Is the magician Eric Walton ripping off Ricky Jay? It sure seems like it. But I don’t see where Jay can do anything but grumble and then move on. The danger with being an inspiration to other artists is, while they may want to follow in your footsteps, they may follow you too closely. That’s simply a side effect of success. Jay may be the magician most closely associated with the performance of historical magic, but others should be allowed to perform in that arena, too. I’d be a lot more sympathetic to Jay’s complaints if Walton was stealing his innovations.
Naturally, I can’t help but tie this back to puzzles. Should a puzzle constructor who creates a new crossword variant be the only one allowed to construct such puzzles? Is there anything preventing other people from making and selling Split Decisions puzzles, other than a courtesy to its creator? As I create and sell “Going Too Far” puzzles — a crossword variant invented by Mike Shenk — I guess it’s clear where I stand on this matter…
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I find Walton a little disingenuous…it’s true Ricky Jay didn’t originate many of the tricks in his act, but are there so few historical magic tricks of interest that Walton needs to use such recently (and prominently) used material? It seems disrespectful to the audience; I saw “On the Stem”, and I’d be a little annoyed to pay to see the same tricks again.
It looks like it’s also a matter of stealing the other person’s style and presentation, not just the content. (Compare cookbooks: a recipe can’t be copyrighted, but a particular presentation of it can be.)
Also, someone needed to think it through before referring to Teller as “the non-speaking half of Penn & Teller” and then quoting a lot of things he said. I mean, I know what it means, but it still reads oddly.
What I find interesting is that in the movie ‘The Aristocrats’, Penn Jillette, the other half of Penn and Teller, makes a big point of saying how it’s the singer, not the song and that the beauty of the aristocrats joke is that there are so many versions of it. I’d be curious to see if Teller feels the same way about the issue and if so, why the same thing shouldn’t apply to magic tricks. I didn’t get the impression that Mr. Walton was doing the same version of the trick that Mr. Jay was and having read this, http://cuvier.blogster.com, I’d say the routines sound like they’re pretty distinct. It might be said that Mr. Walton didn’t excercise the best judgement in presenting his version in the same city a few years later, but I don’t think he desrves the bad rap that The Times is giving him.