WHY AREN’T WE TALKING ABOUT DAVID BLAINE ALL THE TIME?

Chris Galletta
Jul 10, 2017 · 3 min read

I struggle with two truths: 1) David Blaine exists 2) there can be any other topic. It confuses and troubles me that he does what he does, to be sure, but much worse that we can watch him pull a Gila monster out of a handbag and then change the channel or go make a sandwich.

Consider: David Blaine goes to Harrison Ford’s house, asks him to pick a card, and makes the card disappear from the deck. Then he asks the man who played Han Solo in four Star Wars movies to pick an item from a fruit bowl in his kitchen. Harrison Ford, who plays Richard Kimble in The Fugitive, selects a grapefruit, and then a witch called David Blaine says “cut the grapefruit.” Ford, star of Frantic, Air Force One and Patriot Games, slices the grapefruit open with a knife, and finds the nine of hearts, which was the card he chose initially. What do we do now? Go to bed? Go to work the next day? Good luck.

We make movies and write books like Excalibur and Harry Potter and the School O’ Wizardly Wayz and then classify them as “fantasy.” Why? There is a warlock sauntering through Los Angeles right now with a deck of cards and some coins destroying the sanity of anyone he comes in contact with. He is good friends with Tobey Maguire. We do nothing!

I cannot understand how the lead story of every edition of every newspaper is not a story about David Blaine. “MAN TEARS DOLLAR BILL UP, EATS IT, REGURGITATES IT WHOLE.” This shatters every natural law. Why are we talking about the Dow? “BLAINE STICKS COAT HANGER INTO STOMACH, RETRIEVES SMALL BIRD.” There are empirical realities, no? Absolutes? I would agree there are, and in the same breath ask why, on Netflix right now, I can watch a soft-spoken mage with a thin beard poke Will Smith in the shoulder and have a blindfolded Jada Pinkett-Smith feel it across the room.

Blaine is an abomination. I will never be over him. I shudder at the thought of his wrath. But what a sad thing for us, that we can watch him throw a nickel into the Dead Sea and have it turn up in Jon Stewart’s cargo pocket, and then shrug and put on a pot of tea. We can watch someone blow a fireball at Robert DeNiro, watch a man essentially take on the traits of a dragon — -which last I checked is an impossible animal — -and then check the guide to see if Talking Dead is on.

From Roger Ebert’s review of Star Wars, Episode One: The Phantom Menace:

“How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story Nightfall, about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen.”

David Blaine exists and yet there are other topics. Shame on us.

The Haven

A Place to Be Funny Without Being a Jerk

Chris Galletta

Written by

I write for film & TV and for websites like Vice and Vanity Fair.

The Haven

The Haven

A Place to Be Funny Without Being a Jerk

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