The inspiration for my illusions comes from many places. Most often they come from my dreams, or an everyday occurrence in life.
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.
To make magic credible on screen is always very difficult. The story is the most important thing. That is what should win. If sacrifices or compromises are made, it's usually for story. Story in magic is very, very important to me. That's what I've really championed through my career.
Marriage is like a formality for me.
You have to learn certain skills to present magic.
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.
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.
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.
You can feel better about yourself in a very short period of time depending on the kind of magic that you are doing.
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!"
The audience likes to be taken on new journeys.
I'm a magician, not a singer.
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.
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.
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?"
I used to fly around the stage without strings or camera tricks. That took seven years to create.
Magicians lose the opportunity to experience a sense of wonder.
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.
Everyone understands cards and relates to it. They have them in their homes and in their hands, so it makes them very accessible.
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.
I love creating new things. It's kind of my job, it's what I do, and I really have fun with it.
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.
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.
I was teaching magic at NYU when I was 16.
I was published in Tarbell Course in Magic when I was 12.
