We heard stories about fakery and decoys at revivals. I never personally saw any trickery.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles what has been thought of as a novel for these last two hundred years.
I'd seen the movie 'Paranormal Activity' and was convinced for weeks that it was real.
I'm a complete skeptic when it comes to the supernatural and all that. I've never had any ghost stories or any kind of weird experiences.
I believe in ghosts now because of New Orleans. I never did before. I was so skeptical, but now I've seen one, which sounds insane, but it's true.
Magicians will always tell you the trick is the most important thing, but I'm more interested in telling a story.
I'm such a proponent of the theatrical experience and the cinematic experience, and we've reached this point where the magicians are not only giving away their tricks, but they're telling us how they're doing the tricks in advance before you even come to the magic show. It'd be nice to get a little of the mystery back in.
Folktales are real.
I love a ghost story. I think they affect me more than other people that are much more skeptical than I am. I think that it's good that I do buy into them to some degree.
Trickster stories are pleasurable, contradictory, annoying, abrasive. They're powerful, transformational acts of liberation because they are not nailed down to the real, to the representation of something in the world.
When I did my first few television specials, my illusions were so advanced that it took a couple of years before the other illusionists could even figure out what I was doing, let alone try to imitate me.