Abacadbra: A Conversation with Misty Lee

Now I’m going to have to admit it.  When it comes to magic acts I watch through the eyes of a skeptic.  I suppose a big part of it is because of the disappointing experience I had when my mother brought me to see my first live magic show as a child.  On that bright summer afternoon, from an outdoor stage, the magician was going to miraculously saw a woman in half.  Now I was pretty excited to see this because, being a popular clique that I had seen a hundred times on television, I couldn’t believe I was going to see it in real life.  Man!  How exciting!  How thrilling!  How lucky of a kid was I!  Well Blackstone this guy was not.  I’m not sure if the trick went wrong, or if the magician on stage was just a poor performer, but although I was only eight years old, I was totally able to see how the magician had done the trick.  Now that never stopped me from loving magical characters in films or fiction, or from watching magic shows and specials on TV, but that afternoon I learnt that magic wasn’t real, and that it was all nothing more then an illusion.

Too bad that my mother didn’t bring me to see the beautiful and talented Los Angeles based magician Misty Lee.  On the morning that I was to interview Misty, and her husband Paul Dini, about their internet film series Monkey Talk, in which Misty provides the voice and attitude for the mischievous and slightly psychotic Rashy the sock monkey, I did a YouTube search for Misty’s magic act in curiosity to see with my own eyes the magical feats that I have often read about.  I immediately liked Misty Lee.  First of all she looked like Zatanna, who, after only the Black Canary, is my all time favorite superhero.  How could I not like her immediately?  I also was taken by the amount of zeal that she displayed when she described the illusion that she was about to perform on the little morning show sound stage.  However, despite all of this, as I sipped my morning tea, I still watched her performance with a certain amount of cynicism in my heart. Misty put a beautiful blonde girl in a box, slide a large piece of metal through the middle and then some tubes through the bottom and middle of the box.  Well, I had it all figured out.  I knew where that girl went.  She was hiding underneath in a collapsible tube or something…but suddenly Misty was pulling that box apart, and there was a waving hand, and I realized that there was no way that the pretty blonde girl was stuffed in some collapsible tube!  I was totally stumped.  All I could think was that if I had seen Misty do that when I was a kid, I might still believe that people could really make a beautiful girl in a box disappear!

So to say the least, when I was on the phone with Misty Lee later that evening I was just dying to ask Misty how she had pulled that trick off.  However, I had to be professional.  We were there to talk about Monkey Talk after all.  Well, when Paul was called away for a few minutes and Misty and I were left alone holding the phone,  I had my chance!  Before you knew it, our small talk turned into a separate interview about Misty’s magic career in itself!  Now I’ll be the first to admit that I know very little about the magic business.  I mean, I’ve talked to actors, musicians, directors, writers, artists and comic book creators, but this was the first time in my life that I had ever spoken to a magician.  So join me in a PCA first as:

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PRESENTS

ABACADABRA:

A CONVERSATION WITH MISTY LEE

I spoke to Misty Lee at her Burbank office via telephone in December 2007,

Sam Tweedle:  So I was on YouTube today Misty, and I found this clip of you doing a magic act on some FOX TV morning talk show, and you put this girl in a box, and threw some sheets of metal in it, and I sort of thought I had the whole trick figured out.  But then you pulled the whole box apart and her hand was still waving and I couldn’t figure out how in the world you did it!  So…how’d you do it?

Misty Lee:  Magic, baby!

Sam:  Okay…so…that’s all you’re gonna tell me….huh?

Misty:  Hmm hmm.

Sam:  Okay!  Cool….

Misty:  You know, there are three kinds of people that usually come to a magic show:  One, you have people who genuinely love magic and don’t WANT to know how it’s done because they love that ‘suspension of disbelief’ thing.  Two, you have skeptics who either a/ want to see you fail, or b/ who think, even if they’re wrong, that they know how you did everything. And finally you have the third type, which is what I am, and what I’d wager YOU are: people who LOVE to know how tricks are done because the cleverness behind them is impressive, and knowing the method enhances your appreciation for the art.  Every once in a while, I’ll share the way a trick works with an ‘appreciative gotta-know’, which is what I call people like us, because I know that not only is the secret safe, but the next time you see that particular trick, your respect for it will only increase.  I am VERY selective about whom I’ll share with, and there’s a magicians’ code that prevents me from sharing EVERYTHING – and I NEVER expose other people’s methods and routines – but if you REALLY have to know, you can always find out.  Just dig around.

Misty Lee as reimagined by animators David Alvarez and Stephanie Gladden

Sam:  Now when I was a little kid I saw David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear on TV and I remember at the time thinking “Wow…whatever” and I just moved on and didn’t think about it again because I knew that it was an illusion and it wasn’t real.  Then, about fifteen or twenty years later, I’m in university and working a night shift at a corner store and my mind was wandering and, out of the blue, I remembered that TV special and suddenly it really started to fascinate me because I couldn’t figure out how the heck he did that!  It was like a twenty year reactionary delay.  Soooo….do you know how he did that?

Misty:  Do I know how *actually* did the Statue of Liberty disappearance?  No, but I can think of five or six ways that it *could* be done.   Usually things are much simpler than you think, because a magician wants the trick to WORK.  The less potential for error or disaster, the better.  A friend of mine called me once and said “I know how Copperfield did the Statue thing – he used a camouflaging radar screen.”  I said, “You have GOT to be kidding me!”  I teased him a little, but honestly, I don’t know for sure that he was wrong.  That’s just SO complex, though – imagine the technology that would take!  There are thousands of uses for a cloaking device, and unfortunately magic would probably fall far below ‘military tactic’ and ‘crime’ on that list.   It’s so funny when people come up with these weird technological devices when explaining our methodology – you’d think magicians are the driving force behind all scientific discoveries.  They’ll say “Well there’s a machine in the box that zapped her into the third row and then she got up in that certain part of the music, turned on a magnet and ran back to the…” and it’s like, no.

Sam:  How long have you been doing magic professionally?

Misty:  Since 2001, so about six years.

Sam:  Are there a lot of women in the magic business?

Misty:  Not really.  More and more are surfacing, but right now there are very few.  Some say there are few girls in magic because we’re treated poorly, but personally I’ve had very few problems.  I’ve been lucky  - I’ve dealt with, and studied with, VERY successful people, and it seems to me the more successful the performer, the less they have to hide, and the less they feel it necessary to make you feel bad about yourself or what you do.   That’s true in many arenas, though – the more comfortable someone is in his or her own skin, the more they have to offer, and the more comfortable YOU feel while around them – you can actually connect and share as human beings.  The pressure of trying to impress one another evaporates, because a mutual respect already exists.  “No need for a pissing contest amongst good folk,” you know?  Man, I wish I knew who to contribute that quote to.  It’s crude, but it is very, very true.

Sam:  So how did you first get into magic?

Misty:  I started as the girl inside the box, and then decided I didn’t want that job – so I took the magician’s.

Sam:  Were you working with somebody I would have ever heard of.

Misty:  Perhaps, but I’m not telling who it was.

.Sam:  So how does one become “the girl inside the box?”

Misty:  It’s different for everyone.  I happened to go to high school with someone who became a magician, and did some theater with him.  Years later, he called up and said he needed a magic assistant.  I said, “I’m not interested.” He said, “It pays $500 a show,” and I said “I’m listening.”   That sounds kind of rotten and superficial.  I got INTO it for the money, but I continued because I fell in love with it.   You have to love magic, or you’ll never be good at it.

Sam:  Well that doesn’t make you sound like a superficial person.  I mean, if I could make $500 dollars a night by stuffing myself into a box I’d totally do it!

Misty:  Good point.

Sam:    So when you decided you wanted to be the magician, instead of the girl in the box, did you just steal all of his material or something? 

Misty:  No WAY.  I wouldn’t, and I couldn’t have even if I wanted to.  Our brand of entertainment and our artistic voices on stage are completely different.  All of the material I do is either totally original, or revamped with permission and modified to suit my personality.  My personality is such a big part of what I do now, that someone else’s stuff would stand out and look weird.  Our vaudeville show is a great example of this:  sure, I play Chaplin in a vignette on stage, but it’s Misty acting like Chaplin, doing a sketch that MISTY wrote – not just a rehashing of one of his movies.   I’m really proud of the new show.  It’s so fun!

Sam:  So when and where is your vaudeville show going to be running?

Fellow female magician Mystina

Misty:  We just finished it. and are JUST starting to sell it.  I’m working with some amazing people, including a magician named Mystina, She is FANTASIC.  It’s great working with someone who understands the concepts and principles of magic on her own, and stays true to both those AND my personal vision.  I’ve learned a lot from her – she’s extraordinarily talented.  The whole cast is just superb – I’m lucky to be surrounded by such great people.

Sam:  So, besides your vaudeville show, what else are you working on at the moment?

Misty:  Oh, geez.  So much!  There’s a lot of stuff going on over here for me.  I’ve been studying improv comedy at the Second City in Los Angeles, am working on developing a show for the web, and have recently obtained the California rights to produce a live show called Night of the Living Dead: The Musical.

Sam:  Wow!  Here in Canada we have Evil Dead: The Musical and it went to New York and did a small run on Broadway, and then came back to Toronto and has been wildly successful!  It even won Toronto’s “Best Musical” theatre award as a write in!  So what is Night of the Living Dead: The Musical all about?

Misty:  It’s basically a farce of the movie!  It’s ridiculous.  It’s just campy, bloody fun and I’m really excited to put it on.

Sam:  Well that’s fantastic.  Well I’m going to be in LA in July, so if it’s running then I’ll make sure that I’ll go.  I’ll even buy a mug and a T-shirt.

Misty:  Okay!

To say that talking with Misty was “truly magical” would be an absolutely terrible clique and I should be ashamed to use it.  However, that clique wouldn’t be to far from the truth.  I found Misty Lee to be a wonderfully open and funny woman who not only made me laugh more in an interview then I have ever laughed before (you never know what to expect when she’s playing Rashy the monkey, and the banter between her and Paul Dini is priceless) but who seemed to be as interested in me as I was in her.  She asked me probably as many questions as I asked her and Paul!  To say the least, she’s become one of my favorite individuals that I have been able to feature at Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict and someone I hope that I’ll be lucky enough to meet in person one day.  Hopefully in the year to come we’ll see and hear much more from this talented and wonderful magician!  Make sure to check out Misty’s website at www.mistylee.com for information of her upcoming appearances and shows.  Believe me.  She’s a lot better then that guy my Mom brought me to see as a kid.  She’ll make you believe that magic is far more then just an illusion.

POP CULTURE ADDICT BONUS

Wanna experience the magic of Misty Lee for yourself?  Via our friends at YouTube, enjoy these clips of Misty at work.

The original clip of Misty on FOX TV.  Misty stuffs a girl in a box, and damned if I can figure out where the heck she went.  Be ready to be amazed.  If you can figure out how she did this then, brother, your a smarter man then I am.

Animated hijinks at the Dini household with Misty and Little Rashy the sock monkey, both voiced by Misty herself.