Ever since David Blaine was a child, he was obsessive about a man who was nicknamed the human hearth hydrant. Since there was no YouTube, Blaine would spend hours at a broadcasting museum to look at previous clips of the notorious trickster who may drink kerosene, spit it out and ignite an “monumental hearth like a human dragon.”
Regardless of what number of glasses of liquid he consumed, nonetheless, Blaine couldn’t fairly determine how the human hearth hydrant carried out his feat of magic. So in 2013, Blaine determined to go to the supply and be taught firsthand how you can carry out the fiery trick. That profitable quest — yep, Blaine can spit flames with the very best of ’em now — was the premise for David Blaine Do Not Try, a six-part documentary sequence for Nat Geo that explores the world by the lens of magic.
Blaine traveled the world to search out unusual folks doing extraordinary issues. Alongside the best way, he learns a couple of methods for himself — like how you can attraction a King cobra, or what it’s prefer to swim with an anaconda, or stuff a serrated knife down his nostril.
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“This pursuit of doing issues together with your physique, pushing as arduous as you possibly can, after which going even additional to develop one ability that takes hundreds and hundreds of hours to be taught … these are the unbelievable people who we see,” Blaine mentioned throughout a dialog at Deadline’s Contenders Tv: Documentary, Unscripted & Selection occasion of his visits to Brazil, India, South Africa and extra. “It’s just like the invisible work they put in to create that one fleeting second of astonishment. To me, that’s the true magic, and that’s what I discover lovely. This was a seek for that.”
“Alongside the best way we found all of the issues that led to what they do, their driving forces,” Blaine continues. “They use the intense chilly, they do issues that shouldn’t be attainable below 5 ft of ice the place they’re strolling the other way up and holding their breath. They use their excessive environments to create the closest factor to magic that I contemplate attainable.”
That features planting a giant buss on the pinnacle of a King cobra. To tug off the final word trick, Blaine relied on a veritable snake charmer named Fitz whom he met in Indonesia.
“He’s been truly working with King cobras and snakes for 20 years now,” recollects Blaine. “He confirmed me his way of life, and he began to show me how you can really feel snug round venomous snakes. He’s a grasp at what he does. So I used to be very tuned into the whole lot that he had instructed me and I processed it and I did it at my pace. So it was child steps, however he shared the whole lot with me and made me very snug. It was most likely essentially the most unpredictable and scariest second in my profession as a result of in my thoughts if something went fallacious, that will most likely result in at greatest a really lengthy hospital go to.”
Verify again Monday for the panel video.
