Some interesting info here about Max:

http://littleegyptmagic.com/magic.html

Nice performance by Max at the Magic Palace

https://youtu.be/_aeVwLwegkU

Max just shows to go ya......yes...it's ok to mix mentalism and playing cards ;-)

Nice presentation of effects Max eventually released to the magic community.

One of my most favorite pieces from Max (as Phil Goldstein back then) was B’Wave. It remains just a perfect little piece of mentalism with just a few cards. Just one of many amazing effects from this Master that I’m sure will last forever as a reminder of the man and his giant excellence in the art.

I still have and greatly admire the perfect simplicity of his B’Wave, and will continue to happily present this classic with great reverence.

It's been a year. I'm going to tell a story that might come off as a dig at Max, but I promise you all that is not my intent.

I fully admit that after initially watching his Penguin lecture about 5 years ago, I was not impressed. Boy, was I an idiot. I was so caught up in methods. Wanting a new, unique method that made everything look as direct and propless as possible. Something that fooled magicians around the world. This was at the height of my Derren phase. I wanted everything to look like something off of Trick of the Mind (the show, not the book). And it took a year after him passing for me to take a good hard look at myself and finally ask myself "What was wrong with me?"

This past week I have made the effort to learn one effect from it per day, but before each effect, doing a "time travel" style guided meditation to bring me back to a younger version of myself, a version of myself young enough that I was just learning how to do a double lift for the first time.

Max was capable of doing something that most of us struggle with: understanding how a lay-person thinks. We often applaud new mentalists for being bold and taking chances when they take a wild guess at something, but rarely do we ever applaud a different type of boldness. I'm talking about the boldness of, for instance, using a self-working card sleight that no magician or mentalist even bothers to touch because they think it's too obvious. Or using that mentalism technique that many mentalists consider outdated because they assume lay-people know about it already. This is the type of boldness I see when I watch the lecture. And once again, I'm treading carefully, because I don't want anyone to interpret this as being a backhanded compliment. I truly wish I had this type of boldness in me. I wish I had the attitude of Max when using these methods. Because his attitude and performance style allowed him to get away with practically anything. And that is REAL power.

I know what you mean but Max was a brilliant actor as well. I could'nt believe the laughs he could get as a mentalist.Brilliant lines,super sarcastic a lot of the time. I see a bit of that in Derren Brown but well....no one could match Max!And he was the only writer of his shows.

Well-said, Jared. (and your sentences quoted above ar soooo true...)

MaxPhil was one of the "big-names" that was so helpful to me when I reached out to some for ideascrediting ips when putting together the effects for my 'SAFWAN PAPERS' ebook. They certainly didn't have to do that, and it was greatly appreciated (and helpful...lol!) He seemed to reply so quickly with crediting history info I think he had it memorized...

Bryn