Anything is Possible

by Hazel Flynn

  State Library of Victoria Bk.7/No.252

  THE GREAT BLACKSTONE

  I doubt that even one in a thousand people who know about Houdini know of Harry Blackstone Snr, despite his importance in the history of magic. Born just eleven years after the other Harry, Blackstone looked very classical in his top hat and tails but his approach to the craft was very innovative: he was one of the first magicians to excel in both sleight of hand conjuring and stage illusions. Among his most famous illusions were the ‘Vanishing Birdcage’, the ‘Dancing Handkerchief’, a buzz-saw version of sawing a person in half and, perhaps his most famous trick, the ‘Floating Lightbulb’. Holding the bulb, which was clearly not connected to a power source, Blackstone would command it to turn on before releasing his grip and letting the lit bulb float freely around the stage. This trick is still powerful today but when Blackstone performed it in the early part of the twentieth century to audiences who remembered a time before electric power, it seemed absolutely miraculous.

  Blackstone Snr died in 1965 but the family business lived on through his son, Harry Blackstone Jnr, who became a very successful magician in his own right. In 1985, on the one hundredth anniversary of his father’s birth, Blackstone Jnr donated the original Edison bulb to the Smithsonian Institution, making it the first magic-related donation accepted by this prestigious museum.

  Private collection

  Private collection

  Even for someone who puts as much effort into planning and organisation as I do, life IS FULL OF UNPREDICTABILITY. YOU NEVER REALLY KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN, GOOD OR BAD. AT THE START OF 2004 I’D BEEN RIDING HIGH, ONLY TO BE BROUGHT BACK DOWN TO EARTH WITH AN ALMIGHTY CRASH. BUT IF I’D LET THAT DEFINE ME I WOULD HAVE BECOME AN UNHAPPY, FRUSTRATED PERSON. IF YOU WANT TO GET ANYWHERE YOU HAVE TO LEARN TO BOUNCE BACK, HOWEVER HARD IT FEELS AT THE TIME.

  As the end of the year approached I had a stroke of great luck, stumbling upon someone with an incredible knowledge of magic, someone who has been part of my career ever since — and I can’t even tell you his name. It happened because I’d become fascinated with the idea of an underwater escape. I’d really enjoyed mastering the straitjacket escape and it always made a big impact in performance, just as it did back in Houdini’s day. It was one of Houdini’s two best-known stunts. The other was his underwater ‘Milk Can’ routine (explained at the end of this chapter), which he called ‘the best escape I ever invented’, not because it was complicated or highly skilled — in truth it was much more of an illusion than an escape — but because the dramatic presentation wowed audiences every time. I started to think about how a modern version of the escape might look.

  The only underwater escape experience I’d had was as a kid in our family pool breaking free of the chair my brothers tied me to, and I didn’t know of any other magicians doing anything similar (David Blaine’s first underwater escape attempt, at the end of an endurance stunt, didn’t happen until May 2006). In fact it requires such a different set of skills that most performers in my field don’t even contemplate it. As with Houdini’s Milk Can, some escape stunts involve trickery, but legitimate escapology of any kind requires intense training and physical skill, and that increases exponentially if the escape is an underwater one. Trying to prepare yourself for such an escape while still putting in the work to maintain the dexterity and smoothness you need for sleight of hand conjuring and stage illusions is extraordinarily difficult and demanding — which made it even more appealing to me. I do love a challenge.

  Even if I came up with a good take on the underwater escape and managed to get the equipment and build up the requisite skills, there was no prospect of me being able to include it in a show anytime soon. Schools were okay with the straitjacket routine, but even if the logistics had been possible, which they weren’t, a submerged death-defying stunt would have been way beyond the pale. Ditto for shopping centres.

  But the idea just wouldn’t let me go. I daydreamed about it, read up on famous feats of escapology and doodled ideas. I talked about it with Adam and once we’d got past the bit about me not being able to perform it anywhere, he could see the potential. It didn’t matter if a century had passed since Houdini’s version, it had an elemental power that would be just as riveting for modern audiences. John agreed, and they both offered to help me see if I could make it work.

  Milk cans being out of favour, I decided to use a 44-gallon steel drum. It was easy and inexpensive to get hold of a new one — just $80 from a drum factory I found through the phone book. It was glossy black, but not for long. I could see the whole act in my mind’s eye and my vision for the drum was something that looked rusty and a little menacing, as if it had spent the past ten years in a neglected paddock. I took it to a sandblaster and had it stripped back, then painted it to match my vision.

  Wilson Du

  Next up I needed to look into locks and handcuffs. Again, the only experience I’d had here was with the basic set of disposal-store handcuffs I’d got years earlier. It was at this point I was blessed with the wonderful good fortune of meeting a locksmith who turned out to be a world expert in escapology and a collector of its history. And he wasn’t in Vegas or New York, he was living within easy reach of me.

  It began with another phone-book look-up. There are plenty of locksmiths around. They can discuss the merits of various brands of deadlocks or come and let you into your house if you’ve lost your keys, but that’s often as far as it goes. Few have the highly specialised skill to manufacture equipment from scratch or do major modifications. I needed to find one who did. Having identified a likely candidate, I briefly told him by phone what I was after. He seemed to understand exactly what I meant and I arranged to visit him. I put the drum in my old blue van and went to his shop. I showed him the drum and described my ideas for the escape. There was one particular part of the locking apparatus that I was keen to discuss. He got it straight away and started doing some sketches to show me what he might be able to come up with.

  That sparked more ideas in me, which he incorporated. It was a real meeting of minds, one of those rare interactions when you click with someone pretty much immediately and go straight into an easy collaboration mode. I could tell he was deeply knowledgeable about Houdini and the other practitioners of the craft and he could tell I was committed and respectful of those who had paved the way.

  I noticed some antique handcuffs on display on his wall and he told me the stories behind them. Among his collection were sets that had belonged to Harry Houdini, Harry Blackstone and to other all-time magic greats. Not replicas, originals. It would have been incredibly exciting to have seen them in a museum but to have come upon them completely unexpectedly in what I had assumed was going to be just a regular locksmith’s shop was nothing less than gobsmacking. His secrets didn’t all come out that first day, not by a long shot, but it was immediately obvious I was in the company of someone very special indeed.

  He told me he had written a manuscript on how to pick locks. As with the rest of his specialised knowledge, this was something that could do a lot of damage in the wrong hands. So I felt very privileged when he entrusted me with the pages as well as a set of lock-picks and tension tools and a practice lock and told me to come back and see him when I was ready. I couldn’t wait to get home and get started. The manuscript was highly detailed, with lots of drawings showing all the components you have to deal with when you pick a lock. Among the things it taught me was that it’s not a mechanical step-by-step process. You have to feel your way along and train yourself to pick up tiny differences in sensation from the tools in your hand, almost like a surgeon.

  The reason for this is that although any lock you might work on will almost certainly have been mass-produced in a factory, the manufacturing process introduces flaws. Let’s say a machine is drilling pin tumblers on one hundred locks. From numbers one to fifty the drill is getting minutely blunter with every lock. At number fifty it needs to be changed or it will pass beyond the acceptable discrepancy range. So
the drill bit is changed. Now the process starts again, with a new sharp drill. Picking lock number fifty-one will be a quite different challenge from picking lock number fifty. It’s not something you’d probably notice on a cheap, simple lock, but the more complicated the lock, the greater the impact of tiny differences in the positioning of the pins.

  I spent day after day making slow, tiny movements, pushing each little pin up and slowly moving the tumbler, making sure it locked in place, then moving on to the next pin, and starting over if I bumped it or hadn’t secured it and it dropped. I found the challenge addictive. I completely understand why honest, law-abiding citizens take up lock-picking as a hobby (and they do): it becomes a cat and mouse game between you and the lock. The first time you hear that desired click and the thing pops open is a huge rush.

  After a month’s worth of intensive practice I thought I was good enough to go back to the locksmith and show him what I’d learned. He was impressed. He now trusted me enough to open up more and over time we became great friends. I can share some of what I found out about this remarkable man but because he values privacy very highly I can’t share his name, so I’m going to call him Mr Smith.

  Mr Smith is so expert in his field he has been sought out for more than twenty years by the biggest names in magic, including Criss Angel and David Copperfield. I know from personal experience what incredible talent there was among the prop-builders in Vegas; it’s hard to think of a bigger compliment than the fact that those superstars bypassed the talents on their doorstep to seek out this guy living quietly in Victoria. He could close up shop tomorrow, move to the US and make a fortune, but he’s not that kind of guy. In fact, he’s very selective in the magic clients he takes on. If he doesn’t feel a rapport or the project doesn’t interest him then no amount of money will convince him to change his mind. I really like that. So he is known only to the inner circle and they have a tag for him that indicates the respect in which he is held. Jimmy Collins was Houdini’s right-hand man, a gifted carpenter and machinist who knew all his famed employer’s secrets and created apparatus for him including the famed ‘Water Torture Cell’. Those in the know refer to Mr Smith as ‘the new Jimmy Collins’.

  Having proved myself with the lock-picking, Mr Smith took me under his wing. I bought my first pair of proper handcuffs from him and he taught me how to pick them, then we moved on to various other kinds of locks. He entrusted me with some of his deepest professional secrets and over the years, beginning with that first ‘Water Trap’ escape, has worked with me on designs for many of my most spectacular and mystifying tricks. It’s no exaggeration to say that part of the reason I got where I am today is because of his expertise. And to think I chanced upon him in the Yellow Pages!

  Lock-picking was one important skill I would need to master the Water Trap; the other was the ability to hold my breath for long periods, to give me time to free myself. I needed to train because, unlike Houdini’s, my escape was going to be conducted in view of my (eventual) audience, with no tricks. I really would be handcuffed, shackled by leg irons which were connected to a locked chain around my waist, and fully immersed in the tank. But that wasn’t all. I’d had an idea about how to make it even harder for myself and more spectacular for those watching, and with the help of Mr Smith I could make it a reality. The drum would be fitted with a metal grid top. Crouching in the filled drum, I would put my hands up through the grid. The handcuffs would then be fitted, leaving my locked hands on the outside of the grid. I would lower myself the last few centimetres, bringing the grid down with me. It would be secured with four padlocks, trapping every part of me below the wrists underwater. In order to attempt any of the other locks I’d have to free myself first from the handcuffs, using the lock-pick I was holding for dear life.

  I slowly built up my ability to hold my breath. I now know a lot about breath-holds but when I began I was just making it up as I went along. I didn’t know anything about freediving — the ability to stay underwater for many minutes at a time without breathing aids (for example, scuba gear). It has been practised for thousands of years by people making their living from the ocean floor, including Greek sponge divers and Japanese pearl divers. Fifty or so years ago people started doing it for fun and in recent years it’s become a recognised extreme sport. There are various different disciplines, from seeing how far a diver can get down with or without weights, fins or ropes, to testing how long someone can sit unmoving at the bottom of a pool holding their breath. The record for the latter is an amazing 11.5 minutes.

  The other thing I didn’t know about at the time was shallow water blackout (SWB) (explained at the end of this chapter). A couple of years later I got a frightening first-hand insight into it, but when I first began I avoided its dangers more by good luck than anything else. Dad had emptied out our pool and it was being used as a storage area, so I didn’t start my breath-hold training underwater. Instead I killed two birds with one stone by getting used to the feeling of being cramped in the drum while gradually increasing the time I could go between breaths. I dealt with the psychological process of getting used to confinement in stages. First I just sat in the open drum, my knees up to my chest, and practised staying calm while holding my breath. Without consciously realising it, I was using on myself the hypnosis techniques I’d learned to use on others several years earlier. I distracted myself from physical discomfort by playing mental games: trying to picture a location I knew well in minute detail, for instance.

  It was surprising how unsettling it was to move to the next stage and have the steel grid fitted overhead, even without water in the drum. The only thing that had changed was the open grid above my head, not even locked into place, but I had to fight the claustrophobic, panicky feeling it produced. But I persisted and became used to being enclosed and then, little by little, accustomed to being in there with handcuffs on under the grill, then with my hands poking out, then with my hands poking out and the cuffs on. Layer by layer, through repeated exposure I got to the point where I was calm and comfortable with all the restraints on and the lid fully locked down. Then we added water.

  Yet again I got incredibly lucky in meeting an expert who could help me. I went to a nearby dive shop to buy a face mask and diving gloves. The shop’s owner, Martin Owen, happened to serve me and we got talking. I told him about the underwater escape I was planning. I could tell that at first he wasn’t sure if I was for real, but we ended up having a great conversation. It was clear he really knew his stuff and he was happy to share his knowledge. We became friends and he was a great source of advice, including the fact that if I was going to be doing this kind of thing I should get my scuba certification. I wouldn’t be using scuba gear, but the course would teach me things I needed to know about how the body deals with being underwater and the risks to watch out for. I did as he suggested and found out so much (including, belatedly, the dangers of SWB).

  Cosentino family collection

  Cosentino family collection

  Gradually, day by day, week by week, I got to the point where I was perfectly fine being fully shackled and locked in underwater. I realised it required a 180-degree turn from my usual mental state in performance. Normally I needed to be in control of every little thing. Here I could only succeed by accepting a certain loss of control. If I fought against that my heart-rate would go up and I’d burn through oxygen. Paradoxically, only by accepting a loss of control would I be in the right state to succeed.

  In all, the process took many months. It got to the point where I could hold my breath for two minutes and ten seconds and I knew my lungs still had the capacity for more. The whole time I continued to improve my lock-picking abilities until I could, literally, do it blindfolded. The effort and discipline required to learn these new skills filled me with energy. Adam and I were still doing school shows and shopping centres, so I couldn’t use any of my new skills in the act yet. But I wasn’t impatient. We had a new plan: crack the performing arts centre market. While I was working
on my escapology Adam had learned about these centres and was working hard trying to make inroads.

  If you live in Melbourne or Sydney or Perth you have one or more major theatre companies with their own performance spaces on your doorstep, along with other organisations such as opera and ballet, and venues such as the Sydney Opera House or the Riverside Theatre. Regional centres do it differently. Places such as Portland or Wollongong or Broome tend to have a performing arts centre which brings theatre, opera, dance and other artforms to town. They do a great job, giving people in these regional areas exposure to all kinds of culture. I’d never had the right kind of act for them before but thanks to the cruise ship booking I now had two 45-minute halves — a full show’s worth — which put us in contention.

  We didn’t have the money to film an updated showreel but Adam put together great-looking flyers and sent out dozens of them but, as had happened with our attempts to interest American agents, we got just one response. It proved to be a beauty, though. It was from Karl Hatton at the Portland Arts Centre and he liked what he’d seen enough to book the show. On a wintry day in mid-2005, John, Adam and I, and a uni mate of Adam’s called Jim who we’d hired as a stagehand, packed the van and drove four hours west from Melbourne for the show. In some ways it was a less impressive gig than the cruise ship: a 144-seater theatre versus an 800-seater, with very basic lighting. But it didn’t feel that way to us. For one thing, it was a sell-out, which was very, very exciting, and for another it was my ‘legitimate theatre’ debut. Not a basketball court or a shopping mall, a solo show that a packed audience had paid to see.

  I threw everything into it. John appeared in the act for the first time since he’d stepped in as an assistant when I was fourteen; I sawed him in half. I did Twister with Adam and I did the floating table and the straitjacket escape. The response was wonderful and Karl was very happy. It felt like it was sure to lead somewhere, we just didn’t know where.