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Rory Diamond New user 69 Posts 
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Jerico, it's funny you should say that, because I was trying to think of acts that I thought were totally original, and Rudy Coby came to mind. But now I see perhaps he had another source for a part of his material, anyway. I really like Rudy's act, I think that "Blammo" box thing he does with the giant marrionette puppet is very cool. Another performer I believe to be very original is Ed Alonzo. I also always thought Harry Anderson was very original.
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George Ledo Magic Café Columnist SF Bay Area 3045 Posts
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Quote:
On 2007-11-07 10:48, Rory Diamond wrote: Well, not to add fuel to the fire, but I remember this gag from around 1969-1970, when I was a faithful attending member of my local IBM ring.
That's our departed buddy Burt, aka The Great Burtini, doing his famous Cups and Mice routine
www.georgefledo.net Latest column: "Sorry about the photos in my posts here" |
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Starrpower Inner circle 4070 Posts
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Yeah, but Steve Martin was also doing these gags when he was a writer for the Smothers Brothers.
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George Ledo Magic Café Columnist SF Bay Area 3045 Posts
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Right, and who knows if anyone did it before then. I think the whole point is that there's so much material out there that it's practically impossible to search it all before "coming up with something." For me, there's a major difference between:
a) Publishing a bit as part of a routine, and just admitting that the bit has been around for a long time, but that it works in the routine, and b) Claiming the bit to be original. Gee whiz, if musicians were so hung up on this, and thought it was unethical to use anything ever used before, they would have to stop writing music. Has anyone noticed that the first three notes of the Darth Vader theme ("Dum dum dum") are the same as the first three notes of the old "Highway Patrol" TV show with Broderick Crawford? Did John Williams steal those three notes?
That's our departed buddy Burt, aka The Great Burtini, doing his famous Cups and Mice routine
www.georgefledo.net Latest column: "Sorry about the photos in my posts here" |
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mtpascoe Inner circle 1932 Posts
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You can hear a lot of Star Wars in Gustav Holst the Planets. I’m sure John Williams had to be influenced by it. Leonard Bernstein did an album of it and you can hear a little bit of West Side Story in it. I think all artists are influenced by those that came before them.
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George Ledo Magic Café Columnist SF Bay Area 3045 Posts
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Exactly -- artists have been learning and adapting from other artists for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The difference is that a real artist will not copy someone else's work and claim it as original: he or she will be inspired by it, or adapt it, but come up with something new and fresh and personal as a result.
I don't have a clue if this happened, but it could have (and, if it did, it's perfectly legitimate in the creative field): John Williams may have remembered the old "Highway Patrol" theme, liked where it went, and decided to take those first three notes in a different direction. Which he did, beautifully. Or then again, he may have hit on those three notes while playing around at random on a piano. Or while driving over transition strips on a bridge. Or from somebody knocking on the door. Or from bad plumbing in a hotel bathroom. Who cares? I just find it fascinating that, back in the old days (my old days, as in the late 60's), we didn't get so hung up on originality as today. Back then, if somebody did an effect at a lecture at a magic club, you were free to use it; that's why he did the lecture. But we didn't go around stealing material from each other and calling it original. But, then again, most of us performed for the general public, not for each other, so claiming originality (and wanting people to believe we were creative geniuses and that our material was original) wasn't important.
That's our departed buddy Burt, aka The Great Burtini, doing his famous Cups and Mice routine
www.georgefledo.net Latest column: "Sorry about the photos in my posts here" |
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Starrpower Inner circle 4070 Posts
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Quote:
On 2007-11-10 18:58, George Ledo wrote: Performing to entertain laypeople? That would just make too much sense. |
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mtpascoe Inner circle 1932 Posts
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But, if you perform for laypeople, you can’t do like a singer would do and say, “Yeah, this is a classic trick from Whit Haydn, it’s his rendition of the Linking Rings.” Then have the audience clap when they recognize it. It just doesn’t work that way with magic. You just perform it. You can’t site anything when you do magic.
Now when you write it up in a book, if you know where the inspiration came from, then that’s different. But there are card and coin moves that I picked up when I was a kid and I don’t know the names of the people that taught it to me. I just didn’t know that I was ever going to put it down in words. Now I feel bad because it became part of my repertoire. |
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George Ledo Magic Café Columnist SF Bay Area 3045 Posts
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I'm writing a column on this whole topic right now, and hope to have it posted today, but, in the meantime...
I don't unerstand why we're getting so hung up on attribution. It's one thing to say, hey, here's a way I came up with to use some old stuff, and a totally different thing to say, hey, lookit, this is all original. But then again I catch myself thinking that, if we want to come across as creative geniuses, then we do have to imply the material is original. But with so much material out there today, how can you possibly attribute everything? And why are we getting so hung up on "original" material? You mentioned singers. Do singers (do any musicians, for that matter) always use original material? No. If you go to a club, and the pianist is playing "Strangers in the Night," is he or she plagiarizing Sinatra? Did Sinatra create that song? How about "As Time Goes By?" Did the movie Casablanca rip it off from the original writer? Somebody is going to jump in here and say that songs are owned by music publishers, and that artists are supposed to pay royalties when they use the material, and that's correct. We don't have such a thing in magic. However, given the amount of magic material published in the last few years, and the obsession with claiming it as original, it would seem to me that trying to have such a system in magic would only serve to create a huge amount of legal actions. In which case, if that ever happens, I'll get out of the theatrical design field and head off to law school. There's a lot of easy money to be made there. 
That's our departed buddy Burt, aka The Great Burtini, doing his famous Cups and Mice routine
www.georgefledo.net Latest column: "Sorry about the photos in my posts here" |
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Tom Cutts Staff Northern CA 5935 Posts
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You can’t site anything when you do magic. That is simply not true. When used genuinely from your heart, a comment on the source of a routine connects you with the audience. It tells them a little of the story about where you learn this stuff and it shows you have respect for the art and its creators. What you can't do is rely on the source to get you applause. That you must earn yourself. Cheers, Tom |
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Rupert Bair Inner circle ? 2181 Posts
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If a magician uses a joke that is so old its public domain I think its ok. If the magician invented the joke and they put it in print or on the dvd in the presentation then I believe you've paid for the right to use it.
My friend told me a joke of Steven Wrights. I told him off because it was unethical. He should write his own material if he wants to tell me a joke. |
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George Ledo Magic Café Columnist SF Bay Area 3045 Posts
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Quote:
On 2007-11-11 14:31, Matt Colman wrote: See, taking your comment strictly the way you wrote it, I don't agree with it. Jokes are meant to be told and repeated. If your friend told you the joke as coming from someone else (as in, hey, I heard a good one...), he was only doing what millions of people have been doing for a very very very long time. It's not unethical. On the other hand, if he said it was his original joke, then that was his bad.
That's our departed buddy Burt, aka The Great Burtini, doing his famous Cups and Mice routine
www.georgefledo.net Latest column: "Sorry about the photos in my posts here" |
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Rory Diamond New user 69 Posts
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I agree, why get hung up on attribution? But everyone should tell that to the "magic police" at magicians conventions who think they have the right to tell everyone else how to do thier act. These types are quick to tell you if you did a joke that is supposedly someone else's, when they themselves are the biggest offenders.
This could be another topic entirely: when magicians feel they can uninvitedly approach another performer and start giving advice or criticisms. If the performer invites and welcomes comments, that is one thing. But I have seen magicians walk right up to other magicians at conventions, fairs, malls, etc. and give the other performer thier "two sense" worth. I was at a big magic convention in Las Vegas one year, and there was a well-known Husband and Wife Illusion team performing on stage. A conventioneer just yelled out during the act, "your magic would be much better if your music wasn't so loud!" The act stopped, and the husband said "what?". Again, this rude conventioneer yelled "your magic would be much better if you music wasn't so loud!". Now, this was not a contest, the man yelling was not a judge- he just took it upon himself to interrupt the act and tell them what he thought. Where does someone like that get off at? If this took place at a comedy club, or a Vegas showroom, the guy would be escorted right out. Look what happened to that college kid who thought he could just yell what he wanted at that John Kerry event a couple weeks ago. (Don't 'taze me, Bro'!) I have been to lectures at magic conventions where the lecturer on stage will take a verbal "pot shot" at another act. I vividly remember a well known-magician / lecturer berating another performer about originality during his lecture. Problem is, I can find many un-original items in the Lecturer's show! Also, I paid to learn something from the lecture- I didn't pay to see some stuck up "has-been" get his little juvenile digs in at some other guy. Many of those preaching creativity and originality are hypocrites. |
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George Ledo Magic Café Columnist SF Bay Area 3045 Posts
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I think rudeness might be a good topic for another thread... however, I kinda doubt that those who really need to read it, will.
That's our departed buddy Burt, aka The Great Burtini, doing his famous Cups and Mice routine
www.georgefledo.net Latest column: "Sorry about the photos in my posts here" |
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Rory Diamond New user 69 Posts
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No kidding! Ok, here is another observation. You see gag stealing (or research, as Whit calls it) in movies and tv all the time. Those "Austin Powers" movies are filled with gags that appeared in comedy spy or cop movies before. Many of the gags were stolen from Peter Sellers movies from the 60's. In "Goldmember", there is a scene where Austin Powers is talking to Foxy Cleopatra via a man facing Austin- Foxy has her back to the man- and the gag is that the man appears to have a woman's voice. That gag is directly out of Peter Seller's "After the Fox" from the 1960's.
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George Ledo Magic Café Columnist SF Bay Area 3045 Posts
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Well, there's another way to look at this. Some movies are written such that they use old gags and bits specifically so audiences will recognize them as coming from older sources. Several Mel Brooks movies from the 70's, like Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and others, were full of bits that were intended to be noticed as old gags. They were inside jokes. And the movies were a lot funnier if you got the inside jokes and understood what Mel was doing.
That's why I said before that, if a gag is widely known as belonging to someone else, I would have no problem using it, as long as I said something to the effect of, "Like so-and-so would say, blah-blah." That way, I can use a funny bit and still give some attention to the guy that made it famous. But you can be creative with this too, and do something original with it. For all you know, the other guy may refer back to you in a similar fashion at some point. It's all part of good show biz. When done well, audiences love this stuff.
That's our departed buddy Burt, aka The Great Burtini, doing his famous Cups and Mice routine
www.georgefledo.net Latest column: "Sorry about the photos in my posts here" |
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Whit Haydn V.I.P. 5449 Posts
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Quote:
On 2007-11-11 20:12, Rory Diamond wrote: Rory, you seem obsessed with everyone else's behavior. Why not focus on what is smart or right instead of constantly comparing other people's behavior. No clarity comes from that. I am sorry if some magicians have been mean to you or something, but your negativity and slams of other acts seem much worse to me than the behavior you are lambasting. |
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Rory Diamond New user 69 Posts
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Hey, wait a minute Whit, did you not read this entire index? There are many people here who agree with me. Nobody was mean to me- I am making legitimate observations. The only gauge of determining what is "right" or "ethical" is by pointing out what we feel is "wrong", and by making comparisons. You just don't like it when an example includes someone you know.
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Starrpower Inner circle 4070 Posts
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I think clarity does come from that. Without bad examples, how could we tell what's good? Or, to paraphrase "The Magic Show" -- "Without the bad guys, what would the good guys do?"
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Tom Cutts Staff Northern CA 5935 Posts
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The only gauge of determining what is "right" or "ethical" is by pointing out what we feel is "wrong" Do you mean like when an act is so loud it is uncomfortable? |
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Posted: Nov 7, 2007 09:14 pm 