Now you see him....

Jennifer K Mahal

David Copperfield is busy making a sandwich disappear as he talks

on his cell phone from Las Vegas, Nev. There’s no illusion to it,

just a hungry man having lunch.

The 46-year-old magician comes to the Orange County Performing

Arts Center next week to perform “Portal,” his new show that will

feature sleight of hand with an African scorpion, walking through

steel and a bit of teleportation.

Born David Kotkin, the New Jersey native known for levitating

Ferraris got his start in magic when his grandfather taught him a

card trick.

“I wanted to be a magician. He didn’t want me to become a

magician,” said Copperfield, the youngest person ever admitted to the

Society of American Magicians. “He showed me the trick as a fun

thing, but when I chose it as a career, he rebelled. He was so

against it, he disowned me.”

What his grandfather wanted was a much more secure career for his

young grandson, who began performing professionally at age 12. He had

talked Copperfield’s father out of becoming an actor, steering him

toward a career as a clothing store owner.

Copperfield’s grandfather could not have foreseen that his

grandson would become one of the most famous magicians in the world,

thanks in part to TV specials in which the illusionist has walked

through the Great Wall of China and levitated across the Grand

Canyon.

“He didn’t speak to me for the last three years of his life,”

Copperfield said. “Six months before he died, I saw him in the show,

in the audience. I ran up and the guy turned around. It was a

stranger.”

After his grandfather died, Copperfield’s parents went through his

belongings. Among his things was a ticket to his grandson’s show.

“It really was him,” the magician said.

A lottery segment of the show, in which Copperfield demonstrates

how to pick the winning numbers and then what to do with the money,

is dedicated to his grandfather, who dreamed of winning the grand

payoff. Dreams are what inspire most of the magician’s illusions,

whether it be flying, being teleported to a beach or winning a lot of

money.

“People don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘I’m going to dream

about sawing people in half,’” said the man who lists Orson Welles,

Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly among his influences. “These dreams are

personal to me, but also to a lot of people -- beaches, money,

tangibles.”

He has had to change locations for what he considers his most

difficult illusion -- teleporting to an exotic beach halfway around

the world. Bali used to be the destination, but because of the recent

terrorist attack at a nightclub, Copperfield moved his crew to

Thailand.

“World events affect my show,” he said.

Each illusion takes years to perfect, between designing the

apparatuses needed, figuring out the psychology that will work best

on the audience and practicing. Copperfield said he works on keeping

the glitz factor out of his illusions, preferring to keep it

elemental and raw.

“I think magic isn’t what you expect it to be,” Copperfield said,

having finished his lunch. “It can be emotional. A lot of people cry

in the show. There are a lot of laughs -- I’m a bit irreverent

sometimes.”

It shows. When asked what illusion he’d like to master, the

magician replies that he wants to be doing interviews in 80 years, at

age 126.