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David Blaine: The Iceman Defrosteth
The made-for-TV stunt, which played out on the ABC special David Blaine: Frozen in Time, drew 15.9 million viewers to the network, and countless more fans spent hours in a line that snaked around the network's Times Square studio, where the 26-year-old magic man was entombed in an 8-foot tall, six-ton block of ice.
Blaine survived the stunt relatively unscathed. Although he escaped frostbite, as soon as his helpers sawed and chopped him out of his igloo, he had paramedics drive him off to tend to ankle and foot pain.
By Thursday morning, however, Blaine was well enough to recount his ordeal on the talk-show circuit. Appearing via satellite from his bed--he supposedly can't walk, and his ankle is swollen to the size of a cantaloupe from 62 hours of standing in frigid temperatures--Blaine regaled both Good Morning America and the Rosie O'Donnell Show with tales of his self-imposed torture.
Blaine, whose previous ABC stunt involved him being buried in the ground for several days, said the icy experience was much worse than he expected. Because of the unseasonably warm Big Apple temperatures (the mercury was pushing 60 degrees), his ice prison had to be fitted tighter to prevent the interior ice from melting and new ice had to be added on Tuesday. Blaine compared the melting ice dripping on his head to "Chinese water torture."
"It was a nightmare," Blaine told Rosie O'Donnell. "When the ice closed on me...I was suddenly terrified, I thought, 'I can't do this, no way.'
"After 24 hours, I was pretending I was a prisoner of war. It made me get through it a little bit better. But then I hallucinated, and that was it; I was in trouble."
In preparation, Blaine said he had to avoid sleeping and eating before entering the ice--that meant he went 96 hours without sleep and seven days without food for the stunt. Both added to the sensory-blasting experience. Blaine told Rosie the most terrifying delusions occurred about an hour before he was to be freed.
"I thought I was dead," he said. "I was in this weird place and I felt the cold ice."
The magician said that while he could see his girlfriend and others through the ice, no one could hear him through the frozen walls, even when he was shouting.
"I thought my mind was gone," he added.
In the end, engineers had to carefully pick away the ice from Blaine, due to fears that the ice might collapse upon him. Saws and chisels were used simultaneously.
Said Blaine: "I was convinced my career was over. I didn't know what I was going to do for work. I thought it was the biggest disaster ever."
ABC is hoping his career keeps going. The network, which padded its one-hour special with videotaped footage of Blaine performing magic tricks for New Yorkers, pulled in its strongest numbers in six months in the Wednesday night 10 p.m. slot, finishing second to the NBC powerhouse, Law & Order in most key demographics.
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