I’ve seen several of his tricks in person (and even sat next to him on the redeye from LA to NYC back in May 2000) and have watched his various TV specials. The one trick I can’t seem to figure out is the one where he brings the fly back to life.
Thought it was in poor taste to ask him “howdju do that?”
Anyone have the straight dope on this trick?
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YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED - GO NO FURTHER IF YOU WANT TO BE KEPT WONDERING ABOUT THIS SUPERB TRICK
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Well, you asked for it. Basically what he does is he catches a fly, puts it in a plastic container and then holds the container over liquid nitrogen (or something else waaay below zero) the fly gets so cold that it passes out. He then puts the comatose fly somewhere warmer. Then he asks someone to check that the fly is dead, of course they aren’t going to know that it’s out cold so they say its dead. He then puts the fly in his hand where his body heat warms it up, wakes it up and it flies away. Clever innit?
What I wanna know is about his recent “iceman” stunt. Seems to me that on day one he was placed in the ice shirtless, then magically appeared the next day with a sweater on. Now how’d he do that?!?!
“What I wanna know is about his recent “iceman” stunt. Seems to me that on day one he was
placed in the ice shirtless, then magically appeared the next day with a sweater on.”
Huh? It was around his waist when he went in. He said so himself.
Have you tried standing for 2.5 days? Sure it was cold inside the ice, but what was really difficult about that stunt was the fact that he couldn’t sit for all that time. I read that when he came out his ankles were as big as his knees.
You are correct, Siva; just one lit candle inside an igloo can raise the ambient temperature as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Blaine wouldn’t have been cold at all, but it makes for great showmanship for those not in the know.
He said that his friend gave him the sweater just before he went in. Then discussed how freaky cold it was & how thankful he was that his friend gave him the sweater & how he put it on.
I believe Penn and Teller debunked the iceman stunt. He was apparently in a plexiglass “coffin” which was then surrounded by ice. Impossible to see the coffin with the light and reflections and such. So he was never actually touching ice, and the chamber retained a lot of heat… as someone else said, the hard part was standing up that long.
Penn said something along the lines of “Give me a chair and a copy of Moby Dick, and I’ll spend the whole damn summer in there.”
I think P&T are intentionally yanking chains. They do that.
Perhaps I’m naive, but as a magician, I think he actually pretty much did it. I can’t think of much he could have done to fake it that would be any easier than just doing it.
Blaine gets a lot of flak from the magic community for what they like to call “sleight of post-production”, but I think he does some cool stuff. His TV specials are a bit pretentious, but if he walked up to me on the street and did some tricks, I’d be appropriately blown away.
I haven’t been too impressed by what I’ve seen of David Blaine, actually. Though, I only saw his first special, so he’s probably improved.
His first special seemed lacking. It’s like Jerry Seinfeld would say of magicians; he’d go “Here’s this…now it’s this; you’re a jerk.” Well, not that bad, but he lacked the presentation. It’s like he learned how to do the tricks and then said exactly what was in the instructions. Also, the edits bugged me too, I gotta admit.
But the thing is, I work in a magic shop. I really like magic, and it doesn’t matter if I know how a trick’s done, as long as it’s presented well. Be it humour or mystery or whatever. So, when you get a magician doing a lot of tricks that I’ve already picked up in different books (like in Blaine’s first special) the presentation became central. He didn’t have that.
So, maybe Blaine’s improved. Even if the iceman stunt wasn’t completely real, by telling how he didn’t eat or sleep before…well that’s a little more impressive.
Incidentilly…the whole stunt seemed a lot like Houdini’s Buried Alive act that he was planning right before he died. The premise: he’d be buried for a few days, in a coffin. People have seen the plans for the trick, since, and…it was a trick.
The ice stunt was lame because it so defied credibility. Anyone with more than a room temperature IQ realizes that what he proposed to do is essentially impossible physically (ie be enclosed in a block of ice only an inch or two from all your body surfaces) for more than a few hours much less a few days without it being an obvious smoke and mirrors fx “stunt”. If it was a bit more plausible and less over the top it would have been a better trick. He might as well have said “I’m going to hold my breath for an hour”. It’s just stupid.
Not exactly. Did you not hear about Blaine’s previous stunt were he did the buried alive gig? This wasn’t like that - he was in the chamber the whole time. However, as was mentioned, it probably wasn’t as cold as we’re led to believe. I don’t know about the plexiglas part.
What annoys me most about Blaine is not his presentation style. He just walks up to people and says, “Hey, can I show you something?” Not always the best approach in, say, New York City. Also he does a lot of post-preduction - only including the successful bits (duh), editing out parts of the tricks for set up, swapping out footage for the levitation skit. But what bothers me most is his attitude. He goes around with this mysterious air and tries to get people to think that he has some real mystical ability. He doesn’t do like most professional magicians and mentalists who fully admit that what they do is trickery. He lets people propose all sorts of believing stuff and just stands their coldly and “mysteriously”.
astro said:
What do you mean by “defied credibility”? He was actually in the block for the whole time. The trickery is that it wasn’t nearly as cold as we’re led to believe. For instance, pump some warm air into the chamber “so he can get fresh oxygen”. This was more of an endurance stunt. How long can you stand?
That’s the whole point. It was an absurd notion that any human being is going to be able to survive more than a day in the environment he specified. Either there was thermal protection via a plastic “coffin” or warm air being pumped in or his anal “catheter” kept his core temperature warm or whatever. As grueling as it was it was not an “endurance stunt” it was “trick” and an obvious one made somewhat un-interesting by the fact that it was so obviously going to require some kind of fx trick to succeed.
A trick that’s an honest trick is interesting for it’s potential cleverness. An honest endurance stunt can also be interesting. An obvious trick being sold as an (dis)honest endurance stunt is not as interesting.
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