And there are people who make a living out of creating tricks that they sell to magicians.
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For those of us who can’t access youtube, would you kindly give us the gist?
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He’s not a hack. He’s actually a really skilled magician. Bit of a…not sure of the word…pompous douchebag kind of guy, but no hack. And, as I’ll come back to in a moment, the doucheypompous thingy is his on stage over-dramatic act.
About 10-12 years ago, I met a prominent(well, to magicians) guy who specifically has worked with David Copperfield to design some major tricks. He helped design the Great Wall walk-through and also the Statue of Liberty disappearance.
He was a really nice guy, a skilled magician in his own right(obviously), and he had nothing but praise for David Copperfield both as a magician and as a guy. And it is no idol worship; the magician I met(his name is lost to me) was quite a bit older than Copperfield and pre-dates him in awards and magician hall-of-fame status(the Merlin award or something).
Also, and this is far more anecdotal, my brother and some friends saw Copperfield at an airport in 1993 and his friends and he did the whole “rush up to the celebrity and gush” kind of thing. He was friendly, conversational, and gave them autographs. They did not push their luck and ask for a trick, though. I think even they realized that is too stereotypical a thing to ask a magician.
I don’t remember the name of the guy I met. He is a major magic-engineer and tours as a magician, going mostly to churches(he’s evangelical). He’s an older guy(if he is still alive) and his major trick is making a large replica of the statue of liberty disappear…but he makes it disappear gradually from the bottom up(she show a curtain slowly rise and the bottom half is gone while the top is there). Anyone know who he is/was?
I once met an Australian called Geoff Diamond in a bar and he was more than eager to show us some card tricks (he also wanted to be payed some, but after all, it’s his job). He was also very drunk, but managed all tricks but one, but he showed his professionalism by talking himself out of it in two seconds and started on a new trick.
ETA It was he who asked us if we wanted to see him perform.
Saw Copperfield at the Fox in Atlanta once and was very disappointed at his live performance. At one point he disappeared from the stage, then out of the wings a guy with a jacket thrown over his head and an usher with a flashlight – a lit flashlight in a darkened room, mind you – come running along the right side aisle and end up exactly where Copperfield ‘appears’ in the audience. Surprisingly, I seemed to be the only guy (other than those around his seat in the auditorium) to not be so entranced by what was going on on stage to notice this. I was floored that a resounding chorus of Boo’s didn’t erupt.
There are two cards. He replaces the “original” card with a duplicate, tears that up, and that brings out the original again. My link was to a google search for “tear and restore trick”, and there are hundreds of non you-tube links.
Maybe, but as I said in my follow up, this is such a simple trick that it’s beneath someone of his stature to even do it. If you took a two-hour “intro to magic” class, it’s one of the three tricks you’d learn. It requires almost no skill, and to do it with such flourish is embarrassing for the most well known magician of the last thirty years.
That’s the same reason for my negative opinion of Darren Brown. Sure, he has some of his own tricks that are rather amazing, but he sullies himself by doing these old, easily figured out tricks. Dude actually used a flipping camera-based trick once!
Just for the record, the man’s name is Derren Brown.
No, because it is not done in front of a live audience. This is a film that was shown to an audience, and this bit was pre-recorded. That says a lot. The first video doesn’t show this. The second video doesn’t either where it starts, but take it back to the 17:40 mark, and this will be shown. Copperfield isn’t trying to hide this though. Since the film footage was recorded previously, there’s not much to it at all if all are in on it, and I think they are. If so, all that’s left is a good editing team. Professional magicians have all sorts of glues, inks, and special smokes (the sound of steam was obviously added, the smoke?) that can put all of this together.
I was going to mention the same thing even before I read your post. All seem to have a script to go by from the get-go. Gretzky is on cue about quite a few things. “What about the creases?.. What about the signature?” Notice the King’s owner line too, when he comments to Copperfield…”wait a minute, the insurance company covers accidental damage, not willful destruction,” and Copperfield then gives us the dead pan look and his clever line: “Well then, I guess the heats on me.” It seems to show they were on a standard script and all working together on this.
It does seem like it, but hard for me to say. Post # 2 video from Mahaloth, I freeze framed at the 19:38 mark, they only give you a brief second to look at that one. But the other one there is more time, at the 20:40-21:29 frames you get an excellent look at that signature. I concentrated on the last letter y which seems to show on the down stroke to be further away from his face than the one at the 19:38 mark. And actually when Copperfield is pulling the signature apart, the letter y here clearly shows a much greater space and used another card altogether here. See frames 21:40-21:44.
He can though, and does more than you think. Sometimes entire live audiences are in on it if the number is small enough, e.g., when he made the Statue of Liberty disappear. People sign waivers where they agree not to reveal the trick. And as another pointed out, many love to be in on this.
Mahaloth, I liked how you were able to go to this piece in the video without us having to start from the beginning. I looked at what you added in the url, but still not familiar with what this means. Do you or others have a link that shows how to do this?
Setting a time jump in YouTube:
You can click on share under the video and put in a time reference, e.g., 1:20 for 1 minute and 20 seconds and the link given will update with an url that will cause a jump to that marker.
Or for any YouTube video you can manually add to the url: #t=XmYs
Where X is the number of minutes and Y is the number of seconds. When I first learned this, all the instructions said to use a hash tag. It seems that when YouTube creates the link under ‘share’ it uses a question mark. Both are valid.
Prepare to have your mind blown.
You can right click on any Youtube video and there is an option called “Copy this URL at the current time”.
It will copy the proper URL into your clipboard and you can paste it.
Or, add #t=Xs
X would be your seconds in. or XmYs, with x being minutes and y the seconds.
Ninja’d by moriah there.
That cracked me up. But hey, thanks to you and moriah a lot. This is going to be very helpful
You are full of shit. It is a point of honor with magicians not to use stooges (because it would make far too many things far too easy) and if someone does use use a stooge it is a virtual certainty that any other magicians seeing the act would know, and would hold them in contempt. That is not to say it it never happens: incompetent or unsuccessful magicians may sometimes use a stooge (if they have no professional self respect), and may get away with it if no other magicians see their act. Anyway, they won’t have much to lose if their colleagues don’t respect them much in the first place. Very occasionally, as a one off, a more prominent magician may use a stooge, and may be given a grudging pass by his fellows if it enables a very spectacular, original effect that could not be pulled of in any other way.
However, someone as prominent as Copperfield, at the very top of the profession, would be crazy to use a stooge at all, let alone to pull off a very commonplace effect, that, as has repeatedly been pointed out in this thread, is easy even for a tyro magician to pull off without any need for stooges. If Copperfield was spotted using a stooge to such little effect, his reputation in the magic community would be in shreds within days (you can be sure there was plenty of envy of him), and it would not be very long before his stardom crumbled in his hands, and someone else took over as the big magic star. (There only seems to room for about one at a time.)
This was not done with a stooge. The notion is absurd.
Andre Kole is who I met and talked about Copperfield with. He is a really good illusionist in his own right as well as being a great magic designer.
Copperfield even recorded narration for part of his show.
IAMAM, but, as far as I know, many magicians use stooges. Cris Angel uses stooges all the time since you can see from episode to episode of his series that there were familiar faces in the crowds wearing different outfits. (Not to mention his overly obvious baseball cap and fake long hair covering the earpiece he was wearing.)
Penn and Teller reveal that they use stooges. In one trick where Teller is run over by the tires of a truck they had Victoria Jackson stand across the street to witness the backside of the trick and to look for any fakery. And so, after he was run over and came out unharmed, they asked Victoria, “Did you see any fakery?” and she said, “No.” Then, when they revealed the trick, they showed the tire was fake foam. And so they went back to Victoria, “I thought you said you saw no fakery?” and she said, “I lied!”
Penn and Teller revealed that magicians use stooges.
Magicians also get audiences in on the gag for either when a person leaves the room, or, for the TV audience. Hypnotists get people in on the gag because people love to play along with the bit by pretending to be hypnotized and they use the excuse of being ‘hypnotized’ for doing things they would ordinarily never do in public.
Are the magicians who never use stooges? Sure. Is using stooges forbidden by the magicians’ “code”? Nope.
You’re amusing, but no need to shoot the messenger, and to get all bent out shape. It’s absurd to think Copperfield is unique and doesn’t use stooges. It wouldn’t hurt his reputation any more than any other magician when it’s so common even among top performers. Where did you get the notion it would? It hasn’t so far, although you claim he doesn’t use them when he has such skills. I don’t think his skills are nearly refined as many sleight of hand artists that are up close and personal that do live routines without any editing. I don’t particular care much for his kind of magic, actually never have, but I have nothing against the guy.
Okay, tell us your version of why he needed to do that baseball card trick pre-recorded on film instead of showing it to a live audience? Don’t you think that would have been more convincing? Does the thought ever occur to you at all during a live show, he had that part taped? Seriously, let’s hear your version.
As far as David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty Disappear, that’s how I recall it from watching the Masked Magician and reading about other versions of how they make big things disappear. But it has been a number of years since I saw that on TV, and some time ago when I saw the Masked Magician.
There was a revolving platform involved that moved with the very small audience and camera on it. I don’t recall enough to know if the room had walls where they couldn’t see out, and just had the opening up front where the Statue of Liberty was. If so, the small audience wouldn’t necessary have to be in on it. What is needed is for the camera and audience on the platform to be pointed at the Statue of Liberty, the drape goes up, the platform is rotated, then the drape comes down and all the camera is picking up is black night sky, as would the small audience members.
The bigger audience once again was watching it on some large video elsewhere if I recall correctly, and his main audience was the TV viewers. Only a very small number were there on the platform. I’d have to go back and see what the platform consisted of. It seems like maybe a lot of black velvet drape for walls may have been used which on TV gave the appearance of night sky, but if not and it was open sky on the sides too, you can bet that very small audience was in on it. I could be wrong about certain aspects. But I think I got most of the important details correct. So easy, a caveman could do it. No special skills required whatsoever for this one. If he didn’t need a single stooge for this illusion also, not the small audience members, not the announcers, not the helicopter pilots, him being so talented and all, let’s hear your version.
Personally, I don’t mind a magician using stooges, so long as the number of stooges is small compared to the number of genuine live audience (as a rough rule of thumb, the number of stooges should be less than the square root of the number of real audience). A large TV audience doesn’t count, since by that standard, we’d have to call Ian McKellan a magician.
I remember as a kid being amazed by that Statue of Liberty trick.
When I found out the how years later, I was still amazed that someone thought about the “how can I” and made it happen.
Not sure if anyone mentioned the how (As I skimmed though all this post as it’s 3:30AM and I’m all tired… but here it is (spoiler added):
The crowd is sitting on what is basically a huge lazy susan and are VERY VERY VERY slowly spun around while Copperfield rambles on and on about the history.of the statue, and when the curtains part, the crowd is looking about 35 feet to the left of where they were originally looking. The lights on the original stature were put out, and the helicopters simply moved…
All in all a spectacular illusion.
EDIT: Oh. I see some jackhole just put it all out there, not thinking about how it could possibly SPOIL it for some…
Mental note folks: Puting {spoiler} text here {/spoiler} around your text put’s a spoiler bar on it (Replace { with [ )