RIP Ricky Jay

My gosh... Just noticed the news and Ricky Jay is dead at 72.

One of my very favorite actors in a number of David Mamet's films. My moviegoing world wouldn't have been the same without him. RIP.

Ricky Jay, Master Magician and Actor in ‘Deadwood,’ ‘Boogie Nights,’ Dies at 72

 

He was an amazing slight-of-hand artist, one of the greatest ever.

I can recommend the documentary Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay.

 

Interesting guy.

 

RIP Ricky.

 

My wife and I saw the documentary of the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago in 2012. The director was there and had a really great talk with her about my childhood.

My dad was a magician and Punch and Judy puppeteer and I was a ventriloquist, so we would go to magic conventions every year. The busiest area was the dealers room, where you could buy magic equipment, and the dealers would be there demonstrating effects, which would generally be sold as typewritten sheets of paper in envelopes, sometimes accompanied by a particular piece of gear necessary to accomplish it.

Outside of the dealers room the hallways were filled with dozens upon dozens of magicians, all looking for someone to show a particular piece of sleight of hand too. It was complete inversion of the rest of the world, where you would have one magician for a hundred audience members.

 

I was fortunate to meet Ricky Jay several years ago on the last day of an exhibition of his magic poster collection at the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and thank him for the show. An American original indeed, RIP Mr. Jay.

 

Yeah, I was a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and the Society of American Magicians when I was a teenager, and I did magic shows for awhile. That's an interesting world. I like observing it from the historical point of view: I still remember a lot of the standard texts, like the Tarbell Course of Magic, Bobo's Coin Magic, the Rice Encyclopedia of Silk Magic, Ian Adair's Encyclopedia of Dove Magic, and so on. Those were fantastic. I particularly loved the story of Chinese magician Chung Ling Soo, who was the toast of London at the turn of the century... only after he died after a gun mishap on stage, it was discovered he was not Chinese at all, but actually a British man pretending to be Asian. And then it was discovered he was a Brooklyn man who faked his identity as a British man! And had at least two wives and two families.

Ricky Jay was an astonishing man, very well-read, very interesting, and also very mysterious. I saw him perform twice at the Magic Castle in LA (and I'm told he didn't do it all that often). Once was a stage show where he did the card thing where he'd fling cards and hit people in the very back row of the theater (literally "cards as weapons"), and then I saw him years later do close-up magic in a room down the hall from the bar. He's one of those guys who impresses you just as the trick ends, and then he'll go one step further -- "oh, and by the way" -- and then the final thing makes everybody scream and run out of the room. The film shows some moments like that, I think one where he has lunch with somebody in a coffee shop and then produces a giant block of ice from the table.

Anybody who doubts the genius of Ricky Jay, read this 1993 portrait from The New Yorker:

Ricky Jay’s Magical Secrets

 

X-Files fans may remember him from the S7 episode "The Amazing Maleeni".

 

I never saw him live, but his performances on screen were amazing. (Watch him throw a playing card so strongly it pierces a watermelon.)



He wrote a hilarious book about sideshow oddities and other entertainers, well worth seeking out:

https://www.amazon.com/Learned-Pigs-Fireproof-Women-Ricky/dp/0394537505/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1543156983&sr=1-1&keywords=learned+pigs+&+fireproof+women

In that book he devotes a chapter to Joseph Pujol, a.k.a. Le Petomane (the fartomaniac), a professional farter.

Le Pétomane - Wikipedia

 

Is there a longer version of the commerical for Bob Dylan's Love & Theft album, which Ricky Jay appears in?

 

Jay performed an opening monologue at a Shakespeare in the Park performance I saw many years ago. As he spoke, he calmly threw individual playing cards over the audience and out of the theater. He didn't come close to missing. He could have cleared at least another 10-15 rows. Here's what he had to contend with.

 

He was good in his minor role as “Eddie” in “Deadwood”. I know I’ve seen him in a few other things, but they’re not coming to mind.

“House of Games” too!

 

His performance in Boogie Nights is effortless, he blends into the background but is also memorable. His laughter when he hears Burt Reynolds say the words "NevertheLess" is a great story!

Paul Thomas Anderson Explains Why Ricky Jay Couldn’t Stop Laughing During A Dramatic Scene In ‘Boogie Nights’

R.I.P Ricky.

 

IIRC I first saw him on Wonderama when I was a kid. He threw cards over the audience and I found that fascinating enough to give it a try. I could not do it.

Years later and there he is in TV and movie roles including Boogie Nights, one of my favorites.

RIP Ricky

 

WOW. I recognized him immediately...R.I.P.

 

He was one of those mysterious individuals who would "sneak" in and out of TV episodes and movies......very recognizable, but not very well known. RIP Mr. Jay.

 

Impressive close-up sleight-of-hand “magic”. To me, always more impressive than the grandiose Doug Henning stuff.

 

Among magicians, there's little respect for someone who is all equipment - the equivalent of describing a cowboy as "all hat, no cattle." A real magician can entertain for hours with nothing more than some stuff that he or she can always have in a pocket - a deck of cards, some coins....

 

Doug Henning was horrible.

 

Maybe not your style of magic....but no need to categorize him as horrible. RIP

 

Okay, fine. He was great.

 

Well, I can tell you he was a great man.......I met him on several occasions as a kid. He helped me deal with a close family member's death by writing me a letter.

 

I already said he was great. What else do you want from me?