Taking the phrase “bite the bullet” to a whole new level. David Blaine pulled off his most dangerous and death-defying stunt yet when he shot himself and caught the bullet in his mouth — but it didn’t go exactly as planned.
In the hour-long ABC special David Blaine: Beyond Magic, which aired on Tuesday, November 15, the magician attached a string to a gun, which he used to pull the trigger and fire a bullet into a steel cup in his mouth.
As soon as the bullet hit the cup, the 43-year-old illusionist knew something was wrong. “There was a high-pitched ringing in my ears, and I felt an impact in the back of my throat and I was sure the bullet went right through my head and I was dead,” Blaine recounted during the special.
Luckily, it was just the shattering of his mouth guard, and he escaped with only a minor laceration. He was taken to the hospital for treatment, but despite the close call, he insists that he’ll continue to perform the trick on his upcoming tour.
As documented for a Rolling Stone behind-the-scenes video, Blaine did a lot of preparation for the crazy maneuver. The illusionist had a friend shoot him multiple times in the chest with a handgun while Blaine wore a bulletproof vest with the impact plate removed. The purpose of the exercise was to teach him not to flinch when the gun went off.
“In order to catch a bullet, I need to get comfortable with this first,” he says in the Rolling Stone clip. “In order to figure out if I have the confidence to do it, I needed to get shot here a bunch of times so I understand, ‘Oh, it’s possible.’”
Blaine — who is also known for such stunts as hanging upside down in NYC’s Central Park for 60 hours and spending 44 days in a clear plastic box over London’s River Thames with no food — performed several other mind-blowing tricks to a celebrity audience during his magic special. In one memorable moment, he spit out live frogs into champagne glasses and totally freaked out Drake, Dave Chappelle, Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler.
During a Facebook Live chat (conducted at Facebook Media Central) on Tuesday, Blaine further discussed his world tour. “It’s going to have everything that I’ve worked on my entire life including death-defying stunts, magic,” he said. “It will be like mini Ted talks all strung together, and it will start in an experimental magic way — small — and I’ll start to add more dangerous things to it as I start to feel comfortable with it.”
David Blaine: Beyond Magic is available to stream on Hulu.
