David Blaine on Being Inspired by Harry Houdini, Reveals the Stunt He's Most Proud of & More | THR Video - video Dailymotion

Hollywood Journal

American magician and mentalist David Blaine sat down with The Hollywood Reporter during his THR photoshoot and dishes on studying the magic of Harry Houdini, how his insane near-death stunts began and the exciting part about being a magician.

Transcript

00:00What I love about Magic, especially with cards, is I love the way they feel.

00:04Like, I love the way cards just move in your hands.

00:07I love the weight. I love the size.

00:10It's two and a half inches by three and a half inches.

00:12It fits perfectly in the palm.

00:14And there's so many different things that you could work on with a deck of cards.

00:19There's 52 cards in a deck, 52 weeks in a year.

00:22There's four suits, four seasons, 13 cards per suit, 13 lunar months per year.

00:28If you count every single pip, there's 364, plus the Joker makes it 365.

00:35So there's just so many little bits of information stored in a deck of cards.

00:40To this day, I'm not even kidding, I fall asleep almost every night with a deck of cards in my hand or next to me,

00:47and I wake up with cards stuck to me all the time.

00:58There's so many fascinating figures in the history of magic.

01:05And if you look at all the old posters and all the art from the last few centuries, it's incredible.

01:11I was obsessed with studying Harry Houdini, and there was a poster that he had made that he died before he was able to do it,

01:18and it was him buried alive.

01:19And I said, what if we do it, but I'm buried under water?

01:25I'm in a coffin, but I'm under six tons of water.

01:29So it's a double coffin with a coffin that's see-through on top of it that's full of water,

01:33and then I'm buried there.

01:35And what if I did it for a week instead of a month?

01:38I'll last a week.

01:38I'll lay in there with nothing, no food, just water and a trucker's tube that they use when they go to the bath,

01:47and I'll fast beforehand, and I'll do it.

01:50So we went to Queens, where Houdini was buried, and there was a funeral shop, and I bought a coffin.

01:58And I just started sleeping in it just to practice.

02:00So I'd stay in the coffin one, two, three, and then I'd go, oh, well, obviously I won't be able to eat.

02:06Obviously I'll need a trucker's catheter, a trucker's tube it's called,

02:12and I would need about four and a half liters of water a day, and yeah, it should be doable.

02:18I practiced, I did four days, and then I was like, I can do this.

02:22And that was the beginning of the stunts.

02:36The stunt that I'm probably most proud of is the balloons, because I was able to show that one to my daughter.

03:00She was 10 years old, and I wanted to give her, do something that was happy and colorful and nice,

03:07because I stopped doing them when she was one and a half, because I was injured.

03:12And I said, I'm never doing another stunt, and I stopped for a decade almost.

03:17And then I wanted to give my daughter something beautiful and show her what I love doing.

03:22So I put together a rig of balloons, and I rode the balloons up to about, no, up to 25,000 feet,

03:30and then released, then jumped down, landed, and was brought to her.

03:34So that's probably my favorite one.

03:36The exciting part of being a magician is you're always practicing, you're always learning,

03:41you're always improving, and there's no end to it.

03:44So lots of the tricks that I do, I've been doing for 30-plus years,

03:48but I'm still changing them all the time, and they're still evolving.

03:52So I think there's just no end.

03:54And I think the reason whenever I'm stopped or people ask me to do magic, I always love to do it,

03:59it's because even though I love the practice of it, I'm also improving slightly,

04:03always trying to make it slightly better.

04:05Wait, George, can you give me exactly half of the day?

04:16No, but I'm saying like this way, because I'm going to be exact.

04:20You want me to rip it?

04:21Yeah, to hold that.

04:22Hold it?

04:22Yeah.

04:23Hold that.

04:28No.

04:29Let's try to...

04:32Yeah.

04:35Seems pretty tough.

04:39Yeah, I know, I can't.

04:40I can't rip it.

04:41Here's something I worked on for a while.

04:50See, now we have exactly half.

04:53I never imagined a deck of cards would take me around the world,

04:56and I'd meet all these incredible people,

04:59and I'd find all these amazing magicians that I only imagined or had read about,

05:04and I would be able to learn from them.

05:06I'm able to entertain anywhere.

05:10If I'm sitting on a train, if I'm on an airplane,

05:12if I'm in a cafe, whatever.

05:13Yeah, no, I'd never, ever imagined a deck of cards would do that.

05:18It brought me over...

05:1952 cards literally brought me around the world

05:22and changed my life in the best possible way.

05:25The world may have changed, but magic is the same.

05:27By the way, the more technology advances,

05:29the more AI and the more this becomes relevant, I feel.

05:33It's like people are looking for something that defies logic,

05:37but they know this is really happening in front of them.

05:40So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:43So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:44So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:45So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:46So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:47So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:48So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:49So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:50So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:51So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:52So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:53So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:54So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:55So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:56So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:57So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:58So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

05:59So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.

David Blaine on Being Inspired by Harry Houdini, Reveals the Stunt He's Most Proud of & More | THR Video

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