“In this episode, I am going to share with you my methods for transforming ANY classic trick into a signature magic performance. And I’m going to do this while answering all of the most frequently asked Sands of the Desert questions. If you love the classics, have ever considered performing Sands of the Desert specifically—or you just want to know how it works to see if it will fit your show—then this is the episode for you…”
The magician Derek DelGaudio sat in a Hollywood art gallery with several decks of cards before him. It was a February evening in 2011, and he faced a well-dressed audience of art-world people, whom he was keen to impress. Dressed in a black suit and matching Converse All-Stars, he instructed an attendee to “time me for a minute.” As the countdown commenced, he began dealing the cards wordlessly, with such force and rapidity that they soon overspilled the table. He finished off one deck and started on another, then another. When time was up, DelGaudio announced, “184 seconds in one minute — thank you very much,” then stood and walked away. Trick, as it were, over.
The performance was titled “184 Seconds,” and with it, DelGaudio obscured a virtuosic feat within a pantomime of banality. A “second deal” — a hard-to-master maneuver, often referred to simply as a “second” in the world of card magic — is when the magician appears to deal from the top of a deck but is in fact dealing the second-to-topmost card. Seconds usually aren’t tricks in themselves but rather are building blocks for more elaborate deceptions. In “184 Seconds,” DelGaudio set himself a daunting challenge: How many seconds could he execute in a minute? The answer to this question became the performance’s punning title.
“184 Seconds” was anticlimactic by design, privileging invisible technique while eliminating any perceptible effect — all hat, in other words, and no rabbit. In envisioning his work, DelGaudio, who has a fervent fan base among magic aficionados, likes to nod to well-known conventions (pick a card, any card), only to slyly deconstruct them, in a manner that either heightens or thwarts their payoffs. His animating goal is not for observers to ask, “How did he do that?” but, “Why?” For DelGaudio, “184 Seconds” enacted what he calls “one of magic’s defining paradoxes”: that a magician’s slavishly honed talents of subterfuge must by definition remain invisible to others and thus easy for the uninitiated to dismiss as trivial. “There’s something beautiful about that,” DelGaudio told me, “and there’s something heartbreaking.” Read more HERE…
As you’ve no doubt already noticed.. I’ve transferred all files and posts from my MagicNews.org site to this site. They are now all combined under the ‘POST’ heading. The Magic Roadshow newsletters are here as well. The easiest way to locate the Roadshow is to find it in the Latest Post column to the right and click on it. That will bypass all the latest Magic News and take you directly to the latest Roadshow. I’m going to try to create separate pages for each shortly.. but for right now.. search it out to the right..
Thanks much!
David Copperfield is Being Sued to Reveal his Secrets..
THE smoke and mirrors behind David Copperfield’s world-famous illusions will be revealed in open court if a Manhattan lawyer has his way.
A British tourist is suing Copperfield, saying he suffered brain damage during a stunt gone awry, and his lawyer is threatening to finally lift the curtain on the magician’s secrets at trial.
“I’m going to have a good time questioning Mr. Copperfield, because he may try, but I’m not going into any box,” quipped the lawyer, Benedict Morelli.
“I do believe that certain secrets are going to come out.”
According to the lawsuit, Morelli’s client, Gavin Cox, 57, had gone to see his illusionist “idol” at the MGM Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas for his birthday in 2013.
When Copperfield plucked him out of the audience for a disappearing act, Cox said he was thrilled.
But then Copperfield’s assistants hustled Cox and other participating audience members through a dark secret passageway as part of the stunt, and the plaintiff tripped and fell on construction debris, slamming his head on the ground, the suit says.
“People were saying to him, ‘Mr. Copperfield, this man’s been hurt,’ ” Cox told The Post.
“And Mr. Copperfield looked at me and smirked. He just walked away. He never showed any concern for me.”
Cox, who once cooked for British royalty, said he can’t even bake a muffin now.
“It’s turned my life upside-down,” he tearfully said of the incident.
“I have pretty much constant pain, and my difficulty is my short-term memory.
“I have a ventilator,’’ Cox added. “Otherwise, I stop breathing at night.”
According to Forbes, Copperfield conjured up A $84 million in earnings in 2016 alone.
“He supposedly is the most successful magician in the world,” Morelli said.
And he claimed he has a few tricks up his sleeve — and plans to use Copperfield’s “own words” to show that he’s more of a trickster than a magician.
Copperfield’s lawyer, Theodore Blumberg, told The Post that the illusion at issue “has been performed successfully for over 15 years with over 100,000 audience participants. The history of the show speaks for itself.”
He declined to comment on specific allegations or Morelli’s threat to expose the magician at trial in October.
For now, the conjurer’s methods are protected, as a judge sealed documents related to the illusions after finding that they were proprietary information.
