Acts of Violet(78)
We got to work the next day, Violet, Joyce, and I, figuring out what sort of tour to do in support of You Are Magic. The book wasn’t even done yet, but the venues she wanted to play get booked six months to a year in advance, so we needed to plan early.
Without a dinner party of guests to entertain, Violet was a different person. She wasn’t trying to be coy and charming and mysterious. Once she dropped that shtick, I could talk to her. I preferred her more direct, bitchier.
Violet was already butting heads with her publisher about what kind of promo to do for You Are Magic. Empirical wanted a traditional book tour with bookstore visits, Q&As, signings, the usual. That didn’t appeal to Violet. She wanted to do something unconventional.
CAMERON FRANK: Like what?
RUDY SERRANO: She was still figuring that out. She wanted to incorporate magic in a way that tied into the book but wasn’t as grandiose as her Vegas show.
CAMERON FRANK: Wasn’t “grandiose” pretty much out of the question given the previous accidents and rising insurance premiums?
RUDY SERRANO: It might’ve been out of the question in Vegas, but she had other options. A couple of touring magic shows offered her a headline spot, but she saw that as a step back. She also turned down not only my father, but other theater producers who approached her about doing a Broadway show. Joyce said she could’ve even done a solo tour, playing arenas if she wanted.
CAMERON FRANK: That’s surprising, considering the media at the time painted Violet as too much of a liability, with nobody wanting to take a risk on her.
RUDY SERRANO: That was Violet creating a narrative.
CAMERON FRANK: I don’t understand.
RUDY SERRANO: Her reputation did take a hit after Dominic Puglisi’s death, but once the divorce followed, and then getting dropped by the Kintana, she knew she needed to ride that negative wave for a while. She saw her celebrity as a form of storytelling. It wouldn’t make a good story if she made a comeback too quickly, professionally or romantically. The public needed to see her suffer, to put those accidents behind her, and to get to a place where they’d root for her again. So when she moved back to LA from Vegas, even though things were great with Mayuree, she played out that relationship like a trainwreck in public, picking fights with her when paparazzi were around to document them. Eventually, Mayuree had enough of the charade, and she took off. The tabloids painted Violet as emotionally unhinged and speculated about addiction issues, after which it was easy to plant stories about her career being in trouble. It was a tricky gamble, and Violet did lose out on film and TV opportunities at that time.
CAMERON FRANK: Was Joyce advising her to do all this?
RUDY SERRANO: Oh, hell no. Joyce wanted Violet to step out of the spotlight entirely for a year and let all the shit cool off instead of stirring up more of it. Joyce used to say managing Violet was an oxymoron. “Stubborn as a fucking mule, that one.”
But she was always there to support Violet no matter what. After the Mayuree breakup, when Violet said she wanted to write a book instead of putting together a new stage show, Joyce was encouraging. After three years of nonstop performing, it could be the break Violet needed.
Of course, it wasn’t long before she talked about returning to the stage anyway. Though the show she initially conceptualized was very different from the act we took on the road.
CAMERON FRANK: How so?
RUDY SERRANO: Initially, Violet wanted to forgo working with assistants and rely entirely on audience participation. And we’re not talking about picking a card, any card, but extreme illusions involving pyrotechnics, barbed wire, sealed glass boxes. Violet’s reasoning was, having everyday people create these illusions alongside her, they’d be harnessing their own magic, which would reinforce the ideas in the book.
Of course, there were two huge challenges to creating a show like that.
CAMERON FRANK: The first thing that comes to mind is safety.
RUDY SERRANO: Exactly. And Violet didn’t know how all of these effects would work, looking dangerous and dramatic but being safe enough for a novice to participate in, so we hired the best magician consultants out there to help design the show.
The second challenge was trust. After the onstage injuries in Vegas, after Dominic, how were you going to convince members of the audience to get up there at all, then stay up there when they saw the crazy shit she had planned for them?
CAMERON FRANK: Is this where Quinn Dwyer comes in?
RUDY SERRANO: Almost.
We’re in spring of 2003 at this point. The You Are Magic tour was already sold out, with all this secrecy surrounding what kind of show it would be, apart from a press release that promised inspiration with a dash of magic or something to that effect. Violet’s LateFridayLive appearance would be the first preview of the tour to come.
It was always Violet’s intention to perform that illusion with a little girl. What better way to regain the trust of her audience? It just so happened that her niece was visiting at the time and willing to be part of the act.
It went great, too. The audience loved it, the press raved about it. We were two weeks from kicking off the tour and already being inundated with requests to add dates.
I don’t know the details of what happened next, but less than twenty-four hours later, Violet demanded we tone down the act, and said she wouldn’t be performing any effects with audience participation, which was about fifty percent of the show. Everything had to be reconfigured at the last minute. It was a creative and logistical nightmare.