The Successful Entertainers – The real live Cartoon

“Magic is, to me, like the first miracle and man’s greatest achievement”

Daniel Sylvester Battagline, also known as Sylvester The Jester (born 1961), is an American magician, best known for playing a cartoon character who comes to life. He has had hundreds of stage and television appearances, He has performed in multiple Las Vegas shows including opening for The Amazing Johnathan, and appearing at Caesar’s Magical Empire. Sylvester the Jester has created numerous magic effects and gags, for his own act as well as for other performers. Effects performed in his act are self-fabricated, original designs intended to imitate classic American cartoons. (Source wikipedia)

Interwiev made by Sebastian & Kristina during the performance in TRIKSTARS show in Kuala Lumpur!

 

Kristina:              How you became magician and why?

Kristina:              How you became magician and why?

Daniel:               I really didn’t have much interest in magic when I was younger. I’d seen a couple of magicians before. But it didn’t spark my interest. But one day, I was really depressed, my mom had left permantly. And my dad, who was Usually like this crazy violent person was just sitting in his room and he was really depressed too. I was taking a shower that day and glanced over at the tile on the wall. It was cracked! I thought, “Oh, shit! my dad’s going to kill me.” Because no matter what went wrong I would always get blamed. But when I reach to touch it the crack moved! And suddenly I realized, “It wasn’t a crack at all, it’s just a hair.” This made my brain kind of explode because I a moment ago I was certain the tile was cracked. Then suddenly I my brain was spinning and I began to think like a magician. This concept of limited perception came into my head. The idea that when we look at something our brain imediately atempts to interpret the experience based on limited knowledge. And that led me to believe and to think about magic! Maybe that’s how magic works.. Its that we’re not certain about what we see so we make a quick decision but its wrong. Afterwards, I got out of the shower and took another look at that hair. But this time I looked at it from about an arm’s length and from that short distance the hair was invisible! And I said, “Wow, this must be how invisible thread works.” And I thought, ‘‘I guess it’s not really invisible, but under certain conditions you can’t see it. So I go scotch taped the hair to the Ace of Spades and I put it in the deck and I must have seen a rising card trick on the TV or something.. Anyway I just did this magic gesture around to cover the fact I wrapping the hair around my finger. I could make the card come out of the deck, move to right and left, and back down into the deck. And I thought, “Wow, is that cool?” Then I went downstairs do it to the old man, he was pretty depressed cause my mom split. So I said, “Hey dad, what’s your favorite card?” And he sais, “I don’t know… the Ace of Spades.”So it was just luck, right? And I go, “Watch!” And did this trick. And I made the card slowly come out the deck and then move to the right, go to the left, and then return to the deck. He gots this big smile and he sais, “You’re doing that with your thumb, aren’t you?” And then I turned around sideways and I did the same thing. And my dad just—he stood up at one point and then he just flops back down on his bed and says, “I have no idea how you’re doing that.” And this made my year—it was like the Grinch who stole Christmas. And his heart gets three times as big and that’s what happened to me. I felt that something had changed in me. And it was fantastic. I’d never experienced anything like that. Never got that kind of reaction from my dad let alone anybody else. And I said, “I’m going to keep doing this.” And I don’t even know what it was exactly, and suddenly I was interested in magic. I’d be interested in story of Houdini when I was a kid but just didn’t seemed like magic. But from that day on I started creating my own magic. And even inventing my own tricks out of junk lying around, and occasionally other people said, “Oh, have you ever seen this trick? Or that trick?” And so that’s how it all started off. The beginning it I

Sylvester-ReverseGravity
The beginning….

was just learning. That was 1975! A few weeks later I saw Magician Doug Henning on his first US TV Special.I continued to learn about magic, and read every book I could find on the subject, then when I was a sophmore in high school there was a talent show based on the old“gong show“ I auditioned with a few effecst I made and I won first prize. I was like, “Wow! I can’t believe this!” I started getting popular! And it wasn’t a big show or anything like that. But then the next year I won it again! And then I kept adding to my repertoire, more and more effects and routines. And did kind of a big one, big illusion, like a shadow box thing, produced my sister out of it. I got some steady work as a magician too. It was at a big resteraunt called Bronco Bear Creek. But after two years of that I decided I was going to move to California! That’s where my mom was. But I couldn’t get any much work as a magician. And this one guy said, “Well, I’ll hire you as a clown.” And I didn’t understand why.—so I decided, ok, I’ll try to be a clown. You know, it sounded stupid and I really didn’t want to do it. But it was a similar experience, like the crack in tile, I put this wig on… make-up a goofy costume and seddenly I’m someone I’ve never met! I was someone else! And I could be anything, do anything, say anything. And it just made me feel as if I‘d tapped in to some real power. It just took me out of the construct of me. I often talk about magic, how magic is based on constructs which is a simplified version of reality. But reality isn’t so simple. I’m not even sure we really see reality for what it is. Anyway that’s what happened with the clown thing; I put this clown suit and make up and it made me not see me anymore. That construct for me was some insane guy who would do anything. And that that guy was hilariously funny, which I had never been before. I could never remember jokes but when I became a clown I could create them on the spot. And I was really funny!

Then in 1988 a movie came out, “Who Frame Roger Rabbit.”

roger_rabbit_movie_poster
Who Frame Roger Rabbit.

And I remembered when I was a kid, my little brother and I used to watch cartoons and we loved them. And I thought, I’m going to do it, I’m going to try to be a cartoon. That’s somewhere between a magician and a clown. And I’d never seen anybody do it. And so I worked really hard in coming up with the right stuff. I was working at a dentist also. I’d been hired to do magic at a dentist office because it was huge, and you’ve got all of these people in there sitting around in pain. So I would just entertain them. And that’s when I invented my first sound effects vest. And I’d go over to kids there, I had one of those pretend hammers, and I go, “Ding!” on their head, “Your head’s broken, ding! Ding!” And have sounds. And they would just laugh. It was a great time. So then little by little I started building this cartoon character. And first time did it at the Magic Castle. And it went fairly well, some people really liked it but didn’t get the response I was hopping for. It was more like they were looking at me like I was the monolith from 2001. But then… Jim Carrey did the Mask in 1994, and overnight everything changed!

the-mask-sylvesterjester
Jim Carrey-The Mask & Sylvester the Jester the real-life cartoon

People were calling me a genius. And others were calling me too! It all seem to happen……Overnight! It was like—because people didn’t have a model, they didn’t have a construct for what a real-life cartoon would be like. They felt uneasy, like what is this? But then when Carrey did his film everybody thought I copied off him. But I’d been doing it years before that movie ever came out! Suddenly, my character was valid, novel and unique. And Monique Nakachian (Tavel International Agency) called me and agents called me. And suddenly I was going all over the world. I’d never even left the United States ever before, and I was travelling around. And then I thought, “This is the greatest thing ever.” And then I had another agent too, he was sending me down to the South America, all the places in South; Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, and all these places like that. And local stuff too; television shows. And that’s pretty much how my character grew and became a successful guy. At least it was successful for me. That was the most success I ever had. I was being a cartoon! Thats norma1.

Kristina:       What you think, what is important in a magic act?

Daniel:      I think what’s important in a magic act is to take people out of their reality and to take them to some new, crazy place and give them the possibility, that same thing that felt when I saw this hair and then it turned out to be something else. And the same thing that I felt where I—when you see something and then you’re fascinated when you discover it’s much bigger, more fantastic than you ever thought. And I think that’s a magicians, or entertainer’s job is to make people feel like the world is a much bigger place they’ve got. It’s more fantastic. More wonderful. Because of course they don’t believe it necessarily that we’re doing real magic because they don’t know how we’re doing what we’re doing, that makes their brain kind of expand and constantly trying to figure out, “How could this be? How could he do that?” And that’s a wonderful thing!

 

Kristina:       How important is the costume and costume designs for a magician?

Daniel:       I don’t know. It depends on what kind of magician you are. I’ve seen

sylvester-costume
“the face of”

magicians wear just regular old clothes, and do very, very well. I think the costume is for the entertainers almost as much as it is for the audience! For me, I want to look in the mirror and not see me. I want to look in the mirror and see somebody that looked like a cartoon and so the costume was important. And tried a different things for a while and it evolved. It evolved into what it is now. And then yeah, so that’s how—your costume, you have to be able to do a lot of things in it too. So it’s more than just a costume, more than just dressing. It’s also part of the magic.

 

Kristina:              What is the secret to create the successful magic act?

Daniel:     Well, you have to work with the strengths you have. A lot of people are not unique. They’re not even original. So you have to look at—you have to try to grow, of course and it’depends on what limitations you have and what you want to pull off. Not everybody has the same skills. We all have different skills. We all have to learn—to use what we have the most of..to standout and be unique in some ways. I was always an artist from the time I was a little kid. So I would draw, sculpt, make all kinds of things. I was always interested in mechanics too, and always do your absolute best. You have to do something original, do something new. Because that more than anything else, if people see something that they’ve never seen before, that works. As long as it’s entertaining, it’s not like you can explode into a million bits on the floor. You can, but you can only do that once.(laugh)

 

Kristina:           What do you like most to be an entertainer?

Daniel:        Oh, the girls. I just can’t keep them off me. (Laugh)
What I like best about it, I like travelling, meeting new people, trying to do my act in other places where they don’t even maybe understand English and see how well I could do it. I like the challenge of it. And I love making people feel what magic is all about to me. My tricks, a lot of them don’t even necessarily fool people like, “What the…?” They’re not like a mentalism trick. They’re like something just crazy and outrageous that they’ve never seen anybody do before. And I am also in that area, kind of specialized in something different, that was outside the regular magic periphery, whatever you call it.

 

Kristina:           What was your biggest success and your biggest failure in your career?

 

Daniel:           My biggest failure, I think, is as businessman. I just don’t get it. I don’t know how to—I’m afraid to ask for money a lot of times. I don’t think business-like way. I mean, my wife says, “You’re the worst business person—man.” I’m just terrible at that. And so I had to try Success-Failure-entertainerharder in the areas that I was good at. Just recently I raised my price and I was so scared. The Koreans called me and I asked them for a decent amount of money and they didn’t even blink an eye. And I was, “Oh, I can’t believe it. It was only three shows.”When I was a kid, I worked so hard, I was like my dad’s slave. I never got paid. Never got a dollar. Never got an allowance. Just work, work, work, work,

award-monaco
International Magic Festival in Monte Carlo

like a slave. So I never had that sense that my effort is worth something. I never had that most of my life. So that’s where my biggest failure is.My biggest success I think was in Monaco, in Monte Carlo winning the Baguette d’Or The Magic Festival in Monte Carlo 1998. I remember first they gave me this Junior Jurors Award which is all they took a vote from all the young people in the audience, and they voted for me. And I was so happy just to get that. I just thought, “This is great. ”It was maybe one of the last ones they had. And I got this award and I was standing there. And Princess Stephanie gave it to me. And then the next thing they’re saying is the champion award, the Baguette d’Or… and then they said my name again, and I almost cried—“That can’t be right.” And it was. And I’m standing there with these two giant awards in my hands—and all these other magicians were great magicians behind me who are in part of the show and that was probably my biggest success—I was absolutely thrilled by that.

Kristina:              If you could start over, would you choose the same path?

Daniel:                 That’s kind of a crazy question because I know where it led. I think that if I didn’t know, if I didn’t have any memory of what I had done, and I started all over again, I would probably end up in the same place. I would, I would do it again.

 

Kristina:             What is your advice for the new generation?

Daniel:                 Stay out of magic. (Laughs)

My main thing is to stay away from so much technology because—I often feel that

live_cartoon_sylvester
The Real Live Cartoon

technology is the opposite—magic is, to me, like the first miracle and man’s greatest achievement was some—probably autistic, cave person kneeling in the jungle, doing what the chimps do…spinning a stick between their hands trying to get meel of grubs out of a some dirt hole and suddenly the thing’s getting hot and starts to smoke then … fire. And they’re probably on their knees doing this, because this may be the origin of prayer. I think that the more ancient it seems the more magical it is. And that’s why I’m not—I mean, I use technology but I build it and make stuff like that. I’m not against using it, I’m against the audience seeing it, like certain big screen things and stuff like that. Because to me, it has to be real. You have to—the audience has to believe in it. The other thing is copying, I don’t like when people copy other people. And sometimes they do it, they just have the same exact idea. And then they have to look, did this person do it before me and then maybe changed? Because these things can happen by accident too, but that would be my biggest beef, to see so much of the same stuff again. Do not copy but also try to come up with something that nobody would think of. No matter how crazy it is, that’s going to make a splash because if the people haven’t see it before….
The presentation, that’s the tough part. You have to present something that is really new in a way that the audience doesn’t get scared or filled but that’s too strange. You have to present it in such a way that they’re on-board with you. That’s what the difficulty of doing new stuff, is that they’re not always on-board with you. The more you give them a construct, something they’ve seen before, the more they feel safe. To me, magic is exactly the opposite that. Magic takes you to that place that isn’t safe. But then you safely return to reality after, that’s what should be; that you take them to some fantastic place in their head or in this crazy world and then in the end they feel safe, and then they have to think about that magical place they went to for a while.

Visit the wild world of Sylvester the Jester for great products and merchandise!
*All magic props are hand made by Sylvester himself: Sylvester – Magic Product shop

Notable nominations

The Magic Castle’s Academy of Magical Arts, Los Angeles, California:

  • Lecturer of the Year: 2002, 2009
  • Parlour Performer of the Year: 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004Sylvester-the-jester
  • Comedy Magician of the Year: 2003
  • Stage Magician of the Year: 1998, 1999

Awards

  • Baguette d’Or (Golden Wand), 1998, Monte Carlo Magic Stars, awarded by Princess Stéphanie of Monaco
  • Kid’s Choice, 1998, Junior Jury’s Grand Prix, Monte Carlo Magic Stars
  • Festival Favorite, 1998, International del Humor, Bogotá, Colombia
  • Gold Medal Champion, 1995, Pacific Coast Association of Magicians (PCAM), Santa Clara, California
  • Appreciation Award (50th Anniversary Special), 1996, International Brotherhood of Magicians
  • The S.C.A.M. Annual Comedy Magic Award, 2007, South Carolina Association of Magicians