Harry Houdini : English : directed by Franco Giacomarra
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EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
African (General) North American (General) US African AmericanTranscript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls fasten your seat belts and prepare yourself for the greatest show on planet Earth. Introducing the captain of captivity, the sultan of security, the master of animals, the one and only the incomparable. And before he's finished, I know something's wrong. The show must go on of course. And it did, but I didn't go on much longer at all. After that night, I would be dead. Contrary to popular belief, I wasn't magical or possessed. Escaping is not a matter of the supernatural. You see, it is a matter of knowledge, mainly memorizing the inside of every lock ever manufactured. I wasn't mystical. I was handy and strong, very strong. I felt the worst for my dear wife, Bess. She took it the hardest. She wept and she cried. But deep down we knew we'd be ok because we had a secret. After the funeral, she went back to our home and placed the candle beside my portrait. She sat for an hour every day and waited for the word Roosevelt 1913. I was leaving for Europe again and mama wanted me to bring her a wool scarf from Copenhagen. She could have asked for the c and I'd have found a way to give it to her. My earliest memories are of her singing me a lullaby or bouncing me on her lap while she made something delicious. I laugh when I remember how she'd scold me for opening the oven while she was baking fresh cookies. Shaking her head at my impatience. But why I want to eat them now because she said in her strong yet soothing voice, the time is not right. When I would cry as a child, she would need only hold me to her breast and I'd fall to the most peaceful of sleep. The kind that she would now be in forever. I fainted when I received the telegram with the news about her and I was not a weak man. I was strong, very strong. The voyage back to America took two agonizing weeks. They may as well have been sent after decades of making things vanish and reappear. I finally found the one thing I could not. In these days, there was a widespread fascination with what we called spiritualists. A lot of people lost their boys after the war. You see and across the land, everyone was desperate to make contact with them in the realm of the ever after. After seeing how grieved I was, Bessie spoke to me and she and I decided we would visit one of these so called mediums and try to facilitate contact with my dear mother. We went with a friend Arthur and his wife, Lady Jean, she claimed to specialize in these types of weird abilities and felt certain that if the love between Mama and I was so strong and I assured her it was then surely we would be able to reach her. We sat at a round table, our hands and feet clasped almost like shackles if you will. And we sat in the dark as Lady Jean spoke incantations and groveled at the feet of the spirit realm, imploring that they opened the gateway to Mama so that we may hear her speak. Suddenly there were noises, whistles and how the table began to levitate. A cold wind rushed through the room and Lady Jean began to write. Never was I saw through her silhouette in the darkness. I saw Lady Jean scribbling furiously unconsciously. Never even looking down pages and pages of words poured from her, her body, a mere cipher for the message being passed through her right before our very when at last the commotion stopped and we were restored, there were 15 pages left for us to read over the words on them were sweet, kind come for beautiful, but they were not Mama a soliloquies written in perfect English and signed with the cross was a strange way for a Jewish Hungarian woman to reach out to her son from beyond the grave bess. And I were quiet. We thanked Arthur and Lady Jean because we knew in their heart of hearts they sincerely wanted to help us. But the others did not. I spent my whole life learning the art and skill of deception. So I knew how to spot it better than most, probably better than anybody. I use that skill to amaze to stup to awe, but never to give people false hope, never to lie and tell them that they could once again speak to the one person they'd give anything to see again. All for my own personal gain, exposing these thieves, these liars, these moral degenerates became my mission. My obsession, I attended Seances in every city offering thousands tens of thousands of dollars to any medium whose tricks I could not expose and not one cent did I ever lose. I went to the newspapers in the streets anywhere I could to disenfranchise these vile shams. I wrote book after book, after book, after book. Until eventually spiritualists and mediums didn't dare cross me anymore because they knew they'd be ruined. And why was I a mean spirited person? Did I seek to destroy the livelihood of others? Simply because I was unable to move on? Perhaps if it were that simple, I would have felt better, but I never did because my goal was never just to expose the fraud. I thought if all that was illegitimate was stamped out than what was left must be the truth. And now came the time for me to find it. The agreement between me and Bessie was simple. Roosevelt, our favorite song and the message I would bring to her. If ever I successfully reached her from beyond the grave, then she would know beyond the shadow of a doubt. At first it was frightening, dark cold, almost like I was being buried alive again. But still I soldiered on scrambling in the nothingness until I finally saw it flickering the flame, the candle that best kept burning by my portrait. Every second of every day after I had been laid to rest, I ran for it and it all became clearer. I could see her sitting there waiting, waiting for me. I ran faster and I was doing it. I was getting closer, the heat began to return and my flesh began to sweat again. This was it, I was going to do it. The greatest trick I ever pulled my greatest escape from the realm of death itself. It was tough and the chains were stronger than ever, but I was going to break them to come back to you best because I'm strong, very strong. And just as I opened my lips to say the code and to let you know we had finally found the truth. I felt a head on my shoulder. It stopped me cold. I didn't have to turn around or speak or think because I already knew whose hand it was. Of course, mama. I said, why mama? Because the time is not right. Isn't being a magician all about the timing mothers. And with that, we went back to where we were supposed to be and we waited patiently because we knew Bess would join us eventually. When the time was right. She kept that candle lit for 10 years before finally deciding that she too could wait. After all, we had eternity to look forward to. She was interviewed on the radio the night she extinguished the flame when they asked her how she felt. She said 10 years is long enough to wait for any man. She was strong that way. Very strong.