I'm reporting about an eleven-day trip that I recently took with my lovely friend Amber to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and New York. Before you read about Day 2, you might want to read about Day 1.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Amber and I spent the second of our two days in Vegas roaming the floor of the Licensing Expo. For much of this, we were joined by two sets of friends, which I'm listing here in order of appearance. One set consisted of Frank Ferrante and his exquisite companion, Dreya Weber. Dreya is a producer, director, performer and choreographer specializing in aerial (i.e., off-the-ground, dangling in the air) choreography. Frank is…well, if you read this blog, you know who Frank is.
Also roaming the floor with us were Charlie and Sherry Frye, who together form Charlie Frye and Company, one of the best acts I've ever seen — juggling, magic, physical comedy…
Here. Rather than tell you what they do, I'll show you a little of it, also (like this morning's early video clip) from an old Jerry Lewis Telethon. Charlie's the guy who does the heavy lifting. Sherry's the beautiful Company who makes him do it…
In addition to being able to do all that stuff, Charlie's also a pretty good cartoonist so he was excited when I introduced him to Jim Davis over at the Garfield booth. So was Frank, who did some voice work for me on The Garfield Show. We covered the hall but I occasionally broke off from the pack to complete the last of my scheduled meetings with certain folks about certain projects.
One tip: If you ever visit the Licensing Expo, it's a fun thing to browse but if you want to talk business with anyone, you need to make appointments with them weeks in advance. And if you want to go at all, you need a good, working pair of feet because there's an awful lot of walking involved.
That was my problem. A few weeks ago, I somehow fractured the little toe on my left foot. I haven't a clue how or when this happened but it got to hurting and when I went to my podiatrist, he did that x-ray thing, gave me the bad news and slapped a fracture shoe on that foot. A fracture shoe is like a rubber sandal with Velcro® straps. It prevents the injured toe from having any pressure put on it but it's not good for the foot in other ways, especially when you're walking all over Las Vegas. I applied some drugstore, over-the-counter remedies (mostly gel-pads) and was able to lessen the pain but it would remain a major distraction and problem for much of the trip.
That evening, Amber, Frank, Dreya and I journeyed to the Rio Hotel to see Penn and Teller's show and to meet those two men — and I guess I have to stop and tell a story here.
A few years ago, I was in talks with the CW Network about a possible show for them. In particular, I was dealing with a friend of mine, Kevin Levy, who is the Executive Vice-President of Program Planning, Scheduling, and Acquisitions. I was kinda hoping they'd buy a show idea from me and it would run longer than his job title.
It was kind of a game show targeted for a certain time slot on their schedule and at one point, the question arose as to who would be the host if it went forward. I suggested my pal Jonathan Ross, who is very big on TV in Great Britain…and he's also a huge fan of Jack Kirby, which in my book counts for a lot. Kevin wasn't all that familiar with Jonathan's work and asked where he and the others in his office might see Jonathan in his natural habitat — in front of a TV camera. I suggested they take a look at Penn & Teller Fool Us, a series that had a brief run in 2011 on ITV in the U.K. All the episodes, I told them, were up on YouTube.
Kevin and his crew checked them out and liked Jonathan — but they also liked the show he was hosting. Kevin called me and asked a whole bunch o' questions about it and said he was thinking of seeing if the rights to run those episodes in the U.S. were available. They were…and this kind of demonstrates why Kevin has a much longer title than I do. He knows what CW watchers want to watch on CW. The old episodes did well, they led to new episodes…and Penn & Teller Fool Us has recently completed taping their fifth season, which is their fourth for American television.
When I mentioned to Kevin that I was heading for Vegas, he offered to arrange for me (and however many guests I had) to be comped to their show and to go backstage before to meet the stars so they could thank me for my (minor) role in getting their show on the air here. I think it's been exaggerated but hey, free tickets are free tickets. Penn plays stand-up bass before the show until about twenty minutes before it starts, and the two of them linger outside after for photos and autographs…so they only had a brief window of time to give us.
The four of us were taken backstage to a place called The Monkey Room decorated with Penn & Teller memorabilia and almost immediately, Teller came in, all dressed to go on stage and curious about this person their manager (I think) had told them they oughta meet. I was impressed with what a smart, polite man he is…and how we quickly fell into talking about the show and the "rules" of presenting magic on television.
The directors and editors of any TV show are sitting there with dozens of ways to create magic that is not actually performed on stage, or ways to make a trick more impressive than it actually is. If in the midst of a trick, the magician makes a move he hopes the audience will not notice, the director can shoot it from an angle that guarantees the home audience will not see it. The editor can cut around it so it isn't even there. There are other tricks which can be done and it is not ethical to employ them, though some shows have.
This is an area that especially interests me. I've occasionally worked on shows where magic has been performed and once got into a huge argument with an Emmy-winning TV director who shall remain nameless (it was this guy) who wanted to "enhance" a magic trick by editing out the ten seconds when the magician did most of the sneaky stuff.
I've been involved in many discussions with magicians about this and about when you cross a line of honesty with a viewer. It is not dishonest for a performer to say "I'm putting the three of clubs in my pocket" when he in fact has already switched that card for another. It is dishonest for him to say "We are employing no camera trickery" when that's only true by a very odd, disingenuous definition of "camera trickery." Some shows have not only crossed that line but made it vanish altogether and I was pleased that Teller seemed to share my disdain for those who cheat that way. I wish we'd had more time to talk about it.
Penn came in. We only had a few minutes before he had to go don his stage wardrobe but I told the two of them the story of my tiny role in causing CW to bring Fool Us back from the dead. Everyone was introduced and shook hands and then we were gifted with Penn & Teller swag and escorted out to great seats in the Penn & Teller Showroom and we saw a very good Penn & Teller show with an impressive percentage of Penn & Teller bits I hadn't seen before. Amber — who had never seen them perform until that night — said, "I wish we'd gone backstage after because I would have been more impressed to meet them once I knew how good they are at what they do."
So that was Wednesday. Join us tomorrow as we fly to Philadelphia…and really nothing else happens except that Gilbert Gottfried flakes on me. Same bat-time, same bat-channel.