It said rubber cement, but that only works if you are doing it through the skin. It looked like Blaine was doing it right through the middle of his arm.
Without having watched the show I will guess that what YOU SEE is Harrison Ford name a card out loud and Blaine then does his thing.
What you do NOT see is all the stuff that they didn’t show and that can go a long way towards explaining why Ford named the card that he named.
And I’ll bet that Blaine knew well in advance exactly which card Mr. Ford was going to name and it’s not because he is psychic, magic or a good guesser 
Keep in mind, not only are magicians professional liars, but so are actors.
The Jason Sudeikis / Olivia Wilde card trick was lame as hell. They didn’t even show the sleight-of-hand deck substitution he probably did after they shuffled the deck.
Just curious, what card was named? Something like 50% of people choose one of these four : ace of spades, ace of hearts, king of hearts, queen if hearts.
I didn’t watch the show but I know on past Blaine specials they have creative editing where the trick you see on TV is not the same as the one the live spectators are seeing.
i.e. his street levitation. If I recall he was performing the Balducci Levitation to people on the street and they were awestruck. However when they cut to him doing the trick they showed a shot from his knees down and him levitating a good foot into the air.
I wouldn’t doubt that Gervais was watching the needle through the arm using the surface skin prosthetic while us at home were watching a needle through the middle of the arm via creative editing.
True enough, but here’s the Ricky Gervais segment. Looks like he’s seeing the same thing we are.
I say no to both. Here’s that segment. He may have somehow guided Harrison Ford to one of a few choices before we joined (that’s my best explanation for how he could do the part where ‘your card is not in the deck’), but he did not out and out fake the card pick (And the card was the 9 of hearts).
I know another thing he’s sometimes done is play the odds (like your 4 cards people usually pick), and we only see the segments where he was successful.
Harrison Ford also might have been a confederate, in which case the whole thing is trivial.
I say no to both. Here’s that segment. He may have somehow guided Harrison Ford to one of a few choices before we joined (that’s my best explanation for how he could do the part where ‘your card is not in the deck’), but he did not out and out fake the card pick (And the card was the 9 of hearts).
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It seems pretty clear to me that Blaine slipped the card in there with his left hand while he was carving the orange (~1:11 in that clip). If Harrison Ford had grabbed the orange and opened it himself without Blaine handling it at all, I’d be more impressed / confused.
It seems pretty clear to me that Blaine slipped the card in there with his left hand while he was carving the orange (~1:11 in that clip). If Harrison Ford had grabbed the orange and opened it himself without Blaine handling it at all, I’d be more impressed / confused.
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In looking at all the fruit that there was to pick from - Blaine definitely guided him to that orange very specifically - I also agree that the card appeared to be palmed in, but how he managed to ‘insert it’ so cleanly with Harrison watching so closely is definitely a ‘trick’.
As for the ‘picking of the card’ - IMHO - Blaine told him to pick a card and that his card was not there - then had harrison look for the card that was ‘not there’ - its not unreasonable to think that Harrison then ‘chose’ the 9 of hearts because it was missing.
Why would he need cards placed in the kitchen? All he needed to do was have 52 cards on himself (memorized locations or a system), get Harrison to state the card( did that), retrieve the card from himself(talk, gesture etc and draw attention away from the retrieval task), cut open an orange and use slight of hand to either insert the card or make it look like he was pulling the card out of the orange. Notice he didn’t just slice the orange in two. He sliced it part way and then pried his hands into the orange.
The partial giveaway was that he had Harry state the card name out loud. Blaine needed to know the answer before he could retrieve his card.
The trick of pulling the alligator out of Katy Perry’s bag was some of the worst camera editing I’ve ever seen in one of these up close magic programs.
The needle through the arm is pretty awesome. I fail to see how even trick video editing could accomplish that one.
I didn’t see the David Blaine special but I have seen the “needle through the hand / arm trick” a lot. When I was young I used to watch Steve Allen’s late night show and sometimes his guest would be someone that practiced yoga (or whatever) and they would do the exact same thing. I was a kid and thought it was real and figured they went to Tibet for five years and found the secret of how this was done.
My point being that was fifty years ago and so it is not a new trick. I’m guessing it goes back even further than 50 years.
A little googling turns up a bunch of different explanations, none of which apply to a serious gauge needle thrust through the middle of his bicep.
I think the options are: (1) he actually just pushed a big ass needle through his bicep; or (2) the whole thing is fake and Gervais was in on it.
[QUOTE=bup;16864484(And the card was the 9 of hearts).
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Yeah, that’s one of the rarest cards named in a “think of a card” situation, at least according to this. Sort by “verbal accessibility.” It’s basically the 6th least popular choice.
Yes it is unreasonable. He picked the card before he checked the deck. And if you can see where any part of his hand came close to the inside of the orange you have been eyes than me.
This is Harrison fucking Ford. He doesn’t need publicity. He doesn’t need money. I would be shocked if he was acting.
I heard Blaine on the radio the day of the airing. He said that he put this show together over several years. He would bring a camera with him to different events and private gigs. None of the celebrities were filmed knowing it would later be on a special and none were paid. Which is how he got all of them. If you went to Harrison Ford, Woody Allen and George W. Bush and asked if they wanted to film something for a magic special I’m sure they would say no. Especially if you tried to get them to be shills. I’m not a fan of Blaine’s stunts but he is a pretty damn good close up magician.
I’ve been playing with magic for 20+ years. A card force is one of the easiest things to accomplish. Loading an orange/envelope/pocket beforehand is easy.
I’m sure you can Google any trick and find the answer, so I won’t spoil things, but I’ve been doing the needle/arm trick for years for Boy Scouts and kids parties. The older ones love it, and I can promise you there’s no unhealed or fresh piercings, or jamming a needle right through your arm.
It’s all cleverly crafted illusion, misdirection, and outright lies.
What David Blaine does is no better than a 10th grader who got a magic set for Christmas. He’s an arrogant, smug asshole who preys on the stupid or uneducated.
In any video you see of him performing on the street, everyone is in on the trick.
Their surprise and awe is simply people wanting to be on camera, so they go along with it. It’s ridiculous.
Conversely, Penn and Teller are great magicians, and they tell you up front they’re full of shit, and they’re going to trick you. That they still can speaks to their ability.
David Copperfield made me mad when I saw this crapas a teenager.
" No camera tricks!" Uh-huh. What about having a dozen hand-holding “volunteers” move out of the way while a dozen or more guys push the damn thing behind the back curtain? The whole thing is a god-damned lie. I could do that. You could do that.
It takes practice and skill to do real close-up tricks with coins, cards, and whatnot.
It takes no skill whatsoever to lie and hire people to lie and pretend to be amazed.
This is why David Blaine and David Copperfield don’t impress me.
So, you do a trick in which you take an ice-pick sized skewer and appear to jam it through the middle of your bicep in such a way that you cannot have just folded skin around the skewer?
Because it seems more likely than you do the Harry Anderson version of the trick, involving folding skin around the skewer. But if not, then I will be much more impressed.
I know. His claims are just all so…unbelievable!
One possible way to do the skewer thing without doing a puncture (at the time).
Have a small rod surgically inserted into your bicep, wait for it to heal, etc.
When doing the trick, feel for the near end of the rod, push the rod forward until it starts pushing the skin on the other side.
Note that he has Ricky doing the pulling, not the pushing. No need to line things up for that. I do note that the skewer does seem to “pull out” and stick to the skin. So it may have been a collapsible rod with some goop on the skin. (Or Ricky was shown ahead how to fake it like the rod was actually being pulled out, sliding his hands to simulate the motion.)
OTOH, a piercing type hole would be easier.