I used to fly around the stage without strings or camera tricks. That took seven years to create.

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.

I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I dont know what she was--anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted.

I invented magic stuff; it came very easily. Now, I sucked at everything else, but I was good at magic as a kid.

I was 16 at the time, and I came backstage and started hanging out with them. I said, "Well, maybe you can 'vanish' the silk this way." The opening was a black stage while the "Magic to Do" song started playing. All you saw were hands, lit by Jules Fisher, and then Ben Vereen would appear beyond the hands, and at the end of the scene he would vanish a silk. The spotlight would hit a red spot on the floor where you'd see the silk on the floor. He'd pull the silk out of the floor and it became the entire set coming out of the floor.

When you're a guy and meet a girl the first time, you do whatever it takes.

My father kind of encouraged me through that. Exactly,[work] not as an actor, obviously, but as someone in show business that had some success. He told me to live the impossible. "Live the impossible!"