Posted: Fri Aug 10 2001
Copperfield Plays To Packed House Of One

Magician and smarmy over-actor David Copperfield performed his amazing new "Look at Me, I Have A Mouth on my Forehead!" road show to a sell-out crowd in Hoboken New Jersey last Thursday only to find that he brought in a total of $75 in ticket proceeds.

What is the cause of Mr. Copperfield's vanishing profits? The fact that all but one of the audience members in the theatre were on his payroll. "The problem was that we were originally booked at a larger venue" Says David's road manager Cheetah Williams. "We usually try to keep a consistent 6 to 1 ratio of audience plants and paying customers. But we lost more seats in switching venues than we expected." This meant that instead of having the 500 paying spectators that they expected, they had an audience of only one person plus some 3,000 or so stooges.

The mistake was discovered during David's thrilling "Floating Table" routine in which several people from the audience place their hands on a table which then floats about the stage. "I knew there was trouble when I recognized each of the people around the table." David told reporter Phillip Matanka, "Then when they all started trying to pull the table in different directions I knew I had a disaster on my hands." He went on to add that the only thing that saved him from great embarrassment was the fact that the one real audience member, who had come expecting to see a play based on the novel by Charles Dickens, was 85 years old and slept through the entire second act.

Copperfield was very disappointed by the mess-up not only because of the meager boxoffice take but also because until the snafu was discovered he thought he was doing unusually well with the crowd. "They were eating out of my hands. The reactions couldn't have been better if I had scripted them." He said, then added sheepishly "as it turns out I had scripted them."