America's Got Talent?

If the videos don't work The top was Rudy Coby's Puppet Boy Routine from America's Got Talent. Which to put lightly was not well received by the judges. And the bottom is the original routine as it aired back in the day. I think the first difference to notice is that the bottom routine is twice as long as the top. So what did he have to get rid of in order to make his routine fit the minute and half time frame. Well almost all of the build up, which is very important to the routine. His being mean to the puppet is there to set the audience against him. When the decapitation happens, you're supposed to feel a little shocked and little like he had it coming. That he also turns out to be the puppet is some psychological mumbo jumbo I don't want to get into. He also had to cut out a lot of time between putting the puppet in the box and the decapitation.
There was also a derisive comment about his outfit. Well the outfit is another part of setting the audience against Coby and it really needs all the being mean to the puppet that was cut out for it to work.

So basically what happened was Coby took one his old routines and pared it down to fit on AGT. But you can't really blame him seeing as less well established magicians have gone broke trying to come up with new effects each week on AGT. Illusions are not cheap and they usually require other performers to work so there's the cost to pay them too. And moving all that junk to the performance venue can't be too cheap either.

Now I don't watch AGT but it's near impossible to follow magic news without seeing something about it. I don't really believe variety acts stand a chance on AGT. Google-ing for a list of past winners seems to support that. So why can't non-singers win. Well I don't think its structured so that other acts have a fair chance. It not hard to crush a song in a minute and a half, really it only take 20-30 seconds to tell if a singer is good or not. But most variety act need time to build. If I were the cynical sort I'd also say that the producers don't want variety act to win because its harder to market and sell them.

So given the chance would I ever try out for it or a show like it, knowing I can't win the whole thing and that it will be costly. I would probably come up with a something and if I thought it was good enough I'd give it a go. For the simple reason it gives you something you can't buy, publicity. I go on and wow people and I can guarantee that my name gets Googled, my site gets hits, some of which may well lead to work.