David Blaine Stunt--The Float of Death?
Nine of us left Drinking Skeptically early to head up and see Mr. Blaine, and, well, it was certainly a spectacle. This was a made for TV event, of course, but I thought they managed the live crowd very poorly. We walked in right at 9:15 and they announced "15 seconds to air".
That was the last time they even announced anything to the crowd that I heard, and then Blaine's mic wasn't working into the PA so he couldn't address the crowd. They didn't even play music while they were at commercial or anything, so the crowd kind of fell silent. It was getting kind of boring. and having seen the setup the night before, I headed home before the big climax, figuring I'd catch it on my DVR. However, Bush spoke and delayed Blaine's start by 15 minutes, so I never saw that or his bullet catch. Apparently, I didn't miss much, and I think the producer's innattention to the crowd resulted in these not-safe-for-work crowd reactions (from andrewalsol on youtube) (fast forward to about two minutes in for the dive):
Hint: I had noticed a bunch of huge balloons over the truss when I arrived:
I thought the crowd reaction was a bit harsh, I mean the guy did jump off a 40+ foot high truss after hanging upside down for a long, long time...
At least the TV show did get a nice shot of the Fisher Technical control system.
Update
on 2008-09-25 19:39 by controlgeek
Audio on what happened at the end from Mr. Blaine himself:
http://linkingpage.com/2008/09/25/blaine-comments-on-finale-flub/