Quotes by David Copperfield - Page 3

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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Done
Tests
Tv Shows
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Believe
Friday
Night
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Book
Magic
Moving
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Technology
Gentleman
Magic
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Magic
Moving
Special
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Bob
Dancing
Eras
Copy Quote
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!"
David Copperfield / Magician
Actors
Father
Impossible
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Bunch
Houdini
Magic
Copy Quote
All the lawyers and the business stuff is work, but actually creating stuff isn't work. It's good effort. It's hard work. But, it's not work. It doesn't feel like work because the result is very rewarding.
David Copperfield / Magician
Creating
Effort
Hard Work
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Book
Hard Work
Reading
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Dream
Daughter
Encouraging
Believe
Motivation
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Kids
Thinking
Years
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Journey
Impossible Things
People
Taken
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Comic
Participants
Relief
Selected
Tricks
Added
Dropped
Evolving
Fresh
Old Ones
Provide
Randomly
Stays
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Fairy
Saws
Slave
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Fire
Magic
Years
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Death
Dream
Medicine
Needs
People
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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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Dream
Jobs
Hard Work
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Easy
Matter
Risk
Copy Quote
[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.
David Copperfield / Magician
New York
Stars
Years
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Kids
Magic
Numbers
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Girl
Moving
People
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Careers
Sacrifice
Winning
Copy Quote
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 / Magician
Jobs
Mom
Father
Copy Quote
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?"
David Copperfield / Magician
Death
Dream
Moving
People
Views
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Kids
Fall
People
Copy Quote
I have a bunch of islands in the Bahamas that we made into this amazing, magical place. And we have these birds; they're trained to do certain things on the island, which is awesome. These toucans had a baby toucan, and the baby toucan, every hour that you'd look at this toucan, he would change.
David Copperfield / Magician
Baby
Bird
Islands
Copy Quote
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."
David Copperfield / Magician
Having Fun
People
Trying
Copy Quote
I've always taken a lot of cues from comedy minds. The guy that discovered me in the very beginning was Joseph Cates. Joe and Gil Cates were the Cates brothers. Gil produced the Oscars for many years. Joe produced a lot of comedy specials, Steve Martin specials, and he discovered me, this 18-year-old kid.
David Copperfield / Magician
Kids
Brother
Taken
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Attitude
Hard Work
Views
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Acting
Magic
Thinking
Copy Quote
Everyone was talking about having airplanes disappear. And I said, "Wait, wait, wait. That's what you like? I'd tell you a story about something like my girlfriend leaving me, and the magic was really hard. The airplane thing was comparatively easy, and people liked that thing?" I realized at that moment, the power of the simple idea.
David Copperfield / Magician
Airplane
Girlfriend
Simple
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Fighting
Stories
Writing
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Cutting
Light
School
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Magic
Tests
Trying
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Grease
Teenager
Years
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
New York
Illustration
Wings
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Thinking
Wall
Years
Copy Quote
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."
David Copperfield / Magician
Kids
Teacher
Boys
Copy Quote
I went to visit Frank Capra, one of my idols, and did a kind of Judd Apatow interview with him. I said, "I'd like the Statue of Liberty to disappear, but I want to do it as a lesson in freedom, how valuable freedom is and what the world would be like without liberty." And Frank Capra looked at me and said, "David, I love your idea, but here's what you're going to do. You're going to try and it's not going to work; it's not going to disappear." And I said, "Mr. Capra, I can't do that."
David Copperfield / Magician
Ideas
Idols
Love You
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
New York
Bricks And Mortar
Guy
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
New York
Hate
Religious
Copy Quote
I was 16 at the time, and I came backstage and started hanging out with them. I said, "Well, maybe you can 'vanish' the silk this way." The opening was a black stage while the "Magic to Do" song started playing. All you saw were hands, lit by Jules Fisher, and then Ben Vereen would appear beyond the hands, and at the end of the scene he would vanish a silk. The spotlight would hit a red spot on the floor where you'd see the silk on the floor. He'd pull the silk out of the floor and it became the entire set coming out of the floor.
David Copperfield / Magician
Black
Hands
Song
Copy Quote
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.
David Copperfield / Magician
Technology
Games
Moving
Copy Quote

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David Copperfield Quotes - Page 3

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