He's made the Statue of Liberty vanish, escaped from Alcatraz and jumped over Niagara Falls. But it was a grainy, old 1950s TV show that inspired David Copperfield to fly.
"I loved Superman. I loved it as a TV show," Copperfield says. "The effects were really crap, but they made me dream. As a mere kid, you look at that and you want to jump off buildings, which I did."
Ever the showman, there's a slight pause, just enough for effect, barely noticeable, and then: "The buildings were short."
It's that ability to entertain that has made Copperfield the magician more famous than Copperfield the book. Born back in Metuchen, New Jersey, as David Seth Kotkin, he claims to have learned his first trick at the age of 7. He got his first payment for performing magic five years later. A self-proclaimed "total nerd" in high school, he was the youngest person ever admitted to the Society of American Magicians at 14, and at 16 was teaching a course at New York University.
He has brought his latest show back to the MGM Grand, playing through April 14. But, while An Intimate Evening of Grand Illusion is on its second Vegas tour, don't think that it's the same show as before. Copperfield maintains he squeezes in new things all the time, and the "touring keeps me hot, keeps me fresh, keeps me hungry. I have to change my show. I'm forced into it.
"It's pretty cool. I get a girl pregnant onstage," he says. "We send people to Hawaii during the show. There's a team in Hawaii there to greet them. You see it happening on satellite feed. We vanish 13 people at every show. It's about dreams. People dream about traveling around the world, or dream about winning the lottery."
While Copperfield has said it takes him, on average, two and a half years to perfect an illusion, it all starts with a theme.
"We've done whole shows about spirits, ghosts. We've done whole shows about snowing. Francis Ford Coppola, he did my Broadway show which was called Dreams and Nightmares. ... I just took that idea and expanded on it. I made all the dreams about what people dream about," he says. "I just take those ideas and that's the basis for my show."
His shows have not only made Copperfield the 13th highest-paid performer in the world, according to some accounts. They've also made his name into a metaphor, and not always the sort of metaphor you'd think.
"Have you ever seen the movie Kingpin? He got Munsoned, you know? As long as they use it in a positive sense, it's good," he says. "You've got to be careful; people turn on you. Howard Stern has got a Copperfield reference on a sexual act. The Copperfield. You'll have to look it up on the Internet. It's a sexual technique. You trick your girlfriend into thinking that you finished a particular act, and then—" I interrupt, pretty certain where this is headed and worried the FCC will confiscate my casette tape. "It's called a Copperfield," he continues, "and I'm kind of proud of that, too."
The prankster side of Copperfield the magician, not Copperfield the book nor Copperfield the sex act, emerges not just in conversation, but in the man's hobbies, as well. His massive collection of magic relics and curios being stored in a secret warehouse in the Nevada desert is well-documented, at least as well-documented as a secret warehouse can be. But what isn't as well known is his love for 19th century hazing machines made by such firms as DeMoulin Bros. and Company. Once used by various fraternal groups, the items are kept by Copperfield at his New York City residence.
"Chairs that collapse and things that spank you on the butt, things that squirt you with water. Like practical jokes," he says. Copperfield says he will even test them out on occasion, including a spanking device that picked that moment to fail the test of time.
"The explosion was supposed to make a sound, but it made a sound into my butt. It burnt a huge hole in my pants and a big hole in my butt."
As the interview draws to a close, there is time for one last question, one last trick. Is there any magic the great David Copperfield can perform over the phone?
"I can say good-bye and disappear."