The other day I was watching Harry Anderson’s “Hello, Sucker!” on YouTube, and around the 7 minute mark he did a great routine where he borrowed $5 each from two gentlemen in the audience, ripped them both in half, gave one half back, and then lit the halves he had on fire, and so on and so on. Long story short, at the end of the routine, he revealed that the restored bills were transported into a sealed pack of Camel cigarettes that he handed to a female spectator prior to taking the money in the first place.
All of this is to ask, is this just a variation of Chapstick Caper from Mark Wilson’s Complete Course in Magic? Obviously, Harry adds a ton of his own flourishes to make it his own but a lot of the basic principles seem to be there:
- The sealed pack of cigarettes stand in for the chapstick tube
- The torn bills
- Comparing the serial numbers at the end
- There’s even a part where, when he seemingly messes up the trick with the $5, Anderson asks for a twenty and says that he “hardly ever [screws] it up with a twenty.” Wilson suggests this very joke at this moment in his version of the trick (sans the profanity).
For those of you familiar with the routine, am I onto something? I feel like this might be a “duh” moment but since I’ve only been studying magic for a few months now it’s exciting to me to think that I might have been able to dissect a routine from one of the greats that I’ve always admired.
If you’re not familiar with the routine, check it out! The whole special is really funny.
All of this is to ask, is this just a variation of Chapstick Caper from Mark Wilson’s Complete Course in Magic? Obviously, Harry adds a ton of his own flourishes to make it his own but a lot of the basic principles seem to be there:
- The sealed pack of cigarettes stand in for the chapstick tube
- The torn bills
- Comparing the serial numbers at the end
- There’s even a part where, when he seemingly messes up the trick with the $5, Anderson asks for a twenty and says that he “hardly ever [screws] it up with a twenty.” Wilson suggests this very joke at this moment in his version of the trick (sans the profanity).
For those of you familiar with the routine, am I onto something? I feel like this might be a “duh” moment but since I’ve only been studying magic for a few months now it’s exciting to me to think that I might have been able to dissect a routine from one of the greats that I’ve always admired.
If you’re not familiar with the routine, check it out! The whole special is really funny.