Making Space

My favorite YouTube reactor, Coby Connell, recently reacted to the 1978 movie Magic, starring Anthony Hopkins.

There’s a performance lesson in this movie (at 17:30), where Hopkins gets truly worked up while doing a key-card trick—the first trick many of us ever learned. He invests so much into the presentation that Ann-Margret can’t help but fuck him in the next scene.

Now, you might say, “Well, Ann-Margret is getting paid to act like she’s really affected by the trick.”

True—but you can see how effective that scene still is as Coby watches this nearly 50-year-old movie and sits in rapt attention during that trick.

Most of us would look at a simple key-card trick like that, not get a great response with it, and think, Ah, well, it’s a beginner trick. I just need a stronger trick, with a more clever secret, and then I’ll get the sort of reactions I want.

But it’s often not the trick itself that elicits the reaction. It’s the magician’s investment in the trick that tells the other person how interesting, exciting, or stimulating this experience is—and thus dictates the type of response you’ll get.

Hopkins gives a great example of a casual performance here (performance in a casual setting, that is—the performance itself is intense). It’s one-on-one. There’s no apparent “patter.” The performance of the effect is the story he’s leaving with her; he’s not adding a story to the trick. And he leans heavily into the one-step process for more engaging presentations… he eliminates certainty.

Most of us would look through the deck and find the other person’s card. The end. It’s too certain and too pat. There’s nothing to it. Watch Hopkins’ performance, watch Ann-Margret’s response, but most importantly, watch Coby Connell’s reaction to it all. She’s enraptured, appalled, scared, and happy. (This is not a post you can really “get” unless you watch the video.)

And don’t forget the fact that this is an absolute beginner trick. There are no sleights. There are no expensive gimmicks. There’s nothing that most magicians are pursuing with their interest in the craft. There’s just his intensity, which suggests what they’re doing is something significant or consequential in some way.

But, Andy, he’s a murderous psychopath in this movie. And his intensity makes him come off like a lunatic.

Yes, you’re right. I’m not telling you to mimic this specific energy. I’m telling you to mimic his commitment to the bit.

Because the thing is, he’s not really crazy in this scene. He purposefully failed the first time. He’s acting upset. And he’s pretending like he needs her to focus. We know that as magicians because we see he’s following the key-card procedure. He’s committed to the bit that the success of the trick is based on their focus and connection. And that gives the person he’s performing for the space to believe it too.

But you don’t need to echo that commitment in order to trick women into bed with you.

You can just be committed to the belief that what you’re doing is fun, or interesting, or spooky, or intriguing, or wondrous, or surprising—or whatever the experience you’re crafting is.

Most magicians won’t even commit to that much. They won’t even commit to the idea that what they’re showing the other person is interesting. “What if they don’t like it? Then I’ll look dumb for presenting it in a way that suggested they should care.”

But the most likely way to get them to care is to present it like they should.

This is “making space.” You make space for their reaction by committing to the vibe you want them to feel. They can then step into that space to experience that energy.

This is how a beginner’s key-card trick could realistically be used to lure a woman played by one of the hottest actresses of all time into bed. He made space for the moment to seem significant by acting as if it was significant.

If you commit to the idea that what you’re going to show them is fun, unsettling, mind-boggling—whatever it is—you’ll make space for them to feel that way too.