I can’t find the quote easily (it’s somewhere in God, No!), but Penn Jillette has said that one aspect of magic tricks is the magician putting in more work to set them up than anyone sane would expect.
I’m moderately sure that he’s overestimating how clearly the vast majority of people think about what’s needed to make a magic trick work.
Make the secret a lot more trouble than the trick seems
worth. You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more
time, money and practice than you (or any other sane
onlooker) would be willing to invest. My partner, Penn,
and I once produced 500 live cockroaches from a top hat on
the desk of talk-show host David Letterman. To prepare
this took weeks. We hired an entomologist who provided
slow-moving, camera-friendly cockroaches (the kind from
under your stove don’t hang around for close-ups) and
taught us to pick the bugs up without screaming like
preadolescent girls. Then we built a secret compartment
out of foam-core (one of the few materials cockroaches
can’t cling to) and worked out a devious routine for
sneaking the compartment into the hat. More trouble than
the trick was worth? To you, probably. But not to
magicians.
Edit: That trick is 19 minutes and 50 seconds into this video.
I can’t find the quote easily (it’s somewhere in God, No!), but Penn Jillette has said that one aspect of magic tricks is the magician putting in more work to set them up than anyone sane would expect.
I’m moderately sure that he’s overestimating how clearly the vast majority of people think about what’s needed to make a magic trick work.
His partner Teller says the same thing here:
Edit: That trick is 19 minutes and 50 seconds into this video.
It’s not clear to me that clear thought on the part of the audience is necessary to make that statement true.