![]() He offered a prize of $1,000 to any illusionist who could scientifically prove their own powers as real. He was appalled at how easily people were duped by his own staged psychic feats and became determined to expose others. Randi is a self-described scientific investigator. It included tricks like spoon-bending and using his psychic powers to find water, and skeptic magician James Randi was determined to expose him as a fraud. The magician's act was all about his psychic abilities. You could almost feel bad for illusionist Uri Geller, except that his failed "Tonight Show" performance launched him to superstardom. More than half a million dollars for 30 views definitely classifies this as a total disaster. Dogge's videos had received fewer than 30 total views on YouTube before the company took them down. The $15,000 was 10 percent of the damages that Teller sought, and the attorney fees were about half of what he wanted, but that's still a steep price to pay for one magic trick. Ī final default judgment came down in October 2014, and the judge ordered Dogge to pay Teller $15,000 plus $530,000 in attorney fees, and banned Dogge from performing "Shadows" in the future. Copyright Office back in 1983, along with a detailed illustration of the trick, which strengthened his case. Teller had even registered "Shadows" as a pantomime with the U.S. It's the specifically planned moves that fall under copyright protection, much in the same way that the specific choreography of a dance performance can be protected. Unfortunately for him, in March 2014 a Nevada judge ruled that "Shadows" was more a pantomime than a magic trick, and in the United States pantomimes can be copyrighted. Here's the thing: You can't copyright a magic trick, and that's probably what Bakardy was banking on. Built-up powder caused both the blank and the real bullet to fire simultaneously. It had worked smoothly for him at show after show until March 23, 1918, when he forgot to clean the gun properly. An audience member would load a real bullet into the gun, but what actually fired was a blank from the other barrel. The key to Robinson's trick was a gun with a secret second barrel. In a nod to the circa-1900 Boxer Rebellion, a failed anti-imperialist uprising in China, he called his act "Condemned to Death by Boxers." Classy. ![]() (Think Mickey Rooney in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," but worse.) In Robinson's act, he was sentenced to death by firing squad. From today's perspective, his whole act comes across as racially offensive Robinson was a native New Yorker of Scottish descent who took on an Asian persona, stole a name from a living Chinese magician, and only spoke onstage in fake Chinese gibberish. Magician William Ellsworth Robinson performed in the early 20th century under the name Chung Ling Soo. But a failed bullet catch is no joke, and at least 15 magicians or their assistants have been seriously injured and even killed when this illusion falls apart. ![]() Someone fires a gun at the magician or assistant, who then "catches" it: in their hand, between their teeth, whatever's dramatic. It's so dangerous that it makes more than one appearance in the world of magic-gone-wrong. One in particular – the bullet catch – is one of the most dangerous magic tricks that performers take on. Some magic tricks are actually incredibly risky. Magic gone wrong can range from the epically hilarious to the epically tragic, and we're going to explore failures from both ends of the spectrum. On the darker side, an illusion that doesn't work out can cause severe injury or even death. Some magical mishaps are laughable, like when a magician's trick goes awry mid-act: a hidden assistant is revealed, cards scatter to the ground rather than fly overhead, the bunny refuses to come out of the top hat. ![]()
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