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Trying to make movie magic
real
BY
DALE RODEBAUGH Mercury News Staff Writer
Morgan Hill magician Ray Lum has taken the illusion of sawing a woman in half to new lengths: He chops an assistant into nine pieces, stretches the body across a 15-foot stage and sets the head aside. “People like to have their minds twisted, but we can’t get
away with sawing a woman in half anymore. I knew I had to do something
more complicated, “ said Lum, 29, who started his career with a Toys R Us
magic set when he was
six years old. In addition to the on-stage sawing, Lum makes a woman pop
out of his stomach or borrows a ring from a member of the audience, making
it disappear and reappear entwined in the laces of a shoe. Lum says he also has invented several illusions. One trick
involves tearing the corner off a playing card selected by the audience
and burning the remainder. Then, the burned portion – minus the corner –
reappears inside a fortune cookie that has been sitting in plain
view. Magicians are under pressure to duplicate the increasingly sophisticated special effects |
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- illusions – seen in films, Lum said. They have the added
burden of performing before a live audience. It took years for magicians to fly as Peter Pan did in the movie, but in months they’ve duplicated the “morphing” seen in the movie “Terminator II” and in Michael Jackson’s video “Black and White, “ Lum said. Morphing is the transformation of a person into another being.
Props required for illusions that match those in movies are custom-made
and not cheap, Lum said. A good prop costs at least $4,000 and an
apparatus that allows a person to “fly” runs
$100,000. Illusionists, like auto race driving or movie stunt performers,
require perfectly engineered equipment, Lum said. Otherwise the audience
may see through what they are doing or the performer could be injured or
killed in a dangerous act.
Lum doesn’t remember when he wasn’t interested in magic. By the
time he was 12 years old, he was getting paid to do tricks at birthday
parties. In high school, his repertoire served another purpose.
“You want all the pretty girls to fall in love with you, but it’s
hard to stand out, “ Lum said. “I had them running up to me, though.
That’s real magic.”
Now, Lum performs regularly in Las Vegas, and Los Angeles as well
as for corporate parties in the Santa Clara Valley. While magicians have practiced their craft for centuries, Lum said,
it was David Copperfield who turned it into more than “a kid’s art” and
gave it high visibility and new status. “Magic is basic, like two plus two is four, but it has to remain a secret to keep its appeal. When you know how’s it’s done, it like when you learned there’s no Santa Claus, “ Lum said.
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