An ultimate master of illusion, Cosentino exploded into the world of magic on Australia's Got Talent back in 2011 and has since wowed audiences across the world on-stage and on screen with his tricks and escape acts.
Cosentino has earned titles like International Magician of the Year and is bringing his act to Kiwi audiences, joining Jack Tame to pull back the curtain on the magic scene.
He dug into his introduction to magic, how his act came to be, and the crazy escapes he’s managed to pull off.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at b.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
An ultimate master of illusion, Cosantino exploded into the world
of magic on Australia's Got Talent back in twenty eleven
and has since wowd audiences around the world on stage
and on screen with his tricks and incredible, death defying
escape acts. Cosantino has earned titles like International Magition of
(00:33):
the Year, No Biggie and He's here today to pull
back the curtain on the magic scene. Ahead of his
New Zealand tour, held a good morning, good morning, great
to see him for having me seeing you in person,
So take us right back. How does one get into
this kind.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Of business stupidity? I think looking back now, my gosh, No,
I started when I was twelve. Yeah. I was a
very shy kid, believe it or not, very introverted, had
a lot of learning difficulties. Didn't learn to read until
I was twelve. My mother was a schooled principal. Right,
she's going mad and crazy. So she has this bright idea.
She says, I'll take him to the local library. For
(01:11):
all the kids listening out there, that's a place where
they have books because now you just go to Google, right, yeah, yeah,
doesn't exist, or it does, but you know. So she
takes me to the library, and that's the last place
a qut you can't read, obviously, really wants to be.
So I'm looking at books with pictures and I stumble,
by coincidento across a book called the Encyclopaedia of Magic.
(01:31):
I found that out later on, but the reason why
I opened it. It had these beautiful pictures and posters
or famous magicians, and to me, they look like comic
They predate comic books, but they look like comic books.
They're beautifully illustrated. If you've ever seen these vaudevillian posters,
they're gorgeous. So the book's open. My mother sees it open.
She thinks, great, he's interested in the book. I'm just
looking at the picture. And there's a photo like a
(01:53):
drawing of a man in all his handcuffs and chains.
And I said to my mother, what's this? Who's this?
And she said, that's the great Harry Judini. And she
reads his byline which says, under the post and nothing
on earth can hold Herdini a prisoner. And I ask
her what that mean, and she says well, you know,
nobody can stop Eudini, and he would escape from handcuffs
and chains and people would locking in jails around the world,
(02:13):
and people thought that he could melt through them. When
de materialize, I'm like, oh, wow, he's a superhero. He's
like in the comic books. And my mother says, yeah,
but he's not make believe, he's real. So that was fascinating. Anyway,
we worried a book. We take it home. She reads
these stories and adventures to me escapades. I'm very fascinated
about Houdini, Howard Thurston Dante. And in the back of
the book there's magic tricks. But to learn the tricks
(02:36):
you had to really analyze the wording. So you read
the description of the trick, what it's supposed to look
like to the audience, and then you read the method
or the secret, and it says things like grab a
packet of cards, put it in your left hand. This
is called mechanic scripts. So you look at the little
illustration and you go, oh, okay, and then says put
your left little pinky in this position and you go okay,
And then you write index. So by breaking down each
(02:58):
word and analyzing it, I slowly learned to read, and
so it was the first time that I was engaged
and connected, because before that, when you're a child and
things are difficult, you kind of you push it. I
don't want to do it. I'm not good at it. Yeah,
So I love learning these tricks, and I slowly learned
to read. And then I showed my father my first trick,
(03:21):
which was making a little coin vanish. And he's a
structural engineer, and he said to me he was a genius.
I'm twelve, and he makes bridges and buildings stand up
using mathematics. You know. So this coin vanishes, and my
father says, how did you do it? And all of
a sudden, there's a transfer of power because I can
(03:41):
do something that my father cannot. So that's very empowering
to a kid who is struggling, who is it has
to stay in at lunch time to do extracurriculum, who's
taken to all these specialists because he couldn't read because
they thought, oh, Mark, there's something wrong with his hearing,
or he can't see properly, or whatever it might have been.
And so now I'm in control, and so all the
original tricks that I performed had to do with control
(04:03):
and power, Like I would take a five dollars note
and make it ten, and I would eat fire. I
made birds appear, creating life. So that's how it started.
And it became this obsession of being in control, having
that kind of power because I had I didn't have
any of it.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
And do you think it was addictive? Yes, you know,
having all of all of a sudden feeling that that
transfer of power. It's like, oh man, I want I
want to feel that again and again.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Correct and the better you get, the more powerful you get.
It sounds like some kind of Jedi thing, doesn't it,
But really that's what it was about. As an adult
now it's not about that anymore. But as a child, yes,
I'm told when to wake up, what to eat, when
to sleep, what to do at school, what's sport I
have to play? Blah blah blah blah. And now all
of a sudden, I'm this little performer and I'm saying,
(04:45):
you know, pick a card and I'm going to read
your mind.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So do you define yourself with any one thing except
for performer? Because it strikes me that you have this
real blend of talents and passions yes, you've got the
the there's the illusionist in you, there's the magician if
you like. But then you you love the escape act
as well, and you're a dancer. You have these kind
of these different threads to your performances.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
And all happened organically. I would go to the video
store as a little kid, and I'd go into the
nostalgic section and borrow VHS tape on Gene Kelly and
Fred Astaire singing there. And so I don't even know
how to answer that, like that's what I was just
that's just for dancing, correct, And I would just watch
these these these old films of Charlie Chaplin and and
(05:33):
I remember the video store guy saying to my mother once,
why is your son in? Why is it he in?
Like the eighties action section, well the current action section
in the late eighties, early nineties, And my Mom's like,
I don't know you just like so I would just
watch these video tapes and I would watch them in
slow motion, fast forward and rewind and copy, and I'd
put little socks on and I would kind of skid
around on the on the tiles and mimic. That's even
(05:56):
that predates the magic and then I discovered the book
Judini and Escapes, and then I kind of put the
two together with the It wasn't like it's a great
gene idea. I thought, Okay, I'm going to take this dance.
I'm going to take the escape. I'm going to take
the magic and to combine it and now I'm going
to have a career. I just played around with things
that I enjoyed and then it kind of it came together.
(06:16):
But there was pushback in Australia. When I first started
doing magic. I joined the Little Magic Club. Young kids
would go once a month and I was entering a
competition and I did my act and they kind of
review your act constructive criticism, and the constructive criticism was
take out or a dance, because it's not a dance competition.
It's a magic competition. And I remember going home as
(06:37):
a twelve year old, thirteen year old, and I was
really upset about it. And I was like, you know,
they've told me the act is good, but you know
the dance is all rubbish and should come out. And
my brother, my older brother who works with me, he
still works with me today, he was like, ah, tiime
to get stuffed. I said, oh, you know, I'm just
going to do the act I want to do. And
I went to Adelaide as a little kid. My father
took me and I won this competition against people twice
(07:00):
my age and three times as experience. I was doing
the act that I wanted to do. So all of
a sudden, I've now won this competition against peers, people
better than me. You're older than me, more experienced than me,
doing it my way. So that set me on a path. Well,
I'll just do what I want to do.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
It's a validation, right, correct. I want to ask you
about some of the ESCAPEX because you've done some crazy
things and I as beast you can. Can you describe
to us your kind of mindset when you find yourself,
for example, locked up underwater trying to peck locks while
holding your breath for an extended period of time in
front of television cameras and a live audience, because it
(07:37):
strikes me as being the sort of thing that would
be totally overwhelming for ninety nine point nine nine nine
percent of us.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
It is. It's it's very so to hold your breath
lying on a couch. Static, yeah, comfortable, no stress. I
can go seven plus minutes.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
That's amazing, it's and.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
That's not that difficult to do it, and you can
be trained to do that.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I can do three, been training, So that's a.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Long time because most people can only do forty five
ninety seconds, So that's a long time. You train, Do
you push for it? Like, do you train for it?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
No?
Speaker 3 (08:14):
No, no, just naturally.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I can do three. But but then I start to convert,
like my chist starts.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
To yes, yes, but you can push through that?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's deeply unpleasant.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Yes, it's deeply unpleasant. Wow, I'm impressed because most people
can't do through, but not the average.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I mean, that's it's to do. Seeven, you have to
be able to completely lower your heart rate, right you.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yes, it's under fifty beats. Yes, it's meditation. So what
I do is I go through the alphabet in my head,
starting at A, obviously, and I go through all the
people I know with the litter a in their name,
and then I go to B and I move on
and I go through a whole alfabet. And the reason
why you do this is you distract yourself from everything
else that's happening around you, and you focus in, and
(08:58):
by focusing and zoning in you can lower your heart rate.
And then once I finished all the alphabet and then
go into my like my, I go through my my. Else,
I walk through the front door, and I picture vividly
my hand grabbing the front door and the key, going
inside and opening the door, then shutting it and walking in.
What's on the left hand side, what's inside the vas
(09:18):
what pictures are on the wall. And by the time
you go through this press and even just talking about
it right you can so. But then doing it in
a tank with the cameras moving around so not static.
As soon as this add movement to it, it changes everything.
And then you add the pressure of going let's say
five meters or ten meters deep and half a hemisphere
(09:40):
of pressure on your lungs, it reduces it automatically by
fifty percent, so you don't have the capacity to And
then you have people watching on the outside, the expectation
of you know, the television crew and the network and
people that have come to see it live. It all
just kind of compounds very very quickly. And had I
(10:00):
had the ambulance stand, they were measuring my heart rate
and I wanted to go into an under fifty beats
for my first TV special, and I was going in
at like ninety. It was because I was just anxious.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, of course, Yeah, so I started.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
On the wrong foot to begin with. It is it was.
It was terrible, but you in that moment you push through.
Something interesting about the escapes too. It's the only time
when I do it on stage. It's the only time
when I'm by myself and I can't hear the audience.
I can just hear my heartbeat. Very calm. I mean,
if you if you relate to this, if you hold
(10:34):
your breath, you know that kind of calm. It's really odd.
There's something surreal.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
It's like it's like meditating.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Yeah, it's really really special. It's a special feeling. And
when you get there and you can get to that
really calm state, that meditation state, it's it's pretty epic.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, you're listening to news books the Jack Tame speaking
with Cosantino, a hit of his New Zealand shows. Has
anything ever gone wrong when you're doing that? Like, what's
the most wrong something has ever gone?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
We did a stunt called Dropped was in a Perspects bubble.
Oh yeah, Perspects kind of I don't know how explain it,
like a perspects. Yeah, it's like a big bubble and
it was dropped ten meters deep in like a silo.
It was. It's actually like a diving tank, a training
diving tank. And the bubble was the same width as
the actual tank, so there was no divers in, No
(11:25):
one could get to me. A little hatch on the top,
and I was handcuffed, chained bally chains, locked up leg irons.
And the night before the TV special, so we'd set
up all the cameras. There was a special remote camera underneath,
there was cameras on the side, there was GoPros all
over it, blah blah blah, and we're just testing everything
the night before. So I'm doing my test run and
I go down and I'm only down there for like
two and a half a minute. It's not a long hold,
(11:47):
but again five meters deep it's and I start to
I couldn't equalize the pressure in my head. So once
I got my first handcuff off, I'm trying to equalize
my pressure. I don't. That's one thing I hate. I
hate the pressure. Like if I do do a water
tank escape and I and and it's kind of just
on stage. I can do my breath hole much longer
once I get the pressure on me. Me personally, I
(12:09):
find that really really challenging, just.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
To be clear pressure as in the ear pressure from
being underwater.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Correct the water pressure. Yes, so I'm being dropped down.
I'm ten meters deep. I start to feel the pressure
on my head. I get my handcuffed off, and I'm thinking, geez,
there's a lot of pressure in my head. So I
equalize by blowing through my nose like what you do
when you're on an aeroplane. And I hear this little pop,
and I think, oh, great, because there's a relief. But
then all of a sudden, it's excruciating pain in my
right yea, so I blew my right ear drum. Yeah right,
(12:38):
So of course if you blow, when you blow an drum,
you get disorientated, you get nauseous. And I'm locked up
and chained and no one can get to me. And
this is rehearsal, and my team is filming it on
an iPhone, just certain they know how to tell the
cameras how to film it tomorrow when the crew when
everyone comes in. Anyway, I managed to get out of
all the chains. This is all on video, by the way,
(12:59):
on the tested go pro footage, and I swim to
the top and they can see it. I pop the top.
They could do something's wrong. They could see in my
face and you can see it on film. And so
my brother pulls back my hair and you see the
blood still coming out of my ear literally so bluoty
ear drum. And we have to cancel the entire stuff.
Couldn't get on an errorplane, couldn't do my live shows anymore.
Had to go back to the network, explained to them.
(13:19):
You know, the big stunt we had at the end
that we spent all this money on year, it's gone.
It's not People say, oh, you've dramatized it so much,
But it wasn't a you know, we didn't aim to
That wasn't even.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
A lot worse could have correct. Do you ever see
that show. We're of the same same generation win stunts
go bad?
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Yes, yes, yes, please, whatever you do, don't that, yes,
I know you see it. Can it cannot go pair shaped.
And when you're filming a TV show, you're under a
lot of pressure, and the time restraints are just to
accomplish what they really want. You just don't have enough.
There's not enough budget to do it, to do it
no matter how. And also when you don't, you're always
thinking big for TV, so no matter how much budget
(13:58):
you get, so for some reason, it's never enough.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, we're almost out of time, So tell us about
the show.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yes to send him. It's a a celebration of my
life in magic ten years, hence the name the sending
me Who's Latin for ten and off a decade, And
I bring together close up slide of hand magic, so
it's all projected onto video screens and people sit opposite
me and we borrow objects, rings, and they sign cards
and they really participate in amazing things. Miracles happen under
(14:26):
their noses, and the whole audience gets to watch it.
And then these crazy death defying demonstrations. My heads in
a Perspex box with kitchen knives dangling above my head
and I've got to get out and escape. And then
the illusions people appearing and disappearing and levitating and teleporting
and mind reading and predicting the future. And it's really
powerful because when you watch it on TV, you can
(14:47):
often justify what I'm doing in your head. You might
say to yourself, Ah, it's an actor or it's set up,
which it's not, but you might say that, or if
I was there, I would know how it's done. So
when you come and witness the show and you come
up on stage, or your spouse comes up on stage
and I read their mind, and you go, well, hang on,
this isn't set up. He doesn't know me, he doesn't
know my partner.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
How did he know?
Speaker 3 (15:07):
How could he do that? Or you're watching someone float
through the air and you're sitting in the front row
and you're going, oh, there's no strings, there's no magnets,
how is that possible? So you get caught up in
the atmosphere and people around you are gasping and laughing,
and so the show is as immersive as you want
it to be. So you could just sit and watch
(15:27):
the show and observe, or you can participate and come
up and make sure the knives are real or that
the handcuffs are real and that it's not gimmicked or
set up in any way. Or you can be the
person who who selects the cards, so you know, and
so it's it's a really obviously it's a magic show,
but there's a lot of humor, and there's the dance,
and then there's all a little light and we bring
(15:47):
all the lighting in, we bring all the sets in,
we bring all the costumes, and everything's bespoke. So it's
a great night of family entertainment. And no one really
walks out. From my experience, and with toured this show
in Singapore, Malaysia, all across Australia, and no one really
walks out saying, oh, I love that trick where he
levitated the person. What they do walk out saying is
that's really good night of entertainment. And that's the biggest
(16:08):
compliment because I don't pin it to just one thing,
and I love that.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
I'm so excited to have it here. We're going to
have all the details for to sending him up on
the News Talk's HEDB website. But it is so good
to see you guys.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Thank you, pleasure, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
That is Cozantino, Magician, escape artist Extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to Newstalks I'd Be from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at b.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
An ultimate master of illusion, Cosantino exploded into the world
of magic on Australia's Got Talent back in twenty eleven
and has since wowd audiences around the world on stage
and on screen with his tricks and incredible, death defying
escape acts. Cosantino has earned titles like International Magition of
(00:33):
the Year, No Biggie and He's here today to pull
back the curtain on the magic scene. Ahead of his
New Zealand tour, held a good morning, good morning, great
to see him for having me seeing you in person,
So take us right back. How does one get into
this kind.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Of business stupidity? I think looking back now, my gosh, No,
I started when I was twelve. Yeah. I was a
very shy kid, believe it or not, very introverted, had
a lot of learning difficulties. Didn't learn to read until
I was twelve. My mother was a schooled principal. Right,
she's going mad and crazy. So she has this bright idea.
She says, I'll take him to the local library. For
(01:11):
all the kids listening out there, that's a place where
they have books because now you just go to Google, right, yeah, yeah,
doesn't exist, or it does, but you know. So she
takes me to the library, and that's the last place
a qut you can't read, obviously, really wants to be.
So I'm looking at books with pictures and I stumble,
by coincidento across a book called the Encyclopaedia of Magic.
(01:31):
I found that out later on, but the reason why
I opened it. It had these beautiful pictures and posters
or famous magicians, and to me, they look like comic
They predate comic books, but they look like comic books.
They're beautifully illustrated. If you've ever seen these vaudevillian posters,
they're gorgeous. So the book's open. My mother sees it open.
She thinks, great, he's interested in the book. I'm just
looking at the picture. And there's a photo like a
(01:53):
drawing of a man in all his handcuffs and chains.
And I said to my mother, what's this? Who's this?
And she said, that's the great Harry Judini. And she
reads his byline which says, under the post and nothing
on earth can hold Herdini a prisoner. And I ask
her what that mean, and she says well, you know,
nobody can stop Eudini, and he would escape from handcuffs
and chains and people would locking in jails around the world,
(02:13):
and people thought that he could melt through them. When
de materialize, I'm like, oh, wow, he's a superhero. He's
like in the comic books. And my mother says, yeah,
but he's not make believe, he's real. So that was fascinating. Anyway,
we worried a book. We take it home. She reads
these stories and adventures to me escapades. I'm very fascinated
about Houdini, Howard Thurston Dante. And in the back of
the book there's magic tricks. But to learn the tricks
(02:36):
you had to really analyze the wording. So you read
the description of the trick, what it's supposed to look
like to the audience, and then you read the method
or the secret, and it says things like grab a
packet of cards, put it in your left hand. This
is called mechanic scripts. So you look at the little
illustration and you go, oh, okay, and then says put
your left little pinky in this position and you go okay,
And then you write index. So by breaking down each
(02:58):
word and analyzing it, I slowly learned to read, and
so it was the first time that I was engaged
and connected, because before that, when you're a child and
things are difficult, you kind of you push it. I
don't want to do it. I'm not good at it. Yeah,
So I love learning these tricks, and I slowly learned
to read. And then I showed my father my first trick,
(03:21):
which was making a little coin vanish. And he's a
structural engineer, and he said to me he was a genius.
I'm twelve, and he makes bridges and buildings stand up
using mathematics. You know. So this coin vanishes, and my
father says, how did you do it? And all of
a sudden, there's a transfer of power because I can
(03:41):
do something that my father cannot. So that's very empowering
to a kid who is struggling, who is it has
to stay in at lunch time to do extracurriculum, who's
taken to all these specialists because he couldn't read because
they thought, oh, Mark, there's something wrong with his hearing,
or he can't see properly, or whatever it might have been.
And so now I'm in control, and so all the
original tricks that I performed had to do with control
(04:03):
and power, Like I would take a five dollars note
and make it ten, and I would eat fire. I
made birds appear, creating life. So that's how it started.
And it became this obsession of being in control, having
that kind of power because I had I didn't have
any of it.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
And do you think it was addictive? Yes, you know,
having all of all of a sudden feeling that that
transfer of power. It's like, oh man, I want I
want to feel that again and again.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Correct and the better you get, the more powerful you get.
It sounds like some kind of Jedi thing, doesn't it,
But really that's what it was about. As an adult
now it's not about that anymore. But as a child, yes,
I'm told when to wake up, what to eat, when
to sleep, what to do at school, what's sport I
have to play? Blah blah blah blah. And now all
of a sudden, I'm this little performer and I'm saying,
(04:45):
you know, pick a card and I'm going to read
your mind.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So do you define yourself with any one thing except
for performer? Because it strikes me that you have this
real blend of talents and passions yes, you've got the
the there's the illusionist in you, there's the magician if
you like. But then you you love the escape act
as well, and you're a dancer. You have these kind
of these different threads to your performances.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
And all happened organically. I would go to the video
store as a little kid, and I'd go into the
nostalgic section and borrow VHS tape on Gene Kelly and
Fred Astaire singing there. And so I don't even know
how to answer that, like that's what I was just
that's just for dancing, correct, And I would just watch
these these these old films of Charlie Chaplin and and
(05:33):
I remember the video store guy saying to my mother once,
why is your son in? Why is it he in?
Like the eighties action section, well the current action section
in the late eighties, early nineties, And my Mom's like,
I don't know you just like so I would just
watch these video tapes and I would watch them in
slow motion, fast forward and rewind and copy, and I'd
put little socks on and I would kind of skid
around on the on the tiles and mimic. That's even
(05:56):
that predates the magic and then I discovered the book
Judini and Escapes, and then I kind of put the
two together with the It wasn't like it's a great
gene idea. I thought, Okay, I'm going to take this dance.
I'm going to take the escape. I'm going to take
the magic and to combine it and now I'm going
to have a career. I just played around with things
that I enjoyed and then it kind of it came together.
(06:16):
But there was pushback in Australia. When I first started
doing magic. I joined the Little Magic Club. Young kids
would go once a month and I was entering a
competition and I did my act and they kind of
review your act constructive criticism, and the constructive criticism was
take out or a dance, because it's not a dance competition.
It's a magic competition. And I remember going home as
(06:37):
a twelve year old, thirteen year old, and I was
really upset about it. And I was like, you know,
they've told me the act is good, but you know
the dance is all rubbish and should come out. And
my brother, my older brother who works with me, he
still works with me today, he was like, ah, tiime
to get stuffed. I said, oh, you know, I'm just
going to do the act I want to do. And
I went to Adelaide as a little kid. My father
took me and I won this competition against people twice
(07:00):
my age and three times as experience. I was doing
the act that I wanted to do. So all of
a sudden, I've now won this competition against peers, people
better than me. You're older than me, more experienced than me,
doing it my way. So that set me on a path. Well,
I'll just do what I want to do.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
It's a validation, right, correct. I want to ask you
about some of the ESCAPEX because you've done some crazy
things and I as beast you can. Can you describe
to us your kind of mindset when you find yourself,
for example, locked up underwater trying to peck locks while
holding your breath for an extended period of time in
front of television cameras and a live audience, because it
(07:37):
strikes me as being the sort of thing that would
be totally overwhelming for ninety nine point nine nine nine
percent of us.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
It is. It's it's very so to hold your breath
lying on a couch. Static, yeah, comfortable, no stress. I
can go seven plus minutes.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
That's amazing, it's and.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
That's not that difficult to do it, and you can
be trained to do that.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I can do three, been training, So that's a.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Long time because most people can only do forty five
ninety seconds, So that's a long time. You train, Do
you push for it? Like, do you train for it?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
No?
Speaker 3 (08:14):
No, no, just naturally.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I can do three. But but then I start to convert,
like my chist starts.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
To yes, yes, but you can push through that?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's deeply unpleasant.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Yes, it's deeply unpleasant. Wow, I'm impressed because most people
can't do through, but not the average.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I mean, that's it's to do. Seeven, you have to
be able to completely lower your heart rate, right you.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yes, it's under fifty beats. Yes, it's meditation. So what
I do is I go through the alphabet in my head,
starting at A, obviously, and I go through all the
people I know with the litter a in their name,
and then I go to B and I move on
and I go through a whole alfabet. And the reason
why you do this is you distract yourself from everything
else that's happening around you, and you focus in, and
(08:58):
by focusing and zoning in you can lower your heart rate.
And then once I finished all the alphabet and then
go into my like my, I go through my my. Else,
I walk through the front door, and I picture vividly
my hand grabbing the front door and the key, going
inside and opening the door, then shutting it and walking in.
What's on the left hand side, what's inside the vas
(09:18):
what pictures are on the wall. And by the time
you go through this press and even just talking about
it right you can so. But then doing it in
a tank with the cameras moving around so not static.
As soon as this add movement to it, it changes everything.
And then you add the pressure of going let's say
five meters or ten meters deep and half a hemisphere
(09:40):
of pressure on your lungs, it reduces it automatically by
fifty percent, so you don't have the capacity to And
then you have people watching on the outside, the expectation
of you know, the television crew and the network and
people that have come to see it live. It all
just kind of compounds very very quickly. And had I
(10:00):
had the ambulance stand, they were measuring my heart rate
and I wanted to go into an under fifty beats
for my first TV special, and I was going in
at like ninety. It was because I was just anxious.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, of course, Yeah, so I started.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
On the wrong foot to begin with. It is it was.
It was terrible, but you in that moment you push through.
Something interesting about the escapes too. It's the only time
when I do it on stage. It's the only time
when I'm by myself and I can't hear the audience.
I can just hear my heartbeat. Very calm. I mean,
if you if you relate to this, if you hold
(10:34):
your breath, you know that kind of calm. It's really odd.
There's something surreal.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
It's like it's like meditating.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Yeah, it's really really special. It's a special feeling. And
when you get there and you can get to that
really calm state, that meditation state, it's it's pretty epic.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, you're listening to news books the Jack Tame speaking
with Cosantino, a hit of his New Zealand shows. Has
anything ever gone wrong when you're doing that? Like, what's
the most wrong something has ever gone?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
We did a stunt called Dropped was in a Perspects bubble.
Oh yeah, Perspects kind of I don't know how explain it,
like a perspects. Yeah, it's like a big bubble and
it was dropped ten meters deep in like a silo.
It was. It's actually like a diving tank, a training
diving tank. And the bubble was the same width as
the actual tank, so there was no divers in, No
(11:25):
one could get to me. A little hatch on the top,
and I was handcuffed, chained bally chains, locked up leg irons.
And the night before the TV special, so we'd set
up all the cameras. There was a special remote camera underneath,
there was cameras on the side, there was GoPros all
over it, blah blah blah, and we're just testing everything
the night before. So I'm doing my test run and
I go down and I'm only down there for like
two and a half a minute. It's not a long hold,
(11:47):
but again five meters deep it's and I start to
I couldn't equalize the pressure in my head. So once
I got my first handcuff off, I'm trying to equalize
my pressure. I don't. That's one thing I hate. I
hate the pressure. Like if I do do a water
tank escape and I and and it's kind of just
on stage. I can do my breath hole much longer
once I get the pressure on me. Me personally, I
(12:09):
find that really really challenging, just.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
To be clear pressure as in the ear pressure from
being underwater.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Correct the water pressure. Yes, so I'm being dropped down.
I'm ten meters deep. I start to feel the pressure
on my head. I get my handcuffed off, and I'm thinking, geez,
there's a lot of pressure in my head. So I
equalize by blowing through my nose like what you do
when you're on an aeroplane. And I hear this little pop,
and I think, oh, great, because there's a relief. But
then all of a sudden, it's excruciating pain in my
right yea, so I blew my right ear drum. Yeah right,
(12:38):
So of course if you blow, when you blow an drum,
you get disorientated, you get nauseous. And I'm locked up
and chained and no one can get to me. And
this is rehearsal, and my team is filming it on
an iPhone, just certain they know how to tell the
cameras how to film it tomorrow when the crew when
everyone comes in. Anyway, I managed to get out of
all the chains. This is all on video, by the way,
(12:59):
on the tested go pro footage, and I swim to
the top and they can see it. I pop the top.
They could do something's wrong. They could see in my
face and you can see it on film. And so
my brother pulls back my hair and you see the
blood still coming out of my ear literally so bluoty
ear drum. And we have to cancel the entire stuff.
Couldn't get on an errorplane, couldn't do my live shows anymore.
Had to go back to the network, explained to them.
(13:19):
You know, the big stunt we had at the end
that we spent all this money on year, it's gone.
It's not People say, oh, you've dramatized it so much,
But it wasn't a you know, we didn't aim to
That wasn't even.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
A lot worse could have correct. Do you ever see
that show. We're of the same same generation win stunts
go bad?
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Yes, yes, yes, please, whatever you do, don't that, yes,
I know you see it. Can it cannot go pair shaped.
And when you're filming a TV show, you're under a
lot of pressure, and the time restraints are just to
accomplish what they really want. You just don't have enough.
There's not enough budget to do it, to do it
no matter how. And also when you don't, you're always
thinking big for TV, so no matter how much budget
(13:58):
you get, so for some reason, it's never enough.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, we're almost out of time, So tell us about
the show.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yes to send him. It's a a celebration of my
life in magic ten years, hence the name the sending
me Who's Latin for ten and off a decade, And
I bring together close up slide of hand magic, so
it's all projected onto video screens and people sit opposite
me and we borrow objects, rings, and they sign cards
and they really participate in amazing things. Miracles happen under
(14:26):
their noses, and the whole audience gets to watch it.
And then these crazy death defying demonstrations. My heads in
a Perspex box with kitchen knives dangling above my head
and I've got to get out and escape. And then
the illusions people appearing and disappearing and levitating and teleporting
and mind reading and predicting the future. And it's really
powerful because when you watch it on TV, you can
(14:47):
often justify what I'm doing in your head. You might
say to yourself, Ah, it's an actor or it's set up,
which it's not, but you might say that, or if
I was there, I would know how it's done. So
when you come and witness the show and you come
up on stage, or your spouse comes up on stage
and I read their mind, and you go, well, hang on,
this isn't set up. He doesn't know me, he doesn't
know my partner.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
How did he know?
Speaker 3 (15:07):
How could he do that? Or you're watching someone float
through the air and you're sitting in the front row
and you're going, oh, there's no strings, there's no magnets,
how is that possible? So you get caught up in
the atmosphere and people around you are gasping and laughing,
and so the show is as immersive as you want
it to be. So you could just sit and watch
(15:27):
the show and observe, or you can participate and come
up and make sure the knives are real or that
the handcuffs are real and that it's not gimmicked or
set up in any way. Or you can be the
person who who selects the cards, so you know, and
so it's it's a really obviously it's a magic show,
but there's a lot of humor, and there's the dance,
and then there's all a little light and we bring
(15:47):
all the lighting in, we bring all the sets in,
we bring all the costumes, and everything's bespoke. So it's
a great night of family entertainment. And no one really
walks out. From my experience, and with toured this show
in Singapore, Malaysia, all across Australia, and no one really
walks out saying, oh, I love that trick where he
levitated the person. What they do walk out saying is
that's really good night of entertainment. And that's the biggest
(16:08):
compliment because I don't pin it to just one thing,
and I love that.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
I'm so excited to have it here. We're going to
have all the details for to sending him up on
the News Talk's HEDB website. But it is so good
to see you guys.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Thank you, pleasure, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
That is Cozantino, Magician, escape artist Extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to Newstalks I'd Be from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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