How do you know you are batshit crazy? Well, let’s take it from Magician David Blaine who believed adding a new stunt that included shooting himself in the mouth was a spectacular idea.
The 43-year-old’s show Beyond Magic, which aired this week, included clips of him spitting out frogs into Drake’s drink, guessing cards over Facetime with Jennifer Lawrence, bringing Margot Robbie to tears with his mind reading, and a montage of other tricks for celebrity audiences (including hottie soccer player David Beckham).
If Beckham likes magic, I like magic.
The hour special all built up to the show’s main event, Blaine’s unique bullet catch.
He first tried the trick in 2010. David had a friend shoot a bullet at a steel cup inside of his mouth, the only thing that went wrong was his friend completely missed the cup, and his head, by a few centimeters.
This particular stunt has been performed by magicians for centuries, but has never actually been done. Most magicians set up the same trick, but fire off blanks and make a new bullet appear, or they shoot a real gun that purposefully misses, and they reveal another bullet. Ironically, over half a dozen magicians have died from faking it.
But David Blaine is shooting a real gun, with a real bullet, into his real mouth, in front of 20,000 people at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena.
After his almost fatal 2010 attempt, Blaine decided he would no longer use a friend for such a vital part of the trick, as the possibility for error or too great. David wanted to pull the trigger himself.
After countless hours testing angles, lights, and positioning. Along with many visits to the dentist who were building him a custom mouth guard to assist the cup in his mouth/prevent his entire mouth from shattering. David was ready to go.
He first did a test run of the stunt in a trailer park with the most non-celebrity crowd imaginable, which was a far different taste from what we got the rest of the show. He shot himself, acted surprised when it felt, “like a punch” and just like that – he was ready to do it live.
The night of the performance, it shows Blaine with his dentist in the green room of the arena. Why was the dentist there? Because the mouth guard wasn’t entirely ready to go, and the dentist flew all the way to Las Vegas to make last minute adjustments to make sure David didn’t commit suicide in front of 20,000.
David didn’t seem to mind.
Once out on the stage, tensions rose. It was all dark surrounding a green laser pointing from the gun to the inside of his mouth. Not a peep was made from the crowd and then he pulled the trigger:
“Time just started to move really slow. When the bullet struck the cup, there was a high-pitched ringing in my ears and I felt an impact on the back of my throat. I was sure the bullet went right through my head and that I was dead.”
Blaine was looked over by doctors and discovered that his throat had been lacerated by the bullet. But nothing life threatening.
This was the last straw for Blaine’s friends, they refused to assist with the near death stunt again.
Not so shockingly Blaine still plans to go through with this stunt during his upcoming world tour.
Just one question, how crazy do you have to be to shoot yourself in the mouth? David Blaine crazy, perhaps?