co-creator and Detroit area native Rick Lax perform 13 magic tricks
Lee DeVito for Detroit’s Metro Times..
Rick Lax used to practice magic tricks at Caribou Coffee as part of Royal Oak’s little street performance scene. He moved to Las Vegas in what was supposed to be a short stint to work on a book about magic, but his stay has since extended to seven years, in which he successfully developed and pitched a new SyFy show called Wizard Wars, a reality TV competitionthat premiered last week.
“You can peek behind the curtain without fully lifting the curtain away. It’s a peek,” Lax tells us by phone. “Each episode, you will be let in on the creative process, but also in each episode, you will walk away fooled. You’re going to get a hint of the magician’s process, and that’s real — you’re going to learn the terms, and see the way the magicians think — but we’re never going to give so much away that you know 100 percent how the trick is done in the end.” Lax describes the show as like “Iron Chef for magicians,” with Penn and Teller serving as the show’s judges.