Nothing Is Impossible: The Real-Life Adventures of a Street Magician

by Dynamo

  I think there are a lot of people out there making TV who perhaps don’t have the same attention to detail when choosing music. They’ll use the same songs that everyone else goes for. People have been so complimentary about our choice of music. ‘It’s amazing that you’re not using Katy Perry,’ someone said to me once. We did actually use Katy Perry, to be fair, but only in the right place…!

  Our challenge with Dynamo: Magician Impossible was to make something really special, both visually and aurally arresting, like a movie but on a TV budget. I like to think the viewing figures proved we succeeded.

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  CHAPTER 11

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  THE LOOK ON PEOPLE’S FACES

  ‘WHAT? WHAT? HOW did you do that? Oh my GOD, tell me, how did you do that?!’

  As David Blaine proved early on with his television series, Street Magic, the most important part of any magic show is the spectator. With television, everyone expects camera trickery, CGI, Photoshop and special effects. So the thing that sells the magic itself, that really proves to people that what they saw was real and not camera trickery, is the reaction of the spectator. If you don’t believe the reactions of the people you are watching, then the whole thing is a mockery and the show would lose credibility.

  With YouTube, Instagram, Photoshop, the internet and so on, people are a lot savvier. When I was a kid I didn’t question the fact that Superman could fly around the world so fast that it could make the world spin the other way, despite the clunky special effects. It didn’t occur to me that it wasn’t real. Nowadays, though, kids want everything CGI-laden and in 3D. They know, from a much younger age, that what they’re watching is a film. Sure, they don’t care – it’s film, a fantasy – but they’re too technologically clued up to believe in it. So it’s my job to bring back that childish innocence and wide-eyed wonder, and show that magic is real and not about CGI and camera tricks.

  Over the years, the biggest change in magic has been the fact that it has moved from the stage and theatre where people always used to see it, with elaborate props and huge sets, and it is now being brought directly to the people on the street. Nowadays, we have everything available to us at the click of a button; we watch films and live-stream concerts on our phones; we certainly don’t need to go to a theatre to see a live performance. As a result, it’s much harder for magic shows to put bums on seats like they used to. Even when you do, you’re not hitting the size of audience in a theatre in the way that you can online. I can post a video of me doing magic on the street, in a club – anywhere – and with a matter of days, or even less, over a million people will have watched it. No need to book an expensive theatre and waste energy trying to sell tickets.

  I’ve had to be inventive when it comes to getting and keeping people’s attention. When I am creating my show, I need to prove that I’m not using camera effects or Photoshop or CGI in my work. What you see on your television set is what you’d see if you were with me on the street. I have to rely wholly on the spectator to help me convince the viewer that what they’re watching hasn’t been tampered with. It’s just me, the spectator and the magic.

  With Dynamo: Magician Impossible, I can spend eight hours of the day trying to film one piece of magic, which equates to only three minutes of airtime. The reason it takes so long is because I don’t want to have that ‘set-up’ feel. You have to be very, very patient to make a show like mine.

  Over the years, I’ve witnessed some of the best reactions at festivals. People are basically on holiday – they’re relaxed, their defences are down and they are actively looking to be entertained. You’re almost guaranteed a good response. Because the festival audience has been a part of my career since day dot, I wanted to incorporate that into my first series of Dynamo: Magician Impossible. But, rather than go to your typical festival though, I fancied doing one with a difference. Snowbombing in Mayrhofen, Austria, is renowned for being the biggest, craziest festival in the snow. There’s live music, snowboarding, DJs, drinking and, in 2011, everyone from Mark Ronson to Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy and Professor Green were playing there. It’s one big rave up a mountain.

  As they sponsor the festival, Volvo lay on cars for artists, guests and journalists to travel there in a kind of Gumball Rally. My film crew, my boys and I all set off together. The first day we drove from Maidstone to Frankfurt and then the next day we headed for Mayrhofen, which was a good five-hour drive. Along the way we managed to have ourselves a little crash. I was actually asleep at the time. In fact, I didn’t wake up until the police arrived to make sure we were OK. I find it hard to get to sleep, but when I eventually nod off there’s no waking me! I slept through the entire thing. Gilera had managed to write off the poor Volvo but, thankfully, no one was hurt and we managed to hitch a ride to the resort.

  It was my first time in a ski village, but as I was filming I wasn’t allowed to ski. Not because we didn’t have time, but due to our insurance policy. I couldn’t afford to break a leg or do anything that would jeopardise the show. It was so annoying. I’d go up to the top of this mountain, every day, to film magic and I wouldn’t be able to ski. I’d have to get the lift back down again. Next time I get chance, I want to go back and try snowboarding.

  Other than the fact there would be no extreme sports for me, the experience was amazing. I felt like I was doing magic on top of the world. I’ve never seen views like it in my life – the brilliant blue skies and dramatic snow-capped peaks were like something from a postcard. The air up there is so fresh too; I felt invigorated and full of energy.

  I hadn’t planned what I would do at Snowbombing. Obviously, I expected there to be lots of snow, so I had some vague ideas, but I prefer to go to a place, have a look around, see what’s there, and find some inspiration. Sometimes I pre-plan, but not everything looks as good as you think it will in real life. I probably went to Austria with ten or so specific ideas and ended up thinking of over five more while I was there.

  It’s like a musician who goes into a studio and probably makes fifty songs for an album but only picks the best eleven. Similarly, I might not get the reactions I need from the magic that I do, so we have to filter the resulting footage and decide what will, and won’t, make the final cut.

  Now, the thing with Snowbombing is that people’s reactions were never too quiet or shy – quite the opposite. Most of the time they were a bit too, er, enthusiastic, so we ended up not being able to use that footage. People really do go crazy up on that mountain – I swear some people partied straight through for the whole five days! There was a guy up there who walked around constantly wearing a horse’s head. He couldn’t give much of a physical reaction, but it made a great piece of television regardless.

  We eventually managed to find two girls who were not only enthusiastic, but who also responded perfectly to the magic I had planned. I had noticed them up on the top of the mountain and I decided there and then to use what was around me to make something magical happen.

  I asked them to touch the snow and they concurred that it was very cold and that it was actual snow. I then turned on my magic breath, breathed on the snow and handed the ‘snow’ back to them. It had turned into diamonds. ‘What? What? How did you do that?’ they laughed.

  Seeing as diamonds are a girl’s best friend, my magic of choice seemed like a nice way to break the ice (no pun intended).

  Sometimes a piece of magic might not turn out how I envisioned, or we might not capture it in the best way on camera. More importantly, though, you can’t guarantee someone will react in the way you want, just because it makes good television. Sometimes, people will give the impression they’re not bothered by what they’ve seen, but it’s just because they’re gobsmacked and their brains are still trying to process it. Some people will literally have their jaws open, staring wildly in disbelief, but that doesn’t work as well for television. Sometimes us Brits can be a bit reserved and that doesn’t help us convey what has happened either. That’s partly why we have travelled th
e world with the series, to show the wide-ranging reactions that magic can provoke, depending on where you go.

  Nothing beats the feeling of seeing someone’s eyes widening, their mouth opening and the look of amazement on their face. When we filmed Dynamo: Magician Impossible, we just embraced all of the weird situations that life threw up – a car crash, a horse’s head and drunken snowboarders – because no matter how much you plan things, life always takes its own path.

  I THINK ONE of the best – or at least most memorable – reactions I’ve had happened years and years ago. I did an event at a club called Pennington’s in Bradford, which doesn’t actually exist anymore. It was a friend of a friend’s birthday and my mate Marcus asked me if I fancied going along to do some magic. We rocked up, hung out, and as it got busier, I started to do my thing. The crowd got bigger and bigger, with everyone trying to get a good view. I decided to chill out for a bit, but then this guy goes, ‘Please show my girlfriend something, she couldn’t see what you were doing before.’ The thing was, what I did wasn’t even anything big. I just bent my finger in half, and the girl fainted. I mean, totally out for the count. She hit the deck and stayed there. I didn’t know what to do, I was so shocked myself. In the end, we poured water on her face to wake her up. She was a bit freaked out, so I offered to do some card magic on her. ‘No, no, no thank you, I’m fine,’ she mumbled and her boyfriend took her off, mouthing a ‘sorry’ as he went.

  It’s funny how magic can affect people in radically different ways outside of the traditional reaction. Of course, I love it when people are like, ‘Wow, great,’ but then you’ll get someone like Snoop Dogg who just randomly did a rap about me. And then there was the Will Smith moment where he changed his speech at The Prince’s Trust event; I find it amazing the way my magic can provoke a reaction in someone and cause them to do something neither of us expected. It’s crazy.

  Of course, not everyone likes magic and sometimes you have to deal with negative reactions. If people are drunk they can get a bit gobby and that’s never cool. Everyone’s got an opinion when they’ve had a few, although I think I’ve got better at spotting those people and making sure I avoid them these days. I’ve been doing magic in nightclubs for years now, so I can usually tell if someone’s going to give me grief.

  Depending where you are in the world, magic is viewed very differently. In Haiti, magic is seen as a powerful and real force. People there practise voodoo and, if used to ill effect, it’s believed to bring great harm and even death to people. Whenever I’ve done magic on Haitian people, they get very, very freaked out. There was a time in Miami where I pulled a can of Coke out of my shoes. The guy I did it on, a coconut seller, literally grabbed his trolley and ran off down the street. I mean, sprinted. Similarly, Wyclef Jean from the Fugees, who is also Haitian, did the same thing – his eyes widened in shock and off he ran!

  I love that no matter who it is I’m performing for, I can provoke a totally natural, often uncontrolled, reaction. And every response is different. One time when I pulled a Polo out of my neck, Pharrell Williams, basically the coolest guy on the planet, ran off screaming. Then I stole his bank details and he literally went pale. I really think he thought I was going to take his money!

  I’ve found that in London you always get the best reactions in Soho. In places like Shoreditch, a lot of people are trying to be too cool. Both times we tried to film in Shoreditch we ended up leaving because the atmosphere was so stiff.

  One day, we’d been doing some stuff around east London all day and it was very stale. The crew broke for a while, but we had one of the cameras spare. I wanted some energy, something raw, something where people weren’t putting on a front, where everyone was too cool for school. So we took the spare camera into Soho where there was a more up-for-it crowd. It was a Friday night and everyone was drunk. They’d lost their inhibitions. I started doing magic there and then, and I truly didn’t know what was going to happen.

  Randomly, we met a guy just walking down the street in Soho. Finally, we got the reactions we’d been spending hours looking for. After I’d done my identity fraud trick (in which I’d used magic to figure out his bank details and make my bank card transform into one with his name on), I walked off and he started chasing me, thinking I was going to spend his money! The situation was so real that he genuinely believed that I was going to steal his identity. So his real, natural reaction was to chase me down the street to get his card back – which he did. So then I put his phone in a bottle…!

  That poor guy, I felt sorry for him. He must have gone home in a totally confused frame of mind.

  In some ways, that’s my trademark. I’ll wait out in the streets for hours to get the best reaction. For the first-ever clip that I posted on YouTube (where I put a playing card through a double-glazed window on an underground train), Dan and I sat on the Central Line for six hours to get it – all ninety seconds of it. It’s hard enough to speak to someone on the tube, let alone persuade them to be filmed. But eventually, this guy got on and he agreed to let me show him something amazing. He didn’t even seem like he was into it at first and then, all of a sudden, I did the magic and he went crazy – he completely came out of his shell.

  We could have sat on the train for an hour and given up, but we waited there for six hours, getting knock-back after knock-back. Most people would have got off that train before we did.

  I have that ethic in me when it comes to getting the reaction I want. I might not have the same mindset when it comes to the gym, but when I’m trying to make Dynamo: Magician Impossible the very best it can be I’ll wait all day and all night to get what I need. I’m passionate about doing what it takes.

  I’ll never get tired of chasing a good reaction and I’ll never get bored of seeing it. I just want to elicit that joy, confusion and astonishment from people when they witness my magic. How many people can say that they go to work and amaze people all day? I don’t take for granted how incredible that is.

  I love magic because I love watching people’s responses when I pull off something incredible. Regardless of what type of magic, where I do it or who I do it on. I’ll never get bored of that. Never.

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  CHAPTER 12

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  LEAP OF FAITH

  FOR THE SECOND series of Dynamo: Magician Impossible, we had to find lots of new locations to film at to make it feel as fresh and new as the first. LA is the perfect place because you can find totally different scenery in close proximity. Some of my all-time favourite memories have been created there.

  If you were to ask me a year ago what the scariest thing I’ve ever done was, I would have immediately said, ‘Walking across the River Thames’. Little did I know what the future had in store; if there’s one thing I’m not too fond of, it is heights.

  As I stood on the top of the Los Angeles Times Building, the bottom looked an awfully long way down. I had decided a few weeks before that I was going to walk down it. Don’t ask me why. I wanted to do it. Just me, my trainers and the jumper on my back.

  The LA Times Building is eighty feet high and situated in the Spring Street area, downtown LA. It was built in 1935 by Gordon Kaufmann, the same guy who designed the Hoover Dam. We wanted to find somewhere that was fairly iconic but not too ‘Hollywood’. Downtown LA sounds upmarket, but it’s far from the bright lights of Sunset Boulevard, Rodeo Drive and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The area was once the hub of LA’s financial district, but it is now blighted by high unemployment and crime. It reminded me a bit of Delph Hill in that both areas feel cut off from the rest of the world. It’s like everyone deserted it in the eighties and at night it feels especially eerie. It’s a pretty edgy part of town, but I always like to take my magic where it’s least expected. Everyone goes to the Empire State Building but not everyone goes to Harlem. Obviously if you’re in Rio you want to see Copacabana beach, but it’s also great to experience the City of God neighbourhood.

  I wanted to give Spring Street a lasting mem
ory; something that would live with the area forever. Other than that, the building was nice and high and it didn’t look too hard for me to sneak in there.

  It was around 8 p.m. on a warm evening in LA. I walked confidently inside, strolled up to the elevators and pressed the button. No one stopped me. I stood on the roof for a few minutes to prepare myself. The sun had already set and although it was dark I could just about make out the people below. They looked the size of safety pins. I knew the crew was there somewhere, ready to capture everything, but other than that, I was on my own.

  My stomach was churning and I physically couldn’t stop my hands and legs from shaking, regardless of how much mind over matter I attempted to employ. I had tried to prepare myself for this, but it was much more frightening than the deathly tides of the River Thames. It was a million times scarier than predicting something live on television or radio. I knew that if my magic didn’t work, there was no way I would survive the fall.