Shawn Farquhar - MAGICIAN INTERVIEW

hello everyone thanks for being here today marks the first day ever that i interview someone on this channel could be the beginning of a beautiful new thing with that being said let's go ahead and welcome sean farquhar yay how are you hey doing pretty good how are you i'm awesome i'm your first i feel very special i think i was your first into a reaction of a reaction of a reaction of reaction so we're doing a lot of firsts together yeah that's exactly right and in fact uh i would like to acknowledge that this video wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the fact that you were unfoolish i reacted to you you reacted to my reaction to which i reacted to which you reacted also which ended up being a whole lot of faces talking about magic and very little magic in there i could barely see the cards at one point and in fact uh there was a fan art that someone sent me that i wanted to share with you he says jason and sean's videos by the end of 2020. oh yeah that's great oh they went really good look at that took screen captures from everywhere that's so good yeah and then there was another one he made uh this one simply having a zoom call to discuss life and magic on one hand jason and sean having a conversation by making a ton of videos where they can each get in a few words every week [Laughter] so that's why he laughs so much oh and i would like to thank d sage magic on instagram for creating those photos i thought they were very funny they are very cool okay so here's how i'm planning to do this interview first time doing one i'm gonna ask sean a bunch of normal questions then we're gonna have questions from my patreon members as well as questions from my general youtube subscribers and then i'm hoping if there's time uh sean's going to help me interpret an aesop's fable together yes so that's the plan it's awesome so i should be succinct with my answers yeah we have time there were about 98 submissions when i made a community post asking for questions for you we should wait till we have a hundred okay let's just give it a couple more minutes okay so i've got a few questions uh of my own before we get into the rest of those these would be the normal questions because they're for me um how did you find out about my videos and then what gave you the idea to make a reaction to my reaction so uh my daughter set up for me a google alert on google that if my name pops up in something it sends me a little message so about once every few weeks something comes up and i usually don't even bother to look uh and then this came up that said magician reacts to and i was like well how's that but it wasn't to your video it was a reddit comment where it popped up in the google thing and so then i had to go read the reddit thing to understand so i had to sign up for reddit and then after seeing the reddit thing then i found the youtube channel and then before i watch it i went and said what are these reaction things i watched one of your other reactions when i want to react to this that's how it all came about that's awesome especially the thing about a google alert i didn't even know that was possible yeah you can put anything you want to in and whenever that pops up it will actually send you alert about it thanks to whoever posted it on reddit i didn't even see that and i'm glad that you sean ended up seeing it yourself me too next question all right let's get down to brass tacks can you prove that that bookcase behind you is not a green screen no but it isn't well i could i could reach back but i have i have an earplug in and the cord's not long enough but i built this bookcase it took three years so if you're really bored you can go back and look at my instagrams as over a three year period i showed the building of it i am curious it strikes me that you're a very resourceful person like a very do-it-yourselfer i was talking to you one time before and you were like yeah just do this and pick that up and go to the store and buy that and you can just easily put that together and i couldn't believe it and in fact on facebook i saw your uh you wanted to have this like metal kind of handle for like a vault door and you just basically 3d printed it or something and made it all yourself and it looked great at the end i couldn't believe it yeah i um i i went looking on the internet for a big steel handle wheel and i wanted engraving in it to put on a vault in hidden wonders and they were all these big huge steel or aluminum weighing 12 and 14 pounds and i was like i don't want that big a handle so i used a laser cutter and i cut multiple layers of the wheel and then glued all the wheel edges together until it became one big wheel and then used a router to smooth out all the edges and then multiple different types of paints to create textures and then laser cut into the wheel of the trojan safe company established in 1962. yeah i did that in like a 48 hour period i was able to put it all together i was gonna say all in a day has worked but i guess that's all in two days work because the paint took two days so was there ever a point in your life when you were not such a handy person such a do-it-yourselfer like did you have to like was there a phase where you kind of learned and got into that yeah i was about six uh my my dad was a jack-of-all-trades a magician auto mechanic airframe mechanic uh worked for the canadian armed forces and he did everything i could fix musical instruments to uh complex radio systems and i just watched my dad and i was probably six when he started letting me touch stuff automobiles not so much it took a long time because he wanted to fix everything i was probably 20 before i started fixing cars my dad somehow was able to impart on to me that everything could be broken down into smaller and smaller parts until no matter how big a project it was you just had to find where to start and how to extrapolate off of it and thank god for google because now when i don't understand something the side view mirror on my car broke the other day and i just took and learned adobe illustrator and how to do a vector imaging and then i found the dimensions for the mirror and i just cut one out while i'm waiting for the real one to arrive because it takes two weeks so i i just cut out my own side view mirror wow that's really amazing in fact i'm thinking right now that this uh upbringing has probably uh definitely influenced your creative style and your abilities as a magician to just you know when you have some idea and you're like that would be cool if but i don't know how to do that or that would be unrealistic try to try to make that but in your case you just be like oh i'll do that tomorrow yeah you just break it down to what the barest is and if you can't then look at something that's similar to it and then look at how they did that and i'm fat i love to learn and i have a big workshop it's i don't know how big it is i think it's 5 000 square foot or something it's it's big uh you can put six cars in it and so i i have the space and i inherited all my father's tools and friends like graham keita gave me tools from his father and alex gave me his grandfather's tools so i just i have tons of tools and i just i want to learn and so i i learn i make lots of mistakes too i'm not perfect at anything sean the tool man farquhar that that's it uh i have the joke of i've got one of those in my garage because i i i challenge you you could say something and uh the next day i see you well it may take two or three days to find it but i have it in the garage the green melissa in the garage now that tea i probably don't have green melissa but i definitely have at least five or six different tea boxes easily oh oh so back to the bookshelf i did want to ask you um i know it would be very difficult to like pick your favorite magic book because by picking one you'd be like letting down 20 of your other magician friends um so just off the top of your head can you name or mention three magic books that you think are kind of interesting or cool for whatever reason um the tarbell course of magic number one because it's it's got a wack volume like there's just a ton of them eight i guess just about anything that's ever been created there is at least a nucleus coming out of tarbell uh tommy wonders books a wonder because of the um uh wonderful essays and uh the discussions and the theory three i really love uh maximum entertainment which is really not a magic book so much as and especially maximum entertainment 2.0 yeah ken weber's book it's unbelievable uh our resource to be a better magician those are off the top of my head um before we move off from the books i also want to ask you if you have like two or three or four whatever number of books that are not magic related that you thought were like really interesting for some reason uh yeah uh whacked to the side of the head it's a book on creativity another whack to the side of the head it's another book on creativity you think they could have come up with a better title for the second one being creative people you think they would have oh and i have the uh first three star wars trilogies written in shakespearean that's pretty cool i didn't know that existed yeah i have it i also have a book called the uh stagehands uh workbook and it's a book of everything you ever wanted to know if you were a stagehand working in a theater interesting selection of books uh you fooled pinatella twice what did it feel like and how did you celebrate that evening of the same day you won the full list the first time and likewise the same question for the second time you fooled pin and teller i imagine it was a real high kind of feeling yeah you would wouldn't you no um i i did a show in paris the night before fulas uh flew the the next morning uh really super tired from the show in paris arrived in london uh was picked up by the crew we filmed the video trailer first they dropped me to change they'd pick me up like an hour later took me to the studio where i ran through the rehearsals we walked through the process i sat in a green room for four hours went out and filmed and as soon as i finished filming jumping up and down with joy they loaded me in the car and drove me back to the airport where i flew back to paris and i just crashed like a bucket of bolts because i had to get up and drive for another seven hours the next day to get to the next gig so i probably celebrated in august that would have been the spring so no and then the second one that was in las vegas and no celebrating on either of them really they're both fly-in fly out but so i'm just curious about that feeling you had when you knew that you had fooled them like i guess it's also related to did you have a a good suspicion that before you walked on did you think to yourself like i'm probably gonna fool them and then when you did you're like that's right that's so funny no i when i went on the first time uh i actually said no to them multiple times when the producers asked me because i didn't want to go on a show called fulas because i don't think magic's about fooling so i had no any thought that i was going to fool him even when johnny thompson was my hero uh i explained the trick to him because he's the judge and uh he came back a second time said explain it to me one more time i'm still confused on a couple of details and afterwards he smiled and giggled and said you're gonna fool the boys and i was like wow okay i still didn't believe it so when that if you ask me how i felt at that exact moment you can see it in the video i'm dancing like i'm seven years old because i was like even more to the story is that there was this long pause between when i performed and when the ending came because they had technical difficulties so i was waiting for a very long period of time while they changed microphones and fixed stuff and so they didn't have like a minute and a half like you see on the tv show it was a long period of time it felt like days for me it was probably 20 minutes but it was a long time they had enough time to build a prototype yeah that's what they had so teller was like okay this no no yeah when they actually went back to filming jonathan ross turns to me and he said well do you think the boys had enough time and i said i think they had enough time to build a prototype and they went and cut and he said you have to act like it's just been a few seconds said okay so he said well you think the boys had enough time and i said well let's ask the audience and the whole audience laughs 700 people and he goes and cut and on the third one he goes well i think the boys have had enough time let's go to them it's like don't talk to sean anymore that's awesome yeah so i didn't think i would in the first and i sure didn't think i would on the second um i didn't think i would on the third i it just you know i go on it to do good magic and have a fun time i guess one thing people don't consider is the fact that you've had so much professional experience in the past i know for a fact that you were on disney cruises performing for a long time you've been involved with tv shows and movies you've had a lot of awards you're the two-time world champion magic and so once you have so many successes like having another one isn't quite as like shocking as maybe the first one can you say when is the first time you had a big success where you thought you felt like wow i can't believe this happened to me um i think the first time i won a major award was the pacific coast association of magicians back in like 1983 and i remember that all the other competitors were magic castle juniors there were so many of them i just thought you know i'm just going to get lost and when they announced that i won it was just elation because it was sort of that moment that said hey you can do this for a living at that point i was working in a lab laboratory stuffing dead fetal pigs into jars for with formaldehyde for science experiments so uh it was i drove home and quit my job well i haven't been able to get to my list of questions because you said some interesting things that it just made me come up with new questions uh it's even cooler i have one last spontaneous question you said that you're uh something like an eternal optimist and i'm curious uh are you an optimist uh by nature are you optimists more by choice i'm an optimist by choice um my dad made me always critically think things that i did for a very long time and then i reached a point where i had a lot of tragedies in a row and i just decided that instead of looking at it as a tragedy i looked them as opportunities i'm terrified of the friday the 13th i've lost a house to a flood a fire and a car drove through my living room wall all on friday the 13th when the apartment building burned down i remember the news cameras coming and sticking the camera in my face and going well you've lost everything how do you feel and i remember thinking well it's going to be the easiest move i've ever had does that mean you got to start a brand new magic collection at that time you didn't have to worry about the junk drawer anymore i lost so much of my magic but then magicians came out of nowhere just giving me stuff so much stuff was given to me i ended up having to rent a storage locker because i didn't have an apartment it burned down i was renting a storage locker to store the stuff that people were giving me crazy and that that storage locker also burnt down no no no but it i reached a point where i had to start some stuff i kept that was slightly burned because i just didn't want to get rid of like old posters of my dad and stuff like that but at one point it was like now they're charred and they have to go uh i lost my theater for hidden wonders i was in chinatown of vancouver and during covet just basically i lost it and everybody thought oh i bet he'll be depressed about that in less than two weeks my wife found a place that's twice as big way better and i've been so excited to spend the last month and a half building it so it's just you know some people look at the bad side i look at the other side there's that old line of half full or half empty for a glass i just keep thinking i bought the refillable that's awesome and that's great that your dad influenced you in that way you know because i do feel like being positive is a choice uh in some ways i mean we're not like unrealistically happy all the time but like it is kind of like what you choose to really allow yourself to get into and stay into you know yeah i'm in no way an idiot i don't just go everything is sunny no no i see the bad i just choose to focus on the good yeah in fact though that that reminds me uh i i submitted my audition for foolish on friday and this waiting period and i was thinking like well if they say yes that'll be great i'll be on fulas if they say no that'll be great i can stop worrying and having so much anxiety about it and think of all you learned in that short period of time while you built up an act and the whole structuring of it and the writing and the rewriting and the the effects and everything no matter what happens you've got that that's a positive yeah yeah if this video gets too long maybe we'll split it into two videos like a part one part two i don't know two that's four two uh a quick question for the magicians out there what is your favorite dl and favorite to dl get ready and you can talk in code if you want or if there's or whatever um i prefer a strike uh i think it's probably the best uh sometimes i do a pushover for um the get ready but most times it's just a strike i do a side strike off of uh usually my middle finger and then the the adjustment with the index all right well let's jump into the patreon questions here there's uh one two three four five six of them and then there's a gigantic number of uh questions from all the youtube subscribers well maybe we'll make that the rapid fire section sure so patreon questions um and i know the answer to this already but i'll go ahead and ask this is by billy jefferson iv is it true that being a magician is the only job he has ever had no billy uh i've held a lot of jobs i cooked pizzas i was a prep cook i dug graves uh i uh uh was the attending for a uh for church lawns doing uh lawn mowing had my own lawn mowing service uh i framed houses i did roofing uh and i studied for um industrial electronics for wiring of houses as well yeah i tried a lot of stuff uh i even got all the way to sous chef um so i've done just about a ton of stuff and more than that those are just the ones that pop into my head right off the top nope uh but every time i went back to magic and if you just like also work into your list of jobs delivering a baby you could say you did all the jobs from cradle to grave oh that's so good uh i'll work on trying to deliver a baby sometime along the line i'll spend a lot of time yeah i'll just follow some pregnant woman for the next six months and see if she makes it a hospital on time what are you doing back there oh nothing nothing nothing my hands are sterile let's get to this that just sounded creepy okay let's move on uh okay next question from jeff peterson sean is big on never stop looking for a different solution so what is the most recent trick he's updated due to always looking for something different that's totally right jeff i'm always looking for another way to do the same effect uh coin in the bottle uh seem to be the one that i've been playing with that i've been making the youtube videos and i went to a lock in a bottle and now i'm thinking about a bottle in a bottle or maybe ice cubes in the bottle uh so that one i've been really exploring and torn and restored i started with a an idea from jc wagner uh with his tournament restored and i've now made it into a three-fly routine so i can tear the four pieces of the card up and one by one they jump to the other hand but as they jump they're restoring and it was just taking an old idea and applying another idea and then working it into the third idea and uh i like your idea of bottle and bottle inception next question next question is from robert hamill is it pretty frantic and crazy in the moments leading up to walking out on the fullest stage i guess you already kind of answered this and was it different between your first second and third appearances on the show i don't know if you have anything else to add to that or yeah uh robert the frantic part uh leading up to it really isn't because they put you in a green room to sit for hours so that uh the camera people are all more expensive than we are so the talent all just sits you sit in the basement you come up in an elevator and they walk you over to another spot where you sit for a little bit you breathe and then they microphone you up and then you move to another position where the floor manager tells you what you're going to do and then they go it's time and you walk out so there's no frantic because your rehearsals are all before for me it was but for most people they're there a day in advance they rehearse then they block and then they go through all the stages and they do that to make you really comfortable the technical crew and the producers are really nice at full us they're they're really good people um and they were a little bit different the first one they were still building the stage so it was kind of chaotic the second one was at the pen and tellers theater so it was way more relaxed and the third one felt like a old home week for me to be back again next question from kenny desrochers sorry if i'm pronouncing your name wrong i'd be interested in uh his magic theater how as has changed his professional life does still do shows abroad regularly in normal circumstances okay there's a bunch of questions here why don't we just stop there uh kenny my hidden wonders uh when it opened in september i basically stopped working i uh resigned from disney cruise line it only took a few weeks for disney to come back and say uh please cover a few dates for me and i agreed and made it so that i could still do the theater theater is my primary goal now but i also have agreed to travel uh when things get better i've already agreed to go and do a show in germany for production and i'm going to australia so traveling's in my blood i'll continue to do that uh but i don't want to do it as much i was doing uh 285 days a year i was on the road 285 days that that's a lot so now i'm hoping to be on the 85 side that would be much better and uh okay i read through the rest of his question he says is there any quirky detail about the venue like a hidden passage or oh there's tons of cool things about it uh it looks like it used to look like an old chinese tailor shop now it looks like an old curio shop with antiques and old trunks and stuff but when you look closer the trunks have markings from magicians that i've collected over the years there's like old ventriloquist heads and the photos that are up in there are old magic conventions so lay people won't notice but magicians will go crazy in the curios area then you have to pick the right doorknob and find the right wall and stick the doorknob on the wall for the hidden door to open and then when you're inside you close it it's a vault door on the other side and then you're in the lounge or from the lounge into the theater uh it's all about the experience i'm very i studied under watching disney for seven years working for them everything is in the details so it's all quirky so how do you balance wanting to have a fake storefront and then also wanting to get people to come in because if it just really looks like a tailor shop maybe people wouldn't come in there for magic they won't i don't want anybody to come i don't want a single person off the street to come in it's a speakeasy then the only way to find out where it is is to buy a ticket and once they buy the ticket then they learn where the location is and then they know that they have to go through the steps to do it for six months i was sold out two months in advance it's crazy um people love the idea that you buy something and that you're on a street where nobody else knows my neighbors it took them months to figure out you're not a tailor so what happens if a random person from the street does walk in do they do they just let them wander and walk out sure wander in wander around hey they want to buy some of my curio stuff help themselves my line will be anything that's got a price tag on it's for sale anything that doesn't is my magic memorabilia so curios stuff you mean like curious items yeah curios is usually for describing things that are like little knickknacks and everything but i wanted to be like curious but curios because the definition of curious is rare and everything in there is going to be rare most gonna be one of a kind two more patreon questions one from matthew with jaja what is one question or topic about your magic you are magic that you wish people knew about but most don't one topic yeah i think it would be interesting one thing most people don't know they all know me in the magic world as the close-up magician as the guy they saw on penintella's fullest and most don't know that my career started as a children's birthday party entertainer went on to comedy clubs and then i went on to a bird act and most people have never seen it but i had an eight-minute silent bird act uh in tuxedo entails that won international awards all over the place uh i produced eight doves in my act yeah i produced an umbrella cockatoo little baby white parakeets because i would toss a dove into the air and the dove the handkerchief would come down with some feathers i collect the feathers up squeeze them and it turned into a little white parakeet like there wasn't enough feathers to make a whole bird then i would scoop the white handkerchief put it over top and toss it out and it flew back as a full-size bird yeah most people don't know that so i've had more than just a card trick career last patreon question from fritz rutz uh and i had to kind of paraphrase this one because i didn't quite get it but it's about social media uh has it become easier now i guess versus in the past to attract a bigger audience on social media for you and has it made some has social media made some kind of impact on your career i don't know if it made an impact on my career social media makes it way cooler and easier to connect with my fans and friends and i think that's awesome i've always wanted in my show i want to connect with the audience i'm not just performing for them i want to perform with them i want to be something special and social media gives me that i love that i can respond to questions i can read all the stuff that are in the comments i don't know whether it helped my career i guess it did because i mean i use the social media for advertising for hidden wonders without things like facebook and instagram that wouldn't exist so yeah i think it's a good thing i see this has been we've been recording for probably uh 45 minutes how would i know how long we've been recording you're gonna have trouble editing this all down i'll try to be faster with my answers well uh i just had an idea now maybe that we divide at the part where i get to all the youtube subscriber questions or would that be kind of heartbreaking to them you think well we could do two of them and go look at all the time let's do volume two and they'll all be excited okay and we'll just go ahead and record it tonight if it's okay with you i'm totally gonna be doing as long as you want to just keep going all i'm gonna do is cut wood just going to push wood through a soft i was going to say is that an expression that means something else no i'm building eight table tops right after this i just bought a big sheet of birch plywood and i'm going to cut all the table tops and then start putting them through the laser to put the logos in the corner and then tonight i'll stain them man you do everything with that laser some people have a 3d printer but you got your laser yeah i want a 3d printer too and i want the cnc cutter i yeah i want everything i just have to get i have two lasers two two lasers do you ever have them like a sword fight like star wars no but if they if the beams cross the ghost goes into the past it's really awesome don't cross the beams yeah oh i love that movie okay um so me too the original not so great on the last one but my daughter loved the last one the most i think i got halfway through the last one and then i just stopped watching yep why did they do that to my movie okay um so here i've got a couple other questions i don't know how to categorize these uh and now uh okay okay okay random question time and now we move on to a new segment called more questions with sean farquhar awesome okay i have a question about work life balance and i'm curious if you set specific boundaries or do you let everything just kind of happen freely like do you do you feel the need to set aside a certain amount of time to relax that is not considered work uh and in this case since you're a magician magic would be categorized as work and then the follow-up question is how do you keep magic fun and not feeling like work when you're doing it all the time but most importantly i'm curious if you have like a a hard defined boundary between work and relaxing time or you don't really worry about that i've heard about those people don't use me as an example of a good person because when it comes to magic it's first and foremost it eclipses my days my nights it's everything my world revolves around magic i was lucky enough to find a beautiful woman who loved me and understood that and we've been married 31 years i don't think there are many people that could persevere with me i eat sleep drink magic uh 24 7. i don't have any boundaries i have to physically stop and think and say hey we should do something as a family now and i do that quite often but i have to actually physically stop and go now would be a good time uh let's have a meal together because i just uh i get caught up i can go out work in the workshop and lauria will come out and say it's dinner i'm like oh wow and i've been out there for nine hours it's um i love magic i'm uh addicted to magic i'm down to two packs a day two packs a day come on that's funny i don't have any boundaries and um and the women in my life don't restrict me with the boundaries which is awesome my daughter understands uh we live in a house we call chateau farquhar the house that cards built i wouldn't have this house i wouldn't have the cars i wouldn't have anything if it wasn't for magic and my passion for it and so for me um nope no boundaries just do whatever i want to always doing magic and when you said do i need to be rejuvenated no i don't need to be rejuvenated i just i i had an email from a person the other day that said you know i'm going through a funk where i just can't find it what do you do when you have those funks and i was like i really can't answer that question i don't have a funk uh even my worst of times when you know everything burned down or i lost everything in a flood i immediately while i was watching you know the restoration people coming and move stuff out going how much can that palette lift will that lift like a body and i was immediately it's like yeah i just that's the way i think uh it doesn't matter what it is nothing it's really hard to get me down you were uh you were looking to dispose of a body or it was something related to magic tricks magic magic yeah yeah that's a good question uh i've got easier ways to dispose of a body didn't i mention i have three quarters of an acre of land yeah and you're being working and a big workshop and lots of tools um uh so for me the reason i ask you that is because um i you know i'll be working on youtube stuff i'll be working on magic stuff and uh it's stuff that i like to do but i consider when i'm like actively doing something like learning something or like my full attention i'm taking notes i'm processing i'm upright and you know using my hands somehow i've in my mind i've categorized that as work and then near the end of the day i'm like now i need to do not work and so i'm going to just watch netflix and just veg out like a couch potato and i i've been doing that for a couple years like there's a separate period late at night before i go to sleep where i do that and i was starting to think like maybe that's not necessary maybe i could just completely chop off that part and just like do do useful stuff and like interesting cool stuff all the time i i think having that's kind of cool uh don't get me wrong i net netflix and chill and amazon and chill and but at the same time i usually have my laptop on my lap and i'm responding to emails from people and working on my palmer magic mail order business which i think is funny because people email a question and it'll be like 2 30 in the morning and i respond because they're like in japan or china and they're like wow do you ever sleep i'm like no not really and i finished the quest and people like your responses are always fast yep because that's what i'd expect so uh but i'm still watching you know the the watchman on hbo and typing away and watching the program and uh it's hard my chill is when we were able to go to movie theaters uh that was one of the greatest things ever the whole family we'd pack up get in the car and go watch a movie and if the movie sucked then my brain went off onto i should be doing this and i got that idea and i should be working on that but when the movie was great i was lost for two hours two and a half hours and then got in the car and on the drive home we'd have a discussion about the movie as soon as i hit the house back into magic again and you're like could that lift the body yeah i wonder what they used for the cgi to do that yeah okay cool um next so the next thing is about your early life what was life like for you in high school second question were you already performing magic at this time and then number three did you first meet your wife performing magic for her wow um so uh i've been performing magic pretty much as long as i can remember i had my own television series when i was in junior high school so by the time i reached high school kids already knew me from tv and you think that would make high school really cool it didn't um it was a small little group of people uh a clique gang whatever you want to call it and uh we hung together and stayed away from other people and uh it wasn't elitist it was kind of like the ragtag outcast kids i moved from one high school to another as i moved from high school to high school we traveled a lot uh it was a matter of my brother always found the biggest guy in the school and hit him and if he won then we were good if he lost then my brother was a nut so they all stayed away from him and i looked at the first kid that looked like he was going to hit me and vomited cards out of my mouth and they all went oh he's a clown and moved along and that's how high school went yep i was performing doing school shows i was uh taking the carpentry class so i could learn to build boxes and taking the theater class and the marketing class and the english class and failing in things like biology and physics because i couldn't see an application in my magic so yeah even my high school yearbook says you know shawn's going to graduate and tour across canada with his own show that's what it said because that's what i was going to do i met my wife uh camping i'd uh done a magic show and a couple of guys at the end that said hey uh next weekend we're all jumping in vans and going to a big party do you want to go i read van's party i had a van said sure that night came around i had the night off they arrived at my door i was all dressed up nice pair of slacks and a shirt to go to a party and we drove for about four hours to a campsite where apparently we were staying for three days they had like toothpaste toothbrushes and food and i had a deck of cards and a nice outfit on and i hired the magician exactly i um there was bands there was hundreds and hundreds of people it was all people that were into banning people that had vans and they had beds in them and everything i had like a a mattress in the back to sleep on and on the first night there was this lovely young lady and i tried to impress her and she wouldn't have anything to do with me her friend seemed more impressed than me uh with me than her she did and uh i finally convinced them that the next weekend i was doing a show on a nightclub they should come see it and they came and uh during the show my bird act i tossed the rose out and the two girls fought over it so i thought that was a good sign so i asked the one out that i was attracted to and she agreed and i later married her and it was years later i found in her purse uh we were cleaning out an old purse uh one of the playing cards from that first night so i guess she did have some kind of interest because she kept one playing card and kept it in her purse so so maybe she was playing hard to get yeah yeah that's really quite a story yeah that was 30 31 30 37 years ago have you seen that movie uh yes man with jim carrey yeah yeah and uh that kind of reminded me of that when when you were at the end of the show and people were like oh we're having a party in a week from now and camping and you want to go and you're like yeah yeah why not yeah i got better at that we went on a lot of those camping things and i learned how to you know pack for it with like actual food i walked around that campsite that weekend doing card tricks for hot dogs and uh people will just give you a beer that was yeah it was fun okay i think we're gonna this is this is great we're gonna have to divide this video into three parts actually there you go okay okay so next part creative process i've noticed you're a very creative person have you always been that way did you read books about how to be creative and well let me just pause there and let me let you answer those and i've got two more sure i as a young man didn't think i was creative uh i was surrounded by creative people uh people like greg fruin who you know just ideas just drop out of his head um kevin james those are the people i knew and so i thought that was creativity uh don wayne i just assumed they just and ideas popped in their head which they do for them it doesn't for me it took me a long time to learn that creativity is a tool that i could actually it's like a muscle and i can build it and it comes with reading and listening and seeing stuff and being willing to go in a different direction creativity is like water you find the easiest path and when you hit something that you can't do anything you just keep banging at it until it gives way i did read a lot of books there's a ton of books that talk about creativity most of them i don't agree with one i do agree with is whack to the side of the head i think it's awesome and so is another whack to the side of the head and the trick brain by dario fitzke uh it kind of clinically takes apart the book by saying there's only seven you know things you can do in magic but there's a thousand items that you can put those together i watch kevin james and learn that he doesn't just have the ideas popping his head he travels with three by five cards and it's plots and props and conclusions and he moves them around and makes new things and then tries to come up with an idea for it and it's a really fun exercise for your brain my creativity comes from sleep deprivation [Laughter] two last questions about the creative process do you ever get writer's block and you need to encourage your creativity somehow i get writer's block all the time and it's uh not because of the the thought pattern it's in that i hit stumbling blocks of i have no way to do something and so i write them down i write all my ideas down i have a drawer that's got more than 20 notebooks sitting in there and i'll write the idea down to where it is and what i wanted the ending but i don't have the capability i don't have the understanding or the technology or maybe science hasn't caught up to it and then later i'll see something and go wait and then run back to notebook but that will work for that and so i have the patience to have the patience of job i'll just wait until it all comes together yeah all the time uh i hit a stumbling block and i just stop the best way to get over it is to write it down and forget about it for a little bit and then revisit it all right well i guess that already answers the next question which was going to be what advice would you give for other magicians who want to get started creating their own magic well maybe it doesn't answer it don't don't look for the final solution right off the top just start like anything else break it down into small little pieces i want to get to here i want to get to there i want to get to here and then i'm going to get to there see the big picture but break it down into small pieces and then simplify those small pieces until it becomes a very simple method and always green hat that was um evelyn kingston who was a phenomenal uh set designer and uh artistic director uh she says uh when i would say something negative in a meeting and i say well what about she'll say we're not wearing our black hats right now we're wearing our green hats there are gray hats now black hat is when you're to go negative and i'm like whatever but the green hat is when everything is growing and i was like okay so only positive thoughts just keep throwing out all the positive thoughts you want to wear that green hat and say well i can do this i can do that i can do that and then afterwards you can then funnel it down until it becomes something same as when i'm building my theater i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do that and then when i got there i said i gotta be more practical [Laughter] all right cool um the disney cruise ship experience uh so you were performing on a disney cruise ship as the magician or one of several magicians and and how how long was that so uh i've been cruising for more than 30 years and about eight years ago uh a head hunter from disney came to me and said we'd love you to come over and join our brand and so i moved over for the inaugural uh cruise of the disney fantasy which is their newest ship in the fleet the largest most beautiful and it was really exciting they have a single magician that performs on an evening in the big gala walt disney theater on the other nights you get to see things like the entire production of beauty and the beast or a fully written show that's just for that ship with a cast of 21 broadway quality stars and they do three nights of those massive disney shows and in between they have two variety shows or sometimes they'll just have a disney feature movie when a new movie comes out they'll world premiere it on the ship before it even hits land and so the one night is you know disney spectacular then the next night was star wars uh uh premiere and then the next night is beauty and the beast and the next night is here's sean and then the last night is a big disney dreams and wishes show and uh yeah uh for 90 of the audience they never heard of you before uh i'm not a disney entity at the time but over the seven years i basically became a disney property people knew me and i was definitely one of the most requested disney acts and highest rated they loved that people came back year after year sometimes two and three times in a year to see the show and i changed some stuff in the show to make it fresh and it was a 45 minute production uh family friendly but not a kids show it was designed so that adults and grandmas the people who paid for the cruise really felt they got their money's worth and the kids got to laugh and have a good time and it was one of the best experiences of my life wow and do you feel like having had that experience that it uh specifically influenced the way you do magic in any particular way or not especially i think it changed uh some uh my years on norwegian cruise lines definitely changed how i performed magic that's when i became went from the bird guy who you know just did an act that i could do in front of a mirror and you didn't have to be there uh to being the performer that i needed an audience to feed off of and my show was only as good as the audience and i became together when i went to disney i amplified that to the point where it was just a community gathering and the amount of energy you give them they'll give it double back and i made that my mantra whatever they gave me i doubled it back so if they went insane when i appeared i had a table that cloth flew into the air images appeared on it the cloth hit the table as soon as it touched the table my shadow appeared the cloth flew up and there i was standing on the stage and then when they went ah i gave it twice as much if they went i gave them twice as much and that that was how it worked uh it was the stories i could tell you uh the connections i made it changed my feeling and when i left and started hidden wonders it was the entire idea was to put that disney feeling of details and seriousness into it and real commitment and making it a choose your own adventure was all based on what i experienced while i worked on the cruises really interesting um i have one rather not serious question but just yeah did you get did you get seasick um twice in uh 30 some odd years i got seasick one was 30 foot swales we were going through hurricane olga and i was on a very small ship the norwegian dream and so in one single list of the ship the entire pool went over the side of the ship and we were in the uh eye of the hurricane for three days and died easily yes uh and they issued crackers and vodka to everybody the vodka to throw off your equilibrium so you didn't feel the cracker to suck up the uh stomach acids and on that yeah i got seasick twice other than that nope most of the time i didn't even real remember i was on a ship i lived on it ten and a half months a year my daughter was raised on it she learned to walk and talk on a cruise ship it was funnier to watch when we hit land after 10 months at sea because we we walked with the ballots fixing so we were correcting ourselves on land and it looked very odd yeah that's very cool um and uh oh last question about disney cruise ship experience um what was life like working on a cruise ship did it feel like a groundhog day um you know it never felt like groundhog day to me because uh when i started on the ships it was with my wife and i and we did something new every day and we only worked one day a week so we had lots of time to explore learn and do stuff and then when my daughter came along and we raised her on board uh we were a family and so every day was different what was great about it was every day we woke up and we were someplace new uh one day you were in portugal the next day you were in spain the next day you were in venice italy it was it was amazing amazing yeah and we woke up in a new place and explored it and the great thing was we weren't in a rush to explore it because we knew in maybe 10 days we'd be back again and we could see more of it and so it's perfect so you're adventurous to see this oh yeah it was relaxed and some days we'd sleep in and go now we're in mexico we can get up later in the afternoon and go lay on the beach and let's go find you know where the locals shop and so it wasn't like groundhog day i know people guest entertainers who go on and say oh it's terrible every day seems like the other day and that's because they're not doing what everybody else does they just lock themselves in their cabin and they do their show and every day can seem like that maybe like if they didn't have a special person to be with you know yeah well in the last seven years on disney i was by myself but i found people i went looking for people i met guests and i i met staff and crew and made friends and i had friends in ports so when we went back to alaska i went to alaska for 30 years every summer to alaska this is the first summer i haven't been to alaska in 30 years okay moving to the next category tv shows now um i remember hearing i think you mentioned to me before that you'd worked on the x-files show and i'm wondering what are all the tv shows that you worked on oh my god how many tv shows i have no idea how many tv shows i've worked on um recent ones like for hulu i worked on a show called shut eye which is kind of cool uh i worked on outer limits uh poltergeist the legacy i did stuff for the television show flash uh recently i've done the x-files highlander uh where they chopped the guy's head off i'd done uh we're just doing tvs not movies because i got tons of movies what kind of things were you doing uh special effects um uh practical special effects so there's special effects that are digital or enhanced special effects and then there is practical and practical is where special effects used to be and they're better because the actor gets to react to them if you say to an actor here's the green screen and the dragon's going to be there now act scare you get one reaction but if they say okay start to act and they lean in a giant dragon face into your face you react differently and i created stuff like highlander where the guy's head gets chopped off and then he drops to his knees sparks fly around him then he floats into the air well the sparks are cg that's the digital effect but the floating i rigged up floating it was really fun um it allowed my creativity because i had this massive budget uh x-files had a million dollars an episode and they go we want to do something like this and you go yes uh and then some of them were just call-ins i worked on a tv show called nightmare cafe with robert england the guy who started freddy krueger and in this one the guy phoned me in the morning said hey sean uh our principal is gonna juggle three eggs two disappear one he cracks open and a baby chick comes out he throws the baby chick into the air and a burst into flames can you do that i said sounds like fun he says drop by the studio around noon it was 10 in the morning i was there by noon i walk in he goes says so how long do you think this it will take to put together and i said you know when's the day which is like when are they gonna film and he said oh it's today i said no when's the day and he says today in about six hours i was like oh good planning uh can the actor juggle he said no i said oh that's even better so in six hours i concocted an entire way to allow robert england to look like he was juggling to make two eggs disappear crack the one have a baby chick come out burst in the flames in midair and made it work and it was fun and i got it in two takes i i had a really great reputation of being able to do most things in one take and they always did like a safety take afterwards i've worked on so many shows and some of them are minor little tiny things and other ones are major things it uh sometimes it's just a prop that they need something designed last two segments well i guess really maybe the last one accomplishments i guess we already covered this i know you've received many awards which one was the most meaningful you mentioned that first one i don't really feel like ah it's my biggest accomplishment being married for 30 31 years that's that's that's an even bigger accomplishment but that that goes to the credit of my wife yeah i've won i think the count is 43 international magic awards now i think it's something like that is there one that's the most meaningful to you or hard to say yeah the most meaningful is that first one from the pcam because it was the day i decided i could actually do magic for a living and i came home and packed my bags and said i'm gonna go make a living at this quit my job uh the security of all that and went on and it's a it's a small little trophy with a little brass lamp on the top of it i drove all the way from california home within the front dash of my van when i got to the canadian border the border guard said you got anything to declare and i said i'm a winner [Laughter] practice i practice saying that for an hour before i got to the border i said he's going to say anything to declare and i'm going to say i'm a winner and i didn't respond to that just like he smiled nodded his head and said uh-huh that with the thing in the dashes yes sir he says what's the value of that back to his job yeah right back into his job when and what was it like the first time a stranger recognized you in public oh the first time um the first time was really weird i was at a bus station and i saw i was young because i had all the television stuff when i was really young so that's kind of hard because they were all the people around me from my school and everything but i moved out to british columbia like 1979 and i went to a greyhound bus station and this couple just looked at me for a few minutes and then the girl turned and said i'm sorry but are you a magician and i was like i am excuses sean i was like yes and it was like i thought i was being set up it was like there was some sort of con because i couldn't believe that there was any level of fame at all from it they're like oh we've seen you on tv i said how i didn't realize that cbc broadcasting was across the country i thought it was just my you know local tv that saw me but apparently it was everywhere and more recently i still still freaks me out um i was in the lumber yard just three days ago i've got the mask on i've got a ball cap on i'm got this young man uh helping me load some stuff into the back his name was elijah and i'm on like the third piece of lumber and he says to me your name isn't sean is sitting that way what he says oh yeah i didn't think so i just i said no my name is shawn he goes oh my god i watched all your youtube videos i was like what it's like i heard you're from maple ridge i just can't believe that i'm talking to you and i was like that's pretty it's still surreal to me it really is because you know i live in a small little community uh i do what i do i do what i love and i just i don't i don't recognize the reach yeah that's super cool um i wanted to share a quick experience that i had i've only been recognized twice and both times surprised me very much because i don't think my youtube channel is quite really big enough yet to be recognized but one time i i flew back to the u.s uh december i flew there to buy a bunch of camera equipment and like new stuff for youtube and i was just it was like a smash and grab i was there for three days and just coming back because it was cheaper to fly round trip buy it in a tax free state of delaware and then come back and uh wow this will be an adventure and uh i was in the best buy in uh delaware and uh i was talking to the salesman i was looking at this new sony camera and then i i heard a voice behind me saying excuse me are you a magician and i was like and it's funny how you described it because the first thought that came to my head is like someone's playing a joke on me or something like someone here like who knows me like a friend found me or something so i turn around and he's like i was like yeah and he's like yeah you do those reaction videos on youtube and i was like yeah he's like yeah i love your videos man and i was like just like i mean he was surprised to see me but i was more mind blown that some stranger had recognized me once it's pretty humbling right because you're like all sudden go wow that's that's really cool yeah i was smiling way more than him it's still surreal it really is yeah i don't think i'll ever get over it last question under accomplishments which magic trick that you've created are you the most proud of oh that's a real toss-up uh my favorite piece of match i've created is shape of my heart because i close my shows with it it's beautiful and it's cards and it's theater and it's just really wonderful but i have another one called unwritten that it hasn't been seen by a lot of people only do it in live shows i haven't published it anywhere and it's just about as special now if you're talking about things i've released to the magic community it would probably be torn to pieces by torn an almost restored photograph i have a photograph that you tear into four sections after it's been signed and we restore it it restores all mixed up and that's just it's crazy i do zoom shows right now and i do it over the and the photo ends up looking like that isn't that crazy it's like actually effects from you there so yeah that's probably my favorite released magic effect because it it it's great to see how many people have done things with it and what they've done with it uh recently there was a guy who did with a photograph of a dog and they said you know uh uh can you do a trick for me and he goes i don't do tricks my dog does tricks would you like to see him do one it just i love to see all the adaptations i don't know it's hard it's like asking which one of your kids is your favorite but i think if you're just talking overall everything i've created shape of my heart it's kind of like my anthem and that's the one in case somehow you don't know that's the one that i believe you had on youtube and it kind of went viral right where you all the to that meet to that song yeah the sting shape of my heart the song and it's just a lyrical dance of cards in my hands and uh i did it at the world championship in beijing and added into it the signed and sealed card deck thing and put the two of them together and made it into one piece that won me the grand prix world championship that's really cool um you know how some bands say that after going around touring and performing a lot they get really tired of wanting to play their classics that everybody loves uh since you have this magic trick that has a song in it do you ever get that feeling that people ask for that too much and you're like i want to show you this new thing nope um i don't because it's just such a beautiful piece and i'm always evolving i change moves in it all the time to make it uh as i evolve and become better at things i change parts of it so it becomes uh a new piece of art for me i can tell you though that i don't listen to the song unless i'm performing because that song just it just is the performance to just listen to it is not a relaxing thing for me because my head goes into all that yeah in fact if you were somewhere out and about and it started playing in the background your hands would probably start unconsciously moving or something really starts to do that television i think it's too long on just hands i've had some very well known uh high level magicians uh talk about you know performing it and all of them when it comes down to it once they examine it they're like uh it's just a crotch shot for a very long time that's what the one one magician called it he said that's just a crotch shot for a long time it was yeah and uh you know i've seen the video so long ago i don't quite remember but uh at the beginning or the end you must show your face because i remember thinking that it's you i start off with the cards up on my hand i talk about it being signed and i say uh listen closely i think you're gonna like this this one's my favorite and as i come down the music starts the whole trick ends that when this trick is ending uh the card ends up in my teeth then i bring it back down then i come up for the applause and then i spit the deck of cards out of my mouth and so it brings everything back to the face although i've been criticized that the routine is so beautiful and romantic and all of a sudden i got the clown at the end spinning cards out of my mouth and i'm like that's me that's me you can't not and it draws everything back to being on my face yeah i guess everybody's gonna have an opinion about that oh yeah my dad said everybody has an opinion they're like butts everybody's got one some are bigger than others and most of them stink i like that okay so that was the end of the normal question segment which ran way longer than i anticipated way longer but you'll be able to yeah add it to what you want and make two out of it so sean thank you so much for taking this time to answer all these questions with me i see that this has gone a little bit long so i think we're gonna have to divide the second part for a second video and that's gonna be all the youtube subscribers questions of which there were almost 100 plus sean is going to help interpret an aesop's fable with me i can't wait to share this experience with someone else for the first time so make sure to stay tuned for that next video anyways sean thank you so much for being here oh my pleasure thanks for having me here i can't wait to do video two [Music] and thank you guys for watching uh make sure to go check out sean's youtube channel smash like on everybody's videos because who doesn't like smashing like and i'll see you next time [Music] me

Channel: Jason Parker

Views: 50,511

Rating: 4.9651995 out of 5

Keywords: Shawn Farquhar interview, Shawn Farquhar magician, Farquhar interview, Shawn Farquhar magic, magic interview, magician interview, magic, magic tricks, magic trick, card tricks, card magic, magic talk, talk about magic, magic discussion, funny, Canadian magician, world champion, best magic, best magician, learn magic, how to magic, magic exposed, magic revealed, magician, magicians, interview, Jason Parker interview

Id: mWQv9B1r9GE

Length: 59min 22sec (3562 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 29 2020

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