We had the opportunity to check in with David Merry and learn more about his
soon to be released film,
Switched at Death.
Who inspires you from outside the magic community?
I lived in Las Vegas in 1981 playing blackjack for a living, while I was there I went to see many comedians as that was what I truly loved when added to my magic. I saw Johhny Carson, Bob Hope, George Carlin and finally Don Rickles. Bob Hope, Don Rickles and Rodney Dangerfield had the biggest impacts on me. Eventually I went on to become a joke writer for Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers. I wrote jokes for Leno at the Tonight Show but not enough to say I wrote for him. I also love Apollo Robbins known as the world’s best pickpocket. He came to me and asked me to write a bunch of material for him… he’s off the charts good!
I lived in Las Vegas in 1981 playing blackjack for a living, while I was there I went to see many comedians as that was what I truly loved when added to my magic. I saw Johhny Carson, Bob Hope, George Carlin and finally Don Rickles. Bob Hope, Don Rickles and Rodney Dangerfield had the biggest impacts on me. Eventually I went on to become a joke writer for Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers. I wrote jokes for Leno at the Tonight Show but not enough to say I wrote for him. I also love Apollo Robbins known as the world’s best pickpocket. He came to me and asked me to write a bunch of material for him… he’s off the charts good!
What is your first memory of magic?
The very first recollection of any magic I have was at a birthday party I went
to as a child and watched the amazing Johnny Giordmaine.
I can’t put an exact date on it but I would guess I was 7 or 8 years old. I was mesmerized instantly. After that a friend who was quite a card guy even at 13 showed me tricks he could do with an ordinary deck. He actually is our last mayor’s younger brother, Michael Tory. He became very accomplished, very early (he attended several Tannen’s Magic Camps) and that got me hooked on close-up. Not a lot of people know I’m a hard core close-up card guy! I took private lessons from Ariel Frailich, Howard Schwartzman, and Derek Dingle.
I can’t put an exact date on it but I would guess I was 7 or 8 years old. I was mesmerized instantly. After that a friend who was quite a card guy even at 13 showed me tricks he could do with an ordinary deck. He actually is our last mayor’s younger brother, Michael Tory. He became very accomplished, very early (he attended several Tannen’s Magic Camps) and that got me hooked on close-up. Not a lot of people know I’m a hard core close-up card guy! I took private lessons from Ariel Frailich, Howard Schwartzman, and Derek Dingle.
Who from the magic community inspires you?
Doing comedy magic I had two people I looked up to, one was The Amazing
Johnathan and the other was Mac King. Both became friends over the years and
I truly respected their work as comedy magic performers. The difficulty with
comedy magic is the extremely fine (and hard) line that needs to be found
that brings the two disciplines together. I spent many years trying to
figure out a way to blend the two together without having one overpower the
other. I never wanted to be a magician that started one trick and after
finishing it implied OK here’s my next trick. My lifelong pursuit has been
to understand the importance in the subtleties of transition between the
two. I have only seen a handful of people who grasp the concept. Mike Hammer
is a great practitioner today as are a few others. I take my hat off to
anyone who has studied the difficult process. Ali Bongo was a good friend
who was excellent and of course Terry Seabrooke.
Doug Henning obviously had a huge influence but I think the man who made me want to try doing it for a living the most was Peter Reveen. After watching him many times years ago at his Toronto run as a kid I realized that’s what I wanted to dedicate my life to.
You've previously been on screen as part of the show Too Much Information and served as director and EP for the TV show Off The Hozzle. What prompted you to make the transition from live comedy magic to television?
I had an idea for a short comedy video and asked a friend of mine who was a
producer and cameraman to help me shoot it. We shot the video, had it edited
and I put it up on my newly formed YouTube channel. I went out to perform at
a corporate event that night and worked in front of 300 people. A couple
days later I checked out the views on the comedy video and 80,000 people had
seen it. I feel like I was given the gift of laughter and after 35 years of
making people laugh at live shows I thought I should try creating more on
screen comedic content. I’m trying to make the world laugh and if I can do
it on a greater scale and leave a body of work behind when I’m gone that
would have a bit of a legacy. I took shooting courses, editing courses,
writing courses and finally directing courses. I stopped reading books
almost altogether as I had to watch how content was shot and ultimately
brought to life. I opened my production company
Home Invasion Studios Inc.
the following year. One thing that I always did on my “road days” was make
use of my waking hours. Some comics would get up at 11 am and not be
diligent in writing or creating. While I worked on cruise ships for about 10
years and had so much spare time I wrote everyday. When I got off the boats
I had written 9 feature films and pilots and bibles for 6 television shows
which I am very proud of.
The Switched At Death logline and synopsis suggest a wildly entertaining plot! The screenplay was a finalist in at least four international film festivals and it won Best Screenplay at the 2019 Canadian International Film Festival. Where did the story idea come from?
My writing partner on this project is the very funny prop comic Marty Putz,
an old and dear friend. We have written several screenplays together and
have another in the works. We were spitballing ideas on a phone call one day
(he lives in LA) and he said to me ‘How about a young guy gets kicked out of
the house and moves into an old folks home.” That’s all I needed to hear, I
loved the idea! Over the next eight months (on and off of ships) I hacked
out the first draft which was originally called Senior Management.
When I was done I sent the draft to Marty as he had forgotten the original
concept. He couldn’t believe I had written the screenplay. This would have
been about 8 years ago which gives you an idea how long it takes for an idea
to come to the screen. Over the next 6 years we tweaked, re-wrote and
morphed that first draft into what is now our movie called
Switched at Death. We sent it off to the Canadian International Film
Festival in Vancouver and basically forgot about it. Out of the blue I got
an email saying it had won the screenplay festival. Immediately I sent it to
several others and it did so well at all of them (placing in all) some of
which had 1400 scripts we realized we needed to make it. By then I had
already shot my TV show
Off The Hozzle
on CBS and
A Little Sketchy
here in Canada that I reached out to my two partners and we raised the funds
needed to shoot it! CMF came up big for us which is the TV arm of Telefilm Canada. I’d like to thank them for their support as it’s not an easy feat
getting a movie made anywhere.
Are there similarities in the work of writing a screenplay and putting together a comedy magic stage routine?
Absolutely. I would say the greatest similarities are format and of course
creativity. They both have to be formed in a way that follows some format
conventions but also have no outer boundaries. In both scenarios we are
telling stories really. Both a screenplay and live show typically need a
beginning, middle and end. In screenplay writing it’s a little more complex.
You need to hit certain notes by a certain page. You need to state your
theme of the movie in the first few pages, you typically need your inciting
incident (quite often around page 8) that is the moment that puts the story
in gear. Next in both live shows and movie writing is the “middle” part.
Some say the typical structure for film writing is three stages some say
five. In either case the middle is the meat and potatoes of the story, as
well as your act. In movie writing you are expanding on the inciting
incident and plot point one to take the viewers on the story “journey” which
will eventually resolve the conflict or issue at the centre. The last stage
is the resolution (again quite often with stage shows as well). I have three
pieces in my show that I do in the middle of my show that are called back at
the very end as the climax to the evening. When I landed on this my shows
had way more impact!
Here’s a golden rule of script writing, “Show, don’t tell” in other words if you have successfully written and shot a movie, you should be able to watch the movie with the sound off and still understand what you’ve seen. If the entire script has very little action and is all descriptive dialogue, it isn’t typically very good story telling. Magic quite often is the same, certainly an act to music with no verbiage tells its story visually, however, someone who only describes the action of what they are doing usually doesn’t connect with their audience. Example, "here’s a ball that I’ll put under this cup, it will now move to this cup.” If the trick does just that, don’t describe what they are about to see as it’s bad “storytelling.” With an act like mine (comedy magic) I use a combination of visual and the written word. I am a joke writer so I need the verbal aspect firmly ingrained in the backbone of my act hopefully heightening the visual optics.
Principal photography wrapped March 31st. Where are you in the production schedule? Where and when will we be able to see the final product?
The first process was seeing a full linear version of my film edited by my
amazing editor (the editor’s cut). I then step in as the writer and director
to make the changes needed from a comedic timing and (scene take) choice. I
have final choice as to every aspect of what will eventually be seen on
screen as I wrote, produced, and directed it. It then went to be colour
graded. When you shoot the film it’s shot on very expensive cameras that
capture everything in 4 K. The files are huge but when you review the scenes
shot daily (dailies) they look uncoloured and drab. That process was done
and I now see the vibrant colouring! The music score is being done now (we
need) 59 individual pieces of music and so far 52 have been written. The
composer is a friend of mine who went to Alert NWT with me a hundred years
ago performing on an Armed Forces tour. The audio is being mixed by audio
engineers so the entire film’s dialogue, sound effects and foley are
constant all the way through. We are doing ADR (automated dialogue
replacement) with a few lines from some actors that were not perfect in
playback on the "picture lock" final cut. After that the visual effects will
be added and I’ll go into the studio to see the final cut. We will make last
changes as needed and can start shopping the movie! We are looking at a
release date of Aug 31st downtown at the Royal Theatre if everything goes
well. Then it will be sent to distributors, film festivals, and streaming
services for worldwide sales.
Is there anything else you'd like to share with our readers about you or your film Switched at Death?
The movie took 15 days to shoot in and around Toronto. I had an amazing crew
of 30 and an equally amazing cast of 45 talented actors. The web site is
SwitchedAtDeath.com and I’ll
send further details as they come in!
I have been green lit for my next film THE CAGE which is like the movie SAW. A nasty revenge type thriller that basically takes places in one location! More details to follow, should go to camera this fall or next spring!.
Thank you David, for making the time to answer our questions, and for giving
us a peek into the fascinating world of filmmaking!
To learn more about Switched at Death visit SwitchedAtDeath.com.
Learn more about David at his website DavidMerry.com and follow him on Instagram.
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