Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Duo daring to dream

Sunday, Sept. 26, 1999 | 9:26 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

IN MAGIC nothing is impossible. In America, your impossible dreams can come true.

If I were thinking of a theme for a movie that could express to the coming generations the need to believe in themselves and their dreams, I would create "Siegfried & Roy: The Magic Box." And I would get one of the most creative film directors to make the story come to life and one of the most well-known voices in the world to tell the tale. Then I would show it around the world to families who yearn for such movies to help inspire their young ones to dream and achieve.

Fortunately I don't have to do any of that because Las Vegas' greatest illusionists and their longtime manager, Bernie Yuman, have already made the impossible happen -- yet again. And they have made the movie about the two German-born entertainers spring to life through the use of the giant screen IMAX format. To make it even better, they did it in 3-D!

To anyone who has seen Siegfried & Roy during the past 30 years in Las Vegas and the past 10 years at their home on stage at the Mirage, the idea that something more compelling and more spectacular could come from their genius is, well, just another dream. And yet, if Las Vegans have learned anything from our two most famous residents it is that if you work hard enough, dreams do come true.

Thursday night at the Los Angeles Science Center's IMAX theater, "The Magic Box" premiered by leaping from the screen into the hearts, minds and imaginations of everyone who joined Siegfried and Roy to start what will be another long-running chapter of their magical lives. Monday night the film will premiere in New York and from there it will open in cities around the world, bringing that special kind of magic and that all-important message to people everywhere.

Of course the realists among us know that we make our own magic. Certainly hard work is an essential ingredient, but a generous sprinkling of luck at the right times is necessary to make it all happen. The making of this movie was no different. I know that Yuman has been chasing this idea ever since I met him some 25 years ago. It was one more mountain he needed to help his dynamic duo climb along their incredible journey into the annals of great entertainment. It didn't happen overnight and it couldn't have happened without that indispensable ingredient -- luck.

First was Bernie's meeting with director Brett Leonard, a young man who dared to challenge the old precepts of movie-making because he saw the possibilities of 21st century technology and thought. He shared Roy's philosophy for success: the willingness to not set limits or boundaries for their work. Together with his partner, Michael Lewis, they conspired with Bernie to do the impossible.

Siegfried and Roy gave their blessing and their time -- difficult indeed after doing two shows a night practically every night -- as well as their willingness to open up a difficult but essential chapter of their lives for the purpose of the story-telling. Soon the Magic Box began to take shape. And without anything else happening the movie would have been a winner.

That's where the luck and perseverance -- the essential ingredients in magic -- paid off. That, coupled with Bernie's inability to hear or even understand the word "no," led to a once-in-a-lifetime meeting with one of the greatest actors and storytellers of all time, Sir Anthony Hopkins. With no money and probably no chance, Bernie set about to convince the Academy Award winner that it was his voice, his emotion, his passion that was needed to make an otherwise good movie, special.

I've seen Yuman work before. Tony Hopkins never had a chance. Following that meeting, Hopkins said, "It's a great movie. It's about people living their dream and fulfilling their destiny ... I can see myself in this movie in pre-war Europe. I want to do this movie."

And when you listen to Hopkins tell the story of two German kids with dreams much larger than life, and you see their dreams fulfilled on the magic of the big screen with their fabulous animals practically leaping into your lap, you see how right Tony was and you know that something very different and very exciting is happening.

The movie, though, is about more than magic and Siegfried and Roy's own lifetime of dreams. Hearkening back to the 1940s MGM films, which Leonard refers to as the "fantasy biographies," the story also sends a message about this great and wonderful country in which we live.

Siegfried explains, "We arrived here 30 years ago as two German immigrants. Instead of being told, as we were in the old country, what we cannot do, we were told what we can do. That is why Roy and I are proud that we are American citizens and Las Vegans." Sure, dreams can come true. But the impossible ones, the ones that take work and effort and perseverance and, yes, some smattering of luck, are more likely to reach reality in the United States of America.

Ours is still the home of the American dream. And if you don't believe that take yourself and any young people you can find to an IMAX theater for the next showing of "Siegfried & Roy: The Magic Box."