It wasn't just about doing tricks. It's about taking an audience to another place, a special place, so they can really suspend their disbelief. Its about amazing the audience as well as moving them.

I'm just waiting for people to start asking me to make the rain disappear.

Actually, I started as a ventriloquist and my music teacher said, "Why don't you emcee the talent show?" My act was out of the back of Boys' Life magazine-they had a whole series of jokes in the back of Boys' Life magazine for Boy Scouts. So my act was jokes with my ventriloquist figure, and it was really bad, but I walked into the classroom afterward and the kids went, "Wow, you're cool." I wasn't cool at all, but I thought, "Well, this is a pretty good deal."

I was published in Tarbell Course in Magic when I was 12.

I had a point of view, which was different. I looked at magic as theater, as storytelling, and I tried to have an approach that was different from what they were doing. "How can I move people and really get them to dream with a card trick, with coin magic, or even a piece of stage magic?"

I have always looked to movies and theatre for inspiration.

As I did more of that, I realized, "Well, maybe I should do more magic."