In just one hour, Nick and Blake attempted to come up with a new magic trick. The following is an excerpt from their conversation, and a description of one of their ideas.
Blake Vogt Welcome to Inventing Magic. This month’s special guest is the amazing Nick Paul. Welcome, Nick.
Nick Paul Hello, friends. I used to start virtual shows with an applause track at that point, but I didn’t set that up today….
BV I can put it in when I edit.
NP That would be helpful, just for my ego.
BV I can see you are on a cruise ship, but where are you?
NP We just left Anchorage yesterday on the way to Glacier Bay. This is my 11th year on cruises, and my last unless I need the money in six months. I’ve learned a lot, though. You learn how to entertain people that didn’t buy tickets to see your show. You learn how to write material and just put it on its feet. You have nothing to do in the day so you come up with a new idea to go into the show that night.
BV What is your process? You’re the first person I’ve done this with who I’ve
performed with, so I know a little bit more about how you work, but what’s your usual process for putting a new trick in the show?
NP I always come up with the concept first. I have a note on my phone, and I add to it anytime something pops in my head. I’ve been going more toward family stuff, stuff people can relate to, and then building the trick backward from there. I’m not a great inventor of magic, but I’m very good at taking old ideas and trying to make them feel new.
BV I’ve seen you take premises and tricks and turn them into the Nick Paul version. We actually have a lot of similarities, too, and I’ve seen you do tricks before that you’ve made your own and I wish I had thought of the idea myself. How often do you put in a new trick?
NP It really depends how busy I am and what state of mind I’m in. I don’t really put too much pressure on it, but the one thing I’ll miss about ships is that they really force you to get better. In the past year my B show finally got good. It was definitely the filler show for a long time, but now there’s only one thing in there that is filler. It’s probably the one thing I do that bad magicians do, and I would love to take it out.
BV We worked together last year in Hollywood, and that was fun because we both put in new routines and yours was great.
NP I think mine failed colossally. Well, it wasn’t that it was bad, it’s good to be uncomfortable onstage. When you’re trying out new stuff, it takes you back to when you were first starting off and figuring out who you are onstage. It’s a great feeling to get back.
BV I know that you are on a ship, so you have limited materials around you, but I have everything. So if there is something that you can think of, I can probably reach off screen and be holding it.
NP I have an idea I think would be so interesting, but I don’t know how you would do it in a respectful way. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know people’s credit score? Not how much they make, but what their credit score is?
BV I’m a finance nerd, so people pretending to be rich but really having a lot of debt are fascinating to me, as opposed to what Dave Ramsey calls everyday millionaires, the folks who drive a Toyota from 20 years ago and are completely fine with that.
Everything you just said feels like the perfect intro for a stage or parlor trick. I feel like jamming on finance would be fun. I feel like that opens us up to money, coins, dollar bills, wallets.
NP I’ve always wanted to do something with credit cards. So if we want to go in a more sleight-based way maybe credit cards are good. But the other thing that popped into my head is a drawing duplication of an investment chart or something. Or you could find someone who doesn’t own a home and predict how much they think a house is going to cost in 10 years—it just depends how dark you want to go with it.
