David Chen
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'Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself' Review (with Peter Sciretta)
🕑 Added 2021-01-24 07:04:15 +0000 UTCThis weekend, I watched Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself on Hulu. It was a powerful and baffling experience. I highly recommend checking it out.
I found the show to be so thought-provoking that I immediately had to talk about it with my friend (and magician) Peter Sciretta. I recorded our conversation and am releasing it as a timed Patreon exclusive.
Please watch Derek DelGaudio's In and Of Itself on Hulu before listening to this! Thanks, as always, for your support of my work.
Links:
- Watch Derek DelGaudio's In and Of Itself
- The NYTimes review of 'In and Of Itself'
- Follow Peter Sciretta on Twitter
- Subscribe to Ordinary Adventures
- Hitchbot dies in the US almost immediately
Comments
Chris Gumulya
I enjoyed the movie and his presentation skills are par none, but like Dave my brain goes immediately to the illusion. ***Spoilers*** I think his “tricks” come down to excellent memory and card skills. The purpose of the wolf story is to show the audience that he has complete mastery of the deck. He knows exactly where every card in the deck is and he can control whatever is drawn at any time. So for the letter, you just need 1 letter important to 1 person in your audience and then he can manipulate who gets picked and even which letter gets picked using misdirection. The finale, while presented beautifully and emotionally, is also a bit of a flex using his memory. ***End Spoilers*** I thought his show was executed beautifully. I do feel a little weird about the emotional manipulation, but it’s intent I guess doesn’t seem malicious. His presentation is really well done and I haven’t seen anything like it before.
leanne royo
I made the mistake of popping this on Hulu at around midnight last night just to have context before listening to the bonus ep the next day (today!), thinking I would be able to check out this discussion with only cursory knowledge of the show. Needless to say, I ended up spending the rest of the evening wracking my brain over the whole thing and thinking about how elaborate the performance was. Should have known I wasn't going to get away with seeing only bits of this! So thank you Dave (and Peter) for recommending it, I didn't plan to cry over what was essentially a magic show this weekend, but there you go.
