Do you believe in magic?

Kids Stuff
By William Feldman

Welcome to Kids Stuff. Today’s column includes the first part of an interview with the astonishing Mark Kalin of Kalin and Jinger’s Real Magic, which will perform through Aug. 17 at the Trump Marina Hotel in Atlantic City.
First and foremost, people who know me, know I love magic and illusions. So when I read that Mark and Jinger were coming to the East Coast, I started my adventure, trying to obtain an interview. I was excited one day when I received a return letter from Mark saying, "yes."
Mark and Jinger have been on NBC’s World Greatest Magicians, Entertainment Tonight and Fox Family’s Magic on the Edge. This interview is not an illusion, it is very tangible. This is the first casino show they have done in almost five years.
Mark and I met on a Friday afternoon just as he was arriving in New Jersey. In fact I was watching as his equipment was being moved into the theater. I had no idea where to begin our interview, because I had many questions. One other thing you should know before reading on: Mark and his future wife Jinger met on the island of Guam in 1990, married in 1992 and have one child. In addition to illusionists they are also producers.
With Magic’s Biggest Secrets on Channel 17, and of course with the Internet, will this affect magic?
He agreed that the secrets of magic are everywhere, and even Mark questioned whether those secrets will survive with the Internet. In the past the public would see things and then forget about it, so the secrets were more likely to survive.
I was kind of excited to ask him about his former incredible jet plane routine. Here is the unique story of how he came up with the idea to make a jumbo airplane disappear.
They culminated their show in Nevada at the Reno Hilton with one of the world’s largest stages, a one-acre cement stage, where they vanished an American Airlines jumbo jet.
"We had a contract at the Flamingo Hilton for our show, Carnival of Wonders," Mark said.
His show had a three-year contract but the problem was that the hotel was up for sale, and he had about two years left. Sometimes a contract can become null and void, when a property sells.
"I started thinking what are we going to do? There was another property across town called the Reno Hilton, which had just the most unbelievable showroom, an acre," he explained. "We had this really intimate little show that played really well at the Flamingo, but the Reno Hilton property was going to be around for a while. However, Reno Hilton just decided that they no longer were going to have any production shows, only headliners, so that was another strike against us."
What would they do? Read on.
The Reno Hilton had one thing left over backstage, a jumbo jet prop, because there used to be a show there in the 70s and 80s called Hello Hollywood.
"One of the things they would do is have a jumbo jet land on stage with forty dancers on the eighty-foot wing span. It is like being on the tarmac. If I could make that disappear, I am going to catch their attention," he said.
He went to the executives with a model of the stage and plane.
"This would be the largest illusion live on stage in the history of magic," he said. "Certainly, people had done it on TV, but nobody had done it live, because nobody had a plane. That is what sold them."
Regarding the illusion itself, Mark noted he had five weeks until the big day but no idea how he was going to do the trick. He finished his daily shows at the Flamingo and would drive across town to the Reno Hilton theater. He would just sit there with the plane and wonder, "How am I going to do this?"
The other problem was when he was trying to get the Guinness Book of World Records to come out and certify that it was the largest illusion, the 9/11 terrorism attacks occurred. The dilemma was this: Would it be bad taste to continue to do an illusion involving a jet? After performing the show for two years, Mark felt the show was too big and there was no connection to the audience and it had become a spectacle. This caused him to decide to make a change in their performing venue.
"We built ourselves a little theater in Reno with two-hundred seats called Magic Underground. It even has a museum and it is really an intimate theater," he said. "We still do grand illusioning, but the other thing is we are able to do close-up magic and sleight of hand. So, I have sort of re-connected to my roots of when I first started performing magic."
On the personal side, Mark was born in Santa Monica, Calif., in 1959. His interest in magic came from reading books. He was about 9 or 10, checking out his puppet books in the library, when he saw a book on magic that fascinated him. Key things soon happened to Mark that set the stage for the rest of his life.
"A friend of mine who also did magic asked me to go down to Long Beach, California, to a magic club," he said. "We went to monthly meetings at this club called the Long Beach Mystics."
Mark said there is quite a story about the Long Beach Mystics. In fact, even Magic magazine has written a story on the club, and a documentary about it called A Fifty Year Legacy has just been released.
"Here is the weird thing about the Mystics. It was just a bunch of kids that met at Emerson Elementary School," he said.
Once you turned 22, you were out of the club because it was for age 21 and younger. The Mystics held a show every year called It’s Amazing.
"Here is what set the Mystics apart," Mark continued. "If you had a magic club with a thousand members over the course of five or ten years, and one or two of them went on to become professional magicians, that would probably be a pretty surprising ratio. Of this little group, of which there were thirty-five to fifty of us at any given time, probably twenty-five went on to professional careers in magic: Stan Allen, publisher of Magic magazine, Bill Smith, Dirk Arthur, Kevin James and myself. For some reason, no pun intended, there was something magical about this magic group and we all inspired each other and we all went on to careers in magic."
You are probably wondering how Mark honed his skills. The key was the Mystics made each magician get up every month and perform with total originality. "Theme act" was popular in the ’70s, which meant you had to come up with a theme and do an act around it.
Mark explained: "The king of magic in those days was Marvin Roy, Mr. Electric. He did an act with light bulbs. He toured the world as the opening act for Liberace."
Mark figured he needed to have a theme, so he went to Woolworth’s.
"Nothing really struck me until I went into a section with pool cues and triangles racks," recalled Mark, who had already worked with billiard balls. "I was known for many years as the ‘magical pool shark.’"
He did a whole act based on the game of pool, which led him to take a hiatus from college for a week to accept an invitation to New York City to perform at a magic convention. From this he was asked to perform at multiple conventions and shows. It wasn’t until age 22 when he was afraid he was never going to leave home that he decided to build and add an illusion. He was then hired by Knotts Berry Farm in Los Angeles.
Moreover, one of his inspirations for stage ideas came from music. Asked if there was a trick he was unable to master, Mark joked, "There are two categories: Tricks that are just challenges that you are never able to get — you keep working on them over and over — then there are tricks that you do for years and years and then you go and screw them up on stage."
I always carry on me a piece of magic, and today was no exception. At the end of our interview I asked Mark if he could show me a trick or two. And being such a nice person, he spent some time with me and showed me three incredible tricks.
Next week, Part 2 consists of stage preparations and a detailed review of Mark and Jinger’s absolutely stellar real magic show. ••
Columnist William Feldman can be contacted by e-mail at wmkidscolumn@aol.com