Playing Blaine's Game
Screw journalistic objectivity - I admit, I thought David Blaine was going to be a prick. Having seen him in his box over the summer, I thought that sitting on your arse for a month wasn't the hardest job in the world, and I was pretty sure he'd find some way to sneak a few Big Macs in there.
Meeting Blaine was a revelation. His trademark quasi-stoned drawl, which sounds affected and arrogant on TV, in fact disguises a laconic and self-deprecating sense of humour. Just as well, considering the frosty reaction his 'Above the Below' stunt received.
"Of course, the Press focused on the negative. Actually, it was worse in America," he says, "I didn't realise that there was going to be that red button, showing me all the time. I would have been more interesting if I'd known."
Not that Blaine has a problem with boredom: "I think it's something you give into, you can't let it control you. I thought about all the things I was missing - food, media, sex, gossip."
"I wasn't worried about the fasting either, I've done that before for, like, 20 days. The strangest thing, coming out of the box, was looking into the mirror - I hadn't seen myself for 44 days. I had no sense of what I looked like, no sense of myself."
More of a problem were the, er, facilities in the box. With crowds surrounding him 24 hours a day, and live Sky coverage, he found it very hard to get in touch with nature. "Doing a pee wasn't too bad, I just kind of hunched over and hid it. Everyone would see what I was doing though, and start cheering and singing". He adds with a slow smile, "that takes a lot of getting used to".
"Going Number Two was worse. I had to dump in a garbage bag - the first time it took three hours and the second time it took so long I gave up - and held it in for three weeks."
After presumably having a well-earned private toilet visit, Blaine admits that the first proper meal he had after leaving the box was the traditionally British fish and chips, although he had previously snaffled a packet of crisps after an argument with his girlfriend. "You wouldn't think you could have an argument if you were in a box and your girlfriend was down there, but we had this fight for about four days. When I got out, she left me alone, and I just wolfed down this packet of crisps. Then I felt real sick."
For someone who has received such a hostile reaction from the media, Blaine is surprisingly open, taking questions about Eamonn Holmes and Bo Selecta in his stride: "Oh, with the Shazam? I didn't think that was very funny, but whatever. I suppose imitation is flattery, after all." He felt, when interviewed by Eamonn Holmes, that he just wasn't being interesting enough - and so famously spent the rest of the interview in silence.
David Blaine was by his own admission a strange child, interested in chess, maths and science. His childhood heroes were the unlikely combination of Houdini, Orson Welles and Fidel Castro. All were consummate showman, and the desire to show off clicked with Blaine's existing "digital fixation". He was always fiddling and fidgeting as a child, and even smoked socially in a bid to control his restless fingers.
He started with street magic, trying to shock people with close-up magic. Eventually he progressed to the 'stunts' for which is most famous - being encased in ice, standing for three days on a pillar, and of course sitting in a box for 44 days. The number was chosen, he says, because of his love of the number four: "I still get excited at 4:44 every day."
It's all about finding your limits apparently, and seeing what amazing things the human body is capable. "The first stunt I ever did was when I was a kid. I fell off a cliff - I just got this incredible andrenaline rush."
He still believes that magic should make people gasp, but that it also make them reconsider their perceptions. That's why, in his opinion, Derren Brown's faked Russian Roulette stunt failed.
"He's a nice guy, but I told him not to do it, said he'd get found out. I thought maybe he should have done it with another magician, each taking a real loaded gun and pointing it at their hands."
"That way, you could really lose a hand. I wanted people to think about the consequences of that."
And for his next trick? "I'm going to jump out of a helicopter into the East River. I wanted to do it in London, into the Thames, but they wouldn't allow it. From the height I'm jumping, it will be like hitting pavement."
Out in public, facing a packed chamber (with the unlucky ones who didn't get in shouting "We love you David" outside) he is the living incarnation of dead pan.
"David, what's the strangest thing you've ever seen?" shouts one admirer.
"My stepdad," is the unexpected response.
"Do you think you could have Gandalf in a fight?" says another.
"Oh, I'd have to train for months," he replies, to cheers from the gallery.
After answering every question the crowd can think of, all in his slow, deliberate, way, Blaine moves off and spends a long time signing autographs. Being asked to do tricks is the magician's occupational hazard, but he stands firm. I also get the feeling that he's moved beyond card games and fancy fingerwork, but is too humble to make any extravagant claims for his profession. That's Blaine in a nutshell: talented, and definitely not a prick.
Photo: Frederic Aranda
15th Jan 2004