Friday, April 22, 2011

Max Maven



It is April. In celebration of this blogs two year existence, the whole month will be winner time. Only the coolest and best members of our elite circle of nerds will be featured.

Today: Max Maven

If magic has one thing in abundance it is performers who have little to no characteristics that one from another. Max Maven is different. In the world of magic he is know under two names. Max Maven and Phil Goldstein. In the following video you won't see him do a lot of magic/mentalism, but it gives you a great little view into the character that he is.



As you can see he is an intellectual yet funny performer with a sense of cynical attitude.

Many have tried and failed.

But aside from that he is also a great contributer to the magic world. In both mentalism and magic. I can imagine doing both of the following as an encore piece to my close up magic set.



Seeing the last two bits makes me aware of his smart senses. Let me explain. Having seen him perform and having read some of his books I know that he is a great technician. Yet he decided not to use "extreme" sleight of hand to accomplish the two above pieces. It takes quite a bit of "guts" not to fall back to the reliable sleight of hand methodology but instead use a different route. This makes me appreciate him even more as I know that his stuff is well thought out and one can perform this with confidence and trust.

Max might have the same reason to publish magic as anybody, but I can trust his stuff. And that makes him a winner in my book.

2 comments:

The Smiling Mule said...

Another good choice in my book. One of the few "mentalists" out there with any credibility at all.

truthseekr said...

The challenge I have with this is that Max is known to the magic world, but not well known to the public, at least in the US, and success as a public performer is one litmus test of a "magic winner".