As to the bicep piercing, it looks like he probably just skewered himself, unless you think National Geographic is in on it: Nat_Geo_Skewer on Vimeo
The beauty of the trick is that it has people coming up with all kind of outlandish ways that he pulled it off.
Right. When ducati’s special airs and gets horrible reviews and shitty ratings, and then we start a thread to laugh about it, THAT’S Schadenfreude.
I know how that one’s done. You got to *thousands *of funerals, and when one dead person wakes up, that’s the one you run on your special.
Or you use a confederate.
Or twins.
It strikes me that the ‘piercing’ angle seems plausible. He’s essentially turned his arm into a large-scale ear piercing. There may be a tiny hole in his arm and hand that he uses each time. That would explain the lack of blood.
I really appreciated him using Ricky Gervaise, as he reacted very similarly to how I would have. Incredulous, but ultimately amazed and befuddled.
I thought the best part of the 90 minutes was when he did the trick for Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde (and I’m pretty sure that was a bra top, not a bikini top) where he tore off the corner of the bill and then reattached it in his mouth, and Jason’s reaction:
“It’s like a reverse bris.”
We see the conversation with Harrison Ford during the trick. What we don’t see is the 30 minute conversation prior to executing the trick, where Blane primes Ford for the card selection. Such as saying, “I love doing card tricks. Do you know most people pick face cards?” So later, Ford will avoid face cards. Three or four conversation pieces will prime the card selection. It’s a type of “force” that doesn’t use manipulation of the items directly, it’s just not shown to us and not observed/remembered by Ford. It’s more subtle, and may not work every time, but he only has to show the ones that worked, and not show the time he was at Barbara Walter’s* house and didn’t get her to pick the right card.
*Or whomever.
Or when he spent 20 minutes behind him muttering “9 of hearts, 9 of hearts, 9 of hearts…”
Thanks for the link. I wouldn’t be surprised if David Blaine met with this lady or other folks like her to practice the needle skewer technique.
It is impressive and I doubt he does it too often. Perhaps he worked on the hand version of it because it is less…risky?
In Penn Jillette’s book “God, No” he says:
Who knows, though - could Penn be in on some sort of meta-misdirection?
Penn could be in on it of course, but I don’t think he is. I’ve seen little video blogs of him where he rants and raves about people like Blaine who just sit in their own shit and how that’s not really magic. He seems visually upset, and Teller of course is sitting there shaking his head. I think they have very little respect for Blaine and others who do such endurance stunts.
I loved the show. That being said, it’s not because I was “amazed” or “blown away.”
I KNOW IT’S A TRICK. WE ALL KNOW IT’S A TRICK.
What I enjoy is the skill and talent it takes to pull these illusions off. Like when he blew the torn card back together. I know he didn’t really do that, it’s sleight of hand. Blaine’s slight of hand talent is enormous, and I enjoy watching his craft.
If anyone reads anymore into it than that, then you shouldn’t bother watching.
In regards to the bit where Ford can’t find his card in the deck, Blaine most likely…
… handed Ford a reverse color deck (hearts and diamonds are black, clubs and spades are red). If you’re just doing a quick scan for a specific card, you’ll likely fail to notice that you’re sifting through a reverse color deck, while at the same time, fail to find whichever card you’re looking for.
That’s pretty cool, but that seems doubtful. Why go through the trouble? Blaine already has his 9 of hearts (or whatever card it was) set up. Perhaps he has multiple oranges with multiple set up cards, just in case (but I don’t think so.) So why not just hand him a deck without the 9 of hearts (whether palmed or not) instead of using a trick deck?
I think it more likely he handed him a deck missing several cards - not enough so you’d notice, but a bunch. I still don’t know how he could confidently proclaim the card wasn’t in the deck - but maybe he was prepared to deal with Ford finding it - either just not showing that segment (instead showing one where it did work), or taking the trick in another direction.
If we’re not going to go the “edited audio” angle, or “we only see part of the story” angle, then, yeah, that also makes sense.
But remember, if all is as it seems, Harrison Ford doesn’t tell Blaine what his card is until he picks out the orange. So, unless Blaine somehow sneaks the card into the orange as he’s cutting it (which I suppose is possible, but it looks to me the surprise on Ford’s face is seeing Blaine cut it and the card already being there), the orange contains the 9 of hearts.
Then again, I suppose you could do this trick over and over until somebody, by sheer luck, nails it, but I doubt it. And it you were playing percentages, wouldn’t you pick one of the more commonly picked cards, and not the 9 of hearts?
My money is still on we’re not seeing the whole trick and (in my opinion), some audio trickery.
And, to be honest, the audio probably doesn’t need to be directly manipulated. You can probably find a way to get patter that end with “think of any card in the deck” and then just creatively edit the video so the sentence starts there, without all the words that preceded it after a force.
(Bolding mine)
Actually, it was Blaine who cuts the fruit open, and the way he’s holding his left hand towards the camera (at ~1:11) leads me to believe that’s when he slips the card in there. His other hand and the orange itself is blocking Ford’s view as well. Sure, he’s very good at it, but it seems obvious to me that’s how he did it.
Big T, was Houdini a great magician or not?
ETA:
[QUOTE=SykoSkotty]
WE ALL KNOW IT’S A TRICK
[/QUOTE]
Apparently not ALL of us.
By most accounts Houdini was a decent but not great magician. He was great as an escape artist. The two are related, but not the same. He was, however, one of the great showmen and publicity masters and that’s three-quarters of the battle.
And we have a spectacular case of not admitting it was a trick happening right now in GQ.
So you’re back now, Exapno. Did you watch that video? Do you still think Blaine somehow used magnets or surgically-implanted rods and a collapsing skewer?
