Fake Genius by Steve Cook

Hi, my name is Steve Faulkner. This is Real Magic Review, and this is Fake Genius by Steve Cook. But first of all, can you please like, subscribe, hit the notifications button because we're doing more live stuff, and sometimes when I can't make it or I have to change the times, that's where you'll find out. Also, do follow me on Instagram, I'm at realmagicreview, where you'll see some behind-the-scenes stuff, but you'll also see there whether I have to change anything for the live shows. So make sure you do all that, and go and check out cardmagiccourse.com. I'm currently recording the Royal Road to Card Magic Course, which I'm going to be drip feeding onto the course over the next months, and maybe even years. So, and plus 200 plus other videos. I'm not gonna say the word plus again, because it's getting repetitive. Steve Cook. I didn't know much about Steve Cook, I'm ashamed to say, because he kind of falls under the banner of mentalism, but it's not just mentalism, there is magic in this book as well. And it was, he creates tricks that I didn't think I was interested in, but this whole journey of doing this review show is really opening me up to lots of different contexts, lots of different tricks, and not just looking for that worker that works, you know, at the gig, that you, where they're playing, you know, I nearly said S Club 7. Oh god, I'm 46. You know, where they're playing Justin Bieber, or someone terribly modern, really loudly, and you've got to do something quick. So you know what I mean. So this has been a real journey for me. I, I'm gonna be honest, I read this book through the first time, and I was a little bit like, I don't know, I don't know. Then I've read it through, and taken some of the tricks out of Steve's, and now I'm starting to go, hang on, this is working, and I didn't think it would. Why is this working? So I'm, it's really interesting. So I'll review the book. I'm also going to talk a little bit about the effects that I've also played with. I'm going to create some separate videos with some performances on, so please look at that. It just means that this doesn't run too long. It'll probably run too long anyway, but you know what I mean. So first of all, I went through Magic Enterprises, my local magic shop, lovely place. If you're ever in Sheffield, you have to come down to Magic Enterprises on a Saturday. I think Russell had something to do with the proofreading and the, the edit of the book, and he gave me a copy of this. I didn't buy it when it came out, because to be totally honest, I'm not a mentalist. It's £95, probably not my sort of thing, didn't really look at it. Then I got a review copy, which is quite handy. Before this, this came out sort of last year, Steve had written this, this book Legend, this tribute to Ken Brook, and that was 12 years ago, and it took it out of him a little bit, I think. He says he didn't want to write another book out of it after that. So this, this book was a long time coming, and this is kind of seen as, this is it now. I think that's all, all his main work in his life is material. So latest versions of the trick stick, if you know his stuff, you would have heard of in the past. And before that, 25 years ago, is this point blank book, which again, people talked about as being quite original, quite quirky, quite unique. So he's got, he's got a lot of love. And the first part of this book is a big loving, it's kind of like Steve thanking the people that have really supported him, like Ian Baradale, Anthony Owen, who, who was a big fan, Gary Jones, who, who's been again, Gary Jones writes the foreword, Ian Baradale writes his profile. So there's all, everybody thanking each other, and it's all brilliant. It's all very, very nice. And there's also some words about what to expect from the book. Now, one of them is that you are going to expect to have to invest a bit of time in these effects, not just in the practice, but in getting the stuff for them. Most of the effects in this book require you to go out and buy a prop, and we will talk about that, or, or, or make a prop. We'll talk about that at the end in the And those good and bad points are, by the way, are going to be very, very subjective. It totally depends who you are, and it totally depends on your context. And my opinion is, of course, very flawed. Effects wise, I'm going to have to have cuts in it because I find it, I'm not going to talk about all of them. I'm trying to avoid going through every single one, because we will be here for like a week. There's a lot of stuff in here and there's a lot of variety, which I was surprised at. There are a couple of really nice coin routines. There's, there's one called shell and shuttle, which you may be able to work out what that requires. But it's a nice, you get, you get a Gossman purse, you get three coins out of it. They vanish one at a time and appear one at a time in the purse, which I really liked. Had a slightly different feel to it, but uses some standard moves, but in a slightly different way than you'd think. And, and I started playing with that straight away. The other really nice sandwich effect, which is instant. I can't remember what it's called, but it doesn't matter. Well, of course it does matter, but lightning, that's it, lightning. There's a card and elastic band routine, which we've seen some of them before, but this is again, really, really nice where the elastic band and the card ends up in a box, if I remember rightly. So the few standard ish things, but with a different twist on them. But a majority of the book has a mentalism feel to it. There's this, I think it's foretold where you get four different colored coins and they end up in one of them that they predict ends up in a stack. Someone ends up in a situation where it seems to be totally hands off, which it is really totally hands off. There's a lot of that going on here. There's a lot of, he's thought of ways to make routines totally hands off, but maybe as magicians, we would see as not playing strongly, but I've discovered actually do maybe because of that. But again, something for discussion. I love the fact that a book like this brings up so much to discuss. And that's what I want you to get involved in on the light, you know, ask questions on the live shows, et cetera. The influence is a free will, if you know, free will. And I've got a whole book to review on free will by Mark Chando. And I'm so sorry, Mark, I'm going to do it, but these things take time. Like I said, I've read this book twice now and I ain't a quick reader. So free will, this is really clever. Free cards, blank cards, face down because there's something on one side of them mixed up by a spectator. He chooses completely freely where to put that one, not one out of three destinations, where to put them. And you turn them over and it says on the card where they are. So it's an ID case, I think ID case pocket and somewhere else. I'm so sorry. But it's really strong. If you read it, it reads strong. You know, it's going to play. Again, it's just directness. It's directness of effect, but maybe not directness of method. And that's why I think people love Steve Cook, because he's got these really clever, devious ways of thinking about stuff that create a very, very straightforward effect for the spectator. Two others that I want to talk about, and there are way more than this, and they're all of a pretty similar standard. Actually, three others. One of them is dated destination, which I really like because it uses a peak wallet. And I'm sure you won't mind me saying that. I mean, I've done a whole review on peak wallet before, but a peak wallet in a way that isn't like when I do a peak wallet, I sort of do what I need to do. And then pretty soon after that, I do the effect. But this uses the big timeless direction thing, and you wouldn't be on a backtrack when it's used. So the other two I want to talk about are diabolical and ESP special. And the reason that is that diabolical is a and that, by the way, loads of versions of these tricks are released as separate products with Alexan came out and all that sort of thing, and Magic Wagon. But like I said, there are versions of this. So diabolical is one of them. And diabolical is a trick that I've actually taken out and performed a few times. When I read it, I was reading it going, nah, that's not going to play. Nobody's going to go for that. Everybody goes for it. And I've been really pleasantly surprised at how strong this is played. The same with Symbol. Now Symbol is, so I'm using the Alakazam marketed diabolical, because you can't, you read, oh sorry, just dropped it. You read the, a lot of this stuff, and you have to go and get certain things, which we'll talk about in a bit, and or you could just buy it. And sometimes I think, you know, I just want a nice box. I want it to all be set out. I know it's lazy of me, but time is of the essence. And diabolical is really nicely printed up in the box. Again, I'm not affiliated. And Symbol is similar to, it's different, a different way of doing it, but a one out of five ESP prediction. Now when I first saw this, I was impressed. I remember being impressed when I saw it. And then when I read it and learned it, I was like, oh, it's not impressive. It's only a one out of five thing. We'll move on because of that to the pros and cons, or depending on who you are, the pros and cons of this stuff. A Symbol is a one out of five prediction. There's quite a lot of that going on here. When you read it as a magician, you, it's so easy to go, well, it's one out of five. We start taking it apart straight away. Don't we forget that there is this, there is an experience of this. The first thing is that if you're doing a magic trick, most people, if you sell it as in I've made a prediction, they know you're not going to sell it that much unless you know, unless you know what the prediction is that, you know, they know you're not going to chance it. They know, even if it's one in five, I'm going to make the prediction. And at the end, I'm going to turn it over and might look like an idiot. They know that if you get that prediction out and you predict it, that's an impressive thing. I think we have to remember that. There is also this idea of how you perform these tricks. It's really important that you think about things like timing, maybe scripting, just about what you say, when you say it, how you, how you sell the effect at the end. There are, I've had to really think about this. There are a couple of times I've done things like diabolical and it's gone down. All right. And then I've changed one little thing and people have really gone for it. And that's why I'm getting excited about this kind of thing, because it's making me think about my magic in a different way. I'm a big move monkey. And when you do big moves, sometimes as long as you can palm a card really well, color card really well, the miracle happens. And you have to feel, think a little bit less about that kind of stuff. This is stuff that plays very basically in a good way, simply for the audience, but to make it play strong, you've got to know what to emphasize at what point. And it doesn't mean that if you don't do that, it plays really weak. It just means that will enhance the effect. And the big thing I've got out of this is the second time I started reading this book, I started seeing the good stuff in it. I had the first time I was like, Oh damn, I was like, the second time when I started actually doing it, I'm starting to go now that I'm starting to get why people like it now. So I'm going to go through this criteria. Steve has some criteria. He, he, as in the beginning of the book, he talks about that has the effect has to fulfill before he releases it. So I thought I'd use that as a kind of, has he achieved that with this book? It has to be simple to perform. This is number one and simple for an audience to understand. Absolutely. That's the point of it. Simple to perform, easy for the audience to understand, not necessarily simple in construction. And this is a good point to talk about the, probably the main issue people are going to have with this book is that most effects you need to go out, buy or make or find or resource some props. A lot of it as things like the, the ID case he talks about that you can get from prop dog, which are in the JOL wallets. He, I mean, you can use any ID case, but he, you know, you may have to get one of them. They're not over expensive. Most of the stuff isn't expensive. Um, a little bit of printing you might want to do if you want to make it look good. There's very little here that you can do straight out of the box. All right. Even though it's not in a box, but you know what I mean? Unless you're going to buy the products, which I think actually, you know, if money isn't as a problem, uh, you might want to do so. Um, you know, you, you, you, I'm not going to get into the, what you get with the products. I'm not sending them at the moment, but I might do separate reviews. Um, so just know that if you get this and get home, you're going to have to, he, he talks about in, in this, that he loves that process. That's to him. That's part of it. And he's very aware of it. He's very, he acknowledges the fact that, you know, he loves getting an effect and going out and finding little boxes and finding the wallets and the things that will allow this trick to happen. If you love doing that. And some of you do, and I know I love that process. I just ain't got time to do it very much. Um, you're going to get a lot out of this. You're not going to have to spend loads, but I will say, you know, the first trick in this, the Houdini one is going to require an investment. There's also a trick in here that uses two, two PK rings. All right. So again, I looked at that one. That sounds brilliant. I'm not going to buy two PK rings cause I don't know where two rings and, but that's fine. That's only one trick. Uh, but there's a couple here that you, you will have to invest in time into, uh, and, and money. Um, as to be a real worker without losing its overall power. I think most of this stuff works in, in some situations. I don't think it's a real worker in the way that, you know, if you're going to be, uh, like I said, it'd be in somewhere really loud, noisy, and you've got a really quick thing. This record, most of this stuff requires a bit of focus, a bit of quiet people to be able to listen to you. Uh, because there's, there is a process to it. You know, someone like, someone like influence where you just, it's not a big process. It's not to be avoided, but I'm not saying it, it, it is a real worker in the situations where these effects work. And now everything in this, I think will work in some situations in nearly all situations, uh, has to be offbeat, uh, with an unusual twist or premise in the method or the effect, or all of these things. Yeah. It all that's, these are really offbeat. And I think again, we're looking at the essence of why people like this stuff. It feels offbeat. It feels offbeat in method and method is important. If you're performing and you really like the method, you will telegraph that. And it's contagious. People will feel that from you. So as long as the effect is good enough, uh, which all of these are then, and you like those methods and you like that way of performing that directness, uh, this is going to fulfill that for you. Not too technically advanced often by use of more subtleties and slights. Absolutely. All the way through this book. Uh, it's usually altered if I cannot describe the effect in one sentence yet. So he alters it before he released it. If he can't describe it, which they are, uh, visually appealing to an audience. If, yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, if you get dice out, you get different objects out. It is a PD. You can use that appeal. Now there is a danger of sometimes falling into what I call trinket magic, you know, where you have all these little bits and pieces. So, you know, something objects aren't appealing to me. They aren't visually appealing. So for example, the dice, the reason I, I wanted the diabolical and do it with a, you know, yeah, I could have bought them online, but you need six different colored dice. You then need five of the six of one color and your bag, you need a box, you know, and I was, I just bought it just because I'm nice, you know, a nice box with a printing on it done. Uh, so, uh, that is a visually appealing to me. That's my point. I went off point now, but, but I like the fact that it's nice dice in a nice box now. And I did put this together on my own and it just looked, it was tacky dice. Cause there was only one shop that did them and little crap dice. And do you know what I mean? So that if I get that out, it's like, all right, granddad. And so you need, you need to think about that visual appeal. Um, it has to be as self-contained as possible. Yeah. All these routines are self-contained. You get one little package, whether it's the dice, whether it's the bag, whether it's the purse with the money in it and everything finished. And he says it has to be, um, instantly resettable, which everything is on this. Um, it has to be adaptable for most, if not all performing conditions. I would say again, when we're talking about kind of being a worker, it depends on that condition. Yes. You can, you can adapt anything to any condition and these effects are strong enough to do that. But I would say they're going to work in a lot of the more informal or stage where people have got that focus than, you know, most of these, I can just think work brilliantly in like a parlor or a sitting around a table with friends after dinner. When you can create that moment, there's a lot of moments to be created in this. Um, and as we have progression through very pacing and tempo, absolutely. So, but this is called fake genius and genius. There's a, there's a, um, there's a Julian Cope album called flawed genius. And I like that idea. It's almost like the, and I also like the, what is that saying? The brighter, the light, the darker, the shadow. It's that yin and yang because there's all these ideas happening. I think sometimes the, the effects are, do feel a bit flawed and there is a flaw to them. If, if the spectator was to go and really think about it, then hang on. Um, there are also a few, and I think I can say that by this time, if you're still watching, if you're not a magician now, but there's quite a lot of use of multiple way destinations, let's say. Um, and usually one of those is what, or two play slightly less strong. That's what I'll say. I don't think any of them are like kill it at all, but you're going to want certain, you want to gear towards some things and get when you, when you do that thing, like with diabolically they'll boom. Yep. Great. You know, Neil was like, yeah, great. That's the difference in it. There is also the price got to talk about the price. It's a 95 pound book. And when I first read this, I was like, and before I'd actually played with this stuff, I was like, no, it doesn't feel like a night. You know, I was thinking about a hundred quid books. I was thinking of 200 quid books, thinking of thinking of what I get from your stuff and good design. You know, this is designed fairly, basically, you know, the photos are great. They give you all you need, but it doesn't, you don't open it up and go, wow, it's a kind of pretty serviceable production, which isn't a bad thing. The ideas in there aren't, but the design is, it just gives you what, just, just know that. But when you look a bit deeper, you realize this is a result of years of thinking. There are, there are routines in here that you can make up yourself that are 50 pound pound plus, plus, plus to buy. Uh, so then you start looking at the value of, of these ideas. There are also mentalism releases that I've seen in PDF that are 200 pound, which I don't think are worth a pound. And this definitely doesn't come into this. Just know that when you're spending this money, you, you're going to want to put that time into it. And it's a type of magic for a type of person. But if you're like me and you didn't think it was your type of magic, just sit with it. I think you'll get a lot out of it. I've, I've really enjoyed reading it. I've enjoyed it more the second time around. I've enjoyed it more reading it with a more open mind and a less kind of on a card man and move monkey mind. So there's a big, this is really open. I'm really excited and kind of gutted because I'm now kind of feel like I'm going down another pathway and I don't want there to be any more pathways. There's enough. Uh, but it's, it's, it's something creative about this. So is it flawed? Yes. Is it arguably slightly overpriced? Well, that's how much it is. So if you like that sort of thing, just buy it and make the most out of it. Um, and thank you by the way to, you know, magic enterprises for giving me this, they're an independent shop and this is an expensive book. So do, um, use the links below. Thank you for Alakazam for giving me their stuff. Um, they've given me that I've got some, something in the post coming, which is an ESP test thing. I think it's cool. But anyway, I'll do a separate video on that because they're nice enough to send them to me. These people don't have to send me stuff. They're doing all right. So, so for those to do that and it's kind of supporting the channel. So do use the links below, use the Alakazam link for the trick, use the magic enterprises in magic to go at school. If you want to buy the book, um, I'd really appreciate that. So I think that's everything. There's lots more to say, um, but do ask any questions and ask questions on the live, uh, shows as well. So do make sure you like and subscribe, make sure you hit the bell icon, but you get all notifications. I'm not going to spam you, but you'll know when something, something has changed. Check out card magic course and your Instagram is at real magic review. Thank you very much. Thanks for watching. Thanks for reading magic books because we got to keep them going and have a great one. Cheers.