Growing up, I took a heavy interest in many creative disciplines. One of my favorites was the practice and performance of magic. Family and friends became unwitting test subjects, enduring many failed attempts of deception. Eventually, though, the deceptions began to succeed. One day, my mom entered the room and was startled to a scream when she found me levitating up off our coffee table. There was no turning back. At eleven, I began advertising and performing half-hour shows at parties and events, often riding up on a unicycle with my box of mysteries. Two years later, I auditioned and booked a performance on the popular game show Dialing For Dollars, where I was privileged to meet Harry Blackstone, Jr., and invited to assist him in his full-evening stage show. Continuing to perform into my teen years, magic eventually took a back seat to one of my other passions.
Stage Magic
to Movie Magic...
Time to Face the Music...
About the same time the magic bug bit me, I also fell in love with music. Like many kids, I spent years taking piano and guitar lessons, and joined choirs in school and church. At the encouragement of my middle-school music teacher, I auditioned and was accepted into the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, with a major in music and a minor in theater. Participating in numerous bands, musical groups and stage productions, I gained the skills and experience that got me accepted into Berklee College of Music in Boston. During that period, I also apprenticed as a piano technician, learning how to tune and rebuild pianos of all types. This became a terrific business skill, providing a good post-college opportunity to make my own living and allowing me freedom to perform. Relocating to Southern California, I set up shop and found time to revive my passion of magic. I joined the Hollywood Magic Castle as a performing member, developed several acts, and entered and won a few regional stage competitions. Magic became my full-time job throughout the eighties as I performed at nightclubs, corporate events, private parties, and created custom productions. I also developed and fabricated original illusions for other magicians. By 1990, my fabrication skills became a strong asset as the economy, and the live entertainment industry, slowed dramatically.
Lights, Camera, Action...
During my teens, I discovered photography and filmmaking. I found my parents’ 8mm multi-lens Brownie camera, and began making movies with my friends, editing them with razors, glue, and cellophane tape. Inspired by the Star Trek series and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, we made several of our own space “epics”, a few action films, and even played around with stop-motion animation. I built my own dark room and experimented with trick photography, creating a series of UFO fakes. During my three high school summers, I was extremely lucky to land a recurring job in the Medical Photography Department of the Texas Medical Center in Houston. There I learned professional film processing and custom printing, and handled many assignments for publications, teaching aids, and multi-media presentations. I photographed autopsies, open-heart surgeries, eye surgeries, face lifts, and created before/after composites of spinal corrections, rhinoplasties and more.
Hollywood Beckons...
With the economy slowing in 1990, I visited a few special effects shops around Hollywood and found that my skills applied well to the film industry. That excited me, and thus began the past twenty-three years of working on major feature films and television. I felt right at home inventing custom rigs, building miniatures, blowing them up, working with motion control, sculpting and molding props, developing electronics, crashing cars, flying people, and all sorts of the crazy stuff needed to fulfill the filmmakers’ creative visions. This led to opportunities to advance my knowledge, skills, and official certifications; and I never looked back. I still get calls to consult on magic matters and build illusions, and even handle a camera once in a while. And in the end, I feel extremely fortunate to have found something I love to do, work with really brilliant artists and craftspeople, and raise my beautiful family right here in Southern California.
Now, where did I put that unicycle....?
