Chang Reynolds’ history of western circuses is essentially a history of transportation: the first circuses travelled to California by ship the interior opened up along with the railroads. Touring animal acts are a later development, and touring animal acts in the American West, another still, but the Coens are still well within the realm of possibility here. Nevertheless, his writing provides a tentative answer: No.Īnimal acts are ancient-just ask Christians lucky enough to get front row seats at the Colosseum’s Lion Show-and trained animal acts are not much younger. Unfortunately, Jay died a few weeks ago, so there’s no way to ask him whether or not a mountebank in Colorado around 1870 might have exhibited a mathematical chicken without exploring a whole other realm of carnival trickery. In fact, Jay and his work were a likely inspiration for “Meal Ticket.” The “Wingless Thrush” has more than a little in common with Matthias Buchinger, a man with no arms or lower legs who nevertheless toured Europe performing magic and playing musical instruments in the early 18 th century Ricky Jay’s book, Matthias Buchinger: “The Greatest German Living” by Ricky Jay, Whose Peregrinations in Search of the “Little Man of Nuremberg” are Herein Revealed singlehandedly rescued Buchinger from obscurity.
What would the mountebank be doing?’ And Ricky goes to his library and then sends me an entire description of what the mountebank would be doing.” “I’ll ask him-say, for something I’m writing-‘A guy’s wandering through upstate New York in 1802 and he comes to a tavern and there’s some sort of mountebank. “I’ll call Ricky on the phone,” Mamet says.
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