Illusionist Derek DelGaudio Talks Hulu Special & New Memoir

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, our next guest penetrates the concept of identity with illusion and slight of hand, the writer-cum-magician Derek DelGaudio. His skillful display has brought in the crowds for his off-Broadway show “In & Of Itself,” which has now been adapted by Hulu for the small screen. Here he is speaking to our Michel Martin about card tricks and his new memoir, “Amoralman.”

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHEL MARTIN: Thanks, Christiane. Derek DelGaudio, thank you so much for talking with us.

DELGAUDIO: Thank you for having me.

MARTIN: So, you use illusions. You are a specialist, an award-winning specialist in I think what’s called slight of hand. Is that the right way to say it?

DELGAUDIO: Yes. I have a background in slight of hand.

MARTIN: Would you mind walking me through that? This is something that people can read about in your memoir, “Amoralman.” How did you get started?

DELGAUDIO: When I was 12 years old, my mother played a practical joke on me, where there’s these little — they’re almost like a cap gun, but without the gun part, where you can just have a little cap on a spring- loaded mouse trap, and you can hide it under a Coke can. And she played this joke on me. So, when you lift it up, it makes a big sound. And it scared the hell out of me. But I thought it was hilarious.

(LAUGHTER)

DELGAUDIO: And I asked her where she got it. And she said there was a joke shop down the street from her work. And so she took me there one day, and I went in to buy some mischievous items. And there was a guy behind the counter who made a pocketknife vanish. And I realized it wasn’t a joke shop. It was a magic shop. I went home that day, instead of buying a bunch of pranks I bought a book on sleight of hand, and I got hooked and it was kind of all I did for a while. And I didn’t perform for anyone, but I just sat in my room and practiced.

MARTIN: Eventually you became, what’s the right term, card cheat, card shark? What does that mean? For a brief period of time, what’s the right term?

DELGAUDIO: Card mechanic or card shark. I mean, all those terms are acceptable. And, yes, I was hired by an organization or a private organization to deal poker.

MARTIN: So, the point here is you’re not cheating for yourself, right? You’re cheating for the people who set up the game, right?

DELGAUDIO: Correct. You know, in the blackjack world they call it a bus stop dealer. And these are actually common in Vegas, you know, back when the mob was running town where they would have card mechanics working as dealers to cheat their high-roller customers, make sure that they didn’t walk out the door with a bunch of money. But as, you know, sleight of hand, like everything else, became kind of an antiquated craft, became arcane, that stopped being as popular in casinos, but private games, you know, you’d still have people moving under fire as they would say using sleight of hand to cheat at cards. And some people create — or designed entire games around that concept of we will have a game but we’ll have a crooked dealer to help fleece the customers.

MARTIN: Do the players kind of know? Do they think it’s rigged when they play anyway or they just not know?

DELGAUDIO: I think it’s inconceivable that it’s happening to them, anyone at any given time. It’s something you hear about in movies. You know, you’ve maybe seen it on a television show or something but you can’t imagine that these people actually exist and these things are actually occurring. And I think people maybe underestimate the lengths at which one will go to achieve these things, and also how realistic it can look. You’re not really playing a poker game at that point. You’re simulating the act of playing a poker game. And it becomes a real-life simulation where everyone at the table thinks that they’re playing poker and they’re convinced with every ounce of their being that that’s what happening, but they’re not. It’s just a simulation of a game. And I think it’s very difficult for people to conceive of that, that they are living inside of something that isn’t real.

MARTIN: I know that many people think we’re putting a lot on, you know, cards but it’s really there. And I have to tell you that one of the reasons that fascinates me as a journalist is that we are technically — we say we in the quest for truth, right?

DELGAUDIO: Right.

MARTIN: We are trying to find out what’s true. And one of the things that you have to learn really on as a journalist is you may never know what’s true, number one.

DELGAUDIO: Right.

MARTIN: And even if you do find out, people might not care. They don’t care.

DELGAUDIO: That’s a really good point. Or not only might not they care, they might have set up their value system and their belief system that they can’t believe the truth you’re offering. It might be too painful for them to accept the truth because their entire life has been built around a lie or at least they’ve been functioning as if this thing is true. I mean, it’s very hard for one to accept that that is not true and that their life, you know, thereby, is not true. So, it’s — I think it’s — no one wants to be a fool and no one wants to be embarrassed or, you know, made to look a fool. And so, I think it’s very difficult for people to admit when they have either fallen for some sort of scam be it political or at the card table and it’s hard to come around and it takes a lot of courage and — you know, to do that.

MARTIN: One of the things you talk about in your book, “AMORALMAN,” is that you spend spent a lot of time alone as a kid. Why is that?

DELGAUDIO: I mean, I don’t know the exact reason, but I know that part of it was I grew up in Colorado, and my mother was gay. And I think that that forced me into my own closet of sorts by being around — there was a lot of bigotry where I grew up. And that was passed down from generation to generation. So, it was hard to lead a normal life in the sense that, you know, I didn’t like having friends over or anything like that because, you know, there was very real judgment. There is the fear of being judge. But then there is actual literal judgment in some cases. And so, it just became easier to be alone and to not have to worry about that.

MARTIN: And one of the things you said in the book that really intrigued me, you said that, you know, spent hours mastering these techniques, you know, you spent hours doing it but you didn’t like to perform for folks. I mean, here you are, you’re isolated, you’re in a — the way you describe it in the book, you’re — the choice — you know, you’re kind of in a town that’s split between conservative and very conservative.

DELGAUDIO: Yes.

MARTIN: You’re facing a lot of opposition because your mom is gay. And that could have been your way to be liked.

DELGAUDIO: Yes. I mean, also part of it was I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. And so, as much as it might gain — you know, be a way to connect with others, it was also still dangerous to me in the sense that that meant more attention. And if I was able to hide things, what else was I hiding, you know. I didn’t want them looking into me or my life that closely. And being interesting was one more way to get people to look my direction. And for me, it was all about getting people to just look the other way.

MARTIN: At some point, you start looking for mentors. I mean, like the first one was probably like the owner of the magic shop who really introduced you to the world, and then started introducing you to mentors, people who were really great artists and technicians and — to teach you more technique. This is how you meet Ronnie?

DELGAUDIO: Yes.

MARTIN: Yes. Tell me about him. Tell us about him.

DELGAUDIO: Well, Ronnie is a lot of people to me because he was a mentor but also a cautionary tale in that, like, I romanticized this world of card cheats and swindlers and hustlers and things like that, mostly from cinema, and that is not a life generally anyone would choose. And it’s a very hard life, not just technically difficult but also the toll it takes on one’s person of living in secrecy in so many different ways, having to lie all the time, both inside work and then it expands slowly outside of work because you kind of need to keep juggling the truths that you’re trying to create around what you do and who you are. And so, Ronnie was a figure that taught me not just about the technical aspects of these things because I convinced him that it was only for my educational purposes, it wasn’t to actually do, but then also the real-life consequences of what it is to live in that life and, you know, opening my eyes as to how — what the world really is as opposed to what I imagine it is.

MARTIN: Did you think you were going to make a living playing cards, dealing, whatever?

DELGAUDIO: I once hinted that I wanted to maybe go down that road. And Ronnie showed me some scars that I had never seen before, because he had never shown me because he had been attacked after a game. He played in a game, and afterwards was stabbed in the parking lot, and basically left for dead. He didn’t tell me that story until I showed an actual interest in doing what he did. And he was sort of one of those scared straight moments where they take him to prison and say, this is what you want your life to be like? And so, I didn’t think that was a life I was going to end up being a part of. But, you know, years later, I ended up doing it for a short amount of time despite knowing the consequences.

MARTIN: It just seems like you’ve been thinking for a very long time about right and wrong and why people do what they do and what’s worth doing, and it just seems interesting that you would end up in a place where you’re cheating for a living. And it just — I just wonder how you squared that.

DELGAUDIO: Yes. I wish I could say I struggled more with the decision to do it, but I didn’t. In the sense that I had — I was meant to end up there. I was meant to end up at that table and see what I saw. Morality and ethics aside, I feel a responsibility to take the things that I recognized in that experience and share them in ways that I don’t think anyone else would have been able to had they not had that experience. And that was enough to show me what I needed to see so that I could move on and help others see things that I recognize.

MARTIN: I have to talk about the film. You know, I read in a novel called “The Vanishing Half,” it’s somebody by — by somebody named Brit Bennett, that the only difference between lying and acting was whether your audience was in on it. It was all a performance just the same.

DELGAUDIO: Yes, that’s accurate.

MARTIN: Yes. And you kind of fixed that problem of having to hide your artistry, right, with the staged play. But what made you decide to do that? The one I’m thinking of is the latest one, in and of itself, which people can see on Hulu as I said. What made you decide to do that?

DELGAUDIO: I think like anyone I struggle with who I am and what I am supposed to do in this world. And I had struggled with that question alone for so long, I think I just decided to make it a part of the work and have a dialogue with the world instead of just staying in my room and thinking about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DELGAUDIO: Two things are about to happen. One of these things you will see, and the other thing we will see. We get to see you transform into something else.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don’t understand.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARTIN: Let’s do this together. Help me describe it in a way that it doesn’t ruin it.

DELGAUDIO: I understand. It’s very difficult to describe. It’s — I’ve called it a theatrical existential crisis.

MARTIN: OK.

DELGAUDIO: You know, I go out on stage, and I struggle with what it means to be and be known as something. And we watch me struggle through the process of being told I’m one thing, me thinking I’m another thing and me trying to resolve what is the disparity between who I am and how I’m seen by others, and why is that the case, and what happens, what does it mean to be and be known and to be known as something that I don’t necessarily want to be known as or to be known as just something even I want to be known as, what does that mean? Does it mean I’m not other things? And so, just struggling with the questions of identity in a very public form. And the real secret of the show is it’s not really about me. I only use my story as a proxy for people to enter the conversation for themselves and to think about who they are in this world and what it means for them to be seen.

MARTIN: People who had the privilege of being in the audience have a very emotional reaction to the work.

DELGAUDIO: Yes.

MARTIN: And I just — I mean, obviously, there is some awesome card play and card mechanics, as you say, there’s some awesome visual effects. But what is it do you think could evoke such a reaction?

DELGAUDIO: I think people — I don’t think we really have real conversations about seeing one another enough. I think that most of the conversations that are had these days are political or politicized. At least they’re not — or they’re done maybe in like a self-help context, which is certainly isn’t. And so, I think that the show is sort of a trojan horse for that same conversation, which is a human conversation of what it means to see one another, to be in this world and to be, you know, to be connected in a way that we can’t ignore and that we are all shaping each other’s identities in this world, and there’s real consequences attached to that in terms of how I see you matters. It doesn’t matter, like, how I see you and how I recognize you and everything that you are, or if I choose to deny you of everything that you are matters.

MARTIN: I can’t help but think about the politics of the current moment, especially over the last four years where we have been demanded to ignore the truth of our eyes in the service of somebody’s agenda, right? Now, on the one hand, your work is about awe and kind of respecting the power of awe. On the other hand, it also makes plain how much people are willing to believe because they want to believe it.

DELGAUDIO: Right.

MARTIN: And that is scary, do you not agree, if you think about how democracy’s supposed to function? Isn’t there something kind of terrifying about that?

DELGAUDIO: Yes. It’s absolutely terrifying. And I kind of relate this explicitly in the book I talk about this idea of the poker table being a simulation and how easy it is to live in a world — in a fiction that’s written by others without even knowing and living it as though it’s true. And I can’t help but recognize the parallels between that world, that microcosm and the world we’re living in, especially in the political spectrum. And, you know, specifically, when it comes to things like, you know, democracy and voting and how it’s nearly impossible to know what — if it’s a game or not or if it just looks like a game and there’s people better at pretending to play it than others. And so, it becomes less about truth and more about humanity for me. And truth does irrelevant in a point, as we’ve seen over the last few years where facts don’t matter when it comes to, you know, swaying people about decisions and things, facts aren’t necessarily what people are making the decisions based on.

MARTIN: Why “AMORALMAN”? Why is that the title of your book?

DELGAUDIO: You can’t have light without dark. And so, the title is “AMORALMAN” to kind of point to that duality in a very — both a personal way but a way that I think is universal. I mean, we all struggle with am I a good person, am I a bad person. It was an exploration of duality of that for me and what light I saw in the darkness, a light that could only be revealed in such a dark place. And so, I titled it “AMORALMAN” because I wanted to — I don’t know, it points to that duality and is it a moral man or amoral man? And I leave it to you decide.

MARTIN: Derek Delgaudio, thank you so much for visiting with us.

DELGAUDIO: Thank you very much for having me.