talkmagic.co.uk

Ok, so there is a thread or two about crowd control but I couldnt see any specifically listing peoples favorite replies to those oh so common hecklers. Crowd control is one thing, but I see this as more specific. If I am wrong, I shall accept my mod slapping with dignity. Then again, maybe this post will prove its use and I will get a sticky out of it.

Sometimes if I'm honest I quite enjoy having the odd rowdy crowd member as long as they do not outnumber the more genuine people who will give respect to someone as they realise we are often entertaining them for free. At least from their point of view.

I think it keeps you on your toes and as long as not too offensive, gives a chance to expand your patter into something more free flowing rather than appearing scripted, even if it is mainly so. This is something that is commented on about my magic quite often. No self trumpet blowing, but I do like my style of delivery and so, it would seem, do others. Even many who claim to dislike magic.

Maybe this thread will die without a trace, or maybe it will become a large list of responses from different magicians using a variety of styles in how they deal with heckles.

Allow me to start the ball on a hopefully long and meandering roll.

For the most common heckle, I have a 5 point scale dependant on my own performance and the effect itself.

Heckler "How did you do that?"

me 1 "quite well"
2 "pretty well"
3 "very well"
4 "f****ing well
5 "very f****ing well"

You have to love this response. Accomanied by the mother of all grins this more often than not puts them off straight away and gets a good laugh, incedentally creating an offbeat to prepare either next trick or reset the one they just saw that you know they wont shut up about until you do show them again (if repeatable obviously). If they insist on you showing them how a trick is done, offer to show them how to do another, "better" trick that is in fact one of those gems where they believe they are learning to perform a trick but are in fact an unwitting helper to the main effect (e.g "the spectators card trick" RRTCM).

Oh, and one more that came out of nowhere recently. one guy was burning the living daylights out of my hands and ALMOST managed to see something he shouldnt no matter how I tried to put him off the scent. He thought he had sussed it......

Him "you're c*** (not the best)"
me "yeah, but you're ugly and I can go home and practise, what you gonna do?
que, the very same cheesy grin!
Even he was in hysterics and took it easy on me after that!

Being too rude can turn the rest of the people against you very easily and I've seen mention before of not wanting to give the heckler what he wants, the rest of the audience on his side. It's a fine line I guess. One of the best retorts I saw was from Mike Reid a few years ago. Albeit a comedy show, this guy had been hollering a couple of times and ignored up until.....

"you ain't got the hang of this heckling lark yet have ya mate? you see, you're supposed to make ME look like a pr**k!"

You can't get much more direct than that!
Pure class in my opinion
Not had the chance to air it myself yet, but I can't wait for the situation to present itself


Anyone else want to add to this?
"I just punch 'em in the chops" or "A quick knee in the knackers" isn't really what I am looking for here; while effective and stops them in their tracks, your chances of continuing with the performance dwindle drastically. (N.B. to our american cousins, chops = gob = mouth )
One liners, or even paths to go down if it's all going wrong due to one unruly spectator could help others no matter what levels their skills are as I believe we are all still learning when it comes to the most volatile ingredient in any effect....the audience, whoever they may be.

Have fun, enjoy the sun and if they look lonely, show a trick to the bum......
they will remember it more than the can of beer they may buy with your change. Unless you heal it and seal it. Don't do this alone or where it is quiet!

A very nice and well thought out post Monkey,

I like to answer the question like this:-
"Q: how did you do that"
"A: magic"

Or do a trick on the mouthy spectator like "Poker players picnic" (rrtcm) and at the end say! "how did you do that?" it makes them look a bit small infront of other spectators without being too harsh.

it works for me!

Thanks leighton, both comments and suggestions.

I like the magic response and do use it. Gets a groan, but a giggle too with the right grin

As for turning the tables with "how did YOU do that?" nice one, love it!

Just the kind of thing I was looking for

any other gems out there?

Hmmm. I dont usually use put downs anymore, and most of the time if someoen says "how did you do that?" it's because they're shocked. Not curious. So I normally laugh a bit and move into something else.

If I get someone who insists on being a pain whilst I'm performing for other people though, I normally do a trick on them. The trick being A Design For Laughter from RRTCM
Nothing is more satisfying than hearing them say "haha! You got it wrong!" and then proving that I got it right after all...

Alternatively, I do OOTW and really intensify them as the magician of the situation. Then afterwards I say "Here. Aren't you glad nobody was mouthing off whilst you performed for us?"

good to see someone else as big a fan of design for laughter as I am, noticed you mention it a couple of times now. Not always good if they are getting grabby though
"but it's th...."
"no it isn't"

I wasn't so much talking about direct put downs, just ways of diffusing what can potentially be very embarrassing situations.

It's so easy just to think, look I'm trying to show you something cool that may make you laugh and you don't have to pay for it, why the hell are you giving me a hard time?

I don't know what's worse sometimes, constant calls for how you did that, or that smart a** who knows(?) how you did that.
If I have a trick I'm practising and I notice a stage of it that may run the risk of the odd flash or tell, I do try to work my patter around that, having little things I can chuck in to put them off the scent.
One I'm playing with at the moment has something shiny I do not want them to see. If someone thinks they have spotted it, as I usually hold secret item in same hand as I wear a ring, I just show palm up and say na, just the back of my ring there. heh heh, even that gets a laugh from certain people.

lol
yesterday I was at a party (a lame one) so I though I will show them a trick to brake the ice
so I showed sinfull
they loved it
someone asked me how do you do it
so I was like
you take the coin and put it on the palm of the hand
then you slam it with the can
if its in then great
if not then your not a magician

My favourite response:

Audience: "how did you do that?"
Magician: "I am not allowed to tell but... can you keep a secret?"
Audience: "Yeah..."
Magician: "... So can I"

Some of the responses here are somewhat horrific. No wonder magic is sometimes not accepted as the art that it should be.

Dearie me. Dearie me. I am afraid that some of the posters here will really have to improve themselves.

When I have recovered sufficiently I may comment upon the matter. On the other hand I may not. I am in too much of a state of shock.

yeah, right.
Anywayz, on to the topic ... what do you answer to : "Do that again !" ? It's much more frequent where I live .

My experience of mucking about in a pub the otherday might be useful.

I used a f***ing m****x to revealed a barmaid's home phone number. She simply stared across the bar at me gobsmacked and smiling as if to say, "You look like fun, you cheeky monkey" - a lovely, complex reaction. I just kept quiet and grinned back, because I like those calm, "shared secret" revelation moments. Best of all, when she did tell them what was written, the others were asking her how I did it!

Then a random pub genius (favourite stool, keys, wallet, change and phone on the bar, England top, Lager belly, stupid pointy haircut, you know the sort) decided that it was all a fix and that he knew it was all a fix and that he was going to tell everyone it was all a fix. So everyone looked at me. Thanks for barking me up, Mr Heckler.

The attention was useful, though. I slowly and deliberately started feeding a deck from hand to hand, and asked the barmaid to just say stop whenever she wanted. In other words I just cut the heckler out but used the attention he'd placed on me. The spectators had to keep watching too, or they'd never get the next punchline because I was speaking a little too quiety and they were voyeurs on a private moment. What's he doing now? Why hasn't he come back with a put down? What's he asked her to do now?

A couple of minutes later, I was holding hands with her and staring into her eyes, attempting to divine which card was hers from the few we'd pulled at random from the middle and placed between our palms.

The hecker tried again. It's all a fix, you know.

Her eyes never wavered so I quietly asked her which card she thought was hers. It was only one out (it was the next to botom, she said two up), so I agreed that it felt like that one to me too. We looked through the cards together, with the other onlookers interested in what was going on. Even the hecker seemed to realise he might miss out on what he was debunking. The near miss was taken as a hit by the others - not by me either. She'd named the position after all.

To lighten it all up a bit, I finished with jumping matches, using some from a box behind the bar. The hecker didn't bother shouting out this time. In fact he was suspiciously quiet and started reading his newspaper. I let several people have a go at balancing the jumping match, even letting them select their own box and matches, and they all got a weird fright out of the jump. They grin like fools when it launches itself inexplicably at them. Lovely.

If I was confident enough in my new book test, I might have tried asking if the barmaid would ask the hecker if she could borrow his newspaper - just to add insult to injury.

The point of the point is, I think, that if I'd have engaged the hecker directly, I'd have wasted the opportunity to explain to him by example that he really didn't register on my radar and might as well go f**k himself... in the nicest posible way, of course. I think he got the message. After all, what was he expecting, a punch in the mouth? Possibly, but not a punch in the mind...

Mydas wrote:Anywayz, on to the topic ... what do you answer to : "Do that again !" ? It's much more frequent where I live .

Well, I'm beginning to see the point in saying very little and just deflecting attention back to the revelation before moving into the next trick. I like to try "experiments" rather than present sure fire things, which makes it easier to handle this and to handle failure:

Spec: How did you do that?!
Me: Did it work? Can I see?
Spec: Yes! Seriously, how did you do that?
Me [grinning]: It worked? Wow! That's great.
Spec: Yes, but what did you do? Is it a trick?
Me: It's an experiment. [to another spec] Did you see what just happened? [to first spec] Tell him what just happened.

Etc. You're just as interested in the outcome of the experiment as they are. Geller does it, Brown does it, Blaine does it, - hell, Randi even does it - so why not?

"How do you do that?"

"Magic."

It's the only answer you ever need surely!?

This is one of those things that depends on your style and individuality, personally I use whatever springs to mind at the time...

For example, what worked for Tomo in the barmaid example, might simply infuriate the beer bellied protagonist further if done by someone else (or if the barmaid happens to be their girlfriend). As might any smart-arse comeback you might normally trot out. It's all about the situation at the time and your skill and character as an entertainer.

I think there was a very similar thread to this a month or two back, in fact I seem to remember Rev Lewis had some constructive things to say on the subject!

Flash wrote:For example, what worked for Tomo in the barmaid example, might simply infuriate the beer bellied protagonist further if done by someone else (or if the barmaid happens to be their girlfriend). As might any smart-arse comeback you might normally trot out. It's all about the situation at the time and your skill and character as an entertainer.

Yup. This was just what I did in that situation. In another, I'd react differently. Maybe listen to what he has to say seriously to build rapport, and then do Allerchrist with him so that he can control the values of the face cards and exert control over randomising the coincidences, which will still lead to his card. I could do Poker Faces to let him think he's got a genuine chance of beating me at my own game on his turf and thereby proving his point, but either way he's going to be shutting up with the heckling already!

If i show a spectator a trick and they say 'Do that again!', i have two responses that i use.

The first is:
Me: Do what again?
Spec: That trick where you <effect description here!>
Me: I cant do that, its impossible, how did you do it?

The second is:
Me: Well all good magicians never show a trick twice, so, naturally, im going to show you that one once more! (and proceed to do a different trick!)

If they say 'How did you do that' i tend to just say 'i dont know, i wasn't watching. Iy must have been magic!'