Because in Hollywood, sometimes people attempt to contact the dead to advertise a DVD.
Adrien Brody as the anxious protagonist of Houdini, which aired on the History channel Sept. 1.
Lionsgate Television
A rotund magician walking up the basement steps behind me asked how many people I'd come to the Magic Castle with. "I don't know," I said. "I'm here for a promotional séance." I failed to tell this magician that Houdini comes out on DVD and Blu-ray Oct. 7, because this was my first promotional séance and I missed my cue.
In the dining area of the Hollywood landmark, a private club for magicians, I explained to the maître d' that I had come for the Houdini séance. Because I was the first person in my party to arrive, I was mistaken for the host and led to the small séance chamber full of handcuffs where I walked around the table and saw that the place card next to mine said "Christina Radish." (Christina Radish never arrived at the séance, further cementing my initial impression that Christina Radish was not a real person.)
The room had a circular table in the center with 11 chairs, all of them, of course, empty. The walls were crowded with Houdini paraphernalia: the aforementioned handcuffs, a milk can large enough to fit a man, a trunk in the corner, an organ, a large portrait of the dead magician. I don't know how long I had been in the room before the publicists and the journalists and the screenwriter and the actor began filing in.
Harry Houdini, an extremely famous magician and escape artist.
"Famous Players - Lasky Corp.", US - The Library of Congress, McManus-Young Collection, loc.gov. Public domain via commons.wikimedia.org
The screenwriter, Nicholas Meyer, is a man who is exceedingly comfortable holding forth, and he quickly asserted that his candor led to the now-standard practice of adding disclaimers that studios are not responsible for opinions expressed by individuals on DVD commentary tracks. Meyer later asked, "Where's Adrien?" meaning Adrien Brody, who played Houdini in the two-part miniseries, and I found myself unable to picture Academy Award–winning actor Adrien Brody attending a promotional séance, even though the profusion of cutlery guaranteed a highly elegant dining experience.
Damon, the bespectacled journalist sitting next to Meyer, tried to micromanage the discussion for a bit, and then later, after Meyer said that it was silly to think dramatized historical movies would be factually accurate, Damon said, "We're in the era of nitpicking," which was so Damon. Incidentally, Houdini is not particularly historically accurate. It contains an elaborate meditation on his (made-up) government spying gig in Europe, but who doesn't love a spy caper?
After dinner and an unknowable amount of Cabernet, Josh the self-professed séance manager told us to leave the room for 20 minutes; I sat on a bench in the dining room where Damon told me how pleased he was with Meyer. When we came back, the plates and glasses were gone and we sat down to wait. A gaunt man in a gray suit emerged from behind the portrait of Houdini. He had the facial bones of a line drawing and was completely silent, staring at us. "Well good evening," he finally said, then saying very matter-of-factly that he would "attempt to open the door between this world and the next."
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