Praise for Holy Smoke
“Steve has been there, done that, and didn’t just buy the t-shirt he hand crafted the very first piece of clothing ever. I’m always excited when he publishes a new book. His writing is engaging, and his insights are hard won gems that the community is lucky to have him share. Get this book and read it twice.”
Erik Tait
“I think Holy Smoke is terrific, and possibly the most crisply written of all the Spill books to date. The first half is an invaluable professional and artistic guide, and the material is a delightful bonus. Loved it. Another masterpiece.”
Jamy Ian Swiss
This book is great! Steve’s words on the tantamount importance of allowing your unique self to dictate action and choice are inspired. Sometimes performance theory can elude practical application. Steve shares workable exercises that can lead an artist closer to their goal. “What kind of car are you?” was a revelation. (I’m a black Volvo S60 with the upgraded sports package and a polished wooden steering wheel) These teachings remind me of the deep, thought provoking, and endlessly entertaining writings of my mentor Eugene Burger. Thanks Steve for selflessly sharing your wisdom and years of working experience. Congratulations on a real achievement!
Derek Hughes
“I started in magic long before Spill invented the Mindreading Goose, about the time he started vanishing sponge balls in thumb tips. It has always been clear to me that his thoughts, inventions, and routines are the most reliable of inspirations. I am also certain that this new book, Holy Smoke, aside from the many unique distinctive presentations, has the critical generous information that I wish was available to me 40 years ago, to save time and bring me success sooner. This is one of the best books I’ve read in many, many years. Illuminating and exhilarating.”
Gaeton Bloom
“Those of you who are familiar with Steve Spill’s previous books will need no encouragement to acquire his new one “Holy Smoke.” Once you discover Spill’s writings you are well and truly hooked.
There is no smoke (even holy smoke!) without fire and in Steve’s case the fire that fuels his work is his endless creativity. Spill seems to be incapable of taking a standard idea and leaving it standard in any way. Best of all, Part One of Holy Smoke, Steve teaches you his pathway to creativity and it is a fun journey.
There is an over-employed and slightly irritating cliché that goes “This alone is worth the price of the book.” This is the absolute truth with Part One of Holy Smoke. However, Steve has the good sense to include twelve killer routines.
Every routine is a gem in Holy Smoke and if you haven’t read any of Steve’s books then this is a great place to start but be warned you are Immediately going to want to read them all. I loved this book and give it a wholehearted two thumbs up tips and an enthusiastic five-star review.”
Nick Lewin, Vanish Magazine
“Holy smoke, I love magician Steve Spill’s new book. It is so close to the creative process. It takes leaps. I don’t know how Steve went about writing this book, but I have a suspicion. I think he didn’t know exactly what he wanted to say, but took a creative leap of trust that if he could get sparks started somehow in his overstuffed brain, something magical would come out. Maybe he started with just a premise, a title, a few questions.
But…You say you don’t want to hear this artsy-fartsy stuff? You say you want to get down to business? Well, Steve has plenty of commercial advice here, too. In this little package we call a book, wherein the very next chapter is called “Sermon,” Steve has a whole chapter on pitching for commercial gigs. It turns out Dr. Spill for all his artistic inclinations is also highly in favor of eating every day, and so forthwith he delivers the secrets to pulling off a nice paying corporate gig which may well require touting a client’s product (Can you say Francis Ford Coppola Wineries?) And for you disappointed artistes, just know that should you decide to skip this chapter so that you don’t get tomato stains on your immaculate artistic principles, Steve has a description of a wonderful one-in-five prediction effect in this chapter, highly adaptable for other events, commercial or not.
The book’s latter section like his previous books, concludes with a dozen great presentations and effects, with hilarious premises. The methods are sometimes absurdly simple, while others are so devious, you wonder how he came up with them. Clearly, Steve decides what he wants the audience to see, feel, and experience, and then uses his noggin to come up with the best and most do-able method that fulfills the effect.
I won’t go through all the effects—the ad on his website gives a good description of each one of them—but I will mention that while I think that Penn & Teller’s “Silver Fish” is the best presentation for The Miser’s Dream I’ve ever seen, if you don’t feel like lugging around a fish bowl and assorted live fish, then Steve’s solution to presenting the Miser’s Dream is my new favorite version. And it’s easy and fits in your pocket. Really, perusing these descriptions makes me want to book a magic show performance tonight just to try these out for an audience!
Reading this book I kept saying to myself, “Reading a magic book shouldn’t be this fun.” Enough of magic books where you have to slog through yet five more variations of Triumph, or ask your buddy to point out the best tricks in it because the book is otherwise too boring to comb through. Steve Spill has written another wonderful book, and it’s a don’t miss.”
Jack Shalom — magician / producer Arts Express WBAI Radio NYC
“Holy Smoke is a terrific book. Read it, study it, and apply what you learn. You’ll be a better magician for it. Highly recommended.
Steve Spill certainly has as much flight time as anyone on the planet.
As “Highdini,” he opened for rock bands in the 1970s; for many years he worked with Bob Sheets at The Jolly Jester in Aspen, Colorado, and at the Brook Farm Inn of Magic in Chevy Chase, Maryland; and for twenty-one years he owned, operated, and was the featured performer at Magicopolis in Santa Monica. Throughout his performing career, Steve has created fresh, engaging, commercial material that suits both his performing persona and his venues.
I was enthusiastic about Steve’s previous book, Assassin, and I am equally enthusiastic about his new release, Holy Smoke: Ways to Work in Mysterious Ways if You’re not God. As I recall, Assassin focused on the nuts-and-bolts aspects of show business as a profession. Holy Smoke’s first section (Reflections) offers five chapters of more generalized (but no less important) information, geared toward anyone who wants to perform magic to a group outside of their families and friends.
Here are some gems:
“Magicians are not God, and their mysteries are not best received without also putting across something imbued with conflict or intrigue or comedy or drama or humanity as part of the process.”
“An audience wants to know how you feel, who you are, what you think, what peculiar process it takes to achieve these impossibilities…leave the crowd with something that’s you.”
“Prepare what’s said onstage so it sounds how you talk with the one person on this planet you feel most comfortable with – the one person you can be your real self with, whether that’s your twin, spouse, BFF, or pet hamster.”
“Find one magician who’s better than you, one magician who’s at your level, and one magician who’s less experienced. Get mentoring and coaching from the first, trade notes with the second, and use the third as a cautionary reminder of all the boneheaded mistakes to avoid so you do not suck.”
And these are just a few examples of the myriad practical and useful suggestions in these opening chapters. What makes this advice so valuable is the point of view Steve takes. He explains it this way:
“What is offered in this book was gained through looking with the eyes of an audience rather than my viewpoint from the stage…Being able to put yourself in the position of those viewing your work is extremely important. Why? Because magic only exists in the minds of those who witness it. Understanding what they think and feel can make or break your onstage success.”
If Holy Smoke only contained the sage words gleaned from fifty-plus years of experience, it would be worth the price. But in part two (Deceptions), you also get twelve routines from Steve’s past and present repertoire, providing you with real-world examples of how Steve’s creative process works.
I think you will be greatly amused to learn how Steve has taken some classic effects (including the Living and Dead Test, the Hummer Flying Card, the Rice Bowls, the Crazy Compass, and the Multiplying Bottles) and dressed them up with wildly engaging presentations. A personal favorite is E-Meter, which turns the standard “this is what you’re thinking of” mentalism plot into a visually memorable experience for both the assisting spectator and the audience.
The final section (Psalms) contains two short essays. The first is about Steve’s friend, the late (and greatly missed) Martin Lewis. The second is a deep bow to those who helped Steve bring the book to fruition. He ends by saying, “It is an honor and a privilege to indie publish and have readers enjoy the work. My life is the richer for it.”
Michael Close
“Highest recommendation and pick of the month. GENII Magazine
Steve Spill’s Holy Smoke is a remarkable book that manages to mix practical insight into developing a stronger act, writing original material, and building a sustainable career with a self-aware look into the soul of a stand-up magician. By turns bitingly funny, candid, insightful, profane, and poignant (the book closes on a memory of a last meal with a now departed colleague that hit me in the solar plexus.) It also teaches a ton of strong, funny stand-up magic with an original voice.
The majority of the book is split between two sections: “Reflections,” a set of practical and thoughtful essays, and “Deceptions,” descriptions of 12 pieces of stand-up magic written by Spill (fifteen are taught in total including the pieces taught in the “Sermons” chapter on custom corporate presentations).
The central metaphor of the book first comes up in a significant way with an observation of Teller’s: “The God-like plot of — I wish for something and get it — in terms of theater, is dull and boring and without humanity.” Spill expands on this “Some, like a guy I’ll call Nick Brainiac, embellish this feeling [of acting like God] with an unspoken, yet nonetheless heard, testiness and attitude: ‘Of course I can tear and restore a newspaper, cut to the aces, and separate two silver rings. I’m fucking God! Now clap like baboons you idiots!’”
Spill argues, compellingly, that this alienating dynamic is why human connection, and the expression of a clear personality onstage, are particularly important to magic. “One needs to make themself the bubbles in the champagne, the yeast in the dough, the force that drives the sap in springtime, the tingle in the testicles.”
Having laid out what’s at stake in putting more of yourself into your magic, Spill gives us some practical steps to do just that. There are strong suggestions here that will benefit performers of all experience levels. This is one of the things Spill does remarkably well. It is one thing to tell students to “be yourself” or “create a show that feels like a unified whole.” It is another, far more valuable thing, to be able to teach specific strategies that readers can implement in their work to do those things. Spill gives actionable advice and it is clear that he practices what he preaches.
The discussion of the importance of personality and plot leads to one of the better explanations of the danger of using other performers’ presentations: “you run the risk of using a script that just looks and sounds wrong, mismatched, the way you can tell when someone [is] walking someone else’s dog.”
While most of the essays in the “Reflections” section contain advice gathered around a specific subject — crafting a unified show, conveying your personality in your material, managing career burnout — there is a lovely catch-all section called “Gospel” which contains an assortment of specific, practical insights about a wide range of issues for performers: how to keep creative momentum going, develop your own point-of-view, open a show, use a “mind script,” etc. etc. etc. There is a great deal of enormously valuable information here in easily digestible form.
I have seen one, just one, great magic show that didn’t have connective tissue between the material: Penn & Teller perform a piece, there is a blackout when it ends, the lights come back up and they begin the next piece. Every other first rate magic show I have seen builds and sustains momentum by moving fluidly between pieces and by using devices like running gags, callbacks, and themes developed across the material to create the feeling of a unified whole rather than a collection of parts. Many a crappy show, however, has started and stopped and lost energy in the moments between pieces. Our goal is to immerse the audience in our world, and to do that they need to remain connected to us. The easiest place to lose that connection is to have moments when nothing is happening. Spill’s chapter “Unitarian” describes a series of practical tools for creating connective tissue for a show and delivering an act that feels like a unified whole (and I very much want to see Barfo the Clown, the act described in the course of teaching several of these strategies.)
The chapter that hit me hardest is “Resurrection” which deals with something I have never heard another performer talk about, have never talked about to anyone else, and had never named or reflected upon to myself. It has, however, been a persistent force in different ways throughout my career: burnout. Being a professional magician, especially in the early years of a career, feels like building a plane while you are flying it. You are developing the product — your material and your act — while also figuring out how to both market and sell it. That means that there are endless tasks you could be doing every day.
My first 10-15 years as a performer were spent, somewhat paradoxically, both drained by the work I was doing while also feeling a persistent sense of vague guilt that I could and should be doing more. I was always on the wheel and felt a little twinge of shame when I would relax. When I worked hard on the show (in retrospect, the most important and beneficial work I did over the long term) it felt like play, like an indulgence that was taking away from the “grown-up,” important, Work of finding and converting leads. When I threw myself hard into growing the business, on the other hand, it felt like I had given up art to give myself a sales job. I did not recognize it as such, but I was burned out.
Following the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic, I stopped prospecting for new corporate event work and chose to fill my performing schedule with a mix of long-term residencies, cruise ships, and touring the various magic theaters and nightclubs that have sprouted up. It has been a lovely three years of a full calendar without feeling like I have a sales job, but I have certainly left a pile of money on the table. I did not realize it until reading Holy Smoke, but that career shift was forced by burnout.
“Resurrection” tackles that head on with practical strategies for being highly productive without getting drained. It sounds trivial, and in my twenties I would have scoffed at seeing a chapter about it in a magic book, but the ability to be immensely productive while also letting off enough pressure to not have it all blow up on you is one critical key to having a long-term, sustainable career as a performer.
Speaking of critical career skills for a performing magician, being able to customize your material to communicate a corporate client’s message is an especially lucrative one. In “Sermons,” Spill gives a fantastic overview of this side of the work — including a perceptive meditation on the sense of artistic compromise that often comes along with these assignments and a look at some of the ways these gigs came to him over the years — that moves into sharing three different, fully realized, custom corporate pieces from his career.
His routine for Coppola Winery has an Annemann-esque feel. A small, folded piece of paper is isolated inside a bowl. Behind the bowl are the five bottles from the winery that were awarded “Gold Outstanding” at the previous year’s International Wine and Spirit Competition. A guest names which bottle interests him most and Spill gives a gorgeously written overview of that wine and what makes it special as he sets it aside (“The oak is present but subtle with a character of toasted bread and grilled almond.”) Another guest nominates a different bottle, and gets a beautiful script about that product as it is set aside, and so it continues until there is one bottle remaining. The final bottle’s praises are sung and then the message in the bowl is revealed to have predicted this outcome. The method is direct and versatile, but the presentational framework is the real star here. This approach of progressive elimination to allow you to talk about each product (or, one could make it more abstract and create a prop to represent each benefit so you could talk about each as its symbolic object is set aside) during a prediction effect is a lovely template that I could see many other working performers adapting for corporate presentations.
Next is a lovely presentation of the Sands of the Desert created for Daiken Global to memorably communicate the benefits of an air filtration system. This is an object lesson in connecting an effect — or a compelling visual in an effect like the moment the clear water becomes black — with the benefits of your client’s product or service.
A different, but likewise compelling, example of this is Spill’s script for Keith Clark’s Silks Supreme Act adapted to memorably sell ExxonMobil’s line of polymer nonwoven fabrics in the hospitality suite of a textile show.
The chance to read through these kinds of pieces is a rare and valuable one. This is the kind of material that pros tend not to document for other performers. They are the children of a prosaic creativity, we are proud of our cleverness in making these assignments work but they are not art and always feel like a compromise. Combine that with the fact that these kinds of templates can be reused in some of our most lucrative bookings and you rarely see this stuff taught, and when it is published it is rarely from a performer whose writing is as strong and imaginative as Spill’s.
Those enormous gifts as a writer are on particular display in “Shrinkflation” and “Ghosts,” pieces in the “Deceptions” section that are both original presentations for two routines of the late, great Tommy Wonder. “Shrinkflation” juxtaposes the striking visual of Wonder’s “Diminishing Cards” with a hilarious and timely monologue about manufacturers’ creativity in finding ways to give us less and less for the same amount of money. The direct and uncompromising visual of Wonder’s method dovetails gorgeously with Spill’s script. Method affects effect, as Racherbaumer perfectly put it.
“Ghosts,” meanwhile, takes a novel approach to the presentation of Wonder’s “Ring, Watch, and Wallet.” Here the impossible happenings are the work of meddlesome spirits. It is a funny, humanizing approach that is a refreshing break from the now hackneyed “Hold Up” premise.
This presentational gift is likewise showcased with “Classic Cat,” which is the only presentation I am aware of for the Rice Bowls in which the effect makes sense and is relatable (here as a demonstration of innovative Cat Litter that is self-refilling).
Spill’s creativity, however, is not limited to innovative presentational premises; there are immensely clever, original methods described here that make for strong magic. In “Grapes I Ate Anyway” Spill has adapted a rarely used principle in a fascinating way to allow four grapes to completely vanish from his bare hands (worth emphasizing: no pop-up moves in sight and this bears no resemblance in method or presentation to the “Balls In The Net” — Spill has created an original piece that fits in a pocket and plays massive).
I have been intrigued with “Smashed And Restored” since I first saw it performed on one of my favorite magic videos: “Ten Years of Steve Spill.” Spill wraps a champagne bottle in a handkerchief and then smashes it with a hammer. When he whips away the cloth (silently, mind you) the bottle is restored. The method, in particular the way he has designed it so that you hear the pieces when you are supposed to and do not when you’re not, is brilliant and has me thinking of other applications.
One of Spill’s presentational gifts over the years has been adding compelling visuals to mentalism routines. This is a huge contribution. Visual variety is one critical tool for keeping an audience engaged. A show that is all envelopes and papers can easily feel like we are watching the same thing over and over (particularly given, as Max Maven pointed out in Prism, how much more limited mentalism effects are in variety than conjuring effects). Spill’s inclination toward mentalism with memorable visuals is most famously on display in “The Mindreading Goose,” which is a thing of genius. We see this gift at work here in “E-Meter,” a hilarious parody of Scientology’s device for “auditing” in which the machine divines a guest’s fear, climaxing with two different hilarious and visual revelations.
In the opening essay, “Dogma,” Spill talks about the difference between influence and imitation. He compares the army of dove manipulators who mindlessly imitated Channing Pollock, and are almost all forgotten to history, with the way Johnny Thompson was deeply influenced by Pollock but filtered that influence through his own personality and skills (along with Pam’s) to develop an act that was their own: Tomsoni & Company. It would be a shame to see folks using the material published here in a mindless paint-by-numbers imitation (though Spill explicitly gives you permission to). There are, however, rich possibilities here for being influenced and clear examples of making magic that is relatable, personality-driven, and more human. For those willing to do that work you will find fabulous seeds to nurture and examples to study. “
Nathan Coe Marsh
Overview
I’ve always cared passionately about taking pieces of the world around me and revealing their essence or how they look to me through my lens as a magician. Exposing truths through fakery is a tactic that audiences seem to love as much as I do. Since emerging as a human curiosity I’ve had what some would consider a fair measure of success with a noteworthy, abstruse, eventful career, that has spanned more than fifty years. Sparking audiences with surprise on theatrical, concert, casino, and nightclub stages as well as headlining my own decades-long running show in Santa Monica, California. HOLY SMOKE is my personal bible.
This 180 page hardcover bible includes useful creative-thinking tools, and an examination of the inventive techniques and thought processes employed throughout my career. Developing striking mysteries with presentations that audiences are drawn to, or are curious or care about, or that engage with fascinating or funny ideas, are what I always strive for.
When I face the inevitable obstacles — such as feeling I have no talent, or any burning driving passion, or I feel too old or too young or too jaded — I re-read and use what’s in my HOLY SMOKE bible to overcome these stumbling blocks. When my creativity is running low or there’s a feel or need for inspiration, reading any page at random gives me a boost. I promise when — not if — you see things in a new way and come up with your own special method or presentation, you will feel a swell of pride that’s absolutely precious and important to every performer.
Success as a magician has many ingredients: attitude, quality of material, work ethic. There’s even, I admit, a certain amount of luck involved (though successful people make their own luck by always working, always being prepared, and always being on the lookout for opportunity.).
Part one of HOLY SMOKE is called REFLECTIONS and it includes these important chapters:
DOGMA – the why and how to flesh out magic that puts across something imbued with conflict or intrigue or comedy or drama or humanity as part of the process.
GOSPEL – the ultimate guide to ideas, principles, and tactics that I believe are the most beneficial no matter who you are or what branch of magic you pursue or who you’re performing for.
UNITARIAN – all about creating the connective tissue that makes a show a show. What can be done when the content is good but there doesn’t seem to be a change, or cut, or substitution, or reordering, that can rid a show of feeling “abrupt,” or pasted together?
RESURRECTION – simply put, this is all about dealing with burnout. Breathing life back into that which periodically gets beaten down and some of the learnings from experience that have helped me accelerate the drive past negative occurrences. It’s not a simple matter of pumping yourself up with a motivational YouTube video, sometimes there’s more fundamental work to be done.
SERMONS – When sales jargon is woven into magic it can produce faith in products and services in the same way text from scripture can be a form of persuasion in religious ceremonies. To most the words “corporate spokesman” means “trade shows” but this lucrative slice of our craft is broader. This is a deep dive into the how and why and implementation of my three best-received and lucrative corporate outings – including exactly what I did and what happened before and after those presentations.
HOLY SMOKE also contains these twelve audience-tested scripted stand-up routines:
NAKED TRUTH – A unique piece of mentalism that’s a powerful routine with a quirky premise inspired by the late great comedy icon Mike Nichols. “It’s happened to all of us. You’ve seen things that were never intended to be seen. Quick example. As a teenager I saw my mother naked…” This mind reading escapade is like no other, with a procedure that appears absolutely fair. And it’s done without any electronics or tricky clipboards or pre-show work.
FRISBEE 360 – This is Bob Hummer’s Flying Card as it has never been seen before, because it is impossible to do his famous card trick with a Frisbee. But that’s what this is, and you do it blindfolded. The Frisbee flies 360 degrees around your body twice and a third time as you and the Frisbee spin in tandem. This is strong visual magic.
E-METER – “If someone came up to me on the street and challenged me to read their mind, I know I couldn’t do it. But I have a machine that can.” I am struck by how un-involving and lacking in eye-candy most mentalism can be. Not the case here. More than a mental revelation, the visual surprise impact finish is a cosmic whack that your volunteer participant will never forget.
GRAPES I ATE ANYWAY – “I accidentally dropped a grape in onion dip. I didn’t wipe it off because I like onion dip. I ate it, but it was not great.” If you ever wanted to do a routine about adapting to whatever comes your way using four grapes… this is it. Not a version of the Three Ball Trick. No table, no net, no volunteers, no multiple phases, no pop-up move, no “one goes in the pocket still three in the hand,” and no three balls. What is here is a streamlined chucklesome waggish sequence with a surprise finish in a routine designed for large groups.
SHRINKFLATION – As a fellow magician, I know you spend countless hours wrestling with this question: “How do I do a quirky poignant Diminishing Cards effect that’s a magical metaphor for how manufacturers give consumers less and less and less product and hope we don’t notice because they slap ‘Giant Size’ on the package?” I get it. I got it. Now it’s yours. I call it Shrinkflation.
GHOSTS – Based on the plot of Tommy Wonder’s modern classic “Ring, Watch, & Wallet,” this routine was originally developed to entertain the season 12 wrap party for a horror genre ghost-hunting Travel Channel TV show known as The Dead Files. This presentation romanticizes a crime committed by ghosts. Since I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a believer in the paranormal… this thing is a moral tradeoff of sorts. And while that fact haunts me slightly, I am still a redeemable character since the magic in question here is shared in the form of satirical parody.
CLASSIC CAT – Just because a trick is basic doesn’t mean you can’t un-basic it. And if a trick seems stale, it doesn’t mean your version can’t be fresh. One might say I have a singular sensibility. Taste comes into play when presenting a classic like the Rice Bowls and deciding how best to relate a narrative – this laugh out loud version is presented as a commercial for a new Self-Refilling Kitty Litter designed especially for well-hydrated cats.
