Derren Brown: Archive
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From: maltedmilkaregreat
Date: Sat Oct 19, 2002 5:03pm
Subject: Interview
Hello! Another great interview which you may not have seen before :)
Derren Brown interviewed by Luke Jermay.....
This was done sometime ago now around 2 or 3 years ago actually for a
magazine that ended before running this interview, though some of you
might be intrested in it,
What's your main aim in magic.
My aim is to provide something that looks and feels like real magic to
my audiences. Without getting into the New-agey pretentious nonsense
too
often given in place of intelligent and well-realised performance, I
do feel
that magic has the potential to really touch people, and to be a
genuine
artistic endeavour. The desire to provide 'real magic' may seem
straightforward, but I mean it absolutely seriously... it means
understanding your audience at all times, overhauling your
performance,
finding your personal vision, and following that aesthetic
relentlessly and
without compromise. Of course one must also check it's getting the
desired
result. There are plenty of magicians who aim high but despite their
rhetoric just look daft or sound silly in performance.
I also try and produce magic that is dramatically sound. Magic is bad
drama, it's all effect and no cause. A click of the fingers and
something
occurs. That's not drama, that's just playing God. In a dramatic
situation
the magician would be cast as the hero, a human with a skill, a
vulnerable
and appealing character with a promise of the divine, but at some
price. He
would have a goal - the effect of the trick - but the world would
offer
resistance. There would be emotional investment from him, and his
audience,
as he tries to arrange the forces in his environment to allow for a
glimmer
of magic from the chthonic realm in which he has a foothold, but his
control
would be tentative. This may sound disproportionate or heavy-handed
in the
abstract, but once you perform magic with this more resonant role for
yourself lightly and sensitively in mind, your performance becomes
far more
affecting. And good theatre.
How do you begin Creating magic?
Usually I start with an image, maybe even a gesture or a phrase that
seems to me to be resonant, and which would express something of what
I
would like to say in performance. I go off for long walks and let
ideas
hatch. The feeling when you put the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle
in
place and know you have a routine that captures you perfectly is what
it's
all about. I have a good friend who lives nearby who is a very
talented
actor as well as a magician, and I'll talk my ideas through with him.
I
value his understanding of theatre. Then I'll usually write out the
lines
I'm going to use, and fine tune it so that I'm using the right words
to
create the metaphor or sense that I wish, and to ensure that the
pacing and
rhythm are just right. I'll try it on friends who will be honest and
comprehensive in their feedback, and there we are. Or I just steal
other
people's material.
When did you first realise your performance style?
I remember a chap coming up to me in 1997 or so after a table-hopping
gig and telling me about a magician he'd seen twenty years before in
a pub.
We've all had that, and it's interesting trying to work out what the
original effect might have been that is being currently embellished
beyond
clear recognition. But I realised that the magic that I was
performing was
going to be their anecdotes in twenty years' time. I really wasn't
treating
it seriously enough to respect that. It is common amongst magicians
to feel
that whilst table-hopping you have to perform rubbish in order to get
round
everyone quickly. I find that idea terrible now. That incident really
stopped me in my tracks. Also, sitting with Eugene Burger for a while
in
London made me see that a feeling of magic should be created well
before the
tricks start. I saw the importance of getting a group to really want
to see
something before I started, rather than forcing it on them before
they are
responsive and ready. Once I started to change things, I also changed
what I
wore, how I approached people, and doubled my fees. This helped
massively
too: I felt I should be providing something special. I remember
sitting in
the lounge-bar where I have a residency and wondering how I'd feel if
a
magician came up to me. I got a very clear idea of what would be
appropriate
and delightful, and what would just be grating. That was a moment of
lucidity, too.
Since then I have come to understand more clearly what I want to do,
and
the vision I wish to follow. At the same time, the more up-beat
style, mixed
with pick-pocketing, is still there to fall back on when I find myself
trapped in noisy, busy events. But it's no longer what I feel my
magic is
about. After ten years of doing this professionally and growing a
little
blase about it, it is so rewarding to have something to fuel your
performance. It's suddenly very challenging again, suddenly very
worthwhile.
Having something to give rather than just being the hired
entertainer: well
worth it.
Biggest influences?
Within magic, I owe much to long conversations with Teller. We share
similar passions, and, not being used to talking magic with anybody,
I found
my ideas being clarified by having them restated and criticised by
someone
who has had a real feel for theatre for much longer than I. I do take
what I
do seriously, and it is rare to find professional magicians who feel
the
same and are happy to talk unapologetically about it. Teller does,
and I am
deeply indebted to him.
Outside of magic, I can think of my parents as being the biggest
shapers
of my life. I should probably also name Martin Taylor, a hypnotist I
saw
that unwittingly got me into all this when I was a student. He hasn't
influenced my magic, but if I'd have never got into it at all, I
imagine I'd
be very different now.
Type of magic most enjoyed?
Magic that makes me like the performer. Magic with drama and a vision
behind it, and which meets its audience with respect and
understanding.
Least enjoyed?
Vapid, mindless and irrelevant manipulation acts with no meaning or
understanding of wonder behind them; close-up magic performed by rude,
charm less men who have no business approaching a group at its
restaurant
table. I suppose that's pretty much all magic performed by people
that have
no love of the subtlety of their art and no respect for what an
audience
would want to see. It's particularly bad in a close-up situation,
where it
is often not feasible to escape the over-bearing, humiliating figure
with
his ghastly magician's necktie and rubbish about black cards being
heavier
than red cards and so on. That I find unforgivable, and I know I was
doing
it like that myself at one point. Plain rude. Also, briefly, rope
magic. I
mean honestly. Ropes? Come on.
Fave Magician?
Teller, clearly, also Jerry Sadowitz, Dai Vernon, Hofzinser and Tom
Mullica. Teller for reasons already given. Jerry because I admire him
as a
serious artist, and his magic is the only stuff that isn't mine that
I would
ever want to do. I wouldn't do it, for it destroys the point of
creating if
you're going to do other people's material, but I love watching it.
Above
all he has a persona that is bigger than his magic, far bigger and
famously
severe. How often do we see a magician and feel real apprehension?
The last
thing magic should be is bland and safe, and I am very interested in
anybody
who can genuinely look beyond that. Vernon for reasons echoed
throughout the
fraternity. Hofzinser for his delight in whimsy and appreciation for
the
romance of the art. Mullica because, again, he has a vision and
realises it
perfectly. I don't feel that magic needs comedy, but when it's done
that
well, one can only delight in its success.
What I want to see in a magician is the realisation of their vision,
uncompromised and pure. I want to be watching something personal and
elegantly honed, not an exercise in slickness, gags and applause
cues. Above
all, I want the magician to be more than the sum of his effects. I
want him
to be ther Greater Effect, and his tricks to be mere unimportant
methodologies to achieving that. In the same way that we learn that
effect
is all and method unimportant, so the same should apply to the
meta-performance, if I can call it that without inducing nausea and
vomiting. The effect of the character of the magician should be all.
We are
just watching a few demonstrations, but there should be the sense of
much
withheld. I want to be intrigued and captured by the performer, aside
from
his tricks, and when he does perform a routine, to sense its
congruence with
the intriguing personality of the man before me. Perhaps it's a
British
thing, but I feel this is more effective when it's done subtly.
Withholding
means precisely that: the promise of further wonder and deep mystery
in a
gesture or a silence, as opposed to a choosing a camp two-dimensional
imitation of a 'mysterious' stereotype as a performance character.
Nothing
is really withheld there, there is no real elegance.
Fave magic book?
I don't read books of tricks any more, although I'll watch
performances
or lectures to get a sense of another magician's approach to
performance and
the way that they imprint their personality on the audience. As
something of
a bilbliophile, I sympathise with those that say that books are worth
far
more than lecture videos. Perhaps, but you need to see a performance
for the
effect to come alive. And presuming that you don't just want to go
through a
book and pick out a whole load of effects to do, I feel they have
limited
value. The only contact I really have with the 'learning effects'
market now
is borrowing tapes and watching the performances, fast-forwarding
through
the explanations.
If you are trying to follow your own vision and not be distracted,
seeing or reading other people's stuff can be either irrelevant or
infuriatingly appealing. I find the latter can be the case with Guy
Hollingworth's 'Drawing Room Deceptions': we have different ideas
about
magic, but his methodologies are so delightful to practise that I can
spend
hours immersed in fiddling and come up with ideas that take me way off
course and very far from the aesthetic I am trying to realise. There
are few
magic books that I have really enjoyed. I imagine that Darwin
Ortiz' 'Strong
Magic' would be top of the list, and it is criminal that this book is
now
out of print. This is a densely packed work on showmanship and
improving
your performance, free of the old-fashioned dicta or smug aphorism of
other
works on the subject. Other than that I enjoy reading biographical
works and
character studies of the greats: I really enjoyed Vernon's book on
Malini.
The collected 'Jinx' has a real charm about it as well: marvellous to
read.
Fave non-magic book.?
Boswell's 'London Journals', most probably. I delight in his
flamboyant
arrogance and his bombastic whoring, if that doesn't make me sound at
all
objectionable. Followed by Nietzsche, along with Dostoievsky's
novels. I am
also a enjoy Robertson Davies - his 'A Voice from the Attic', a
treatise on
books and the practice of reading as well as ventures into his own
enthusiasms such as Ninetheenth Century melodrama and Where To Find
Erotica
In Europe: this was a great read. For guilty pleasure, I'd
recommend 'Faking
It: The Sentimentalisation of Modern Society', put out by The Social
Affairs
Unit, 1998. It's a series of essays dealing with areas as diverse as
the
welfare system, food, music, health, religion and environment: a huge
onslaught against feel-good sentimentality. Great stuff.
