Before magicians get to be on billboards and German super-models, they've got to pay their dues. But there are certainly more painful ways of doing it than performing as the pause in a topless showgirl production. Murray Sawchuk's patter and sleight of hand with compact discs have earned him that place. Read about him here now; it's quite possible he won't be returning our calls in a couple years.
Why CDs?
The way it started, way back in the day, I was taught in the business that if you wanted to be successful, you have to have a hook and you have to be different. Hence, that's the way I look with the hair, the way I dress, and also the type of magic I do. I'm known to do things with anything known as magical. And I've purposely made myself not look like a magician, because you see a magician, you think black hair slicked back, maybe goatee, black tuxedo. Nothing wrong with that, it's just for me, I realized, in the industry I really wanted to stand out.
You've just described Rick Thomas and Lance Burton.
Yeah, Rick Thomas or Lance Burton or any of those guys. And they're good friends of mine and I respect them and what they do works. But I realized—they're older than me, obviously—and they have certain markets cornered. So I looked at them, going, Well, if I'm going to try and get in the same markets as them—which is TV and live entertainment—what can I offer that's completely different? So, it's one of those things where I thought, Well, I'm going to need something. And then I was 15 or 17, I was working at the Hudson's Bay Co. in Canada, which is like a Sears here, and I was selling tapes and cameras in the electronics section, and CDs were just coming in. And I thought, You know what, I wonder if I can do something with CDs? So I took all those tricks that were classics—you know, magic tricks, like Lance does from the bird productions to making things appear in cages and stuff—and thought, What can I do with CDs? They're modern, they'll be around for awhile. So I started to basically do sleight of hand with all that stuff. Every classic trick I could do and then changed it to my own style.
So you were practicing while you were working?
Yeah, the real way it happened, I remember clear as day, I walked in and it was really a dead day—it was probably like a Wednesday night, you know 7 to 9 o'clock at night and nobody's shopping—and there was a couple of old CDs that people had returned, ones that were scratched, so I was playing around with it. And the way you hold a large coin in your hand—which is called palming—I tried that with a CD, and my hands are fairly big, and so I did one of the moves with one of the coworkers, you know, stand there for two seconds maybe four feet away, and I did something and basically the reaction was, "Where the hell did you put that?" And to me, I thought it was really obvious. But they thought it was amazing. I said, "You've got to be kidding me." And he said, "No, it was amazing." So after that, for the next three hours of work—thank God my boss wasn't there—I ended up writing down basically all different tricks with CDs. So I really realized that once you have a premise, you can do a lot with it.
Do you think the sleight-of-hand magic, as opposed to big, flashy illusions, limits you as to getting into Vegas?
Yeah, it limits you in a sense. Because when you do Vegas, you're performing for anywhere between 500 and 2,000 people. And you can have the big screens brought in, but you can only do big-screen stuff for so long because people didn't go there to watch TV, they came there to see you. So you do have to have the big things. Some people use the tigers and the boxes. My big things, I like to still make them different. One of my big illusions is where I have two funnels and I have a CD and I put it in between the two funnels and the trick is I actually go right through the middle of the CD. You actually see my body go through the V shapes. So I try to do the big things but more toward me. I try to have the magic happen to me vs. to the system.
Who would you say your idols are?
Back in the day, when I was growing up, I must have been 8 or 9, I guess, my idol was David Copperfield vanishing the Statue of Liberty. Because he was the only magician in my era who was on TV.
Have you had a chance to meet him?
Yeah, I met him when I was a lot younger, 14 or 15. And then I met him again when I was 18 or 19. And then just recently, I got the tour of his warehouse over in Vegas there, with him and Chris Kenner, his partner, and it was such an honor because a very good friend of mine—his name is Jack Kodell—and he's in his early 70s and he was the first magician to ever perform in Las Vegas, at the Thunderbird. We became good friends when I lived in Orlando, and he happened to be in Vegas and said let's go check out Copperfield's warehouse; he invited me and him. But when I walked in there, it was great, because I was with David Copperfield, Jack Kodell—and Jack Kodell also is known as the first magician to ever work with birds—and Channing Pollack, which is another magician who was famous—he worked with Prince Ranier, he got flown over to do Princess Stephanie's birthday party—so it was neat, me sitting there with David Copperfield, Channing Pollack and Jack Kodell, and here I am, a young kid going, "What the hell am I doing here?"