David Blaine Quotes

I am a street performer as much as I am a stage performer. Yes, I have a television show, but every trick, every 'Mindfreak' you see, I can do live.

I've been doing magic since I was five years old, and when I was trying to get acting gigs, I found I could make a good living at it. It's great to kind of shake the cobwebs off and get the feeling of a live audience again. I love close-up magic, the card stuff, the coin stuff, the really up-close David Blaine stuff.

Indian street magic tends to be very gory, blood and guts. One trick is for a magician to take a knife and appear to cut his kid's head almost off. The magician then says to the crowd, 'Well I can continue to cut off my son's head or you can all give me some money.' Then he wanders around and takes 10 rupees from everyone and restores his son.

If you want to talk about magic, the stuff that blows me away is the stuff that's done close up.

I think it's a lot easier to put together a reality show than to actually create a scripted show.

I kind of want to learn how to direct TV. It's interesting.

Normally, I think the people you would use on your first film, it would be a real struggle to bring them with you onto your television show. I just brought every single person with and expanded my little indie film world.

I created 'Dinner: Impossible' with a guy named Bryan O'Reilly and I shot the pilot as a 30 minute show and we sold it.

If I had auditioned for 'Merlin' on magic alone, I don't think I'd have got it. Like any kid, I probably had a magic kit, but it's not something I ever pursued. I've never watched a magic show like David Copperfield or used him to base my character on, but I really like David Blaine and Darren Brown. They are doing wonders.

So now what happens is the cameras follow me around and capture exactly what I've been doing since I was a boy. Only now we have a team of, you know, like 73 of us, and it's gone beyond that.

In film or TV work, you can have this amazingly dramatic pause, and they'll just edit it out.

I'd like to be an assistant producer to a reality show.

I've had so much fun working on 'Shameless.'

There's so many things that can go wrong in the execution of a project like a television show or a movie, so many little elements, any number of things, all the way to marketing - like they could market it poorly and nobody finds it and down it goes.

I feel like my experience on 'Community' was that I saw just how important that first year is for a series. That is where you work all the pieces out, and that means honing the characters' voices, setting that tone, finding your angle.

I was a production assistant in the post department on 'The Surreal Life.' And it's been reported before that I was an assistant editor on 'The Surreal Life.' That is not true.

I directed 24's pilot. I felt we should follow the characters around as if we were a documentary crew, using available light, hand-held cameras, split screens, sound that isn't always what it should be, to suit the reality of the premise.

If people are fans of 'Mindfreak,' they are going to be so excited with 'Believe.' They are actually going to see those illusions that people think can only happen with trick photography.

I intend to do the Penn & Teller show until they pry my cheesy magic wand from my cold dead fingers.

When you're making a television show, it's about the story and arc of the show rather than any particular episode or director.

I am in Toronto, shooting a movie for NBC.

I get my gossip from 'Nashville' on ABC.

I've always wanted to make a music video with skating and different imagery, something very artistic.

I've always performed magic as a kid.

Magic is like special effects live, and I love to perform, so it sounded like doing magic tricks were a good way to entertain people.