THE CREATIVE FORCES behind Magic Society, Buddy and Friday Hangs make music and surrealistic video and visual art. They just moved to town and are starting to unpack a whole lot of weird and wonderful on us.
MERCURY: What is Magic Society?
MAGIC SOCIETY: Magic Society is our production company. We specialize in offbeat and alternative television, film, puppetry, and music. We were born in Los Angeles in 2013.
How did the Magic Society form?
We both love the Jim Henson quote âKeep believing, keep pretending,â and got to talking about what it means to believe, pretend, and persist in the realm of creativity. To us, achieving and advancing the craft you love is a lot like magic. Being an artist and meeting other artists feels like being a member of a really weird top-secret club at times, so calling ourselves a society felt right. Magic Society is really about tapping into imagination and letting it flow freely into the world.
Who does what when you make things?
Friday makes the puppets and Buddy does the dishes. Together we catch all the big fishes. Honestly, we pretty much make everything together. Buddy wipes the red lipstick off of Fridayâs pearly whites at a studio pitch meeting and Friday tells Buddy when his fly is down. We can count on each other and we work collaboratively to reach our goals.
What are you looking forward to doing in Portland?
We canât wait to host our psychedelic puppet video show, Super Duper Video at the Hollywood Theatre (our favorite movie theater ever) on Saturday, August 20, where weâll be showing rare, unseen, and weird puppet television shows [and] films and videos from around the world, as well as some of our own never-before-seen shorts.
Your art is super fun and loud. How do you maintain a tight ship amid all that excitement?
It all depends on the project. We go project to project and our work usually feels a lot like play for us, but sometimes it can feel a lot like work. The hardest thing is seeing projects to completion. When things get too hectic or the focus gets fuzzy on what we have to get done, we like to take long walks in platform shoes to get our minds in check and our focus back to being razor sharp. When that doesnât work, we take out our mini trampoline and throw cats on it and watch their teeth rattle and just laugh. One of those answers is the right one!
Your merch game is strong. I think my favorite is the all night club patch.
We just launched our online store. Patches and pins are a cool and inexpensive way to get art into the world. Weâre grateful that we live in a time when you can run a mom-and-pop shop from your kitchen table in your underwear.
If you could win gold in any Olympic sport, what would it be?
Definitely race-walking, considering we had no car in Los Angeles for more than three years and did quite a bit of race-walking trying to catch the city bus and dodging nudist pyramid scheme recruiters.
Whatâs next?
Weâre currently working on a television show with Amazon Studios that we unfortunately canât talk about at the moment, but we can say that weâre super-duper stoked about it. Weâre also working on our first independent feature film and record!
