Things Get a Little Tricky

Five men in suits and tuxedos move among the green felt tables at the Magic Castle’s Inner Circle Ballroom in L.A., where posters of magicians, past and present, line the wall. “Watch this,” says Brian Ochab, a 34-year-old actor from Detroit as he performs a sleight-of-hand trick in which a card travels from his hand to end up inside a tiny box on the bar, outside his reach. As the box is opened to reveal his folded card inside, the audience gasps and Ochab takes a bow.

Nearby, an older magician in a black velvet jacket makes a crystal ball disappear into a handkerchief, while David Shimshi, a younger magician, flamboyantly spins cards in twirls around his body without touching them.

On this Wednesday evening, the magicians compete in the “Strolling Olympics,” a competitive event in which performers are judged by a panel of their peers. Organizers from the Academy of Magical Arts envision it as the equivalent of stand-up comedy at the Improv.

The magicians run the gamut from purists--close-up magicians who perform card tricks--to hyphenated performers such as Hillel Gitter, a self-described “clown- tomime” whose performance includes “acts of mime, clowning and magic.” This evening, Gitter, whose long, curly gray hair flows to the shoulders of his powder-blue jacket, is not performing but judging the competition. He is impressed by the talent, he says.

Around 9 p.m., the contest wraps up, and judges confer, counting their ballots.

Shimshi wins the competition, carrying home a trophy created especially for the occasion and a check for $50.

After the competition, Ochab explains that he was drawn to magic when he met a magician on a movie set where he was working as an extra. As he got to know the magic community in Los Angeles, “I was surprised to see there were so many young magicians,” says Ochab. There is a “hipness to [magic] that wasn’t there before,” says Ochab. “We’ve moved past the old idea of the bad tux and the bad jokes.”

In the library, which only practicing magicians can enter, librarian Gordon Bean sits behind a desk topped by a skull, a couple of reference books and several decks of playing cards. “Magic is poetry,” he says. “Close-up [magic] is haiku.”

Making people believe in illusions is indeed magic, adds Bean, “particularly in this town, where people think they’ve seen everything.”

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The Secret to His Success

Writer John Ridley stands on the Universal Studios lot, taking a minute for a cell phone chat about his concept of success, which seems to have a lot to do with sheer persistence.

It’s Thursday morning and he says he’s operating on about three hours of sleep, up late and out early working on one of the three new pilots he penned for next season. At this moment, he’s still buzzing from a pitch meeting with a producer. It went well and Ridley’s upbeat.

After this phone call, he’s headed to his publicist’s office to talk about his fifth book, “Conversation With a Mann” (Warner Books) due out in six weeks. The book debuts days after the May 31 release of his new film “Undercover Brother,” a 1970s-style action-comedy starring Eddie Griffin and Denise Richards.

“It’s not always like this,” Ridley says of the hectic pace, during the phone interview. “It’s just a busy time of year.”

Ridley, 35, is a former stand-up comic who got his start in Hollywood in the early 1990s as a TV writer. Over the years, he earned a reputation for dark and violent stories laced with comedy, and he has ridden out the vicissitudes of Hollywood. He wrote the original screenplay for 1999’s “Three Kings,” but divorced himself from the project when the lead character was changed from a black man to a white man and ultimately received “story by” credit.

Ridley’s current pilots show his range. For ABC/Touchstone Television, he’s written a show about two children whose parents are part of an ancient clan of warriors battling evil. He’s also doing a half-hour comedy, sans warriors, loosely based on his relationship with his wife, Gayle. His third pilot, for UPN, is an hourlong drama about two brothers and their struggling hip-hop record label.

“I come up with an idea, pitch it as a movie first, then a TV show, then a book,” he says. The successful concepts are always “the idea that nobody wants in the first place. Then, you do it once, in one format, and everybody wants it.”

Today, Ridley is eager to talk about his new book, the story of a Harlem-born comic in the 1950s determined to become the first black stand-up comic to appear on TV’s “Ed Sullivan Show.” It’s a book, he says, that incorporates almost everything he has learned from working in Hollywood.

That lesson: “You can’t allow other people to set your standard for success.”

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Sightings:

At a book party for Paul Jasmin at Les Deux Cafe in Hollywood last week, celebrities flocked to toast the photographer who makes them look so good. (Jasmin also had a stint in the movies as the voice of Norman Bates’ mother in “Psycho.”)

Among those celebrating the publication of Jasmin’s book, “Hollywood Cowboy,” were Christina Ricci, Sofia Coppola and her husband, director Spike Jonze, Kelly Lynch, Cameron Diaz, Daryl Hannah and artist Robert Graham.

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City of Angles runs Tuesday through Friday. E-mail angles@latimes.com