The collaborative efforts of the actors director Attenborough cinematographer Victor J. The set-pieces I made reference to earlier comprise my favorite Magic moments. Wigston.' I'm laughing just thinking about it. When introduced to a TV executive wearing a very obvious toupee (David Ogden Stiers), Fats slips and accidentally-on-purpose calls Mr. I do have to say that Fats did make me laugh, but only once. And the fact that the act is so lousy is only exacerbated by the film constantly cutting away from this terrible act that we can see with our own eyes, and having characters say (not laugh, but say aloud) 'Now that's funny!' They just sit there.startling in their unfunniness. This collision of limitations is fine when Corky is supposed to be awful, but when he's supposed to have struck paydirt with Fats, I found myself wishing Goldman had hired a genuine comedy writer to do these scenes. Anthony Hopkins is a great actor, but he has absolutely no comedy timing. William Goldman is a talented writer but he's not a gag-writer. I bring this up because I think my familiarity with this almost vaudevillian style of show biz act is what makes Magic's nightclub scenes so cringe-worthy for me. Other sources have since cited Magic's ventriloquist consultant Dennis Alwood as not only manipulating Fats, but serving as his voice as well. Much was made at the time of Hopkins learning ventriloquism and doing the voice of Fats. If magic is problematic on television because you can't misdirect the camera ventriloquism in the movies always opens the question of post-dubbing. I named him Eddie Arnstein because he looked like a cross between Eddie Cantor and Omar Sharif in Funny Girl.) (I even had a ventriloquist's dummy as a child. As were borscht-belt comics with Corky Withers-type names like Shecky Green, Sandy Baron, and Morty Gunty. I wonder if young people seeing Magic today find the idea of a nationally-famous ventriloquist to be more far-fetched (and terrifying) than a wooden figure come to life? I grew up at a time when ventriloquist acts like Shari Lewis, Willie Tyler, Wayland Flowers, and Paul Winchell were staples of TV variety shows.

Magic by William Goldman