DAVID COPPERFIELD’S REAL-LIFE MIRACLE DISCOVERY OF THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH– EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS !
When illusionist extraordinaire David Copperfield announced he’d located a real-life “Fountain of Youth,” it made worldwide headlines. Unfortunately, in recent days it has become ground zero in a series of ugly tabloid reports in a sexual-assault allegation from Seattle.
Worse now is that the TMZ-TV has been playing alleged excerpts of the magician’s answering machine messages to girls inviting them to join him there. David calls Vegas home and he appears regularly at the MGM Grand Hollywood Theater for a total of about six-months a year. I talked with him about the islands before all the current explosive news stories–and I thought you’d still want to know exactly what his Bahamian outpost is all about!
Robin Leach: Let’s talk about the Bahamas. This fountain of youth absolutely intrigues me. How did you find it and what has it done for you??
David Copperfield: Well, I am really 82! No, I’m joking, but I discovered Musha Cay and the islands around it. You can check it out at mushacay.com. It is a bunch of islands in the Exumas, the southern Bahamas. It is probably the most beautiful place I have ever seen, but I am not an astronaut or traveling around the world. They asked them from above what was the most beautiful spot the most beautiful water, and they all agreed this specific spot in the Atlantic Ocean, the southern Bahamas. I found it by connecting lines between magical places around the earth. There is Stonehenge in England, I drew a line from Stonehenge to the statues in Easter Island in Chile and another line between the Pyramid of Gaza in Egypt to the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico and those four lines intersect at a specific spot in the ocean, and it so happens that is where my islands are.
RL: So did you go looking or did someone come to you with the story?
DC: I looked. I search for magical places in my spare time and for the best places I could possibly be in. I have been to Maui and Tahiti - all the places that you have talked about with your wonderful accent. But this is truly an amazing place.
RL: Talk to me about what makes it a fountain of youth. When you think of it you think drinking healing waters, bathing in it. What is there?
DC: We are not really sure yet. We found this liquid that in its simple stages can actually do miraculous things; brown leaves turn green.
RL: That’s not magic? It is real?
DC: Yeah. It is natural. Simple organisms that are near death are rejuvenated. So we don’t know about the effects on humans, but we are doing research and development. That is on one of the islands. On the islands around the area, I am checking them to protect them, and on one of the islands happens to be a resort. It’s available for charter. People can rent the whole island for 24 people at once. It is really spectacular.
RL: Do you use it for your own run away or do you go to the islands with the secrets?
DC: I do both. All of the islands are amazing. There are four of them. Each has different characteristics in flora and fauna. It is just incredible.
RL: You are committed to Vegas for how long into the future?
DC: I am here close to six months out of the year. The rest of the time I am in Japan or China or in Europe; I just got back from a European tour. I go to South America. I love being on the edge developing new things, and traveling out of this city motivates me to do that.
RL: You call this your second home, don’t you? A NYC apartment and now a Bahamas run away.
DC: Vegas is really my first home. I am a Nevada resident and happy to be here. It is an incredible place that people come to escape and be entertained; whether it is seeing musicians or magicians, it doesn’t matter.
RL: What have you added to your museum here?
DC: Lots of stuff. We are constantly changing it. This last week I picked up some things from auction from Chung Ling Sue who died on stage while trying to catch a bullet, but some of his props were acquired and put into the museum. It is in a transition stage and you are welcome anytime. Bring the cameras; I am trying to perfect these things.
RL: Of all the things that you have in the museum, is there one thing that you just look and marvel at and just say, ‘I wonder what that was really like to have been there at that point?’
DC: Well as you know, it is a private secret museum where scholars can come in and do research into magic. It contains 80,000 items. All of Houdini’s stuff from the show is there. If he were to actually come back from the dead, which he hasn’t done yet, he could come back and do his show. Over all these years I have collected all the things that he is famous for doing. The milk can escape, the torture cell, the straightjacket escape. His handcuffs, his locks–everything is right there, so that is pretty amazing. I also have things that belonged to Robert Houdan, who was Houdini’s idol. I have things that belonged to Keller, Chung Ling Sue, and Blackstone. It is an amazing archive, there is no one thing in particular, but we have Houdini’s baby shoes and first magic wand. We all possess the need to dream. Einstein talks about it, Mark Twain talks about it. Dreams are illusions, and we can’t let go of them because we would be dead. Magic is the simplest kind of primal escape form. We take Mother Nature and turn it upside down, so to be able to dream about something that doesn’t really exist. That is what draws us to it and that is what makes me want to do more and more of it because it allows me to take people on an amazing journey and that is what I try to do.
RL: Is there an illusion that you want to do or that you have been working on?
DC: I want to be the first 150-year-old magician.
RL: Well now you have the fountain of youth!
Luxe Life wishes David well as he deals with the legal case and allegations currently swirling around him.