Merlin’s modern-day workshop can be found in a blue-collar suburb of Los Angeles, among the warehouses and machine shops that border the Union Pacific railroad yard.
The city of Commerce, just east of downtown L.A., is a long way from King Arthur’s court. With the ancient art of magic enjoying a phenomenal resurgence in popularity, however, it is an aptly named spot to find one of the great wizard’s disciples.
David Mendoza–founder of MagiCraft Design and Fabrication Group–labors here, creating the highly specialized equipment used by today’s masters of mystery and legerdemain.
The soft-spoken Mendoza is a largely anonymous force behind such flamboyant conjurers as David Copperfield, Melinda and Siegfried & Roy. But his contributions are no illusion–nor are the dollars now being spent by entertainers to thrill and amaze audiences from Vegas to Vilnius.
With all due respect to the likes of Houdini and Harry Blackstone Sr., we may have entered the golden age of magic–with capes and wands being eclipsed by pyrotechnics and laser beams.
No better place to find evidence of this boom than in Las Vegas, where Mendoza was enlisted to help create the illusion-filled “EFX!” (pronounced “effects” or as an acronym, your choice) at the MGM Grand Hotel. Since last spring, this $40 million extravaganza has been playing to full houses paying up to $70 a ticket, drawn first to the estimable presence of singer Michael Crawford, then to the wildly entertaining blend of state-of-the-art magic, 3-D visual effects and Broadway-caliber theatrics.
Crawford–the Phantom against whom all other Phantoms of the Opera are measured–plays several characters in the 90-minute-plus show, including the EFX Master, Merlin, P.T. Barnum, Houdini and H.G. Wells. As such, he engages in battles with dragons, manipulates a time machine, organizes an intergalactic circus and escapes from cages and various instruments of torture.
But the singer needed some help when it came to magic, and that’s where Mendoza entered the picture.
As “illusion designer,” Mendoza worked with the show’s writers to integrate into the “EFX!” story several spectacular illusions, any one of which could provide the climax to a less ambitious production. He makes the Master of Magic abruptly appear on a flaming brazier, saves King Arthur from a burning cage, transforms the sorceress Morgana into a dragon, and helps Houdini escape from a milk can, a spike cell and a water chamber, then levitate as a final farewell.
Crawford must perform at breakneck speed throughout “EFX!”–turning up unexpectedly here and there in the 1,800-seat showroom; singing, dancing and telling jokes; and avoiding flames, 70 other performers, dozens of stagehands, and massive props and scenery. All this, twice an evening, six days a week, three weeks a month.
We’re talking here, folks, about show biz at its most industrial scale.
“We had to go to the extent we would go to for a theme park attraction,” said Mendoza during a conversation in his fabrication shop in Commerce. “Those shows run all day long for 10 years . . . the `EFX!’ shows are twice a day.”
A tour of the vast “EFX!” stage area had earlier revealed a logistical miracle of compactness and efficiency.
Above, below and alongside the 110-foot-wide main stage were nestled 10 acts worth of sets and props, incorporating, among other things, waterfalls, fire-spewing dragons, a 35,000-pound space ship and a giant hydraulic lift on which Crawford swings and sings. Between shows, all were bent, folded and compressed into neat packages that lifted, lowered and tucked into the nether reaches of the MGM Grand facility.
The computerized “stage command” that controls all of this activity resides two floors below the deck, hidden behind the resting place of Morgana and Merlin’s 120,000-pound battling serpent prop. It is from here that the movement of 280 motors–controlling tons of equipment, scenery and hundreds of effects–is measured in split seconds and millimeters.
Dragons everywhere
” `EFX!’ was very impressive to me,” said Mendoza. “Even Siegfried and Roy’s show didn’t have that much hardware to find a home for. That was the second most elaborate show we had worked on.
“We built the illusion (for Siegfried and Roy’s show) where they stand on a platform and tubes are lowered over them. A dragon picks up what looks like these giant beer cans and squooshes them. Siegfried and Roy then reappear somewhere in the audience.
“We also built the illusion in which Roy is impaled on the nose of the dragon.”
A good dragon can always find work in the new family-friendly Las Vegas.
So can someone like Mendoza.
“There just aren’t that many good illusion designers,” said MGM Grand general manager James Trudeau, after showing off his facility. “He’s at the top.”
That kind of quality, however, doesn’t come cheap.
“I wasn’t handed a blank check,” said Mendoza, “but they were very reasonable and realistic about what they were spending and what they wanted to do.”
During a tour of his design facility, Mendoza–without giving away any secrets–explained his collaborative process with an entertainer or producer. A recent case in point was the “Drill of Death” illusion, which was performed by Melinda (“The First Lady of Magic”) in a November TV special.
“For months, we’ve been talking about this one particular mega-illusion,” said Mendoza, pointing to a drawing of the magician being impaled and lifted by a twisting gyre of metal, resembling a drill press. “We cranked it out in about three weeks and took it to Vegas. She rehearsed it for about three days, they taped the show and it went real well.
“That’s kind of typical. The magician will come over here, we talk about the illusion with a mockup and go over the problems and take measurements for parts that have to fit the person.”
High tech, high cost
David Copperfield–with whom Mendoza got his start in the production aspect of the business–is known for his dramatic, seemingly inexplicable tricks, which are staged on a grand scale.
Often built for onetime performance, the apparatus needed to accomplish such stunts–a giant circular “Death Saw,” for example–could cost as much as $200,000.
“He might call me up from Germany and say, `David, I want to make this big thing appear . . . and, when it appears, I want it to levitate. When can you come over?’ ” said a not-exactly-underworked Mendoza, with a laugh. “At this point, he’s done some research with his own people and made some models of the thing he wants to make appear.
“So far, nothing exists on paper. We then throw ideas back and forth, sketch out some ideas in the hotel or backstage between shows. In the course of three days, we’ll come up with an idea or model.
“We then bring it back here and I sit down at a drafting board, bring in an engineer and we look at what it is we actually want to create, what it should look like, how big it needs to be, how compact it needs to fold . . . and that’s when we start the engineering part of the process.”
Because Mendoza also is called upon to produce effects for theatrical shows, rock tours and corporate presentations, he sometimes is given a script and is allowed to let his imagination carry him along. His resume includes work for Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Reba McEntire, Paul McCartney, Madonna, Cirque du Soleil and motivational speaker Anthony Robbins.
That’s some pretty heady company for a 35-year-old guy from nearby Whittier who began his journey into the mystic at age 12, performing puppet shows and learning basic carpentry from his dad in the family’s garage.
Hooked at an early age
“There was a professional puppeteer in our neighborhood who also was involved in magic,” he recalled. “One day when I was at his house, he showed me some magic books and I thought they were kind of neat. I started studying illusions.
“There was this series on TV at the time–I was about 15–called `The Magician’ with Bill Bixby. I thought it was pretty cool: being a magician, the food, the women, driving a fancy car, having your own airplane. I practiced magic and tried out for the Magic Castle’s Junior Club, joining the first group of junior members in 1976.”
Through his affiliation with the Magic Castle–a Hollywood landmark where magicians gather to relax, exchange secrets and entertain–Mendoza met several other performers who needed equipment made.
“I took a lot of drafting courses in school,” he said. “Deep inside, I wanted to have my own business building fun things. I had a friend my own age, who I grew up with and was a junior magician at the club. He landed a job with David Copperfield as his right-hand man. He called me up and told me he needed some props refurbished and some things built, so come up to Tahoe and meet the guy.”
Presto! The rest is history.
“The business has grown since then,” Mendoza added. “I’m told we’re the biggest, have the biggest space and most people. What we’ve done over the years is taken magic props from wooden boxes and evolved with technology at the pace of other entertainment.”
At MagiCraft, the fun begins in the parking lot, where rental equipment and theatrical boxes are stacked to the eaves.
Inside, the walls of corridors and offices are lined with autographed posters, blueprints and letters from entertainers. The design of a trick involving a printing press, destined for Sweden, is on the boss’ desk.
A family affair
Mendoza’s brother Paul handles the marketing of MagiCraft inside an office strewn with memorabilia and paperwork. Their dad, a retired signmaker, occasionally helps out on big jobs that require the craftsman’s touch.
A few designers work at personal computers, but visitors are immediately drawn to grinding and squealing noises emanating from the machine shop, where a dozen or so employees labor.
On this day, models were being built for a European magician’s illusion, an elevator trick was being tested for a Texas performer, and pneumatic guns and mortars were being fitted for the “American Gladiators” stage show in Florida.
Some of the workers are routinely asked by friends about how a trick might be accomplished. Like the CIA, however, they divulge nothing.
“It’s magic and a job,” said Christina Estrada, taking a break from her lathe. “I get excited watching the shows. My friends put a lot of pressure on me with their questions.”
Even Mendoza, who may be excused from amazement, claims to be stumped by some artists.
“Penn & Teller are really clever,” he said of the outrageous duo who often appear to be ridiculing fellow magicians in their act. “I don’t work with them but I’ve seen their show.
“Of all the shows, it’s the one I get the most mystified to see. . . . But I can watch a bird act and be caught totally off guard. I enjoy watching all magic, even if I know how it’s done.”
This ancient art has become good business. In Las Vegas, the neon-lit marquees argue convincingly that magician acts may now be a larger drawing card than traditional racy showgirl revues.
Siegfried & Roy have established a permanent beachhead, Penn & Teller are regular visitors, Harry Blackstone Jr. carries on the family tradition, Melinda is a hot commodity, Cirque du Soleil is full of mysticism, and the MGM Grand has turned Michael Crawford–an officer of the British Empire–into a master illusionist. Mendoza is impressed by Crawford’s progress and chutzpah.
“Not many singers would put themselves through that,” he said. “The spike cell alone is a pretty scary thing to learn and practice.
“It’s as failsafe as it can be, but he has to be alert.”
