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- This is a TV special/documentary in which David Copperfield is interviewed in his Magic Warehouse by his girlfriend, the German supermodel Claudia Schiffer, about his career as an illusionist, speaking primarily of the most famous illusions and escapes performed over a period of about 15 years. The illusions shown are taken from 8 TV specials between The Magic of David Copperfield IV: The Vanishing Airplane (1981) and The Magic of David Copperfield XV: Fires of Passion (1993) and are 12: "Train Car Vanish" (1991), "Amazon Ritual" (aka "Burning Rope Escape" and "Fires Of Passion") (1993), "Graffiti Wall" (1992), "Cocoon" (aka "Passion's Prison") (1993), "Lear Jet Vanish" (1981), "Death Saw" (1988), "Brazilian Water Levitation" (1991), "Statue Of Liberty Disappears" (1983), "Touch The Magic - Destinations Of Flight" (1992), "Walking Through The Great Wall Of China" (1986), "Building Implosion" (1989) and "Flying" (1992). However several illusions are reedited in audio and video to be shorter, even by several minutes, removing first the respective explanations. Five short montages without either dialogues or sound effects are shown along the steps of the interview, and each of them, accompanied by a different song or instrumental music, shows various other illusions only in the related significant phases, and further are just mentioned for few seconds. This TV special/documentary is the only one also officially released on VHS and DVD-Video, but with the title "DAVID COPPERFIELD - ILLUSION", printed on the cover and also shown before the beginning of the special. Released in 2000 as SPECIAL COLLECTOR'S EDITION, this home video release presents further differences from the original version aired on CBS in 1994: it also shows 3 illusions taken from The Magic of David Copperfield XVI: Unexplained Forces (1995): "Grandpa's Four Aces", "Barclay House" and "Snow", and presents different closing credits. The release on DVD-Video presents a main menu that allows instant access to 13 illusions and to the extras, which include the choice of language between the original English audio and a Spanish dubbing, and an optional audio commentary by Copperfield himself, which accompanies the entire documentary.
- This is the 13th CBS Copperfield TV special, introduced by the host Jane Seymour, and the third and last one in which David Copperfield enters the scene on his Harley Davidson. The location is not a stage but a train station, in which Copperfield will perform both the first and the last illusion. So, the illusions performed are: "Motorcycle To Women" (aka "Motorcycle Metamorphosis"), "Torn Card On Train Window", "Head Mover", "Cut And Restored Rope", "Brazilian Water Levitation", "Card In Balloon", "Floating Rose", "Big Black Box", "Touch The Magic - Train Cards" (aka "Interactive Train Effect") and then "Train Car Vanish". This is a TV special in which 2 illusions have been performed on a train, the Orient Express, and the second of them, "Touch The Magic - Train Cards", is an interactive game conceived for an active participation of the TV audience. The last illusion, filmed in long take and no more repeated, is the levitation and the disappearance in midair of a 25,9 meters (or 85 feet) of steel and iron Orient Express dining car, 70 tonnes heavy. This illusion shares some similarities with "Floating Ferrari", the one performed in 1980 in the third TV special, in which the object levitated and vanished in midair was a Ferrari, and also with "Lear Jet Vanish", performed in 1981 in the 4th TV special, which also had a ring of spectators who surrounded a big object at 360 degrees.
- This is the 15th CBS Copperfield TV special, introduced from Caesars Palace by David Copperfield himself, who describes an escapology number which would be performed in this location as the last feat of the special and is inspired by an illusionist of the past, Harry Houdini. Two assistants put a strait jacket on Copperfield and then wire his feet on some ropes fixed to a round platform which in turn is fixed to three ropes which will raise all in air, so Copperfield will come to be upside down, dangling in the air at 10 stories (or 33 meters, or 108 feet) on the stage. At this point the assistants set fire to the platform and to the three ropes. In addition, on the stage they place exactly under Copperfield two rectangular frames which support vertically dozens of steel and sharp spears, and then they also set fire to them. Copperfield has about two minutes to free himself and to grab a lifeline before the fire breaks the three ropes and drops him on the spears. So, the illusions performed are: "Flying Entrance", "Cocoon" (aka "Passion's Prison"), "Air Coppers" (aka "Ring Flight"), "Blueprint For Mystery", "$500,000 Challenge" (aka "Torn And Restored Baseball Card"), "After Hours" (aka "Vertical Asrah"), "Shot Through The Heart", "Touch The Magic - A Miracle In Your Home" (the third and penultimate of the interactive games performed in four specials) and then "Amazon Ritual" (aka "Burning Rope Escape" and "Fires Of Passion"). The "$500,000 Challenge" illusion is the first and only one that Copperfield has performed, with his host Wayne Gretzky, in a pre-recorded video set in his own Magic Warehouse and that he showed to the spectators in the theater via a monitor. Instead "Amazon Ritual" is an escape filmed at Caesars Palace and is one of the few escapes no more repeated.
- This is the 12th CBS Copperfield TV special, introduced by a voice offstage who describes the location of the escape that David Copperfield will perform in this special as his last challenge: the Niagara Falls. Just like his 5th special, this one is not introduced by a host. During the opening credits Copperfield reaches the stage from the backstage on his Harley Davidson, ready to use it to perform the first illusion. So, the illusions performed are: "Motorcycle Vanish", "Camera Trick" (aka "Camera Vanish"), "Cardiographic" (aka "Card From Paper"), "Slicer", "Misled" (aka "Pencil Through $100 Bill"), "Walking Through A Mirror", "Ring On The Hourglass", "Memories" (aka "The Attic") and then "Niagara Falls Challenge". For this feat Copperfield has his hands and feet chained to an axle which is almost entirely covered by a yellow steel box (leaving only his hands and legs exposed) and then suspended in midair by chains inside a cubic platform built over a raft. A Jet Ski is attached to the raft, and the raft is set on fire, raised from the lawn and dropped in the middle of the river, at about 152 meters, or 500 feet, from the falls. Copperfield has less than 60 seconds to escape from the box, detach the Jet Ski and rise upstream before the raft goes over the edge of the falls, with a vertical drop of about 51 meters, or 167 feet. This feat has been filmed in long take and is one of the few escapes no more repeated. This is the first CBS Copperfield TV special produced by his own production company DCDI Productions, that will also produce all the following ones.
- This is the 14th CBS Copperfield TV special, introduced by the host James Earl Jones, who talks about the "flying dream" while David Copperfield is sitting at a large desk in a room where the window illuminates only the desk itself. The illusions performed are: "Heaven On The Seventh Floor" (aka "Elevator"), "Interlude", "Graffiti Wall", "Squeeze Box", "Mind Control", "Orson Welles From Beyond", "Touch The Magic - Destinations Of Flight" (the second of the interactive games performed in four specials), "Flying" and then "Flying Outside Of The Theater". "Flying" is an illusion for which Copperfield had worked for seven years, much more than any other one. Before performing it, he invites a part of the audience to go on stage to see the illusion close up, and makes them sit to the left of the stage itself, then asks two people to examine a plexiglas container. So, he sits on stage and begins to tell that he dreamed to fly since he was a child, a child who felt lonely. At the end of his story he shows a black and white short montage in which other people in the past shared his dream but failed. Then, while he is lying on stage, a falcon named Icarus that is standing on his left hand starts flying. So, Copperfield begins his own performance, flying freely for several minutes and also flying into the plexiglas container, and then flying again freely but with a girl held on to his arms. Before the beginning of this special's closing credits Copperfield exits the theater among the audience and at this point in front of a camera he performs the last illusion, "Flying Outside Of The Theater", toward the night sky. Immediately after that, the falcon does the same thing from a branch.
- This is the 16th and penultimate CBS Copperfield TV special, which six years later will be followed by the 17th and last one, Copperfield: Tornado of Fire (2001). The special is introduced by a voice offstage who talks about Barclay House, the set of the penultimate illusion of the special. The illusion in question is composed by four phases and the first of them consists in turn of four parts. All the phases regard the presence and manifestation of ghosts and spirits remained in the upper room which somehow escaped the destruction of a house that burned down because of a lightning during a storm. The room has a pentagonal shape and has been rebuilt on the stage, on which David Copperfield brings two boys and a girl from the audience. Then he asks the boys to tie his hands, back and neck, and then the ankles to the legs of a chair inserted into the room. This condition serves to prevent Copperfield from moving himself into the room itself and manipulating objects within it. Meantime an assistant put into the room a jacket and a box containing various objects including newspapers and a bell. The four parts of the first phase consist in the interaction of the ghosts and spirits with the objects placed in the room. In the second phase Copperfield asks the three spectators to enter the room and to blindfold themselves. At this point the two frontal walls of the room close themselves to hide the interior and then spark everywhere. At last, all five walls open themselves to show that the three spectators have disappeared from the stage. After a few seconds the room turns to ash because of several consecutive explosions from its interior. In the third phase five sheets that come from the stage begin to float in the theater going into the most different routes over the heads of the audience, until the lights go out, leaving everything in complete darkness for a few seconds. In the four and last phase, there is the reappearance on the stage of the three spectators: a table and a scaffolding are placed on the stage, on the scaffolding four sheets have been hung to hide the four sides of the space above the table, and when three shadows appear on the front sheet, the latter is dropped to show the three spectators standing on the table, still blindfolded. So the illusions performed are: "The Fan", "Vanishing Egg", "Floating Table", "The Blade", "Grandpa's Four Aces", "Touch The Magic - The Clock" (aka "Interactive Clock Illusion", the 4th and last of the interactive games performed beginning with the 13th special), "Barclay House" and then "Snow". At the end of this last illusion all the snow produced by the Copperfield's hands spreads in all the hall of the theater.
- This is the 17th and last CBS Copperfield TV special, introduced by the host Carson Daly and produced six years after the 16th and penultimate one, The Magic of David Copperfield XVI: Unexplained Forces (1995). It is the only TV special with a feat broadcasted live (in USA only) from New York City (the place where both David Copperfield and Carson Daly are present) at the end of the broadcast of a free show performed, filmed and edited three months earlier, in January in a theater in Memphis, Tennessee. The TV special is officially titled "COPPERFIELD - TORNADO OF FIRE", but is better known as "The Magic of David Copperfield XVII: Tornado of Fire", in which "Tornado of Fire" is a reference to such feat, which is not an illusion or escape but a test of courage and endurance, filmed in long take and no more repeated. Before the beginning of the pre-recorded show, that is the only one filmed in a surrounded stage, Copperfield explains the reason of this stunt, saying that when he was six years old he and his family escaped a fire that destroyed his uncle's house, and ever since then he started having nightmares of dying in a fire. Then he realized that the best way to overcome his fears is to deal with them. He will perform this stunt after months of testing with dummies, positioning them at the center of an artificial tornado of fire of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (or 1,093 degrees Celsius). The tornado was generated to be an F2 on the Fujita scale. This TV special is actually constituted by a double climax: the other one is the last illusion of the pre-recorded show and during the show itself there are several phases of preparation of it. In fact, Copperfield talks about it since the beginning, before the first illusion, describing it as an instant travel to the "perfect place". This illusion is called "The Disappearance" or "Portal", and to perform it, he invites a boy from the audience to climb with him a thin platform present on the stage which will be raised during the illusion to prevent anyone from getting on or off without being seen. Then they hide themselves with a sheet and after a few seconds disappear from the theater in Tennessee, to appear a few seconds later in the "perfect place", which in this specific case is the shore of the beach in the Hawaii island, where the boy finds his father and reunites with him, and where an assistant is present with a camera to show live the place to the audience through a big monitor placed on the stage. At the end of this illusion the boy remains in the beach, while Copperfield alone disappears from it to reappear in the theater. There are two versions of this 17th TV special: one for USA only broadcasting (60 minutes) and the other one for international only broadcasting (90 minutes). In the first Copperfield performs nine illusions: "One", "Thumbs", "Laser", "Panty Swap", "Uncle Morty & Aunt Ida", "Tides", "Voyeur", "The Disappearance" (aka "Portal") and then "Tornado Of Fire". In the second he performs six extra illusions, shown after "Voyeur" and before "The Disappearance": "Slo-Mo Duck", "Magic In Your Hands", "Thirteen", "Moon Rise" , "Test Condition" and "Perfect Place Cards"(aka "Moon Interactive"). "Test Condition" is an illusion co-conducted by Whoopi Goldberg, connected to the stage via a monitor. Before "Uncle Morty & Aunt Ida", Copperfield's parents, Hyman Kotkin and Rebecca Kotkin, make in this special their second and last appearance among the audience members, but unlike the first appearance, in 1984, this time they are not presented.