Now You See Him 'Street magician' David Blaine casts his spells in 2nd TV special
by allan johnson

Flash has its place in magic. Lance Burton wouldn't be Lance Burton without a little flash. David Copperfield is the epitome of flash. No one will mistake David Blaine for Copperfield or Burton: Flash is not part of his bag of tricks. The New York based Blaine is as stripped down as Siegfried & Roy are flamboyant. He isn't an elaborate theater stage with sequin-garbed assistants or fantastical props. Blaine's stage is the street. His assistants are ordinary people. Whatever props he uses can be carried in his pockets. A regular deck of cards is his favorite accessory. Blaine's second ABC special, "David Blaine: Magic Man" on Wednesday proves that less can be more entertaining. It also shows that Blaine is one of the most unique and captivating magicians around. "Magic Man" demonstrates that Blaine's special wizardry lies in his ability to make his up-close-and personal tricks-which are caught by close-up camera work-look impossible to pull off.
There's no way, for example, for Blaine to reassemble a torn-up card while it's in the balled-up fist of supermodel Tyra Banks. But he does it. There's no chance Blaine will guess the name of a loved one that a New Orleans resident thinks up, let alone cause it to be scrawled on his abdomen.
But he does it. There's not even a remote possibility that Blaine can pull a swallowed thread out of his stomach, tattoo a card pulled out of a deck at random onto his chest, resurrect a dead fly or accomplish any of the other remarkable feats he performs during the hour-long special.
But he does them all, on city streets and back roads all over the country. In addition to the unique visualization of "Magic Man" (slow-motion, video-style editing, a camera constantly in motion, staged poses of Blaine on rooftops or bridges), the piece is wonderful in high lighting the astonished in reactions of those who witness his illusions. Some people run in terror. Others look with glazed expressions. Still others shriek in horror and giddiness. Even in Haiti and the South American rainforest, where Blaine travels to see how his magic translates in other lands, the reactions are the same--shock, amazement and awe. Admittedly, nothing in "Magic Man" can match the sheer amazement of Blaine's levitation from last year's "Street Magic," but the illusions here are a joy to watch. Which means Blaine can watch his own special on television. He does have a problem watching the feats of legerdemain on the small screen, however. "I've never seen magic on TV that works for me," explains Blaine, a 25-year-old Brooklyn native. Blaine, who has been doing magic since he was 4, says, we've seen the old gags before, like making the biggest thing possible disappear. But his approach to the art consists of "connecting to a person using magic as that medium," Blaine explains. And using props has never been Blaine's first choice, one reason his tricks are few. "I don't like the idea of boxes and I never do," he says. "A box that has three parts that zigzag this and that, who relates to that? Where did it come from, why is it there? "As far as he's concerned, magic should be more personal. "That's why I was trying to this what would work for me. I knew it couldn't just be magic. It needed to be magic plus an ingredient. I'm not talking about pretty showgirls. I'm talking about real people that we can believe add to the credibility factor. "Blaine is crediting the evolution his magic is taking for his own growth in the art. Guessing names out of the blue, traveling to Venezuela to perform before people who have little or no contact with the outside world--Blaine says these are signals his magic is moving into more interesting areas. "The magic's starting to get more intellectual and (is) pushing it a little more," Blaine says. "I'm going with it. I'm letting it sort of develop itself."

During the filming of “David Blaine: Magic Man”, a certain bone-chilling incident never made it to tape—Blaine and his cameramen were too busy running for their lives. On location in Haiti, the 25 year-old illusionist had just finished showing some villagers his ability to levitate, floating about 8 inches off the ground. “People there just accept levitation, because they know that at nighttime their grandmothers can turn into a bird and fly away,” says Blaine. But his next trick—removing, then reattaching the head of a live chicken—incited terror. Believing that only a malevolent spirit would harm an animal so sacred in their voodoo practices, 20 men seized cantaloupe-size rocks and rushed, warrior-style, at the star. With his grave and sultry monotone, glazed eyes gazing away, Blaine embodies this tale with spooky credibility. Then again, he could be making the whole thing up: Illusion is this man’s stock-in-trade. In his new special, Blaine uses card tricks, mind reading, and the occasional chicken maneuver to widen the eyes of cynical New York City cops, playful New Orleans bar janes and remote South American tribesmen. In all, he visits four American cities, as well as Haiti and Venezuela. You and old, urban and rural, people are spellbound. Literally, it seems. Likes fellow prestidigitators Penn&Teller, Blaine just might be the most impressive in his ability to make magic’s corny image disappear. After all, the age-old craft doesn’t exactly rival rock stardom in the hipness department. “There’s a stigma attached to being a magician,” says “Magic Man” executive producer Daniel Kellison. “But David is different. He’s so compelling.”And mysterious. “Even a private investigator couldn’t track me down,” the Brooklyn, New York-born Blaine says smoothly, when asked what part of Manhattan he inhabits. For now, at least, he has materialized in one of the city’s upscale Italian eateries, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. Tall, dark and handsome, Blaine also fits another descriptive cliché—cool, calm and collected. “I was always fascinated by people like Orson Welles or Charlie Chaplin,” he says. “Their whole lives are completely buried.” And like his heroes, Blaine isn’t above taking an active part in his burial—both literally and figuratively. On the literal side, in a Houdini-like stunt, he plans to submerse himself publicly in a Plexiglas coffin under three tons of water in New York City for a week, beginning April 5. And like Houdini, Blaine has a penchant for burying his past in nobfuscation: “The truth is I was born the son of a Gypsy and I grew up in Tibet,” he says with an inscrutable grin. “Wandered around with the Dali Lama. I’m really 60.” The real story (or at least the one Blaine says is real) has inspired Robert De Niro to develop a movie (tentatively titled “Trick Monkey”) that is loosely based on Blaine’s life. Supporting players: Blaine’s mother, Patrice Maureen, a teacher and big advocate of Blaine’s magic, who died four years ago of ovarian cancer at age 48 (Blaine says he never met his father), and his brother Michael, 14, with whom he was raised in Passaic County, New Jersey. Finally, his grandmother, whose tarot cards changed the course of his life when he discovered them at age 4 and found his magical calling. At age 18, Blaine moved across the river to New York City, where he studied acting at the famed Neighborhood Playhouse, all the while perfecting his illusions. “I didn’t know anybody,” he recalls, “so I’m walking around doing magic to everybody that I meet. I go to restaurants or bars or clubs. I give people my business card, and they hire me to do parties. Then I start to book serious parties, where they’re flying me to Saint-Tropez and all over the place.”As the venues got swankier, so did the patrons. Blaine would ask such luminaries as De Niro, Al Pachino and Leonardo DiCaprio to pick a card, any card. “I’m the biggest skeptic, but David made me a believer,” rhapsodizes supermodel Tyra Banks, who says Blaine set her watch ahead three hours without touching it. Blaine’s first ABC special “David Blaine: Street Magic”, guest-starring DiCaprio, drew more than 10 million viewers in May 1997, and the young magician soon became a sample of New York’s gossip columns, first by dating singer Fiona Apple, then by running in a clique of Hollywood party boys led by buddy DiCaprio “I respected Leo’s work, and I had the chance to hang out with him,” Blaine says. But a membership in a group of roving ladies’ men? “Oh, God!” he balks. “I’m not a part of that. Don’t know anything about it. Actually, I don’t even hang out with [Leo] anymore. At lunch, the now romantically unattached Blaine displays a knack for sweeping a woman off her feet. “Pick a card,” he says coyly. Once selected, the card (ten of hearts) goes back inside the deck, facedown. Blaine shuffles the deck. “Do you see it?” he asks, handing the cards over. “I can tell by your face it was black.”Wrong, “I’m not always right,” he says with self-deprecating charm. Is David Blaine offering a peek behind the illusion of his cool bravado? Nice try. Moments later, as lunch arrives to the table, his brazen grin returns. “I didn’t touch your food, did I?” He didn’t, but at the bottom of a heaping dish of ravioli is a soggy, tomato soaked ten of hearts.