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When The Time Came To Say, "mom, I Want To Do This As A Job," It Was Brutal. She Was Really Against It. There Were Screaming Matches. Some People Are Shut Down By That And Get Defeated By It, And Other People Are Empowered By The Negativity. My Father Kind Of Encouraged Me Through That.

-David Copperfield

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When The Time Came

David Copperfield

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When The Time Came To Say, "mom, I Want To Do This As A Job," It Was Brutal. She Was Really Against It. There Were Screaming Matches. Some People Are Shut Down By That And Get Defeated By It, And Other People Are Empowered By The Negativity. My Father Kind Of Encouraged Me Through That.

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No Self-respecting Gay Guy Would Have Ever Made Some Of The Hair And Clothing Choices I Am Still Trying To Live Down.

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I Fell In Love With Magic Acts And Bridged Into That.

Pippin Had An Opening Number Called "magic To Do," And Jules Fisher, The Brilliant Lighting Designer Lit It. Tony Walton Did All Of The Sets. As A Kid I Thought, "wow, I'm Seeing Onstage What A Mgm Musical Would Look Like Live." It Was That Good, And It Was Directed By Bob Fosse.

I Got To Watch Frank Capra, In His Eighties, In Action. You Read All The Stories About Frank Capra Fighting With The Head Of Columbia, Harry Cohn, "it's My Way Or The Highway." I Got To Watch That. He Lambasted Me, "you Cannot Do This. You Will Fail." Finally, After Another Hour Of Conversation, I Convinced Him To Help Me Write The Speech.

To Make [parents] Happy, I Went To Fordham University For Three Weeks, While At The Same Time Running Ads In Variety, "magician-actor David Copperfield."

Everything That You'd See On The Ed Sullivan Show Was At The Tannen's Magic. You'd Think That If You Could Afford A Trick Like Doc Nixon's Dove Vanish, Then You Could Be On The Ed Sullivan Show As An 8-year-old Kid.

My Father Wanted To Be An Actor, Dreamed About Being An Actor, But He Gave It Up Because My Mom And His Family Told Him, "you're Never Going To Make It; It's Too Tough Out There."

Magic Has Been Something I've Been Really Good At Since I Was Really Young. The Ability Has Always Come Easy To Me, I'm Not Sure Why.

When The Time Came To Say, "mom, I Want To Do This As A Job," It Was Brutal. She Was Really Against It. There Were Screaming Matches. Some People Are Shut Down By That And Get Defeated By It, And Other People Are Empowered By The Negativity. My Father Kind Of Encouraged Me Through That.

When I Am On The Road And Heading To My Next Venue, I Think About My Audience.

[ Gil Cates] Said, "you've Got A Point Of View With Your Magic. There's This Comedy To It, There's Drama. You're Telling Stories With Magic."

Never Stop Listening To Your Audience.

I'm A Horrible Karaoke Singer.

The Inspiration For My Illusions Comes From Many Places. Most Often They Come From My Dreams, Or An Everyday Occurrence In Life.

When I Started Doing Magic As A Kid, My Parents Had No Problem.

My Father Kind Of Encouraged Me Through That. Exactly,[work] Not As An Actor, Obviously, But As Someone In Show Business That Had Some Success. He Told Me To Live The Impossible. "live The Impossible!"

Science And Technology Were Often Used By [the Magician Of Old], Even Before They Came Into The Marketplace On A Mass Basis. For Example, Prior To The Moving Picture Going Into Theatre, Magicians Were Using The Technique Of Images In Motion As Illusions In Their Shows. At That Time The Process Was So New, An Audience Perceived It As Magic. Also In The Early Stages Of Holograms Magicians Would Use These Images To Baffle And Mystify Their Fans. Hence, You Always Need To Stay One Step Ahead Of The Technology Game To "wow" The Audience.

Physical Rehab Is Often Very, Very Hard Work.

The First Trick I Bought At Macy's Was A Little Wooden Board Where A Quarter Would Appear And Disappear.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie — Who Wants To Rouse 'em?

I'm A Magician, Not A Singer.

Actually, I Started As A Ventriloquist And My Music Teacher Said, "why Don't You Emcee The Talent Show?" My Act Was Out Of The Back Of Boys' Life Magazine-they Had A Whole Series Of Jokes In The Back Of Boys' Life Magazine For Boy Scouts. So My Act Was Jokes With My Ventriloquist Figure, And It Was Really Bad, But I Walked Into The Classroom Afterward And The Kids Went, "wow, You're Cool." I Wasn't Cool At All, But I Thought, "well, This Is A Pretty Good Deal."

I Love What I'm Doing, I Love Creating New Things.

Creating New Things

In Magic, It Takes Two Or Three Years For Me To Create A 5-minute Illusion For Me To Get It To The Level I Want.

I Invented Magic Stuff; It Came Very Easily. Now, I Sucked At Everything Else, But I Was Good At Magic As A Kid.

No, I Think Marriage Is A Great Thing.

Usually, About Two Years Of Work Go Into Each Illusion, Whether It's Big Or Small. Two Years Of Work On Each Five-minute Piece.

Magic Came Very Easy For Me When I Was A Kid. When I Was 8 Years Old I Started Doing It, And By The Time I Was 12, I Was Already Published In Magic Books

There Were Really A Bunch Of Old, Old Magic Hobbyists At The Time, Some Of Them Who Actually Had Known [harry] Houdini. You Had To Be 14 To Go To These Meetings, And He Snuck Me In At 12. It Was Glorious.

What I've Tried To Do In My Stage Magic Is To Take A Trick And Give It An Emotional Hook.

I Discovered That Magic Tricks Got Me More Attention From The Girls In My Class When I Was Nine - So A Magician Was Born!

Normally, I Do Magic On The Stage. But I Can Make Magic Credible And Resonate Through A Tv Screen.

Stop Saying 'i Wish' And Start Saying 'i Will'.

I Was Published In Tarbell Course In Magic When I Was 12.

I'm Fascinated By The Similarities And Differences Between Comedians And Magicians.

Later On, Towards The End Of Their Lives, I Thanked Her. I Said, "mom, You Were Really Tough." She Said, "i Wasn't Tough! I Always Believed In You."

If I Was Gay, Why Would I Hide It?

I Really Wanted To Succeed. I Wanted To Be Accepted. I Read Every Magic Book That I Possibly Could, Studied Every Move, And By The Time I Was 12, They Really Accepted Me, They Embraced Me.

I'm Just Waiting For People To Start Asking Me To Make The Rain Disappear.

Demonic Figures And Occult Themes Have Disappeared From Modern Magic.

The Audiences Are What Keep Me Enthusiastic.

I Love Creating New Things. It's Kind Of My Job, It's What I Do, And I Really Have Fun With It.

Tommy Chong Connects To The Pipe A Lot.

I Need A Form Of Escape Even When I'm Working Really Hard.

Working Really Hard

I See People's Need To Dream, People's Need To Escape - You See It! That's Why People Come To Comedy Shows, That's Why They Come To Your Movies ... We're So Needed In This World. Not As Much As Medicine , But To Dream For A While.

I'm Really Happy That I Had The Foundations Of Knowing Where I Came From.

There Was Another Guy Suggested. He Was A Tall And Dark-haired And Jewy, And I Said, "no, He's Too Close To Me." It Ended Up Being Jerry Seinfeld.

Watching People React, Watching People Be Inspired, Be Taken On A Journey, Forgetting Their Problems, Looking Ahead In Their Own Lives To Doing Impossible Things. That's Kind Of What Drives Me, Gives Me A Sense Of Focus.

Impossible Things

Magic Is The Only Profession Where It's Easy To Lie About Your Talent. If You Do A Trick And You Can Learn It Very Quickly, You Can Fool Somebody Into Thinking You're A Great Magician.

I Record That I Was Born (as I Have Been Informed And Believe) On A Friday, At Twelve O'clock At Night. It Was Remarked That The Clock Began To Strike, And I Began To Cry, Simultaneously.

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In Movies, Storytelling And Every Single Art Form, We're Creating Wonder. You're Starting With A Blank Page And Creating Something That Doesn't Exist.

I'm Inventing New Principles. The Audience Has A Point Of View That No One Can Predict.

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For Me To Grow, I Have To Know About The Foundation That Came Before.

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What You Think Is Impossible In Life Actually Is Possible.

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Everyone Understands Cards And Relates To It. They Have Them In Their Homes And In Their Hands, So It Makes Them Very Accessible.

There Was A Guy Named Ed Mishell. He Was This Grandfatherly Guy Who Did All The Illustrations For The Catalogs And Reviewed Magic Effects For The Magic Magazines, So All Of The Magic Dealers Would Send Him Magic Effects For Free-it Was A Great Deal. His Basement Was Full Of This Stuff. He Took Me Under His Wing, And He Would Sneak Me Into The Society Of American Magicians Meetings In New York. It's The World's Oldest Magic Organization.

For Me, I Was Watching Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Orson Welles, Victor Fleming Movies, And I Said, "i Want To Tell Stories Like That. I Want To Move People Like That. But I'm Good At Magic, So What Am I Going To Do?" So I Started Using Magic For The Right Reasons - To Get The Girl.

It Is The Unspoken Ethic Of All Magicians To Not Reveal The Secrets.

We All Possess The Need To Dream.

[producers] Took Me To Chicago At 18 To Star In A Show That Ran For Almost A Year. And That's When My Parents Said, "okay, I Guess You Can Quit Fordham." Of Course, When That Show Closed, As You Can Imagine, I Came To New York And Starved For Years, But It's Never An Easy Road.

My Job Is To Make People Dream. Of Course, There's A Lot Of Technical Stuff Behind The Scenes And A Lot Of Hard Work Behind It, But I Get To Watch People See The Result Of That Hard Work And Feel That Wonder And Feel That Discovery, All The Time.

Ride On! Rough-shod If Need Be, Smooth-shod If That Will Do, But Ride On! Ride On Over All Obstacles, And Win The Race!

I Used To Fly Around The Stage Without Strings Or Camera Tricks. That Took Seven Years To Create.

I'm Really Trying Hard Not To Do Anything That Has Been Done Before. So Knowing Everything I Can About The Legacy Of Magic Challenges My Team And I To Invent New Illusions.

Knowing Everything

I Could Vanish The Silk Better Than Ben Vereen - That Was For Sure. So I Think Maybe They Said, "okay, Maybe He Has Something To Offer." Years Pass And I Get A Bit Of A Career, And Ben Vereen Ends Up Hosting One Of My Specials Where I Walked Through The Great Wall Of China. Things Came Full Circle In Kind Of An Ironic Way, When You Have That Honor Of People That Have Influenced You So Much Host Your Show. It's A Huge Experience In Your Life.

Later, When I Was At Caesar's Palace, And [joe And Gil Cates] Were Trying To Get Me To Have Opening Acts For The Show, They Gave Me A List Of People, And Rosie O'donnell Was One Of Them. I Said, "i Don't Really Need Any Opening Acts. I Have Funny Stuff In The Show, And I Do A Lot Of Comedy And Stuff."

My Show Is Constantly Evolving... New Tricks Are Added, Old Ones Are Dropped... So It Stays Fresh. But It's The Randomly Selected Participants From The Audience That Make It Fresh And Provide Some Of The Best Comic Relief.

Magic Was A Thing That, When I Did It, It Made All The Kids Go, "ah, That's Cool."

You Have To Learn Certain Skills To Present Magic.

There Is A Safe Spot Within Every Tornado. My Job Is To Find It.

I Have Always Looked To Movies And Theatre For Inspiration.

I Really Did Sneak Into Broadway Shows, Starting When I Was 12.

I Am Fortunate To Have The Resources To Have Many Methods To Do Each Of My Illusions.

If You Ever Saw All That Jazz [1979], Bob Fosse Was Kind Of Raised Dancing In Strip Joints And The Whole Era Of Burlesque, And That Form Ran His Visual Aesthetic, The Pacing And Rhythm Of What He Did.

I Brush My Teeth With A Sonicare Toothbrush Before Every Show.

Magic And New Technology Have Always Walked Hand In Hand - Even Back In The Days Of Robert Houdin.

When People Say You Can't Do It - That It's Impossible - Never Lose Hope. Just Because They Couldn't Doesn't Mean You Can't.

Believe In Yourself

But When I Go Off Stage I Don't Have A Deck Of Cards With Me All The Time.

From The Very Beginning, I Studied Acting, Directing, Lighting, Dance And Movement. I Didn't Rely On Just The Magic To Take Place. It's A Shame That A Lot Of Magicians Just Rely On The Trick Itself And They Have No Other Abilities. They Get Away With The Wonder Factor, And I Don't Think That's Enough. It's Great, But It's Not Enough.

For One Of My Specials, I Said, "i'm Going To Make An Airplane Disappear." Okay! And The Next Day, Everything Went Crazy - It Was Like Breaking The Internet Before The Internet.

It's Okay For Me To Be Gay, But God Didn't Make Me That Way.

A Few Years Later, When I Was Still Going To These Meetings, I Was Also "second-acting" Every Broadway Show [walking In With The Crowd After Intermission]. I Snuck In To See Grease With John Travolta In Kind Of A Secondary Part And Adrienne Barbeau Playing Rizzo, Into Pippin, Hung Out With Ben Vereen And Bob Fosse. It Was An Amazing Time For A Teenager.

I Act Like I'm 14, If You Haven't Figured That Out Yet.

There Was A Place In New York Called Tannen's Magic. It Still Exists. But Back In The Day, It Was Really Fantastic. You'd Go Into The Old Wurlitzer Building, Take The Elevator To The 13th Floor, Which Was Labeled 14, Because Of Bad Luck, The Elevator Would Open, And You'd Be In Heaven. It Was All Of These Guys Doing Magic Stuff With Props. It's Kind Of Gone Now, That Experience, The Brick-and-mortar Magic Shop, But You Really Felt Like You'd Landed In The Most Amazing Place In The World.

Bricks And Mortar

You Can Feel Better About Yourself In A Very Short Period Of Time Depending On The Kind Of Magic That You Are Doing.

All My Tv Shows Are Done Live In Front Of Audiences, And All The Material I Take On The Road And Travel With Them Test Them For Hundreds And Hundreds Of Shows Before I Shoot Them For Tv.

It Wasn't Just About Doing Tricks. It's About Taking An Audience To Another Place, A Special Place, So They Can Really Suspend Their Disbelief. Its About Amazing The Audience As Well As Moving Them.

My Dreams Are My Dress Rehearsals For My Future.

When I Was A Kid, People Wanted To Be An Astronaut. Today, Kids Want To Be Famous, And That's Totally The Wrong Approach. You Have To Have Authenticity In What You're Doing. You Have To Really Care About The Core Message Of What You're Saying, And Then Everything Else Will Fall Into Place.

You'd Go In The Magic Shop [as An 8-year-old ], And You'd Walk Up To The Magicians Doing Stuff, And They'd Turn Their Back On You. "oh My Gosh, I Wish They Would Accept Me." It Really Lit A Fire. I Really Wanted To Succeed.

Reading [judd Apatow] Book, About His Background, I Think There's A Great Similarity. What Gives Him The Fire To Work Hard? He Worked Hard, Researching The Comedians Of The Time, What Touched Him About It.

I Was Teaching Magic At Nyu When I Was 16.

Magicians Lose The Opportunity To Experience A Sense Of Wonder.

I Discovered Musha Cay And The Islands Around It In The Exumas.

All Of The [bob] Fosse-esque Movements And Point Of View Informed Years And Years Of What I Would Do.

I Think The Negative Reinforcement Really Helped Me In My Very Beginnings.

I Was A Captive And A Slave. I Loved Dora Spenlow To Distraction! She Was More Than Human To Me. She Was A Fairy, A Sylph, I Dont Know What She Was--anything That No One Ever Saw, And Everything That Everybody Ever Wanted.

I Discovered Something Amazing, Which Has Caused A Lot Of Controversy - The Fountain Of Youth. I Have To Keep It A Secret!

I Have Always Been Interested In Pushing Magic Forward.

Marriage Is Like A Formality For Me.

The Key Is For The Audience Never To Know, So I Have A Plan B For Every Illusion.

I Learned That There Were Two Ways I Could Live My Life: Following My Dreams Or Doing Something Else. Dreams Aren't A Matter Of Chance, But A Matter Of Choice. When I Dream, I Believe I Am Rehearsing My Future.

The Real Secret Of Magic Lies In The Performance.

I Was An Only Child. We Were So Poor, My Parents And I Had The Same Room.

Before There Can Be Wonders, There Must Be Wonder.

I Find Revealing The Secrets Of Magic Quite Reprehensible.

I'm A Big Fan Of The Pixar Movies, And Ed Catmull, Who Wrote A Book About His Experiences Producing Them, Talks About How It Takes Three Or Four Years To Get It Right.

The Audience Likes To Be Taken On New Journeys.

For Me, It's About Risk Taking, Taking Things In New Directions. Because Every Single Time, No Matter How Much You Learn, You Can Never Say, "okay, I Did The Hardest Thing I Ever Did. I'm Prepared Now. Now It's Going To Be Easy." Of Course It's Not Easy.

You Lose Your Sense Of Wonder The More You Learn, Right? When You Go To Film School And Learn About Moviemaking, You Go To See Movies And Then Only See Where The Lights Are, Where The Cuts Are, Watching It From A Technical Basis, Nodding Your Head, "oh, That Was Good." The Feeling Of Surprise, The Feeling Of Being Transported Is Further Away.

My Mother Was Really Loving And Wonderful And Tough As Hell.

Performing My Show Is Something I Constantly Think About.

There Was An Old Brochure For The American Academy Of Dramatic Arts With A Quote From Robert Redford Or Someone, That Said, "you're Only As Good As You Dare To Be Bad."

When You're A Guy And Meet A Girl The First Time, You Do Whatever It Takes.

I'm The Luckiest Man In The World - Performing 500 Shows A Year And Loving What I Do - Illusion Is My Day To Day Life.

Never Take "no" For An Answer.

I Wrote An Op-ed Piece In The New York Times About The Amazing Effect Of Shared Wonder - How I Have An Audience Filled With People Who You'd Think Would Hate Each Other, People From Every Religious Category, All At The Same Show At The Same Time. And It's An Amazing Phenomenon To Watch This Shared Sense Of Wonder, Where These People Who Really Don't Like Each Other - For Good And Bad Reasons, Reasons That Make Sense And That Don't Make Sense - Are In The Same Room, Experiencing This Unification.

Like In Comedy, You Know The Names Of The People Who Steal Things That Others Work Really Hard On. It Really Sucks. And, In Magic, It's Not Just The Hard Work Of Getting The Words And Attitude And Point Of View Right; You're Taking An Actual Invention, Making Something Over Three Or Four Years, And Somebody Can Just Take It.

I'm Trying To Change Theater, In My Own Way - Not Just Magic. I Say That Humbly, Because I'm Learning Every Single Day. I Do 15 Shows A Week, And Every Single Audience I Have Is Like A Test Screening For You, When You Listen And Go, "really? They Laughed At That?" All Over The Stage I Have Lines, Written Onstage, That I'm Changing Every Single Day.

Magicians Are The People Who Began To Use Film As An Illusion On Stage.

Magic Is Used In Espionage, All The Time, For Clandestine Things. I've Got A Whole Library From A Gentleman Who Was Hired By The Cia To Create Magic Technology For The Use Of Anti-terrorism.

I Started As A Ventriloquist, A Very Bad Ventriloquist. And People Saw My Lips Moving And It Was Ridiculous, So Finally I Decided I'd Better Change My Occupation.

I Had A Point Of View, Which Was Different. I Looked At Magic As Theater, As Storytelling, And I Tried To Have An Approach That Was Different From What They Were Doing. "how Can I Move People And Really Get Them To Dream With A Card Trick, With Coin Magic, Or Even A Piece Of Stage Magic?"

My Uncle's House Burned Down When I Was 6 Years Old. We Got Out Safely. But Ever Since, I've Had A Nightmare Of Dying In A Fire.

I Try To Help People Realize Their Dreams By Using Magic To Tell Stories That Educate, Move, And Inspire.

But Vegas Is Really My First Home.

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