David Copperfield Breaks Down His Most Iconic Illusions | GQ

the worst thing to happen to me on stage was when I cut my finger off I was doing a rope trick on stage nice and routine with very sharp scissors I was about to cut the rope but I cut the whole tip of my finger off and the tip of my finger was sitting on these scissors I started to get famous blood everywhere and the audience started to applaud I said ladies and gentlemen I think I cut my finger off they take me to the hospital and mike tyson's cut man was in town and he sewed my finger back on and you can't tell us like really amazing but you know I went over Niagara Falls I was an imploding building I did all these crazy things I'm totally safe I do a rope trick and I end up in the hospital [Music] the vanishing airplane my first special is on ABC introduced in the fall season and it was really frightening at all the celebrities at the time the Kate Jackson and Adam rich from eight is enough and Howard Cosell all the stars at the ABC season I introduced and a dineymarie they were all so professional I didn't I don't know what to do with my hands it was like really crazy big but they gave me this chance this chance to to be be on TV and my my specialty was really telling stories with magic I wouldn't just vanish a woman in a box i advantage her in a shower and I do the shower scene from the movie psycho I would do a sailor number like on the town kind of the Bernstein's show I would do amazing stories that dealt with Sam Spade and combining magic with things that were kind of relevant to me at the time after the ABC show CBS picked me up and I was telling my story telling magic on these specials and on the second or third specialer there was four special I vanished an airplane and that changed everything people really enjoyed the big spectacle of it all this shop will pet away you'll see as if you were there with absolutely no camera trips and I was really surprised by it I thought you know you like that this big illusion and you don't like all these stories which are so important to me and they did they just like the whole idea of the simple simple creation simple spectacular thing and the airplane was the first of those those events [Music] I remember it was the next day incredible it was like the internet before the Internet it was like being viral around the world then people talked about that illusion and we had it surrounded by people the airplane that was a Learjet people remember it as a 747 and I say okay that's okay it was really just a Learjet a smaller plane but they're surrounded by a whole audience of people holding hands blindfolded the silhouette of the airplane was on the front of the box you saw the people moving in the airplane silhouette there and then advantaged and and it was cool we talked to the people on in the environment to really make sure the credibility was there and it got an amazing reaction taking the magic outdoors putting it in the world that was familiar to everybody made a big difference I think having it on an airstrip we all been on the airstrip maybe not walking on the airstrip but witnessing it in a non theatrical environment really changed things so I think that's that's one of the factors for sure the Statue of Liberty disappears after the airplane disappeared and the reaction at God I said what am I going to do next how am I going to make this vital and important and you know all my magic had a heart to it our only magic had a kind of a personal meaning and the airplane didn't it was just a big thing vanishing so when the idea of the Statue of Liberty came along it was my opportunity to share the idea of taking a freedom for granted to use an illusion for a metaphorical way and vanishingly a Statue of Liberty was an amazing amazing thing we spent a number of years on it I worked with Frank Capra I asked Frank Capra to help me write the dialogue from it and Frank Capra was kind of cantankerous a very famous fighter you know he was a diminutive size but he was this genius of the cinema and one of my idols and I read to him I said I want to make a statue who disappear to show how important our freedom is and he says you know okay and I said well would you help me I want you help me write that the dialogue for this because you're your studio is Liberty films all the movies that I loved you made you wrote would you help me I'll help you but on one condition that when you attempt to do it you fail and I said what do you mean this is all your gonna try to do this thing you'll set up the whole thing and you got to try to do it and you're going to show that Liberty cannot disappear and you're gonna fail and I said well mr. Capra I think CBS won't like this idea and I spent four hours arguing with Frank Capra believe it or not and I saw the same guy that would fight the head of the studio Harry Cohen you know to try to get his way on his films I got to experience that as as a 20 year old you know silly kid but finally I convinced him finally I convinced him and he helped me write the dialogue for that segment of the show where it talks about how important our freedom is and how we take it for granted and so forth so I had Frank Capra it's my co-writer on the Statue of Liberty vanish I thought if we faced emptiness where for as long as we can remember that great lady has lifted up her leg why then we might imagine what the world would be like without liberty and we'd realize how precious our freedom really is but that was only one problem the real problem is getting permission to do it the park department said no you know and I think they were right you know here's this guy saying I make the statue disappear will you help me do it and the parks department said we don't want you to go get out of here and I said well please I've got this great idea finally I was doing lots of shows at Ford's Theater in Washington for various different presidents and Reagan was the president at the time and I became kind of friendly with Ronald ray and I said I've got this idea of showing how important our freedom is and how fragile it is and how we shouldn't take it for granted and will you help me can I get permission everyone said no to me he thought of had and he said okay you should go for it so I Ronald Regan me permission to to vanish the Statue of Liberty which is pretty pretty awesome so I got for our egg and I got Frank Capra and I've got this big beautiful lady you know in the harbor there that I've got to make disappear so then we had to figure out how to do it and make it really wonderful and then we did and it worked out pretty good [Music] [Applause] [Music] it was really really great and it really kind of is one of our things and in our cultural time and it was it was torture for me the whole thing was torture but it was glorious torture how I was it was really worth doing that jacket will probably not be seen in GQ this month bill blue was the designer of the costumer for the show and that jacket he's the same guy that did the Elvis the famous Elvis high collar you know thing kind of iconic I think it's due for a comeback walking through the Great Wall of China I was I was looking to take magic and bring it further than where it come from before you know Houdini had walked through a brick wall on stage and a friend of mine said you know Houdini did that I think you've got to walk through the wall what does it do all in the world it's probably the Great Wall of China built the key keep farming's from going through so we started working on that idea and the idea of collaborating with the Chinese government and the Chinese television networks was a interesting challenge too and we went there we went there slightly before Big Bird went there and collaborated with them and it was really a wonderful experience they've never seen a lot of the same equipment boy they had the best equipment they could afford it but they didn't know how to use it so we taught them how to use steadicams we had a luma crane this big crane that would do the whole illusion in one shot without cutting away that was very important to make the magic credible we'd have to show the entire vision without any cuts or breaks in it and there was a crane developed develop at the time there was the newest thing called the luma crane which was a head that could turn camera head they can turn and they could move any way you wanted to move and we brought that to China and it was it was really really cool and we worked side-by-side with the Chinese technicians and so forth I understand now how the Great Wall was built now because I saw there is no osha in China there is no rules of safety in China at least at the time so you'd have 200 people climbing on top of each other carrying gigantic crates over the wall it was incredible and you don't care about safety um but they were able to accomplish stuff you could never imagine you know here we have all these rules at that time there was no rules and it was really eye-opening a little bit scary but it was pretty cool I would always layer things in my illusions you know with the Statue of Liberty I had cameras I was promoting Kodak cameras at the time corex Polaroid camera they had their own version of polar they later got sued for two billion dollars in lost to the Polaroid corporation because they kind of took too much of the patent but I was their representative at the time the coda yeah so I had all these cameras around the statue simultaneously taking these instant pictures around the thing I did the same thing at the great wall we had radar and you hear my heart beat as they went over the whole wall we fought many layers of ideas were important to make it more credible [Music] you know we had the wall inspected and you know the walls lots of its in disrepair it's kind of sad and but it's really beautiful what's what's good about it is very beautiful and it did stop Genghis Khan from coming through but not this little Jewish kid from New Jersey you know I was able to get through there [Music] but I think having all those different steps made it better you know we had a moment where I was trying to push through it in two to two spandex and you know today of course I would do it in a different way you know you always look back and go I wish I'd changed that or that you know I get reactor would look at performance ago I wish I didn't do that but you know overall I think it's a it's it's pretty good work well always different haircuts always that the Escape from Alcatraz this must have been inspired by the Uni at least in part Houdini was probably the iconic escape artists you know the person that that made that idea important you know I'd done a few different escapes but that would seem Alcatraz seems to be you know pretty formidable challenge and we did it as layers and layers and layers how would you escape from guard dogs you know you'd produce a cat how would you get out of a cell that had a certain kind of lock or you'd form a key with your hands to to make it how would you get through a bars will you penetrate through them of course you would and then the end how would you get off of an island that's shark-infested waters and very cold water and then the bay what would you do and you know you have to become a guard you know and I became a guard at the end disguise myself and it took my cat there's some really unique illusions in that thing really you know the penetration through the the bars is is pretty good the the cat production is pretty good and my getting away at the end of this is not bad to make it interesting I had timed explosives or in the cell and the hallway they would go off to give a little bit of a kind of a ticking clock effect and I'd rehearse the straitjacket escape the whole thing I was a Hurst on stage I had a cell onstage I had the straight check out on stage even the ending scene I would do on stage as I would travel to kind of prepare for this and I did that with every special I wouldn't just go and shoot a TV special I'd do it live so I hear the audience reaction I get used to doing it and they escape from a straight check and was with it with with a bomb in the cell with me and when I went to Alcatraz the timing was different and I didn't know why the time he was different and I would get out and the time was wrong and I realized that on stage when I would do it there was an exit sign in the back of every theater there's many exercises I had focus on that exercise and I'd escaped focusing on exercise and I would get out in a certain amount of time but in Alcatraz there are no exit signs and it changed everything it changed how I did the piece so look at next time you're in prison you'll see no exercise using a helicopter was the only way to not get caught that would be my theory of this whole thing so in order to be have a helicopter available that have to be a helicopter that was trying to keep me in as supposed to keep me out so for me to become a guard to transform into a guard to be found all in one camera shot if you look from the beginning if I get into this box there's no cuts the box blows up the camera looks underneath the table goes follows the guards out of the building try to find me and I get in the helicopter and I'm gone so all that is one complete shot no cuts on Alcatraz which is pretty awesome I got to sleep in Al Capone cell the cell that escaped from was Alvin creepy car pieces so it's pretty pretty pretty fun and we had real guards there who were there at the time of those guys you know they were in their 70s or 80s at the time but they were kids kid guards there it was so much fun hanging out with them and learning about the whole experience there it's a kind of amazing place the explosive encounter he won an Emmy for your costume I did what was my costume we've won 21 Emmys which is pretty cool I didn't realize the costume from my explosive building illusion was one of but it's interesting that escape was really awesome me to do there's only one take you can only do it once we asked permission to use a church parking lot to shoot it from you can see the building from this church parking lot and a church said no they thought magic was demonic or they have some kind of anti spiritual thing with what I was doing and I explained no no I'm an illusionist I'm trying to bring joy to the world I this is not you know nothing like that this and no we talked to our board we're not going you can't use the our church parking lot to shoot this thing huh well hundreds of thousands dollars later because we had to shoot in another direction we had to shoot it from a roof of a garage was the other other angle of the building together churches over here the building was here in order to do that you'd have to go and rent the camera crane to go across the parking lot and up to these to the top of this parking lot over here to be able to shoot it okay so the church cost me a lot of money even though I'm sure they were a little nervous about me using the parking light anyway so we do this illusion and the illusion is I should they call him escape takes place in one camera shot and the McConkey brothers mikake brothers did bonfire of the vanities and Goodfellas all these long very famous camera shots which they did after my thing so it is kind of cool my thing was broadcast before any of those very famous Scorsese movies are were done with these fantastic camera shots but they are the ones that show me getting into the safe backed out of the building onto the camera can onto a building all in one take to see if I escaped or not that day there was a lot of wind we couldn't turn back we did the escape and they run out of the building and the winds blowing and they get on top of the thing and the wind as the Billy implodes with no retakes obviously implodes and becomes dust and that dust blows right over the church [Music] we would have had no escape would have been a total bust because if we were to get permission from the church and shoot from the church parking lot where we wanted to and see that a building implode the desk would have blown over us no illusion it would look like a camera check look camera cut so you watch if you watch the video you'll see that the whole building blows to the side and that's where we want this shoot so you know I we thank the church Church did the right thing for us and we appreciate their efforts music is very important to everything I do it everything if you look at every piece of work that I've I've done music is you know I I study it like Tarantino and he makes a movie you know and I heard he does I said that's why that's what I do I just really spend years to find the right piece of music for each little thing I always thought the whole idea of ability imploding was sort of classical in nature it's just to watch a building go in slow motion like that was operatic it was it was classical I found a a Mozart piece I thought would really fit that and it starts out with me putting a DVD in the DVD remember DVDs there's a little round diskeeper than a thing and anyway I put it aside as a DVD new-fangled a and you start the DVD in it it begins all of the action and it ends off with talking heads I think burning down the house it's kind of obvious an obvious play off music is really key about this and the whole juxtaposition between this piece of classical music and these brilliant camera operators running out of a building and people call quoting up cable because you couldn't have there's no radio control or you know Bluetooth connection to the thing you couldn't trust it maybe this connection during this one chance of having a building implode contrasting with his music that's classical I thought was kind of nice and yeah it was a good day the Niagara Falls challenge what things in our life that we can visually see are formidable challenges a building implosion is pretty durable a waterfall like Niagara Falls seem to be a good adversary you know so he designed it a whole whole thing where I had to slowly get out of a contraption going down the rapids into you know Niagara Falls and with a jet ski that I have to get on to go back and we put tracks into the rapids of Niagara Falls a week before we were issued this and he steagle thick tracks became like spaghetti they literally twisted in the current steel and I didn't sleep for the whole week up to shooting this thing we had to find another way of doing this and just the fear of that much power was something we didn't expect and planned for so instead of going down a ramp into the rapids we had to be placed with a helicopter and drop to the helicopter in there also not very good it was every night was really sleepless for me it was really not I thought it was going to be that this is going to be you know the end of it but we did it prior to that we rehearsed this ending with me on a rope coming up from the falls and we hired a stunt person to do rehearsal so he'd shoot rehearsals with a stump I've obviously I was gonna do that real event we got a stunt person to do the rehearsals of it and he did it once and then he refused to do it after that and I said why and him and the helicopter pilot said we have no out strategy when you have a helicopter didn't do a helicopter stunts there's a ground underneath you and you can somehow land onto the ground but hovering over rocks and a waterfall there's no house strategy you're done there's not even a chance of doing this so I was the only one that got to do it and because I'm stupid it was amazing you know it was just amazing imagine holding on to a rope and having Niagara Falls 3 feet in front of you literally the waters rushing down like this giant force of nature literally force of nature like a curtain in front and splashing you and would Nagre faucet and coming of it it's unbelievable no one I don't get to experience that nobody and the amazing thing is my hair was totally dry magic hang on to a rope coming up from the bottom middle of Niagara Falls was the most dangerous part of the whole thing really at the end of the day but it was a horrifying beginning and a very happy relieved ending don't have to do it again yeah yeah we did a lot of stupid things living on fire you know I was supposed to get out before that you know kind of Perils of Pauline you know I have to get out before jet ski back which of course didn't work out but we had fire you know all that stuff going when it was done it was a really thing I I just don't have to do again fly history is very important to all of us you know I like seeing the root of things what came before me what what challenges people have had before in the flying loser we had film which had been seen before but kind of interesting to see together people attempting to fly and failing the amazing thing is those people invited news crews to see them fly with their airplanes contraptions wings orth and they never tested it who would invite the press to come see you when you hadn't rehearsed it maybe because of my magician I think things through carefully that I'll rehearse and try and test and double-check look at the takes before and before inviting the world to see it well these people invited the world to see them and they failed miserably and comedic ly a bit but they brought people to see them when they weren't sure that was gonna work so we thought that was good and it was kind of in contrast to this really kind of poetic flying that I developed I think the flying illusion changed magic in many ways because it really became an aspirational thing it wasn't you don't wake up in the morning and want to make it hell but disappear I don't think anybody wakes up I'd like to saw my girlfriend in half you know I don't that's not normal I don't think but flying people do dream about you know so to do that illusion to do it just this I wanted to be as good as a dream that people have and if I did that people would respond in a very strong way and they did people would gonna get emotional in the audience watching me fly men would cry when they watch me fly the music played a part of it but also just the fact that I made it look like I imagined it you know and I am it and it's a huge dream of mine it's a dream shared by many people [Music] because I'm a magician I couldn't just fly I had to prove there were no wires or magnets or anything like that so it looks for every single way to disprove it you know we had hoops you know around me we had a plexiglass box because that's the most understandable way of containing the object that we'll be flying it's something that we developed my father in fact suggested this particular hoop pass that could work these two hoops that were linked together that was my father's idea so I kind of looked back and kind of smiled thank him you know prefer for that contribution [Music] you know unlike a film director I have a team of people we collaborate ideas we test things and trial and error that took about seven years to get that right that illusion but it was worth it you know it really still looks pretty good having a bird fly with me and just to kind of be an aspirational thing that I would fly with we toured for 20 years without Ellucian and we travel with the bird too you know we'd have an eagle with his own bunk in the bus with a camera off and which he is a free flight bird he would fly around the city and fly back to us with using falconry the falconry kind of system of that you know today I probably wouldn't do it because I feel a bit differently about using animals in the in entertainment but at the time it was it was cool them and it was really a really quite quite beautiful thing in England Princess Di came to the show with William and Harry they were 11 and 13 years old and I flew as the finale of my show and it went horribly wrong so they're in the audience and I begin this piece by levitating up and I'm frozen in the air immobile can't move and I don't know what to do I look out of the crowd there they are and the audience can't hear me because when Mike is off for them but my crew could hear me and I say close the curtain please and the curtain slowly painfully closed like this and I say leave my mic on I'm talking to the audience through the curtain and ladders are coming out to allow me to not be suspended in the air frozen in space as they're getting me down I said ladies gentlemen stay in your seats it's gonna take five minutes I want you to see this piece because I really think it's it's pretty good and five minutes take place and I continue to fly and it goes beautifully so I had oil tea in the audience and on stage a royal portal what he gonna do when you've done so much stuff you know well you're gonna teleport people I want to tell about people make it you know trans coastal you know or go from one country to another leave if he can make that credible and believable how would you do that to make an audience really convinced even for that moment that you're transporting somebody in a Star Trek fashion to another place can you make that happen so that's a big challenge for me so we spent two years on that you know on the road and after every show I'd interview people after the show what did you believe what didn't you believe what you hate was that credible and just define what little proofs wouldn't make it so it will be acceptable and believable you know whether it's a signature on your body that would match what you'd see in the other place a Polaroid that would match that exists what would be the things that would convince you that it was really happening and not just one big camera trick that illusion the portal illusion was a big arm that was over the audience so I'm not vanishing a person onstage I'm benching over the audience suspended with me an ax person vanishing pretty good it's pretty good illusion totally invented from scratch doesn't exist in any magic book and so that illusions got to be good and the reappearance has to be good and the credibility of whether the person really went someplace else has to be believable so years of trial and error of getting people's opinions and finally you get it to work and finally people believe it and then you have to bring the person back or I've got to come back from that remote island so I thought what layer's go put on that it'll be raining on the island and I'll make it rain when I come back it's gonna rain in the theaters people are kind of you know welcoming the rain coming back from the Hawaiian island or the Bahamian or wherever I went that time so it was a amazing idea that reached very very far and fun got it to be workable and acceptable I've done Rian's a lot in my work my current live show has me and my father kind of making amends in Assam way spoiler alert you know forget about this when you come see my show but it's a it's a theme that somehow I keep coming back to you know I guess I like Field of Dreams you know I think I it's it struck me you know my my mother my father you know I was an only child so those that that relationship keeps informing a lot of my storytelling and and that's okay they say write what you know and I know that the mystery of the 15 star I've been doing a lot of work with the Smithsonian it's a fantastic organization larger than you could possibly imagine this I'm thousands of museums all over that are supervised by them that they're helping with our efforts to help the people in the Bahamas right now we're working on saving the culture with the Smithsonian I'm doing they're just great people and they wanted me to do an event with them and we discussed this on Flag Day they have the star-spangled banner the star-spangled banner is an actual flag that's Francis Scott Key saw waving with the bombs bursting in midair and wrote our national anthem the actual flags the size of this room you guys can't see it at home but the size this was gigantic flag it's missing a star is missing the 15 star and they told me it's missing a 15 star and of course I'm me so I go okay now you're in my world now I got to do something with that I can probably make that star reappear so I want to work a year later I have a illusion where I can reproduce this star that's missing in an in my own metaphorical way show how important us being United is and how you know cooperation between States and cultures and all this coming together in one unified form we are stronger that way each star represents a state in our Union so to restore that star has a great value and that illusion of restored make that star appear also as part of the day where we're naturalizing 15 citizens so we have immigrants coming here becoming citizens on the same day I'm making that star up here so it was a really a warm kind of thing to do and the English is not bad and it's such it's in my wheelhouse for sure currently we're working on things that are really really remarkable life I love technology I love taking technology and art combining them together in my show now I have spaceships and dinosaurs and aliens and time travel things that aren't in the magic books that exist but we're developing new things and new technology which you're going to get to use someday I he's it for a while to make make it wonderful but eventually it'll be part of you know human life but it's really really awesome you know and in magic that's been a pattern you know magicians have used radios and communication devices to read people's minds then now we have a cellphone you know but this existed as a the first smart home to exist was a magic trick of though the door that opens by itself was an electromagnet magic effect now every grocery store has it so magicians are at the forefront of creating new technology which eventually they can't use anymore it becomes part of the real world and I'm doing that right now you know this illusions that are really wonderful that I'm working on which are which you'll have actual use in in society someday but first I get to exploit them as pieces of wonder [Music]

Channel: GQ

Views: 2,757,759

Rating: 4.6944699 out of 5

Keywords: magic, david copperfield, iconic characters, david copperfield 2019, david copperfield interview, david copperfield gq, david copperfield magic, david copperfield magic tricks, david copperfield best, david copperfield iconic, david copperfield illusions, david copperfield best tricks, david copperfield illusion, magic david copperfield, david copperfield liberty, david copperfield statue of liberty, copperfield statue of liberty, david copperfield revealed, gq, gq magazine

Id: QCBUx4g5H04

Length: 37min 31sec (2251 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 17 2019