Renee O'Connor Quotes

Movies started out as an extension of a magic trick, so making a spectacle is part of the game.

Ive said its a little bit like a magician performing for a convention of magicians... all the magicians in the audience watching this illusion-Do they see the illusion, or do they see the device that made the illusion? Probably they see a little of both.

I don't want to see the zipper in the back of the monster suit. Like everybody else who goes to the movies, I want to believe the monster is real.

I'm such a proponent of the theatrical experience and the cinematic experience, and we've reached this point where the magicians are not only giving away their tricks, but they're telling us how they're doing the tricks in advance before you even come to the magic show. It'd be nice to get a little of the mystery back in.

Film is so immersive.

When I was a little kid - and even still - I loved magic tricks. When I saw how movies got made - at least had a glimpse when I went on the Universal Studios tour with my grandfather, I remember feeling like this was another means by which I could do magic.

Magic in cinema is a bit like ventriloquism on the radio.

I wish what I do was all real. Some of it's real, some of it's an illusion and I try to blur the line between both, but unfortunately I've got to be honest with you. Taking a $1 bill and turning it into a $100 - unfortunately it's not real.

The secret to film is that it's an illusion.

In Hollywood, moviemaking used to be about escaping reality to go to the movies.

I think it's obvious when you're watching a movie, and there's people fighting or someone's slipping on the side of the building, that it's fake and it really removes you from it.

Making the unbelievable believable is different on a set with 'Fantastic Four,' where it's like, 'Wind machines! Because the airship is coming in and you're pretending to be afraid!'

Magic is like special effects live, and I love to perform, so it sounded like doing magic tricks were a good way to entertain people.

Our ethos for 'Now You See Me 2' was that everything in the movie at least had the potential to be done in real life, and I'd say over 90% of it was actually done in-camera with no CGI. Of course, movies like this are always going to be bound by the rules of Hollywood, being there's going to be enhancements of CGI.

The wonderful thing about cinema is you can bring a 3D world to life.

I'm not emotionally excited by the power of cinema's tricks anymore.

Imagining things are there that are not really there, with the green screen, is very much like theatre, when you're looking at the fourth wall.

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.

Because I have been a magician for many years, people have often asked me whether I ever have sawn a woman in half. I reply, Oh, yes I've sawn over seventy women in half in my lifetime, and I'm learning the second half of the trick now.

Houdini used to pull rabbits out of a hat, but he never tried to make a living out of selling them when he had pulled them out of the hat

All magic is 'Here’s a quarter, now it’s gone. You’re a jerk. Now it’s back. You’re an idiot. Show’s over.'

It is human nature to want to believe in the wizardry of the magician--but also to turn against him and to scorn him the moment that he commits the slightest error that reveals his trickery. Those in the audience are embarrassed to have been so easily astonished, and they blame the performer for their gullibility.

When doing a fantasy show - or a show with fantasy elements - the more you can anchor an effect to reality, the stronger the illusion is.

Most of the time, I leave the camera on the obvious special effects, like the rubber bodies, so that it become obvious they're not real.

I just think action films now have... often, because you can do anything with CGI, people do. And I don't think you necessarily should. You lose that sort of human dimension, and you get all the stuff breaking the laws of physics.