2009-12 Dennis' Deliberations

"mandatum erat hominem punire: non eum castigare usque ad mortuum"
(Your orders were to punish this man, not to scourge him to death.)

Did you ever get so angry at someone or some group that you want to beat the tar out of them?
Try booking agents. The vast majority of them are lower than whale feces. There are a few that are humans-a very few.
There are many jokes about booking “agents” such as: Did you hear about the booking agent that had a heart transplant? He died. The heart rejected him!

It did not take me long as a young man to learn the difference between a “booking agent” and a “personal agent”. The booking agent works for his own benefit. In other words they may very well be a blood-sucking leech trying to hire you for as cheap as they can get you and charging the client many times what you are actually being paid.

The personal agent is more of a partner. He (or she) makes money by taking a percentage of your show fees. It is in the best interest of the personal agent to keep you working. The booking agent just wants someone who will work cheap. They work for themselves and not for the talent.

I would hate to tell you how many “agents” years ago agreed to handle me if:
1) I bought a $250 photo package to meet their specifications
2) Paid for a set-up charge for printing brochures. Out of the goodness of their hearts they would pay for all the printing. I think the set-up fee was $600. Business cards were mandatory and extra!
3) Paid for a month “phone number fee” This was so that you had your own telephone number. Mind you, it was not a separate line but an “extension” (a secretary with a list). I think that was $50 a month.
4) Paid for the “records and booking journal”. You had to buy their calendar and their loose-leaf notebook with special NCR forms so your agent-fee forms matched their records.
5) You also needed a name tag with their logo so you could attend the “mixers” and “showcases” for the talent buyers. Yes, and pay for the drinks, the hotel room for the booking agent, a girl-escort to keep him company, etc. They had these “showcases” every 90 days and they were $200 each not counting travel and the hotel room.

There were other assorted fees.

The killer was that they would list your name for FREE on their talent list but “you need the back-up materials” to really get the most bookings.

The sole benefit of the FREE listing meant was that I got a few dozen phone calls and letters from the agency saying that people had requested me but they legally could not book me without paying the other fees!

I even got a call from a “Magician” who said he was taking my gigs because I would not register. He said that he wanted to throw gigs my way. It was obvious from 60 seconds of talk that the guy on the phone was not a magician but a salesman and knew NOTHING about magic. I found it out by using some absurd phrases that he never reacted to, such as, “I really need to do that. My “thumb tip illusion” is taking up half of my garage and I need to get it out on the road.” The guy answered, “Yes! You can’t let it sit; you have to get it on the road!”

The easiest scam in the world is to play on someone’s ego coupled with their dreams and fears to manipulate them and rip them off. Talent and modeling agencies have been doing it for years. Often some ballroom dance studios and acting schools do the same thing. In a grander way, politicians use the trick: “You should be making big money and living the jet-set life! The problem is those people from the other political party are stealing your money and destroying the country. “There will be no country left for you to get rich in if the other political party wins!” (Substitute Democrat or Republican, Conservative or Liberal. They all lie and manipulate you)

Harry Wise passed on. I was sorry to hear that. I knew Harry for almost 40 years. I met him originally through Phil Morris in Charlotte who hired him to do several Ghost Show tours in Canada. Phil later told me that it takes a special talent to be scary and whip up the crowd into a frenzy. He said that Harry was a bit too funny to really freak out a crowd. Since most of the shows in Canada played a Friday and a Saturday, the second nights were a disaster. Nobody was afraid of Harry. The trouble makers brought their friends back to heckle.
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Harry concluded a tour and ended up in Charlotte with about as much money as he started with. I think he was looking for local TV work and Phil Morris called my house and my wife Cindy told Phil that I was working that evening directing a live show. The show was a classic movie with a host doing live cut-ins. My job as the director was to time everything and run the control room and crew. Phil sent Harry over to the station about 7:30 in the evening and the receptionist buzzed me in the control room and when I heard “Phil Morris” I approved him being brought up to the control room.

Harry may have had a lot of experience in front of the camera but he had no idea what went on in a control room. I had on my headset and was barking orders to the video-tape room, the telecine projection room, the floor crew, the audio man, the technical director-switcher, the camera guys, the video operator…while Harry was depressingly telling me his life story in one long monologue. I was trying to listen to him and run the show.

This never came out in the newspaper obituary but he told me then that his wife had divorced him and he had a daughter and his ex-wife got custody. Harry’s name was etched in my mind when I moved to Orlando and it was Clarence Godwin of the old Fun Way/Paramount magic shop that again put me in contact with Harry.
Harry was living in his mother’s house in Sanford. He had grown his hair long and had a former Club Juana stripper as his assistant/girl friend.

He did show up at the Sanford Civic Center when I played my illusion show there in July of 1985. A year or so later he was selling off some of his props and I think he gave me as much as I bought. My Abbott’s Frame of Life and Death was Harry. He had been storing it in the shed in back of his house and it was covered with dirt-daubers. I had to rebuild the roller shades and do some repainting but it has served me well and I still use it. I think somewhere in the 90s Harry wisely decided to build his legacy and he got his story and heroics in print. I am not exactly sure how much was legend, myth or actual fact. It really doesn’t matter. Harry was a survivor and a journeyman entertainer for a great many years and a unique character and he deserves every bit of eternal fame that he gets. Thomas Aquinas, the great Scholastic theologian from the 1200s is remembered for the extensive and brilliant theology books that he left but he died an empty man saying, “Everything that I have written is straw”. I think that is sad. Somewhere there has to be a balance between a Burling Hull and an Aquinas. Maybe Harry found it.

I had a few thoughts about growing old as a magician:

Ten Thoughts on the Way to the Stage...

The great thing about an aging magician is that he doesn't lose all the other ages he's been. The saddest thing about being an aging magician is believing that he can re-create those ages.

The time to begin most magic acts is ten years ago.

The older a magician gets, the more he tells it like it used to be.

The greatest magic lesson we should learn: "Time wounds all heels." - Dorothy Parker

You don't stop being amazed by magic because you grew old. You grow old because you stop being amazed by magic.

You know you're getting old when you stoop to pick up spilled cards and wonder what else you could do while you're down there.

At twenty we worry about getting repeat bookings; at forty we worry about our reputations; at sixty we discover people haven't worried about us in years.

There are magicians who intend to go on forever; or die trying.

Inside every old magician is a young whippersnapper who wonders what the hell happened.

When a magician is young and accomplished, everyone asks "How does he do it?" When he is old they ask “Why does he do it?”

From chilly Harrisonburg, VA in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley the very best and joyous Holiday season to you and yours.

Dennis Phillips