Hollywood Hypnotist Kevin Stone Attempts To Cast His Spell On Club Goers.
THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2009
Hypnosis as comedy: "You are getting very sleepy..."
Stefano Paltera / For The Times
The golden stopwatch drops from the hypnotist's white-gloved hand. The timepiece dangles for a second before the caped mystic swings it like a pendulum in front of the subject's face. "You are getting very sleepy," the hypnotist says, as the audience eagerly watches the subject become a human marionette at the hands of the master. Will the subject crawl like a hedgehog or maybe cluck like a chicken?
Will a dark secret be revealed?
From soap operas to sensational live shows, hypnosis holds a special place in the American pop cultural lexicon. It's a mind-controlling agent in "The Manchurian Candidate" and the catalyst to ultimate lassitude in "Office Space." Hypnosis is the ultimate key to unlocking the human mind.
Or is it?
It's up to Los Angeles' late-night crowd to decide when Hollywood Hypnotist Kevin Stone attempts to cast his spell on club goers in a series of Saturday night shows at the Laugh Factory. Stone's midnight act takes more from Vegas than vaudeville; he leaves the gloves, cape and stopwatch back in hypnosis history. Instead, Stone saunters onstage clad in all black – the immemorial attire for a man of mystery -- and adeptly pulls the strings of his subjects in a show that brings the weird and wild out of them.
Well, mostly wild.
"No one will do anything they wouldn't normally do while hypnotized," he says. "But you never know what's going to happen."
The setup of his show may be familiar, but the outcome, Stone says, is totally unpredictable. A row of audience members faces the crowd and Stone embeds his suggestions into their minds. When their eyes close and heads drop, the ridiculous spectacle begins. Young professionals sleepily perform disco dances, a woman's hands float in the air (bound with invisible balloons, she believed) and another man frantically searches under his seat for something he misplaced.
"Do you know what happened to your butt?" Stone asks Darrell Johnson, the still-entranced, de-bottomed man.
"I don't know. It's just gone," Johnson replied slightly dejectedly.
Johnson, a 52-year-old Veteran's Hospital employee, became the star of the night as he fell into Stone's web of hypnosis. Tiptoeing with Stone through the audience and smooching a lady friend were not abnormal occurrences for the hypnotized man.
At the show's conclusion, Stone takes a more serious tone with his participants. He asks them to think of something that they want in their lives, and to let this thought seep into their unconscious. For Johnson, this question marked a moment of clarity.
"During that last moment I thought about how I have been clean of drugs and alcohol for a while, and I pledged to stay clean," Johnson said.
While Stone flaunts his Hollywood Hypnotist persona onstage, he says he wants to raise awareness for the beneficial effects of hypnotherapy offstage. "I started off doing sessions in celebrities' living rooms," Stone says. "Then it started taking off and turned into the stage show, but I know that hypnotism can work for everyone."
Stone runs a hypnotherapy clinic decorated with newspaper clippings and a case of vintage metronomes. Celebrity clients like Matt Damon and Denise Richards have sat in Stone's reclining chair. Here, clients have sought cessation from problems ranging from smoking (Damon), cussing (Richards) or a post-apocalyptic clutter wasteland of desk clutter (this writer).
"There's really two sides of hypnotism, what you see on stage and the change that happens in the clinic," he says. Although Stone redefines the visage of the mystic, but his brand of hypnotism still provokes the age-old question: What do you believe?
Hypnosis as comedy: "You are getting very sleepy..."
Stefano Paltera / For The TimesHypnotherapist Kevin Stone poses for a portrait in his office in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Hollywood Hypnotist Kevin Stone Attempts To Cast His Spell On Club Goers.
By Drew Tewksbury
April 9, 2009
By Drew Tewksbury
April 9, 2009
The golden stopwatch drops from the hypnotist's white-gloved hand. The timepiece dangles for a second before the caped mystic swings it like a pendulum in front of the subject's face. "You are getting very sleepy," the hypnotist says, as the audience eagerly watches the subject become a human marionette at the hands of the master. Will the subject crawl like a hedgehog or maybe cluck like a chicken?
Will a dark secret be revealed?
From soap operas to sensational live shows, hypnosis holds a special place in the American pop cultural lexicon. It's a mind-controlling agent in "The Manchurian Candidate" and the catalyst to ultimate lassitude in "Office Space." Hypnosis is the ultimate key to unlocking the human mind.
Or is it?
It's up to Los Angeles' late-night crowd to decide when Hollywood Hypnotist Kevin Stone attempts to cast his spell on club goers in a series of Saturday night shows at the Laugh Factory. Stone's midnight act takes more from Vegas than vaudeville; he leaves the gloves, cape and stopwatch back in hypnosis history. Instead, Stone saunters onstage clad in all black – the immemorial attire for a man of mystery -- and adeptly pulls the strings of his subjects in a show that brings the weird and wild out of them.
Well, mostly wild.
"No one will do anything they wouldn't normally do while hypnotized," he says. "But you never know what's going to happen."
The setup of his show may be familiar, but the outcome, Stone says, is totally unpredictable. A row of audience members faces the crowd and Stone embeds his suggestions into their minds. When their eyes close and heads drop, the ridiculous spectacle begins. Young professionals sleepily perform disco dances, a woman's hands float in the air (bound with invisible balloons, she believed) and another man frantically searches under his seat for something he misplaced.
"Do you know what happened to your butt?" Stone asks Darrell Johnson, the still-entranced, de-bottomed man.
"I don't know. It's just gone," Johnson replied slightly dejectedly.
Johnson, a 52-year-old Veteran's Hospital employee, became the star of the night as he fell into Stone's web of hypnosis. Tiptoeing with Stone through the audience and smooching a lady friend were not abnormal occurrences for the hypnotized man.
At the show's conclusion, Stone takes a more serious tone with his participants. He asks them to think of something that they want in their lives, and to let this thought seep into their unconscious. For Johnson, this question marked a moment of clarity.
"During that last moment I thought about how I have been clean of drugs and alcohol for a while, and I pledged to stay clean," Johnson said.
While Stone flaunts his Hollywood Hypnotist persona onstage, he says he wants to raise awareness for the beneficial effects of hypnotherapy offstage. "I started off doing sessions in celebrities' living rooms," Stone says. "Then it started taking off and turned into the stage show, but I know that hypnotism can work for everyone."
Stone runs a hypnotherapy clinic decorated with newspaper clippings and a case of vintage metronomes. Celebrity clients like Matt Damon and Denise Richards have sat in Stone's reclining chair. Here, clients have sought cessation from problems ranging from smoking (Damon), cussing (Richards) or a post-apocalyptic clutter wasteland of desk clutter (this writer).
"There's really two sides of hypnotism, what you see on stage and the change that happens in the clinic," he says. Although Stone redefines the visage of the mystic, but his brand of hypnotism still provokes the age-old question: What do you believe?
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