Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants
Well this is something special, a holiday treat for the end of 2024: a group of archivists (including Chris Person) has uploaded an HBO magic special by Ricky Jay that has been largely unavailable since it aired in 1996.
This is an RF rip of Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants, to date the greatest card magic special ever produced, directed by David Mamet of all people. This special was produced by HBO and to date has never had a home release, although poor home recordings of this special exist online.
Person described his process for archiving videos at Aftermath:
Before getting into preservation generally, it’s worth considering how we got here. Why is so much media lost or badly preserved? A recurring reason is that the people in charge are sometimes, but not always, asleep at the wheel. Media is forgotten or stored improperly, and humidity and heat have destroyed more of our history than we will ever know. Sometimes companies handle the material sloppily (I’ve blogged about the use of AI before, but there are countless examples in audio too).
Having shared all that, I feel like the quality of this YouTube video of the special is not perceptibly worse than the one uploaded to archive.org? What am I missing?
And as always when I post about Ricky Jay, I recommend Mark Singer’s irresistible 1993 profile of Jay, which begins with this story:
The playwright David Mamet and the theatre director Gregory Mosher affirm that some years ago, late one night in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago, this happened:
Ricky Jay, who is perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive, was performing magic with a deck of cards. Also present was a friend of Mamet and Mosher’s named Christ Nogulich, the director of food and beverage at the hotel. After twenty minutes of disbelief-suspending manipulations, Jay spread the deck face up on the bar counter and asked Nogulich to concentrate on a specific card but not to reveal it. Jay then assembled the deck face down, shuffled, cut it into two piles, and asked Nogulich to point to one of the piles and name his card.
“Three of clubs,” Nogulich said, and he was then instructed to turn over the top card.
He turned over the three of clubs.
Mosher, in what could be interpreted as a passive-aggressive act, quietly announced, “Ricky, you know, I also concentrated on a card.”
After an interval of silence, Jay said, “That’s interesting, Gregory, but I only do this for one person at a time.”
Mosher persisted: “Well, Ricky, I really was thinking of a card.”
Jay paused, frowned, stared at Mosher, and said, “This is a distinct change of procedure.” A longer pause. “All right — what was the card?”
“Two of spades.”
Jay nodded, and gestured toward the other pile, and Mosher turned over its top card.
The deuce of spades.
A small riot ensued.
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What a great find, thank you.
I also highly recommend the 2012 documentary Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay which, as of this writing, is free to watch if you create a free Fandango account. I am convinced that every deck of cards Ricky handled was like an extension of his nervous system. It's hard to imagine how could do what he did otherwise... He was a remarkable performer and raconteur.
One of my absolute favorite hours of entertainment. Jay is giving one of the greatest performances I've ever seen (in front of one of the most reserved audiences I've ever seen).
I agree that this copy doesn't seem TOO different in quality from a few versions that have been on Youtube for years. The Archive version looks a lot less saturated and is probably how it was intended to look, which also helps with the visual noise.
Next up: someone find a recording of his off-Broadway follow-up “Ricky Jay: On the Stem.”
I worked in the crew of this show way back when and I have such spotty memories of the performance. I have much clearer memories of the backstage antics, guests who came to the green room after the show, and post-performance legal action involving a stolen prop.
I also had to sign an NDA, so no, I won’t tell you how the tricks were done! But the egg he juggled and caught on his neck was 100% real because when the trick failed, I was in charge of cleaning his suit.
While we’re at it, the Internet Archive also has a copy of Ricky Jay’s 1977 book “Cards As Weapons”: https://archive.org/details/Cards_as_Weapons_-_Ricky_Jay_1977
It's always a pleasure to watch someone who is a master at their craft. Thank you.
Ricky Jay was great in the movie Boogie Nights where he plays a cameraman. My favourite scene being at a party and he’s watching with admiration as Dirk Digler performs a fairly mediocre card trick.
I loved his character in HBO's Deadwood. Word is that when he found out the script included his character's death, he refused to come out of his trailer to film the scene.
Ricky Jay was amazing and I definitely miss his talents in any venue.
During COVID, a Chicago-based close-up magician, David Watkins did a fundraiser via Zoom for a NPF I'm involved with. Once we started doing things again, my wife and I went to his show, then at the Palmer House.
It was a very good show. Attendance is very limited to everyone is close to the action. I wound up as a mark for the penultimate trick, which absolutely blew my mind. Very long and involved trick (I was standing up there for a long time!).
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