A magician who was handcuffed, chained and locked inside a water-filled tank reportedly needed help to get out of the box alive Tuesday.
Spotters freed Spencer Horsman, who calls himself “The escape artist,” when he couldn’t undo one of the last bars holding him inside the tank after around three minutes, as seen in video of the performance posted by New Jersey Advance Media.
He was conscious when he emerged in front of a cheering midday audience outside New Brunswick’s State Theatre, but paramedics took him to a nearby hospital as a precaution, the news outlet reported. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the rescue was a planned promotional stunt or a near-death experience. read more and watch video…
Mike Hughes, For the Lansing State Journal (courtesy photo)
In the high-tech, special-effects world of TV, this is a surprise: Magic is back.
Yes, trickery — a 500-year-old art that needs no camera tricks, a skill often tried by bumbling grade-school kids and tottering old men – is hot again. “We’re just in a new wave now,” Rick Lax said.
Lax, a former Michigan State University student, has a small piece of that (performing Monday on “Penn & Teller: Fool Us”) and had a big piece recently, as a TV creator and producer: “I’ve had a very charmed video life …. My very first idea (’Wizard Wars’) gets on TV and gets great ratings.”
That’s been part of a revival that includes:
•“America’s Got Talent.” Its 10-act finale – 8-10:01 p.m. Tuesday, 8-11 p.m. Wednesday – includes magicians Oz Pearlman, Derek Hughes and Piff the Magic Dragon.
•Last year’s winner of the show, Mat Franco. He has a special from 9-11 p.m. Thursday on NBC.
•“The Carbonaro Effect,” with Michael Carbonaro mixing magic and hidden-camera. New episodes are at 10 p.m. Wednesdays on Tru TV and reruns abound. There are rerun marathons on Wednesdays (7-10 p.m.) and on weekends, including 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 7-10 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 19.
•And the CW summer shows. “Masters of Illusion” is 8 p.m. Fridays; “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” is 8 p.m. Mondays, plus a rerun at 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18.
•“Fool Us” is something CW originally bought as low-budget reruns from England, then ordered new episodes for this season and next. “It performed far better than we had ever anticipated,” said Mark Pedowitz, the network programming chief.
Why the surge? Lax gives some credit to two 2006 movies, “The Prestige” and “The Illusionist,” and the 2013 “Now You See Me.” These were no magician-as-nerd cliches; they starred Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Edward Norton and Jesse Eisenberg. A generation already familiar with TV specials by David Copperfield, Criss Angel and David Blaine saw magicians as cool guys.
But there’s another factor in stirring young magicians, he said: “I believe it’s because of the Internet.”
He grants that some magicians dislike the impersonal nature of seeing and buying tricks online. “If you grew up in a town that had a magic shop, you could go there and talk to a real magician.”
That’s what he did, going to a shop in Royal Oak. He’d been hooked on it ever since his parents bought him a magic kit when he was 5. “My grandmother would be baffled and say, ‘How did you do that?!?’ I saw the effect it could have on people.”
Lax became obsessed with performing. At Andover High (near Bloomfield Hills), he was drum major, a playwright and a pianist who performed the first half of “Rhapsody in Blue” by memory.
At MSU, he was in the State Singers, in addition to being vice-chairman of the Freshman Class Council. He says he loved James Madison College and Schuler Books … but grants that he departed after a year, when he finally got accepted at the University of Michigan.
There, Lax majored in political science and prepared to follow his dad’s profession as a lawyer. He did get a law degree (DePaul, in Chicago), was admitted to the bar and interned with the Cook County State’s Attorney office. “I did enjoy it when I got to court (on traffic cases), but that wasn’t often.”
Instead, he moved to Las Vegas and communed with other magicians. “We would sit around and take some objects and try to one-up each other with what we could do with them.”
That led to “Wizard Wars” and a two-season, 12-episode run. Now Lax designs tricks for an Internet company (www.penguinmagic.com) and sent an audition tape to “Fool Us.” Soon, he was trying to fool Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller … the same guys he’d hired as his “Wizard Wars” judges.
This was a new experience, he grants. “I’d never (performed in) a paying show for adults.” Now he was joining the performance part of TV’s magic surge.
The odds are in Mat Franco‘s favor for a long run as the Strip‘s next resident magician. DENISE TRUSCELLO/COURTESY PHOTO
By Mike Weatherford – Las Vegas Review-Journal
Ah, that smile.
Mat Franco could sell snow to Eskimos.
Musical instruments to a boys band in River City.
New Coke.
Shares in Enron. Or Bernie Madoff’s securities fund.
Selling magic tricks is a minor challenge then for last year’s “America’s Got Talent” winner. Even when, as the 27-year-old notes, his audience is “sitting there trying to ruin it for yourself” by trying to figure out how they’re done.
Maybe the next TV competition can put Franco up against Jimmy Fallon and Andy Samberg as guys who get you with a contagious smile before they even say one word. I wouldn’t bet against him, especially if they let him play the “Grandma card” as he does in the show, one more powerful than all The Flash-like speed shuffles.
Franco’s odds are also good for a long run as the Strip’s next resident magician at The Linq Hotel. A two-hour NBC special airing Thursday can’t hurt.
So, make room for still another magician. But it’s probably good to separate Franco’s short game from the long one. In the early going, his show is more modest than you might expect from a serious commitment by The Linq and producers Base Entertainment, and maybe a little too familiar for those who see other magic shows.
Oz Pearlman in the finals of Americas Got Talent. Oz performed very well and received a standing O from the judges. He may be a $1,000,000.00 richer tomorrow…
