Mind-Bending Illusions with Magician Adam Trent

I'm going to go and fan these out. I want you just to go and grab one, just grab one out of there. Perfect. Okay, yeah. What do you have? Kill Bill. Kill Bill. Watch this. I'll take this from you. Watch. I'm going to snap my fingers. I'm going to snap my fingers. I'm going to open this up and the DVD that was blank is now encoded with the movie Kill Bill.

Okay. Hey, guys. This is Young Hollywood and there's some magic in the air in studio today because I am joined by one of the original cast members of the Broadway show The Illusionists, Adam Trent. Hello. Welcome to Young Hollywood.

Thank you for having me.

Of course, thanks for being here and I know we were just discussing that you're familiar with Los Angeles.

I am familiar with Los Angeles. I went to college here like you.

Really? I went to Loyola, so I've been here for about 11 years now. It's a good place to be.

It it is now, yes. I hated it for the first five years that we lived here.

You hated it. Really? You hated it. Why did you hate it?

I don't know. I I I kind of expected that when I got out to Los Angeles, I was like going to get off the airplane and it was going to be like, "Welcome to the entertainment industry." And here's all the opportunities. And it was just rough. So I want to ask you a very serious question, okay? And don't be scared of offending me here. Okay. How much do you think I paid for this red jacket?

I'm going to guess $65.

$65. And how many cents?

30 cents.

$65. 30. There's your guest, $65. 30. I will tell you how much I spent on this jacket. Okay. I spent nothing on it. I stole it. I stole the jacket. I shoplifted it. The bad thing about shoplifting is that you're stuck with the security tag on it like this. The good part about it is that uh I actually saved uh $65. 30 if you get a nice tight shot of that.

How did you do that? If you weren't a magician, what would you be doing?

If I were not a magician, I would probably be a forensic detective, I think.

Oh. And I only say that because I'm addicted to these crime shows. Because that's kind of problem-solvy, magicky-ish.

Yeah, and you could throw in some little magic tricks in there and that would get really interesting.

Right. I'm like, "Was that the murderer?" Well, speaking of TV shows, I saw on your Instagram you were traveling a lot lately.

Yes.

Where was your favorite place you've traveled?

Uh, so I went to 12 cities in Europe in 10 weeks and I filmed my first full solo TV series. I went to Budapest. I went to Vienna, Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona, Zurich.

So cool.

Marrakech and my favorite place, probably Copenhagen, Denmark. It's the happiest country in the world. It was pretty amazing. Uh, it was just peaceful and quaint.

That's great. And now you're back for your tour, for your fans that have followed you for a while now. What is something with this tour and these performances that maybe is a little challenging for you or different compared to some of your other shows that people have seen?

You know, I think the toughest thing is that I did a couple of really fun bits on TV. There were a couple things, Well, in LA and Steve, America's Got Talent. Young Hollywood. The Young Hollywood. I've had a couple bits now that when people come to my shows, it's almost like they go when they go see a music show and they fill in the blanks of words, so there's a joke that people will fill in the blank of or I'll be like, "I need to borrow someone's iPhone." Half the audience is like, "Oh, this is the one." It's different than like a song, like you go to a concert and it's great when you know the words to the song. You get to sing along and you know how the song goes. Magic or comedy, it's very different. It it's like the element of surprise is everything. But yet if you don't do the bit, they get kind of angry that I don't do it. So it's this weird thing that I've kind of been playing with of of how can I do the bit but change it enough that, you know, then people come in and they go, "Why didn't you do the iPhone bit or why didn't you do the whatever bit?" And it's like, "Well, because you have seen it clearly."

Yeah. Round two, ready?

I'm ready. So I've got these blank note cards here. You can see this. Uh, and I have one that's uh kind of already started. Right. You can see that. Really? What does that look like?

Looks like the ocean with maybe some fish or maybe some additional waves.

Those are just waves. Those are just waves. But it but I like that you said it it might be fish, couldn't it? I'll tell you what. I'm going to go and give you this uh I'm going to go and give you this marker and I want you to draw a goldfish on there. When you're done with it, go ahead and say, "I'm done."

I'm done.

You're done. Show to the camera. How's it look?

I mean, I'm not an artist, but it looks okay.

Let's see it. Let's see it. That's a very small fish. Okay. Good. I'm going to go and put this uh we're going to put it inside the deck. I'm going to have you go and hold your hand face up. And uh I want you to go and put your hand on top of this. Okay. Cover it up all the way, all the way, all the way and let me just squeeze out this card. This one card, go ahead and cover it all the way. Uh, I'm going to see if I can find your goldfish card, okay? Let's see. Uh, I have your goldfish card. All right. I'm going to take the goldfish from here. Watch me give it a little bit of a shake. Little bit of a shake like this. As it slows down from the shake, you'll see that the goldfish has actually disappeared off the card. It's no longer on the card. And the goldfish is back in the deck. Take a look. Stop. It's goldfish.

Oh my God. How do you do that? That's so cool. And I know you can't give away too much. As a magician, of course, can't give away tricks. That's right. But can you give us any insight on to what the audience may see? What they may see at the show.

Uh, they're going to see a combination of many things. Anytime I've seen an award show and they had some cool projection thing or some awesome thing with LED walls or whatever it is, I've kind of looked at it and gone, "Ah, that's interesting. How could we apply that to magic and how could we make that, you know, have some element of surprise to it?" So we've taken a lot of things that are interesting effects and kind of apply them to magic and there's going to be comedy, there's going to be big cool technology. Yeah. There's going to be uh audience participation. There's going to be a bit of everything.

Round three.

Round three. You remember these things?

Yeah. DVDs. I do.

Yeah. Good old DVDs. Um, they're not used as much anymore, but we still remember these, right? The good old DVDs. Right. I'm going to have you sign your name on this DVD. Not on the face of the DVD, but actually on the data side of the DVD. I got a little pen here for you. Go ahead and take that and sign your name, uh nice and big across that. Nice and big. You don't want it really small like the

Not like the goldfish.

Nice and big. There you go. Yes, perfect. Fantastic. And we're going to go and pop it back inside of here and we will be done with this for just a moment. Okay? Go ahead and hold on that right there. Don't move. Stay perfectly still just like that. Okay? Uh, I've got some uh some movie tickets here. Uh, I'm a little collector of movie tickets. All right? I'm going to go and fan these out. I want you just to go and grab one, just grab one out of there. Perfect. Okay. Yeah. What do you have? Kill Bill. Kill Bill. Watch this. I'll take this from you. Watch. I'm going to snap my fingers. I'm going to snap my fingers. I'm going to open this up and the DVD that was blank is now encoded with the movie Kill Bill. I know you don't trust me. So go ahead and take that, turn it over, show it to the camera. It is indeed Kill Bill.

That's so cool.

Fantastic. Watch, I'll tell you what. I really prefer to keep the movies uh in the case that came with, which is why I keep this one in the actual Kill Bill DVD case. Woo. Movie from you.

Oh my gosh, that is so cool. That was amazing.