I really wanted to mix it up today, so I’m including this performance of Chef Anton from the School for Scoundrels, doing the School for Scoundrels “Jumbo Trade Show Shells”. I’ve mentioned before that I think Chef Anton is an underrated showman when it comes to scams and swindles, considering that he’s got vastly different presentations for things that are very similar in dynamic — compare this routine to both his three card monte routine and his fast and loose routine, and you’ll see that he knows how to come up with something way more nuanced than the usual default Performer-Repeatedly-Wins-Spectator-Repeatedly-Loses dynamic. This particular presentation has built into it a pitch for a trade show, but with just a little bit of imagination one could probably figure out a different way to end it.
Another thing I really like about this, is that it uses a lot of technique that isn’t usually involved in the usual shell game, and yet keeps much of the flavour. I think that’s a particularly noteworthy accomplishment on its own, but it also reminds us just how much can be gained by really studying the key principles at work in magic, and finding ways to extrapolate them to motifs that fit our performing personas better.
Now, this is a commercially available routine, so hopefully people will buy it rather than just rip off the presentation that Anton’s got going here. Not that I’d blame anybody for being tempted… I certainly was.
(Incidentally, I know that he and Whit Haydn have worked closely on designing other gambling-related routines for the School for Scoundrels, so some credit for the nature of this routine might rest with Haydn as well. Certainly the “primitive man” patter has been used by both. Just throwing that out there to avoid another Malone/rub-a-dub-dub fiasco. I’m waiting on a PM to confirm it.)
Update: I was able to get in touch with Whit Haydn, and he confirmed that this routine is a product of collaboration. He developed the method and the moves, and Chef put together the routine. He also mentioned that some of the patter is his, and that due to the teacher/student relationship that he and Anton have had, they’ve worked together on lots of routines, and various aspects are traded back and forth.
Update 2: Whit Haydn popped by the Magic Cafe thread and offered the following…
It is actually called The School for Scoundrels Jumbo Trade Show Shells.
This routine was created by Chef and myself in conjunction with Paul Gross of Hocus Pocus Magic. He had purchased a set of jumbo shells from Steve Conner, that were made for Steve by Frank Radtke (Fakini). Those shells were made of silicon-covered metal–much like his multiplying billiard ball shells–and did not really work well using sponge balls as a pea.
Steve had them made many years ago, and he showed them to me. I couldn’t find a method that worked for them. When Paul approached us to come up with a routine, Chef and I decided to start from scratch. We had our own design for the shells manufactured for us. I spent a year thinking about methods, and finally came up with a very practical and deceptive idea, and several really good moves. Chef put the routine together using patter from our regular shell routines.
The Golden Shells routine on our original DVD on the Shells (from which Bob Kohler took the name for his video–he used our Golden Shells in his performance) is a collaborative product of Chef and myself, as is Three-Card Gold, the three-card monte routine Chef demos on our monte DVD.
Chef’s Fast and Loose routine is also a collaborative effort, putting my original ideas from my routine published in the 70′s, along with the original moves for the chain that Chef and I came up with together in the 1990′s into a single routine.
Chef and I have been business partners since 1994.
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