#317 Justin Flom on Creativity and Viral Success

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:28

right, Ellen, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You get the show going each and every week and this week was no exception. Welcome, everybody to Episode 317 of classic conversations. As always, I am your host, Jeff Dwoskin. Great to have you back for what's sure to be the most magical episode of Classic conversations of all time. My guest today is superstar magician and Social Media Creator extraordinaire Justin Flom. We're talking magic. We're talking spray paint art. You have likely seen Justin all over your social feeds. He has billions upon billions upon billions upon billions of views. He is amazing. And we're getting into all that in just a few seconds. And in these few seconds. Last week, Chris Carter hosted a breakfast with The Beatles on Sirius XM was my guest we talked Fab Four it was all Beatles all the time do not miss that episode. But right now do not miss the amazing story of Justin Flom superstar magician superstar Social Media Creator, so many great stories and that's coming at ya right now. All right, everyone. I'm excited to introduce my next guest is performed on Allen the Rachael Ray show the today show over 30 billion views. you've likely seen him on the internet, Australia's timed out, dubbed him as the heartthrob of the first boy band of magicians. We'll have to unpack that in a minute. He's the most viewed magician on the planet. Welcome to this show. Justin Flom happenin. Hi.

Justin Flom 2:07

Thank you for having me. I'm gonna have some fun. Yeah, we're

Jeff Dwoskin 2:09

gonna have a good time.

Justin Flom 2:10

The heartthrob quote is a crazy, no one's ever pulled that quote out before but it is out there. There was a boy band of magicians for a hot second. I was in it. But it was only in Australia and not successful enough that it's still around. So that should tell you what you need to know about it. What does

Jeff Dwoskin 2:27

that entail? Just a some younger looking musicians? Yeah, the

Justin Flom 2:31

working title of the show was for magicians and skinny jeans like this was a decade ago. But we did we Justin Willman, who's the host of Cupcake Wars back in the day. And then another magician who created stuff for David Blaine and another Australian magician who did Ellen and a whole bunch of stuff. We all joined forces to be like a boyband of magicians and that was a well, the main thing is if your listeners or viewers have seen me before, they actually probably don't know me as a magician now because I've surpassed magic in the views. Now most people know me as a scraping artists. It's really weird because I had like a 20 year career as a magician, but when pandemic hit, everything kind of changed. And I became a social media influencer or a content creator. I like better than influencers and influencers seems to have a lot of connotations these days. But I just started making very different videos from magic, and kind of have found several different niches, which have kind of opened up a whole new side to the career. It's really really weird.

Jeff Dwoskin 3:35

This spray paint what do you call that?

Justin Flom 3:37

Yeah, I don't know. So I've got like 10 billion views just in spray paint art. The way I do it is kind of similar to what Banksy does, you know, with stencils and layers and things like that. This is not new, a new technique and art layered stencils has been around forever. But I am the first guy to figure out that that creates incredible engagement and watch time in videos because you see the painting come together slowly, but you kind of hang out in the video to see the end because you want to see what it looks like because you're only seeing it piece by piece. So you only see the layer red go down in the layer this and as it goes together, you're like, I think it's gonna be the Jetsons or whatever the thing is that I'm painting and it just kind of ended up being a really cool guy has gone beyond just now the painting to how can I incorporate the spray paint art into something in the real world. So when we did Iron Man on the ceiling, we knocked out a ceiling light and replaced it with Iron Man's chess piece. So we like seeing the painting the spray paint art, but also oh wow, cool. Now the ceiling light for this room is Iron Man's chess piece. It's a fun thing.

Jeff Dwoskin 4:48

That was a great one. These videos always start with at least the ones I saw. Why start with an oops, oops I just put a hole in the wall. I like the Iron Man one starts at oops I've just broke the This light fixture What am I gonna do? Oh, I'll cover it up with all iron. Great.

Justin Flom 5:04

Yeah, great inspiration from Britney Spears. Oops, I did it again. It's just constantly knocking holes in my wall or destroying lights. We've got several in the works right now, there's a Braveheart sword that makes a hole in the wall and ends up as a crazy Braveheart piece of art. There is I mean, we've shattered a couple more lights for different things coming out of the ceiling. We're always working on new ways. So it's become a cool thing, not just hey, what's a cool piece of art that I want to do? But how do I incorporate that into some problem solving thing? Like I'm going to shove a book in a wall, and then it wind up being an invisible bookcase with beauty in the beasts Bell holding the bucks. So instead of just a picture of bell on my daughter's wall, it ends up as like actual use. And then I think people like that because they see themselves. Oh, boy, if I had those stencils, I could do something like that, which is good, because we're getting ready to sell these stencils so that people can try at home via fun product

Jeff Dwoskin 6:04

a little under the covers for me. So let's take the Mickey Mouse one you did you mail in these the first time or there's some of these where you're like halfway through and you're like paint the wall white again, we got to start over.

Justin Flom 6:14

So that happened once that happened once. So one time, yeah, we got to the end of the thing. And I botched it, because it is quite sensitive these layers. Look, a lot of people watch these videos. And they're like, this guy's got no skill other than lining up, stencils. Totally fair. Hopefully my skill set comes more and the cool thing that I'm doing with the painting, but the first one to go crazy viral did like 400 million views, which is bonkers. Like you have to pause and just go 400 million. How is that even possible, but it really went crazy on YouTube was Tom and Jerry, where I knocked a hole in my wall like a little mouse hole. And instead of fixing the hole, I paint Tom and Jerry, where it looks like Tom Cat is going to smash Jerry with a sledgehammer as he's running out of the hole. At the end of this painting, though the last layer, the most important one that adds all the black outline to make everything pop. I just went too heavy on it. And it bled all over the place. And it looked like Jerry was it was a problem. So that got painted over. And commenters on social media will spot it because they're like, wait a second, Jerry moved three inches between the final layer and the finishing shots. So they still caught me. But yeah, usually I can knock these things out first try. And that's the great thing about social media, you shouldn't actually be perfect. People want to see the human in this sort of content. They don't want it to be perfect. So we actually really strive to get it in one shot. And even if it's not perfect, but that's it, we roll with it.

Jeff Dwoskin 7:46

It's incredible. And you know, it's armchair artists, sure. Oh, that's easy. You're just lining up stuff. Yeah, go ahead and do that I can't even get a shelf to be straight. Rise out when I'm putting it up cool education.

Justin Flom 7:59

I've gotten plugged into kind of the graffiti artist community and learned a lot because I'm a magician by trade. But I always loved playing with spray paint and spray paint art and that sort of thing. What's nice is having the brain of a magician, I know about a lot of little weird things. So I did another Mickey Mouse one where he's got a light bulb above his head. And it looks like the light bulb turns on like Mickey has an idea. So the opening shot, of course is knocking out a light bulb cut out hole in the wall and shoving a light bulb in there. But the magician brain in me knows, hey, I can wire a light bulb to do this thing. So it turns on, and then I'll incorporate it into a painting. So it's kind of been this perfect marriage of two careers to end up with this totally new spot where yeah, there's a crazy amount of views coming in. I did the Hulk that got 300 million views in three days just on Tik Tok or YouTube. I don't remember which one it is. But it was crazy.

Jeff Dwoskin 8:55

They all blur together. Yeah. So really, the whole plan was awesome at the 3d Fest. Yes. That

Justin Flom 9:00

was an idea I had for a while and I finally got to do it. And here's the if you want some inside baseball on these things, people asked me how do I get views on social media? And it sounds like circular logic. But the way you get people to watch your videos is for people to watch your videos. And that sounds, you know, not enough information. But what it is, is if you only got 100 views on your video, well unfortunately, that means even those 100 people did not watch that video. Even your own mother didn't watch that video. Because if the 100 people the first 100 to see it, watch the whole thing. Well, then it goes to 1000. And if those 1000 Watch it, then it goes to 10,000 and so on and so forth. So the opening shots end up being the most important thing even more important than the finished product, which is why if I mess up something or if the art doesn't come up perfect, I don't care. What I do care about is the opening shot. So for Hulk I knew Alright, we're gonna knock a hole in the wall. The first way we did it is I got into Have a ladder and I had an air conditioning vent smacked me in the face knocked me off the ladder and the ladder went crashing through the wall created a hole in the wall. Okay, good. I loved it. I thought it was a great pratfall. I love Dick Van Dyke and doing any physical comedy like that. So I thought, This is great. So we put that edited it put it up, and it stalled out, it didn't do anything. So I had another opening shot of that as a backup, which was me going to hit a hammer in this wall, and I go back and I hit it, and I hit a hole behind me. Still comedically funny, good little bit of timing, we worked on what that would look like, people watch these things. And they realize, obviously, these aren't accidental mistakes, a camera was rolling, totally fine. That's what entertainment is. I'm surprised when people call it fake. It's like, nobody watches the office or friends and says a fake Oh, of course, we're writing this stuff. And we're wanting to entertain you, the viewer. So that's what that's what's up. But when we switched opening shots to this other one, the difference is only three seconds in this whole video, just different opening shot. And one version did 3 million views. The other version did 300 million views. You just got to be able to look at those metrics. And I'm far more of a data analyst than I am an entertainer because I just want to give the audience exactly what they want. And that all is through just looking at the data. What are people watching?

Jeff Dwoskin 11:24

I think that's where a lot of people struggle is that that hook that first hook? I've done stuff and go, do you have? That would have been I would have killed it is an extra quarter of a half millisecond there. You lost your entire audience and like,

Justin Flom 11:38

it's yeah, we started to you know, I work with a great team here in Las Vegas. And there's a guy named Rick lacs, and he heads up a whole bunch of creators out here and I get to work with those creators. And in Ricky is my best friend. We created the TV show Wizard Wars together. So he had the idea for the TV show. And I filmed the first pilot of it for YouTube. And then it ended up selling and doing a couple seasons on Sci Fi. That was a TV show where magicians get ordinary objects and have to create magic in a game show format, kind of like chopped or Iron Chef, where chefs you know, get here's your ingredients make

Jeff Dwoskin 12:13

a meal. That's exactly what I wrote down Iron Chef for magicians. That's right. It was a blast

Justin Flom 12:18

and and Teller were celebrity judges before they went off and did their own. They did fool us on CW following that show. But when they were celebrity judges on our shows, it was an absolute blast, we got to create cool new magic. But following the failure and cancellation of that show, it wasn't a failure, it was actually wildly successful. It was a new president of the company that took sci fi from reality. descripted just a whole revamp of the whole network. Because we actually our ratings were higher than what Penn and Teller are getting today on CW. I'm not better. It's all good. After we stopped that TV show, Ricky started doing stuff on the internet and Facebook in particular, and really found a niche with interactive Magic Online, because people wanted to interact with stuff. And I was doing my own thing on the internet. But now working with an incredible community of creators here in Las Vegas. We get to kind of study what's working, what's not working. And yeah, a lot of times we found there's like these buzzwords, that'll just send people away and whatever you can do to avoid something that would make somebody swipe that is everything that's that's the success or the failure of a video is these little things that send people away and my

Jeff Dwoskin 13:33

new shove it it's it's hard it's hard to know, you know, because in my head yeah. The things I do URL really, why aren't you watch it?

Justin Flom 13:40

It's really difficult as an artist on the social media thing. And I think it's why a lot of artists and traditional media Hollywood types have a hard time with social media because it was the biggest thing for me to unlearn. As an artist I have things that I want to share right before pandemic I created something called Magic mixtape it was this 20 minute short film, I orchestrated music for it and hip hop beats and created original magic and had some of my friends submit incredible visual magic. And this thing was seen by nobody. It's the most artistic venture I'd ever done, and nobody watched it. And if you really love magic, you might make it all the way through it. And some of my heroes, my favorite magicians were very kind in how they they said it was the best piece of magic released that year, just 2019. But nobody watched it. And that kind of gave me a picture into how it must be when a comedian or an actor gets on social media and goes why is no one watching my stuff. And it's because what we think the audience wants is not always the thing. You actually have to go into the numbers and that's when you start to learn. Wow, we've got some backwards views and entertainment and we thought that this is what the audience wants and that even might be what they say that they want, but they're lying. They go, we want Aaron Sorkin dramas in the West Wing. And actually they want you know, Naked and Afraid or the Kardashians, people don't want to be honest. But their news feed won't lie, whatever they have on their tick tock feed. That's what they're actually watching. People don't necessarily want to admit the content that they like, Oh, I

Jeff Dwoskin 15:21

know. The best thing about tick tock, and its algorithm is people who don't understand the Tick Tock algorithm. I remember being somewhere Watson, they're like Tic TOCs ridiculous. All it is is naked girls. And bikinis. I'm like, is it? Yeah,

Justin Flom 15:35

that's weird, because my tick bite has nothing but stand up comedy clips and podcast clips. And it's weird. Your tic TOCs. Broken. You just

Jeff Dwoskin 15:42

outed yourself, buddy. This is what you're watching. Right. Now, magic Block Party, isn't that and I read? That's what got you on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, isn't it when she spotted you doing that?

Justin Flom 15:52

The Ellen Show was great. So Ellen, I had a blast. I did it a couple different times. One of the episodes I did for Ellen ended up being I don't know if she won an Emmy for it. Or if it was just the highest rated Ellen show that she had ever had. It was really cool. I don't get credit for that. It was not me. It was because Steve Carell dressed as grew on the particular episode that I was on. When I came back into the show was I had already done the show at that point, Steve Carell dressed fully as GRU, it was hilarious and awesome. So I got to be backstage with this, you know, he did the whole prosthetic thing. But the way I got on the Ellen Show was an interesting story. So again, my buddy, Ricky, we were talking and I was like, obsessed with branding. And I wanted like a cool logo. And I was like, this is the color scheme for my life, man, like, look, this is, this is what's gonna make me successful, I'm gonna get discovered, because I have this great logo and color scheme. And he was like, I don't know, that seems wrong. I think it's just do good tricks. So he challenged me, he's like, just take a year and just do good stuff and put it all on the internet. And I was like, I was working on cruise ships at the time. So that meant if you're on a cruise ship, you've got one day that you're doing a show, and seven or six days where you're doing nothing. You're just in a huge on a boat in exotic locations. So I started filming a bunch of stuff and putting it on the internet. And at the end of that year, yes, Ellen DeGeneres called because of two videos that she had seen. First one was this tribute to war veterans using a deck of cards. And that was this cool story thing. And that trick actually ended up in three different magic acts on America's Got Talent and Britain's Got Talent with each magician performing that their version of that trick or my version of that trick, and winning. So this trick was great. And it went viral on Facebook to 100 million people. And Ellen saw that which led her to my magic Block Party and the magic Block Party was just it was a real thing that I would do. In my hometown in Minnesota, I would throw a big party and just do a whole bunch of magic for everyone there. And we filmed it. It was kind of my answer to David Blaine street magic, David Blaine would film for three years to get just all these cool performances. And he would just film whenever he was walking around New York. And I thought, well, I don't have three years. And I don't want to walk around, you know, a street and talk to strangers. Let me see if I can knock it out in a day, I'll get 500 people to my house, everyone will be prepped to see magic because they know that's why they're there. So they're the best audience because they want to see it. And then we'll get groups symbol filament. And it was great at the time that was wildly successful for me at just 3 million views. That was because of one really cool trick called water to coke where I took someone's water bottle and made it turn into Coca Cola. And it was that was a really hard trick to do. But it really worked. So Ellen finds soldier's deck of cards, which is like a touching piece. And then she finds magic block party. So she has her producer call me and she goes Elon thinks that this is a camera trick. Is it a camera trick? And I said no. And she goes great. Come and do it on our show. And the trick specifically that she wanted was me ripping a lifesaver out of my neck. I eat a lifesaver and it pops through my flesh. It's crazy looking. That was a blast. So I'm I was so nervous. It was my very first television appearance ever. I had David Copperfield calling me on the phone trying to get me to edit my set because he had heard worried about what magic I was going to do. And he didn't like a particular trick that I was going to do. So I was stressed about that because my hero that I grew up watching didn't like a magic trick. I was gonna do those crazy, but I ended up doing it and ended up going crazy good. And that kind of was the shifting point for my magic career because Ellen DeGeneres at that point, she hadn't had a lot of magicians on at that point. Now she's had everybody you know, she she really loved magic after that fight. It was a shift from there I was able to get discovered by Florida Georgia Line and I opened up their tour doing Madison Square Garden. And you know all of these arenas was across the United States doing magic tricks in a rock and roll show in a country music show with Florida, Georgia Line and Thomas Rhett Frankie Ballard. It was it was crazy. So I would host that show in between each of the music acts and do magic in the arena, which had never been done before. And that was cool. But all of that came because of Ellen. So she was very kind to jumpstart my career in that way. Okay,

Jeff Dwoskin 20:23

I have a few questions. Wine, David Cobert. Did you know him prior to this phone call,

Justin Flom 20:28

we had had a couple interactions, we'd had a dinner together. And it's cool. I remember a quote from Jerry Seinfeld. He said, It's amazing that life is long enough that you can meet your heroes. Now he was speaking about Bill Cosby, when he said that I think he changed that now. But same thing for me. You know, at the time, David Copperfield was my hero, like he's He is King of the 80s and 90s, where he did more for magic than anybody ever. No other magician has ever appeared on Esquire magazine. He did amazing stuff. And I still, I think his old specials, because he did you know, 20 or so amazing magic specials over the course of 20 years, that was my life I grew up idolizing and wanting to be but yes, in a few different sort of, he's very protective over his material very litigious, as totally he can be because he really wants to protect not just his legacy, but also magic. He has a very strict view of what magic is, and what it can be so called me and said, Hey, I don't like this thing. And I said, I look man, this is a published trick. It's in a book. Here's how magic works. I'm not sure if this stat is correct. But I've heard it a lot from different higher ups in magic, which is next to law and medicine. The most published works in any industry is magic. Like there's a magic book published, like every day, and it has been that way for 500 years. So magic is the oldest art form in terms of technique, because we got people back in biblical times using magic but magic as an entertainment art form is only 500 years old. Because it wasn't until 500 years ago, that magician started being like, honest, yeah, we're not a wizard. But we're doing this for entertainment previous to that magic was only ever used to claim power from God. So for the last 500 years, magic has been released to the community and you can apprentice to learn secrets or buy these secret books to learn secrets. Well, I bought this book by an amazing magician named Jim Steinmeier. He created all the magic for like the Broadway play beauty in the beast things like that incredible piece of magic. That was where it allowed the viewer at home watching Ellen to take part in the magic and the magic would happen in their hands. So wicked piece of magic. And I ended up doing a similar piece on James Corden years later, but David kind of thought that he owned interactive magic. He's like, no, no, I'm the guy who started doing magic through your television set, which is debatable, and he certainly did it for the most people at that time. I did the effect anyway. So David, and I love him. He does not like me.

Jeff Dwoskin 23:16

Sorry to interrupt, have to take a quick break, you can reflect on your own personal relationship with David Copperfield. I do want to thank everyone for their support of the sponsors. When you support the sponsors. You're supporting us here at Classic conversations. And that's why we keep the lights on. And now back to my conversation with Justin Flom, no one pause, but at the end, and I'll remind everyone, I'll put notes in the show notes. But you got to check out this Allen clip, Justin takes these minutes. And then he swells it and then does this thing where he pulls it out of his neck like he just said, which was insane. Okay, and then the water to pop thing water to coke. And otherwise,

Justin Flom 23:54

I can tell you're coming from the Midwest. Water to pop water to come was

Jeff Dwoskin 23:58

insane. I mean, it says like, I mean, it's amazing to watch magic tricks. It always, I never even tried to figure out I'm not when I have a friend who's like, I can figure out anything. I'm like, I don't want to figure it out. I just want to enjoy.

Justin Flom 24:11

I'm okay with either. Like, I'm the guy who I need to know the secret I don't like not knowing. So I understand when someone is like, I'm going to watch your trick. And then I'm going to YouTube or Reddit to see how it's done. And guess what? YouTube and Reddit they always have the answer. They always know exactly how the trick is done. So the secrets are out there. We're in a very different age. It's not 500 years ago where you had to like know a guy who knew a guy who had a book now you can say how did Justin do that thing on this and the secret will pop up. And I'm okay with that. I'm much more of an open source guy. And which brings me to the Magic community really doesn't like me right now because I've started revealing magic secrets on the internet for videos. So not only did the Magic community leave I was a sellout before big As I started doing social media stuff, instead of the artistic venture of doing magic at the Academy of magical arts in Hollywood, California, the Magic Castle, you know, they they're like, Ah, this guy is just doing internet stuff. But I made them even more mad because I started revealing magic secrets. And I've kind of, luckily, I've been able to have some good conversations with friends in the magic world and say, Look, man, I'm not doing this maliciously, I don't want to take down the Magic community, I actually see a lot of evidence that the viewers like learning about magic, and it doesn't hurt the art form, I think it helps the art form. Because if everyone in the world had the same amount of magic knowledge as my dad, who's an amateur magician, and knows a fair amount about magic, I think the world would be a kinder place to magicians, because my dad experiences wonder and astonishment, more than perhaps you because he searches out magic more than anyone, because he knows about it, he likes it. So yes, he knows how a lot of tricks are done. But oftentimes, magicians get really great joy out of fooling other magicians, and until they're oftentimes will use a secret of magic, they'll reveal a secret, and then they'll use that exact secret against the audience to fool them deeper on the next trick or a trick a couple later. And that's something that's really fun to experiment with. But magicians just they hate that I've revealed the fake thumb trick, or the mirror box Trek and things like that. They really, I feel bad. I did not do it to piss off magicians, but boy, are they pissed?

Jeff Dwoskin 26:38

Does this mean you're not invited to like the magician office parties, then I

Justin Flom 26:42

have been kicked out of more than one magic organization, which is funny Penn and Teller. They their whole thing back in the 80s was we were kicked out of the Magic Castle, which was a bit align like a great press release. But I don't think it was true. But I've actually now been kicked out of magic organizations. And my main childhood magic organization that I grew up in, they had a meeting to see if they could kick me out. And they ended up not kicking me out because I went before them and kind of pleaded my case. And I made a good case of it, which was look, guys, you already exposed magic secrets in a lot of different ways. There's magic secrets that you see acceptable to expose and unacceptable and it's just kind of a debate. But please understand my heart. I'm just trying to create interesting entertainment and that sort of thing. So it's, it's a different thing. But yeah, they don't love all of the magic exposure that I'm doing. Since you've

Jeff Dwoskin 27:38

done magic for so long. I mean, does that despite you moved in this spray painting bad? I mean, you know, I mean, I get why you kind of pivoted is that, why you've reinvented yourself with it, or the

Justin Flom 27:48

pivot came. So pandemic hits. And I, as a live performing magician, I see my calendar completely empty, I had all these gigs lined up, and they all went away. So me and my buddy, we sat down, we thought, well, you know, we could, for the first time in our life, really take off a month and do nothing, I thought it was gonna be a month, or we can use this opportunity where there's no risk, because we're not taking off of work, we don't have work. And we could just really work hard every day to create this online content and see what happens. And that's what we went with. So I created a new video every day, all the way through August. So that was locked down to August, March to August. And first month there was $40,000. I was like, Whoa, that's something holy buckets next month was $80,000. And I was like, man, what is happening the month after that was $150,000 from these views, and I was like I I don't know what's going on. But I'm definitely going to pour into this thing. And it did increase every month until the end of the year. And by the end of the year, I was like okay, at first I really thought this was kind of a side gig and it has nothing to do with my career because I'm doing silly videos of puzzle at everything at the beginning was magic adjacent. So it was how to get out of handcuffs or here's an interesting optical illusion or a puzzle, things like that, that kind of felt similar to magic tricks. And then pranks became a part of magic because you can use deception and Frank so making it look like I was sawed in half while sitting on a couch. That was something I'd taken from my magic Block Party, which was just an art installation that anybody could get in and make themselves look like they were sawed in half. We called it the Beetlejuice couch because it looked like the couch at the end of Beetlejuice where the woman is sawed in half. But that thing ended up going to 100 million people in a day. And it was like there's something here the opening shots of that video were the method to a magic trick. All right, seems like people really want to see the method do a magic trick. So what I ended up doing, do you remember the masked magician back in the day on Fox?

Jeff Dwoskin 29:56

Yeah, I was gonna bring magic Yeah, I was I was just gonna, I was gonna bring that up. The that was like, all the controversy guy were the Macan. Yeah, that was was that, you know,

Justin Flom 30:06

it was not me it was a guy named Val Valentina. He lived out here in Vegas. So I'm in Vegas. And it was a huge thing, because we all knew where he lived. So famous magicians just went to his house, and we're like, Hey, man, what the hell, and it was a whole thing. But I saw data from that, which was, hey, he did this thing. Millions of people are still watching those old episodes. And yet, all those magic tricks are still being used professionally and working great. So he didn't take anything out of the magic world repertoire. But also, the way that the masked magician would do it is he would perform the trick. And then he would teach the trick me. I decided I'm going to do the masked magician backwards. Wouldn't it be cool if I start with the weird, interesting method, and then show the trick? Because you'd imagine here's what would happen like, okay, so this is a story I told New York Times because they did a big piece on the 100th anniversary of sewing a lady in half. And my video sewing a baby in half had like, 200 million views. And I saw my four month old baby in half. It was a crazy thing. The New York Times interview where he goes, I hate to bring up Copperfield again. But you know, he goes, we're interviewing Copperfield and, and all these other magicians, and they won't tell us the secret to the song lady and half track. And I said, What do you want to know? I was happy to. So he told. He told me what he thought the methods were. And I was like, yes, no, here's this. Here's this. But magicians all think that I won't reveal my own method. Happy to you know, the song of baby and half thing. You want to know how it works?

Jeff Dwoskin 31:39

I know how you did it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you had triplets and only did the trick twice. Ah,

Justin Flom 31:44

there you go. There you go. Yeah, I show a video of it when I do live shows still have me sewing my baby in half. And people are like, How'd you do it? And I say, Oh, she has a half sister. Very stupid. But so I actually told The New York Times everything. And he was like, Oh, my gosh, this is amazing. We're gonna put the method in the article, someone called maybe a big magician who shall not be named who is litigious. All those methods were taken out of the article, which is fine. I like educating people on how magic works, because I think that's part of it. But the example I gave to the New York Times writer, I said, Imagine you're at a party, and some guy walks up to you with a bird and puts the bird in his sleeve. And it's like, come here, you're like, Oh, we're about to mess someone up with a bird. This is gonna be crazy. What you've seen now is the method, okay? And you see that method. And then you follow that guy through the party until he reaches some girl and boom, makes a bird appear for the girl. So we get to things there, we get to learn the cool method that the audience probably would have arrived at anyway, like, you watch it and you go, yeah, birds probably in the jacket. And you get to see the reaction of somebody who gets the fun cool visual of a bird appearing, it seems like a best of both worlds thing. So after the song and half couch Beetlejuice couch thing, and after kind of everything I've been through, I was like, Yeah, I think it's time that we reveal some secrets to magic. And it's proven to be very successful. But the shift the painting was totally separate from all of that it wasn't because of the Magic community or anything. It's because I get to do whatever I want every day, with the way that I work on social media. I'm trying to cast as big of net as possible. So I'm not trying to fit into a niche and only do one particular kind of content. Which means today, I'm building a foam pit in my house with a trap door. Speaking of Alan, you know that her trap door game show stuff. I love that. So I'm building one in my house because I want to send people through a trapdoor into a foam pit. So I'm building that but also Yeah, I'll do a new buzzsaw magic trick that I got from a friend will chop someone's hand off with a buzzsaw. And in the day after I'll go back to painting. It's a cool way to do it. It sounds like

Jeff Dwoskin 33:51

to me like if you ever want to move you're gonna have a real difficult time moving or a real easy time moving.

Justin Flom 33:56

It's so funny you say that I was saying today because there's a whole thing with trying to get me to move someplace and I'm like I can't like I actually can't afford to move I've got this house is is spray painted every which way and I've got a dozen projects being put in and then I've got a warehouse here in Vegas full of just props and weird magic things and mirrors and stuff. It's a problem. I'm not a pack rat. I'm not a hoarder, but I'm close.

Jeff Dwoskin 34:24

The one big takeaway so far for me is if anything ever happens to you, I'm going to call the authorities and tell him it was David Copperfield. Yes

Justin Flom 34:32

Then okay. Yeah. Look, again I like I liked David a lot his show. It's still when people ask Hey, what magic show should I go see I go go see David Copperfield. It's amazing. He's got a crazy thing with an alien in the in the show right now. Like nobody's cooler or better than David was when he was coming up like he dated Claudia Schiffer. Holy Come on. It's amazing. Also, look I like when young questions come up. And I think that as a Magic community, this is not about David, this is about in general, we don't really do enough to bolster and raise up the young magicians. There's a lot of gatekeepers in magic, who kind of set up these rules. And they're fake rules. They're not real rules about how you should perform and things that you can't do. And the truth is, is all the big guys, they don't follow any of those rules. So you've got a whole bunch of young people trying to come and it's show business in general, you know, you hear from the big guys, this is the way you write, this is the way you perform. Don't do this, don't do this. But the big guys are all doing all those things. So in magic in particular, it's camera tricks, it's actors. And it's exposing magic secrets. The big guys have done all of it. They've all used actors and Stooges, plants, whatever you want to call them. They've all used camera tricks, but then they tell the basically, the Magic community believes the press and says, Wow, you know, we'll just Criss Angel doesn't use actors or camera tricks or anything. Oh, come on, man. Of course he does. I'm not saying it's bad. Because I do it, too. It's a different era. We're all doing entertainment. Zach King is kind of a magician, right? But he only does camera tricks. At the end of the day, just what's the most entertaining? What's the best thing that you can do for somebody?

Jeff Dwoskin 36:21

I did stand up comedy. I guess I still do. But like for 20 years, and I'm one of my inspirations in stand up comedy was the amazing Jonathan Gray.

Justin Flom 36:30

I have two of his cars now that he passed away. I bought two cars from Jonathan. I got close with them towards the end. And he brilliant comedian. I loved all of it. Did you have a favorite Jonathan bit,

Jeff Dwoskin 36:43

it really reminded me of when you pulled the thing out of your neck. It kind of reminded me because he would do that kind of stuff. He would do

Justin Flom 36:48

gory stuff. Yes. He was great at just you know, he would swallow razor blades and all this and just bleed everywhere down his mouth, as opposed to a regular magician who would swallow needles or a razor blade and just pull them out magically, he would. He would make it bloody and gory and great. Yeah, I got to hang out with him a bunch here in Vegas. So I bought his Porsche and I bought his Studebaker and I have 1951 Studebaker commander. It's that bullet nose, old school. It's great. So I have that one. And I gave the Porsche to my dad, and he put it in Florida. But he liquidated he had so many cars and all this stuff. And he was dying. You know, he had heart trouble and he was dying. It was very sad thing. So he sold all of this stuff to a bunch of people here in Las Vegas, because he had months left to live. And then he lived for another six years. And we're like, was this a bit like, it seems like an Andy Kaufman style bit that Jonathan would totally do. And he wasn't dying at all. But no, he was. He was definitely dying. He just held on there for a long time. And I wish I could have had more time with him. Great, great stuff. And the other comedian I really liked and I'd imagine if you'd like Jonathan, you would like Steve Martin's old stand up comedy. I

Jeff Dwoskin 37:59

learned to juggle because of Steve Martin. Great. Everybody should

Justin Flom 38:04

learn how to juggle. So what was the what was the genesis there? You saw him do something and you're like, I gotta I gotta be doing that. Yeah, he

Jeff Dwoskin 38:11

did the little trek where he's just kind of moving up. He's moving his thing. Yes. And yeah, I just I bought that for dummies.

Justin Flom 38:17

His book, born standing up Steve Martin's book on stand up comedy is the best. And not only is it the best stand up comedy book, I think there is I think it's the best book on show business. He did such great. And he started as a magician. But he realized pretty quickly, I think kind of what I took a lot longer to realize, which is magic does not have the amount of power that I wish it did. It just doesn't take up enough brain space in people's hands. They dismiss it because they have to either the options when you watch magic thing is either the person is a supernatural being or they're lying to you and trying to trick you. And most people don't like liars and tricksters. There's exceptions to that rule, of course, but for the most part, they have to dismiss it and go i Well, he, you know, he used a thing or whatever, and they move on, which is why when Steve Martin left magic, and went straight comedy, he had a great basis in thinking different and then that really showed a totally different way of doing stand up. And kind of the same way that I get to take a totally different view of video production and stuff on the internet. It's actually

Jeff Dwoskin 39:24

quite fascinating the way you just frame that the visceral reaction that you get from Magic versus laughing because laughing makes you laugh. It touches a different thing that you write that like a year later years later, you might repeat yes

Justin Flom 39:39

book. I think that's a great point. Like I think once a week about a David Letterman joke where he talks about you know, the toothpaste that collects in the side of your sink, I let it dry and then I serve it as after dinner mints. I think it's a funny joke, but I think of it once a week because good comedy kind of gets in your craw and you think about a lot. And I had never really had that with a magic trick. Look, I've done some incredible pieces of magic. I did magic for 50 cent once where I worked extraordinarily hard on this trick that may or may not happen, because that's the best kind of magic where there's this master magician named one primaries, and he talks about the skillful magician will hide a playing card in every salt shaker in a restaurant in order to do a crazy magic thing. But if the opportunity does not present itself, he walks away. And that's kind of this mentality of you go the extra mile for method and Arrested Development did really good making fun of that they're like, Have you been walking around with lighter fluid and your sleeve for two days to do that? Yes. That's how dumb magicians are for that little moment. So the 50 cent thing. So I am doing a party for the marketing director of SmartWater. So he's throwing a big party in the Hollywood Hills. And I'm there just to do magic and walk around and share cool stuff for people. So this is immediately after the Ellen DeGeneres appearance. And he saw that and, and all this now, I think ahead of time I go Alright, who's going to be at this party? That would be really cool to do a specific magic trick for so I look at who SmartWater is, you know, has his they're not sponsored. What's the the celebrity endorsed people tell? Jennifer Aniston, Kim Kardashian and Fitty cent, and come pity, because now we've we've hung out. So Fitty is that but none of these people are supposed to be at the party. I think he's a marketing director. These are the celebrities. And maybe they'll show up. So I prepare a way to how should I tell the trick? I have a secret thing. So that later if I were to borrowed $1 bill from one of those celebrities, I could change that dollar bill. So that treasurer's signature, actually, on the minted dollar bill would say the name of that celebrity, it's cool thing takes a lot of prep, you got to know about it. Magic's not real. There's a trick to it. So I'm at the party, and 50 cent walks in, and I'm like, yes. So I go up, and he's got his whole crew around him. So I know, I've got like five seconds to do something impressive. And then I can hang out with Fitty. So I literally shoved my way through the group. And I have got a stack of $1 bills. And I hand the guys all a bunch of money. And that's interesting already. So as it happens, I'm the only white guy at this party. It was kind of a Bollywood event sort of thing. So already, I'm in a unique situation, I broke into this crew from Fitty cent, I hand out money, I collect the money and I shake it and it turns into a bunch of $100 bills, and I give out the $100 bills. Wow, that's cool. At that point, though, fit, he grabs me and grabs my wrist and he like jerked me close to him. And he goes, Yo do it with some of my bills. He bought the trap. Oh, just like I couldn't have asked for a better setup. And I said, Yes. Give me some of your money. And he pulls out of his pocket. Look, I don't know what club he had just come from. But he has a wad just had to be $1,000. And once it was crazy, I don't know what $1,000 and ones look like it was a giant wad as big as my head $1 bills, I could just give me any one of those. And he gives me one of those dollar bills. I do the magic thing necessary secret method in order to make what happens happen. But I go look at the signature on that dollar bill, the treasurer's signature. So on every dollar bill, there's a unique serial number and a signature from the treasurer of the year that that bill is minted. And he sees it and it's you know, just whatever the guy's name is Bob Johnson. I go rub it with your finger and he rubs it and nothing happens. And I go okay, look at it closely read it one more time, and he rubs it and it changes into the name Curtis Jackson, his real name 50 cents real name and his crew exploded. Like they lost their minds and they're jumping around dancing around, and Fitty did nothing. He just froze. He couldn't compute what just happened, which is the correct response for magic when it really hits hard is you actually don't go Oh, yay. And give it a round of applause. Your brain does malfunction a little bit and you're like, I didn't tell anyone I was gonna be at this party. And he looks at me. He goes, who are you? And that's a great response to magic. It's one of my favorites.

Jeff Dwoskin 44:22

That is amazing. That is and it makes the payoff so much better. Right? Yeah, I feel Yeah. Sorry to interrupt, have to take a quick break. I'm gonna check on my $1 bills. And we're back to an earlier point where you were talking about how people enjoy knowing the trek. In comedy I enjoy seeing my friends are the same people do it again and nailing the same Joe again. And knowing that or more

Justin Flom 44:47

would be it would be hearing the genesis of the joke, which is why Jerry Seinfeld's comedian did so well. If you're a comedian, you love that movie. You love seeing him try to write the colonoscopy. You bid and you'd like to see him thinking about it. And then eventually you see him arrive at the line. You know, I think the press has invaded my life enough. So I will say no to the Booper ROTC and you're like, Ah, he got there. What a great bit. And seeing that kind of come together is the same way that I like showing the behind the scenes of magic is you get to see kind of the thinking behind whatever that thing is.

Jeff Dwoskin 45:21

I wanted to ask you what you did for the Detroit Tigers I saw that was listed somewhere there. Yes. I got my Tigers hat on. So let's do it. Yeah.

Justin Flom 45:30

Remind me the name of the family that owns tigers. Yeah. So the village family was very, very kind of me. Like I came out. And I did a show at one of the one of the Ilitch family members goes to this big church, big giant church there in Michigan, and I had done a full evening show their big two hour show the intermission, and it's a blast. But while I was there, they were like, Hey, let's go look at the hockey arena and do a tour. Let's go to a Tigers game, and whatever else and let's just hang out. So they're taking me to all the cool spots. We got to see like Kid rocks bar and stuff like that. But we're underneath the arena for the Red Wings. Then we go to the Tigers stadium for the baseball game. And we're hanging out in the box. It's great. And I said, Hey, should you know if you guys want to see any magic or anything like I've, I can always do stuff. So if you got anybody you want me to do magic for? And they said you should do magic for everybody. I said, What do you mean? And they said, Let's go downstairs. We'll do magic for everybody. So we go downstairs, we did. Oh, we also did magic for the players before the game that did not go as well. Look, I'm very honest, they got their game face on. They are absolutely you know, they're not thinking about tricks and whatever else. So I did something for I can't remember which player and he was like, Oh, that's cool. And then he went back to batting? Of course he did. But during the game, we got to go down and grab a camera. And they were like, What do you want to do? And I was like, let's just make it up as we go. Or at least it's the appearance of that. Okay, that's the secret to everyone else. It's gonna look like we're making it up as we go. I am prepared out the wazoo. Okay, that's the thing we get down there, pop on the camera. And I go, Yeah, we can do some magic. Hey, and I had a guy who had just finished a beer and crushed the cannon and I grabbed it from him in the can refilled dents pop out of the cans. So now it's just an empty can. And then I seal the can but it's this lightweight, empty cannon then the can fills up with beer. And I pour it out and the crowd goes crazy. Because it's like a cool trick. And it appears totally as magician say impromptu the reality of which is I was prepared because I knew the illage family may ask me to do magic in that moment. And you have to be ready for that, which is the same and stand up and stand up. I think there's a fair amount of people who believe these guys are just talking funny and telling stories making it up as on the spot. And you're like, oh my gosh, no, this is I've been writing this bid for three years trying to get it right. Well,

Jeff Dwoskin 47:49

you know, to circle back to something that we talked about earlier, what you just described making the can out of nowhere, refill, that's something people would talk about forever, because they didn't come to a show. They didn't watch you walk on stage and then do that. So there was no setup. They literally thought you just went there turned around, grab some guys can Yes,

Justin Flom 48:10

that is true. If you're in person with that person, okay, because I have experienced that I did some magic around a campfire for some Hollywood producers, and they still talk to me about I did it with a Coca Cola. We were at the campfire, I don't have anything on me. We're at a campfire. And they hand me this thing. And I do that trick. They still talk about it. However, as soon as you put this digital screen in between us where a television screen in between us. Now there's too many variables in question that make it less like, well, they don't know if there's a camera trick they don't know. Is that accurate? Is that? Or is that a phony cam? Is that digitally altered beer. All of those things are barriers to wonder or astonishment. Which is why? Look if your goal in magic is wonder or astonishment, which a lot of people in magic think it is in the same way that if your goal in comedy is laughter? Well, that's what's paramount. And yes, in stand up comedy, the goal is just get them to laugh in whatever way possible. Unless you're an elitist, incompetent, you're like, Yeah, but don't use props. But don't use this don't use impressions. And it's like, okay, well, same thing in magic. They go wonder or astonishment is the only thing that we're trying to go for. And in my opinion, that's not the only thing that you can go for. You can go for education, or you can go for a gag or comedy and amazing Jonathan would only do one magic trick in his whole show. The rest of the show was comedy. The rest of the show was gags and bits and magic tricks didn't work. And he's an incredible and a great magician. So what what are we talking about here? When it comes to Yes, a memorable magic trick like that soda can thing? Yes, it will be remembered forever. Only if you were standing right there. And because I want to do magic for the most people possible. I've got to do it through the screen.

Jeff Dwoskin 49:56

I don't know. I just heard someone talking about it yesterday. So I don't I don't think you're right. They I appreciate it. I that Justin guy. Oh, so I watched the video you did with your daughter when she was younger and you took her tooth out with your motorcycle?

Justin Flom 50:13

Yes, I pulled my daughter's tooth out using a motorcycle. I wish

Jeff Dwoskin 50:16

my kids I used to do some really fun stuff with my kids when they were really young. And my youngest youngest was really was really willing to do all that stuff. I feel like if my timing was different, I would have had a better shot. It's social fame. But so I grew up always pulling my teeth out. Well, you know, I mean, when they were loose, right? And so that your video so you tie a string to your daughter's tooth and then drive away on the motorcycle and it pulls the tooth, which was basically me was hanging by a thread. Oh, yes. Yeah, it was it was very,

Justin Flom 50:46

in fact, I really, it was yeah, it was almost out. But it was a fun. No, yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 50:50

I'm just saying so you don't get letters. My daughter had that too. It was hanging by a thread of a thread of a thread for a week. And she would never let me pull it out. We

Justin Flom 51:01

had a whole bunch of ideas on how to do it, but the motorcycle pole and that seemed the most fun, we almost attached it to a horse, we were that we were horse riding earlier that day, because my daughters are trying to learn how to ride horses. And I was like, we could tie it to the horse's tail or something like that. But the main thing is with having kids and doing the job that I do, which is social media, I can't force him to be on camera or do anything I don't want to. But if they a lot of times, they have a fun idea. And they go, I want to do that. So we were watching a video of a whole bunch of kids pulling their tooth out on like Funniest Home Videos sort of thing. And my daughter who has my competitive nature is like we can do better than all of those people. And I was like, Alright, let's get it. It's the same way. She learned how to ride a bite. She's six. So she's a little bit behind from when I learned or when other kids learned. And that's what got her the competitive nature. She saw the neighbor kid riding bike, and he's only four. And it was almost this mentality from her like, fuck that guy. I'm like, I gotta get I gotta get on my bike. And I was like, Yo, let's go. Let's do it. First try then she nailed it. So when the kids want to hop on camera and do things if they want to help me with a painting or something, I'm like, I've been here. Absolutely. If they don't want to do it, I go, that's fine. Because what I learned from song a baby and half, I was like, look, it's pretty fun to saw a little girl baby in half. However, you cannot saw a crying baby in half. That would be traumatic for everyone to see. Oh my gosh. So for selling a baby in half, we actually shot it over the course of two or three days where the first day was just hanging out with the baby who's hiding half the baby's body is hiding in a table. That's how trick works. There's a mirror underneath and you can't see anything. And grandma, my mom is actually hidden underneath this table holding my daughter Haven so only her upper body is hanging out above the table on camera. We just hung out with her in it played with her and she got so comfortable in this thing. She just conked out and went to sleep. And that's when we would do the magic trick when she was totally asleep. And the tape that we ended up using because we did a you know a dozen times time that it really was amazing if she woke up halfway through cutting her in half. And it was just like, it was great. It was it was really really fun. The rule is when you got kids yeah, you can't force them to be on camera. That would be terrible. But when they love it and want to have fun with the stuff and these projects are all really fun. Yeah. What do you want to do? Let's do it.

Jeff Dwoskin 53:32

The tooth pulling reminded me of not my finest moment tie. It was one of those things on paper is so my daughter's tooth is I'm like I'm coaching her through I said here's what you do on this. Grab the tooth. Keep mine it's been hanging by a thread for a week at this point. It's great. I go grab the tooth on she grabs. Oh, okay, I go ready. One, two, and I smacked her hand.

Justin Flom 53:52

Oh, gotta come out came right where she Okay, great. It didn't

Jeff Dwoskin 53:55

hurt nothing. It was just the the Act. The it was the shock of it that I think it still comes up. We were

Justin Flom 54:02

set up the day before to pull the tooth out. And I was tempted cuz she was just really scared. And I said you don't have to be scared like that tooth is gonna come I promise it doesn't hurt. She had never done it before. You know, she didn't know that it didn't hurt and I was like It's not gonna hurt I promise and she's like terrified and I was tempted to just go without her permission like to drive away with the motorcycle and hey, like it or not that tooth coming out but as a dad I can't do that. I was like no and you'll see in the video she yells at me she's like go just go just go do it. Which was finally her like just going because we have a saying here which is five seconds of bravery. No telling what you can do. And really that's what it is, is just need five seconds being brave and your end. That's what it is with cliff jumping, getting on stage. You're nervous before you walk out on stage. But as soon as you're up there all right, here we are. Let's do it. Here

Jeff Dwoskin 54:55

we are. Let's do it. Ah, this was fine. I appreciate you hanging out with me. Do you want that mentioned your books real quick.

Justin Flom 55:01

I've got adventures of a kid magician and everyday magic, which is just cool magic books that are out there that teach kids how to do. Well. The cool thing is about adventures of a kid magician is that was a book I pitched to Walmart. And I was like, Look, I think this will get kids to read because we can hide the secrets of magic tricks in the book. And in some ways, you can't just skip to the end of a chapter and learn the magic trick from that chapter. But it was a book about a kid magician based off of my life and my father's life. We melded together our lives, we both grew up in kind of small town America using magic tricks to get in and out of trouble. So we wrote fictional book that used some of our stories. The first story in the book is a true story of my dad who peed on an electric fence and felt what that was like. That was the first story. And then we combined it with a magic trick, but we teach the magic tricks. And just yesterday, just last week, I got a call from an inner city school that said, Hey, we've got a young kid here who was really struggling behind in learning how to read and is using your book to learn how to read because he's motivated by learning these magic tricks. And he's doing magic tricks for all these kids here at the school. That is like the best thing ever to hear that sort of thing. So I sent him my other magic book. And I said keep going. Those are the books and on the social media side. Yep, just watch me on YouTube or on tick tock or Facebook, where it's just my name, Justin Flom, and you can see all the new stuff that's coming very soon. We are working on a product to put these layered stencils in your hands so that you can do them and that'll be a really cool new thing when that when that happens. Can't

Jeff Dwoskin 56:37

wait for that. I'll put links to all that in the show notes. Everyone listening, you've got to check out there's a reason there's 30 100 million billion views of these things. They're incredible. They're the magic really fun. The spray paint art, all of it.

Justin Flom 56:51

Thank you so much for having me on. This is a lot of fun.

Jeff Dwoskin 56:53

Oh my goodness. How amazing was Justin Flom? I'm sure you've seen one of the billions and billions of views of his amazing magic or spray paint art. I'll put a few choice selections links in the show notes. You gotta check those out. Such a fun conversation. Can't believe it's over. Now the huge thank you. Thank you Justin Flom for spending all this time with me. And of course, thanks to all of you for coming back week after week. It means the world to me, and I'll see you next time.

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