How Magician David Copperfield Made the Statue of Liberty Disappear (1983)

In April, 1983, 50 mil­lion tele­vi­sion view­ers watched the illu­sion­ist David Cop­per­subject make the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty dis­ap­pear, straight into skinny air. Should you’re north of fifty, you per­haps remem­ber the spec­ta­cle. How did he do it? 40 years lat­er, the YouTube chan­nel Thoughts Blown Magazine­ic Illu­sion demys­ti­fies the large-scale magazine­ic trick, clarify­ing how Cop­per­subject dis­tract­ed the audi­ence, rotat­ed the stage, and shift­ed Girl Lib­er­ty out of view. That’s appar­ent­ly the gist of the illu­sion. How­ev­er, within the com­ments sec­tion on YouTube, one com­menter provides a lit­tle extra impor­tant element:

You missed essentially the most impor­tant mis­di­rec­tion. He had a heli­copter with a brilliant spot­mild shin­ing on the stat­ue for a con­sid­er­ready size of time dur­ing which he apol­o­gized to the audi­ence and stated they have been hav­ing “tech­ni­cal prob­lems.” Even­tu­al­ly the cur­tain got here throughout and the stage started to revolve imper­cep­ti­bly gradual­ly. How­ev­er the heli­copter moved in sync with the stage. The beam of sunshine seemed to be sta­tion­ary in rela­tion to the stage. When the cur­tain was elevate­ed they noticed the heli­copter in the identical place however with no stat­ue. The beam of sunshine additionally helped black out the again­floor. Oth­er­smart the audi­ence would have seen a dif­fer­ent sky­line. Pure genius!

For Open Cul­ture learn­ers, it’s price males­tion­ing that the leg­endary movie­mak­er Frank Capra (It’s a Gained­der­ful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton, It Hap­pened One Night time) performed an in contrast to­ly position within the professional­duc­tion. In an inter­view with Judd Apa­tow, Cop­per­subject remembers how he enlist­ed Capra to assist write the script for the episode:

So then I stated [to myself] “Now the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty goes to dis­ap­pear, however I’ve received to make this have extra imply­ing.” So I went to vis­it Frank Capra, one among my idols, and did a form of Judd Apa­tow inter­view with him. I stated, “I’d just like the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty to dis­ap­pear, however I wish to do it as a les­son in free­dom, how valu­ready free­dom is and what the world can be like with­out lib­er­ty.” And Frank Capra checked out me and stated, “David, I really like your thought, however right here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to attempt to it’s not going to work; it’s not going to dis­ap­pear.” And I stated, “Mr. Capra, I can’t do this.” You realize? [laughs] And I received to observe Frank Capra, in his eight­ies, in motion.

You’ll be able to watch a number of the orig­i­nal 1983 footage beneath. Get pleasure from!

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