Ricky Jay: Deceptive Practice

At a performance in London, Ricky Jay demonstrates three-card monte in his one-man show, "Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants," which premiered Off-Broadway in 1994. Jay considers himself lucky to feel part of the continuum of sleight-of-hand artists, whose tradition goes back more than a century. American Masters - Ricky Jay: Deceptive Practice premieres Friday, January 23 at 9 pm on PBS.

Filmmaker Molly Bernstein describes her astonishment the first time she saw Ricky Jay perform. It led her to learn more about sleight-of-hand and the history of magic. She and her partner eventually earned Jay's trust and began the documentary film that was more than a decade in the making.

Ricky Jay learned much from magician Charlie Miller about how to refine his practice and make a move better each time he performs it. Despite the extreme repetition and level of questioning Miller demanded, Jay describes working on sleight-of-hand moves with Miller "as close to pure joy as anything that I can imagine." Ricky Jay: Deceptive Practice premieres Friday, January 23 at 9 pm on PBS.

"I’ve collected thousands of books in my life about magic technique. But I believe that the real key to learning is personally. It’s almost like the sensei master relationship in the martial arts--that the way you want to learn is by someone that you respect showing you something." -- Ricky Jay. Learn more about Jay's scholarship and mentors in Ricky Jay: Deceptive Practice, Fri., Jan. 23 at 9 pm.

"If I had never seen him do magic he'd be the most remarkable person I ever met," say Ricky Jay of his friend and mentor, the magician Dai Vernon (1894 -1992), also known as "Professor." A remarkable observer is one way Ricky Jay describes the sleight of hand artist, whose lifetime spanned a century.

This web-extra feature is a Hammer Conversation with Ricky Jay and Art Spiegelman, from the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles on November 17, 2007. Sleight-of-hand magician Ricky Jay and cartoonist Art Spiegelman discussed works from "Extraordinary Exhibitions," featuring over eighty 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century ephemeral advertising sheets known as broadsides, from Ricky Jay's own collection.