Atlantic City Weekly

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Settled comfortably into a nice little bungalow on the bay side of Margate, magician Paul Kozak lives surrounded by a celebration of the art that has kept him on the move for most of his life. Every table and shelf in every nook and cranny is taken over by sculpture, paintings, and other pieces of artwork. One wall of his living room is given over completely to books, his “magic library,” he says.

“The tricks are in here,” the 55-year-old Kozak says with a sly smile.

Awards for his magic line the bookshelf, including three Merlin Awards, kind of an Oscar of magic. They were earned in a long career on the road as both magician and comic at comedy clubs around the country and a recent six-year stint in Las Vegas.

It’s a peaceful, contemplative place where Kozak, a man who has played for royalty (Prince Charles and Princess Diana), worked with nearly every well-known stand-up and appeared on every late-night TV talk show (except Letterman, so you know what we think of him), can discover new outlets for his restless creativity.

“I do oil paintings and I play the cello,” he says. “But that’s something that settling down has afforded me. You can’t have much of a life when you live in hotel rooms.”

If this sounds like a nice shore retirement, well, it’s not even close. Kozak packs way too much energy and enthusiasm into his large frame to ever sit still. And when he takes the stage nightly — and that’s seven days a week folks — for the dinner show at The Comedy Stop, well, let’s just say there are no AARP cards evident in his future. He comes out shooting fire from his hands, literally, while confetti-ing the children in the audience and quickly making a point to make eye contact with everyone there.

The last bit isn’t standard, but on a Thursday night in mid-March, well before Atlantic City’s busy time of year, the audience numbers only 24 people.

“Wow,” Kozak says of the applause as he takes the stage. “You sound like 25 people. Thank you.”

Though used to playing to hundreds, if not thousands in Vegas — and in fairness, also in a summertime Atlantic City — Kozak is undaunted by the small crowd.

“I like small audiences sometimes,” he says later. “It gives you a chance to be very intimate. One time in January, I came out and there were only two people — a couple. But as luck would have it, it was their 47th wedding anniversary. It was wonderful and I worked very hard to make it a special night for them,”

These 24 will get the same treatment. Kozak starts off by playing to the kids in the audience, bringing them up on stage, wowing them with slight of hand.

“This is the family friendly version,” he says to the audience. “Sometimes there aren’t any children, then you get a very different show.”

Kozak will spend the next hour flirting with the females in the audience (also bringing several on stage). He’ll make things, like say, bowling balls, appear out of nowhere, pull dry sand out of a bowl of water and pretty much leave everybody feeling they were part of the show.

It’s not just the performance of a seasoned performer who knows how to be on stage. The stage is his and has been since he signed a five-year contract to appear nightly at The Comedy Stop starting Christmas 2008. Now, with nearly 500 performances, Kozak has experienced the highs of an A.C. summer and the lows of two shore winters.

And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’m in a great position,” he says. “I’m a headliner with my own show in Atlantic City. This really is the zenith of my career. But I was worried when I agreed to do a regular show in Vegas and come off the road, that it would become a job. And at first it did. But I just had to change my mind set. The way I look at it, I’m in the World Series or the Super Bowl every night. Whether there’s six people in the audience or 76, I’m going to give it my best.”

The stint in Vegas was as part of six magicians appearing in The World’s Greatest Magic Show at the Greek Isle Casino. In Atlantic City, however, Kozak is a one-man show.

“When I was in Vegas there were a producer and a director,” he says. “Here, I’m my own producer. So that is a lot of work, but I also have total creative control. I don’t do the same show every night. After all these years, I’m a totally improvisational performer. One of the first things I do on stage is ask if anybody has seen me before and when. Then I know what not to repeat and where to go with the show.”

Still, he admits that after living in Las Vegas, Scottsdale and Los Angeles, respectively, the New Jersey winters “kicked my ass,” he says. “I started on Christmas and my first month my heating bill was like $700. I just couldn’t get warm.”

“But we’ve been tracking my audience numbers and even though it’s the slow time of year, my numbers are up. When you consider the weather lately and the recession, I’ve really been doing very well.”

And like it or not, with four years left on his contract, he now is knee-deep in Atlantic City’s efforts to revitalize itself in the face of growing competition.

“I think that’s what Atlantic City needs,” he says. “A lot of people have told me that we need more acts like mine that are on early in the week. Just because it’s slower in the middle of the week, there are still people here in town. Entertainment is the one thing Atlantic City has over other markets.”

And there is another thing — intimacy, from the small early week audiences to being part of a new community.

“They say Vegas is a small town,” he says. “But this is even smaller. And it can be hard to meet people here. But after a year here the neighbors are getting to know me. I’m involved with the community and a lot of them have also seen my show. When I drive down Ventnor Avenue to get to work, people wave at me. Trust me, you don’t get that in Vegas.”

But then there are a lot of things Kozak loves about his new home. There are the backyard barbecues with his friends from the Comedy Stop to his painting, photography (“I paint too slowly to do landscapes, so I have to take a picture”), to the cello. He also does charity work, is celebrating nine years of sobriety and surviving four previous marriages.

But if Margate is too slow for him, you’d never guess it.

“One of my first headlining gigs in my career came at the Comedy Stop from Bob Kephart,” he says. “Thanks to Bob, I skipped a whole step in a comedian’s career. I went from emcee to headliner and never had to work as a middle act. And the first press I ever got came from The Whoot!. My first radio interview was with Pinky Kravitz. So in a way I’ve come full circle and come back to where I started.”

And it looks like this time, Kozak may have gotten sand in his shoes. He is in the process of buying his Margate home, rather than renting. The home worked out well since all his [stuff] fit inside perfectly. It’s not the home of someone planning to leave.

“I think the sand in the shoes has already happened to me,” he says. “My friend [comedian] George Wallace does a little video interview I use to open my show. He calls me the new Mr. Atlantic City. That’s what I’d love to be.”

Kozak The Magician
Where: The Comedy Stop at the Tropicana Quarter, Atlantic City
When: Daily at 6pm
How Much: $32 w/dinner, $23 without