Boy, David Copperfield is good at what he does. And what he does is to just come out and do impossible things, right before your eyes…and in my case, only a few feet away since I was sitting front row/ringside at his late show last night at the MGM Grand. Even that close, you couldn't see how he did anything. A few folks may have been disappointed that he didn't vanish the Statue of Liberty or escape from a safe inside a building as the building was imploded. And a couple of frat-type boys sitting next to me were audibly disappointed that there were no sexy dancers or scantily-clad magician's assistants. But he did make a car appear and he did pass through steel and he did crush himself down to about two feet tall and he did cause thirteen members of the audience to vanish, plus he levitated just about everything that wasn't nailed down. So I'd say they all got their money's worth and then some.
I was impressed by the wizardry but I think I was even more impressed by his sheer perseverance. It was a dead house — no energy, not a lot of clapping. In his first thirty seconds on stage, he said two joke lines that obviously got about a tenth of the laughter he's used to…and sitting as close as I was, I could actually read the magician's mind. He was thinking, "This is gonna be a long show."
Every performer has 'em. It's something in the air, something in the ozone. There are a number of stories of entertainers comparing notes after their respective shows — two guys playing different clubs in the same town. Upon exiting the stage, one would phone the other and they'd correlate audience mood. Not always but 90+% of the time, if one had a non-responsive crowd, the other had a non-responsive crowd.
Mr. Copperfield had one at his 10 PM show…but he's been doing this a long time. He knows what to do. He upped his own energy an extra notch and he encouraged people to clap to the music and he milked every spark of audience interest for all he could wring out of it. Sure, the guy knows how to do great magic. But I was just as impressed that he knows how to work a crowd and to entertain them as much as they'd allow themselves to be entertained and maybe a little more than that.
I want to go back and see him some night when the audience isn't impersonating a matte painting. I'm sure that's most of the time…because what he did on stage was quite spectacular and worthy of a lot more ovation than he got at his second show last night.
One other thing I'll mention…
As a longtime student of magic, and a guy who's been known to make his friends suffer through a card trick or three, I've often been amused by bogus explanations. A couple is walking out of a magic show and the lady mentions some trick and asks her date, "How did he do that?" The guy doesn't know but he doesn't want to admit he's sans clue…so he just makes up something. He says, "Oh, there was a mirror" or "Oh, he has a twin brother they keep secret and it was the twin who got into the box." Something like that.
One time I was exiting Penn & Teller's show and I overheard a couple discussing a fire-eating segment…and of course, there really isn't a lot of gimmickry to fire-eating. It's mostly a matter of knowing how to hold the burning torches and how to spit gasoline through the flames and such. The secret is basically to be careful and practice a lot…but the guy didn't seem aware of that. He was telling his lady friend, "They use a thing called Cold Fire. It's a chemical that looks like fire but it's not hot and it can't burn anything." Needless to say, there's no such thing.
In his act, David Copperfield did a trick where he appears to pass his body through an inch-thick piece of sheet metal. Audience members came up and banged on it with a hammer and then Mr. Copperfield and it were covered with a huge sheet of plastic and he appeared to pass through the metal. Very impressive. As we filed out after, I eavesdropped on a couple…and the man might as well have been the Cold Fire guy. I shall now attempt to replicate what he said…
The outer part of the metal plate is real but the inner part of it is one of those liquid metals…you know, like Mercury. Only it's not liquid because when they show it, that part's frozen solid so it might as well be metal. Then when they move it into place before he passes through it, there are hidden heaters which defrost the center part and by the time they put the plastic over it, it's soft enough that he can pass through it. And the soft metal is self-healing so the hole he makes heals up and you don't see it after he's on the other side. Easy as pie.
I heard that and I thought, "Boy, if that's how Copperfield does that, he deserves every cent he makes." And a lot more applause than he got last night.