In magic, it takes two or three years for me to create a 5-minute illusion for me to get it to the level I want.

I got to watch Frank Capra, in his eighties, in action. You read all the stories about Frank Capra fighting with the head of Columbia, Harry Cohn, "It's my way or the highway." I got to watch that. He lambasted me, "You cannot do this. You will fail." Finally, after another hour of conversation, I convinced him to help me write the speech.

I discovered that magic tricks got me more attention from the girls in my class when I was nine - so a magician was born!

I'm the luckiest man in the world - performing 500 shows a year and loving what I do - illusion IS my day to day life.

Everything that you'd see on The Ed Sullivan Show was at the Tannen's Magic. You'd think that if you could afford a trick like Doc Nixon's Dove Vanish, then you could be on The Ed Sullivan Show as an 8-year-old kid.

All of the [Bob] Fosse-esque movements and point of view informed years and years of what I would do.

For one of my specials, I said, "I'm going to make an airplane disappear." Okay! And the next day, everything went crazy - it was like breaking the internet before the internet.