Bravo Profiles - Penn and Teller (2001)

it's a Jeru brother give me the key tell give me tell her give me the teller give me the goddamn game it's an in-your-face almost Punk aggressive sense of humor and sense of the dart it's almost the precise opposite of what we know as the traditional magic act and now Bravo profiles Penn & Teller go out at nine o'clock it's now 8:35 right there so we'll have our prayer circle where teller and I join hands they're different people I don't think I've ever pretended to be anything but different people pen talks a lot this is kind of like some guys do sand and clear their throat and stuff I just shame electric razor teller doesn't talk at all it's the big guy little guy you got one guy who won't shut up yeah you're better back up who's huge and has a tremendous mouth and head so you say man came from monkey and you have another guy who's small and says nothing if I were to tell someone we've never seen them what they were like it might be difficult each of them has a striking personality but it's like Hepburn and Tracy it certainly works they're about as different in style as they are in their appearance but they've been working side by side for more than 25 years together they put on a magic show for people who hate magic shows they don't like the guys in the tuxedos and the prom shirts and the bird loops that are hanging out of their sleeves it's ugly to them dad you know it's time for a car track it's the reason that when they started going to Vegas they could only make 50 bucks a show because everybody went magic what tow hey since 1975 Penn Jillette and his partner teller that's his full name have made a living out of making us realize that things are not always as they appear you think you're seeing something that you're really not seeing and then you get fooled and you're shocked at how you get fooled and it makes you laugh from self-mutilation to twisted pranks to mind-bending illusions Penn & Teller have discovered a way to both amuse and amaze us that's original irreverent and almost impossible to describe they're entertainers intellectual stimulators doing something up there that's riveting and the magic seems almost to be beside the point and I shall be reading Casey at the bat for you this evening in exactly 2 minutes and 16 seconds much of what makes Penn & Teller's act so popular with their fans is its bizarre mix of drama and dark humor delivered by two guys who are highly skilled at what they do but like any good magic trick there's more going on than meets the eye Penn & Teller insist their show is about ideas about skepticism atheism and telling the truth by lying it's about their ability to fool us even after we've been told we're being fooled it's about trust and friendship and the relationship between two very different individuals and it's about their shared belief that the real fascination of magic is not in how the tricks are done but rather why I've tried a lot of ways to say what the overall theme of the show is I think that they all center around how one ascertains truth you believe in tell her do you believe and tell her the new Kazan pistols draw a young man take that with you there's an obsession with freedom and the different in fantasy and reality and an obsession with how we find what's true and important truth is that goes through everything we do say the word magic and for a lot of people this is what they imagine it's a stereotype that's lasted for more than a century and won the pennant teller set out to destroy it it's almost the precise opposite of what we know as the traditional magic act which is done with great majesty almost as if you're just eyeing the audience they couldn't possibly understand what you're doing and almost as if it's magic and Penn & Teller come out and say this is not magic this is this is just a bunch of tricks and furthermore they're not that important their contempt for magicians who claim to have magical powers has earned them the title the bad boys of magic and a reputation for exposing some of the professions most time-honored secrets I think any magician in the world would agree them in a second that you never ever do the cups and balls with clear plastic they did the cup and ball routine with clear plastic cups and at first I went oh this is wrong this is just wrong you know they're there they're showing you how to do it we didn't first ball pretend to place in our hand having already snuck it underneath the first cup we take the second ball simultaneously secreted beneath the cup pretended plates in our hand and showe it and then I watched it and I actually taped in a planet back in the way they're not showing you how to do it and reveal it you couldn't do it even if you have put did it frame by frame you couldn't do it the way they were doing it they're showing you the beauty behind it but they're not showing you how to do it with these seed balls that come over here and this is not juggling well this is called as misdirection for I looking over here tell us it's the final ball under there's one more you either side and of course the russet potato for our finish Penn & Teller's attempts to demystify magic LED some of their colleagues to criticize them for breaking the magician's code of secrecy but others saw through the duo's deception magicians were getting really bent out of shape without ever seeing what they did they just heard the hype the bad boys of magic they were exposing magic in fact they invented their own tricks to expose and most of them are kind of fun to watch if you've ever seen him do that box expose where they get cut up teller in pieces and move them all over to say when you see it it's hysterical and it doesn't it doesn't hurt anything in magic you know there's one like you to actually take the deck yourself when you do that we would do a show where I would show how you pause a deck card off the top I would demonstrate it to the entire audience and 4-bits later I used that exact move I mean there's the whole argument but you would say he's giving away the tricks if he can do the trick you know ten minutes later four bits later with the same move exactly and not get caught how much have you really given away see these guys are saying it isn't really a secret it's it's just it's just skill I mean it's the same as learning to juggle and and you learn how to do it and then you do it few topics are off-limits in a Penn & Teller show not only are they not afraid to speak their minds they insist on it even at the risk of offending their audience so we're moving out of the field of magic into the field of religion it's it's a lateral mode that utilizes many of the same skills directing it to my God he is at least go to offend a fourth of the audience and how nice he doesn't care they believe in messages and they believe they should be giving a statement other than just doing a trick because they have the opportunity to it's one of the things we're supposed to do in the show you know we're supposed to show you miracles that like all miracles are totally fake I mean we're saying stuff you can come out of our show and argue with us ah I don't know how many other shows have that you come out and go you know I don't think that's true I mean what do you mean that it's okay for people to have guns and how can you say that freedom means freedom to burn the flag and what do you mean taking the Lord's name in vain and I think that's nothing but good respecting the intelligence of the audience is one of the most important ways Penn & Teller try to distance themselves from other magicians in one of their now classic bits they Mock the whole idea of death-defying illusions by staging one of their own and he is sworn on his honor as a gentleman that is he will not relinquish this kay be supremely skilled hands find the card selected by crisp there have been magicians before who do stuff that's dangerous if they go into the water tank they try and sell you on the drama of the water tank and frankly in the year 2000 we know there is no drama in the water tank is that your card tell me the truth piss is that your card what these guys do is they go well there's no drama but we're gonna make it seem incredibly real that's really not your cart and morbidly funny tell her tell I'm not gonna find the card Megan to the king it's a hey rule brother give me the King tell her give me tell her give me the telling even the goddamn game what okay he's right we made a promise we're gonna stick to it so you do have this underlying sense of drama what are we what are we what are we at 636 636 es screwed Chris he's brain dead and we'll also have an act that is incredibly funny but it's not the pandering funny it's an in-your-face almost Punk aggressive sense of humor and sense of the dark finally a man's come along who was willing to die for a principle he believed in albeit an insignificant car trick a the big thing on the water tank was leaving teller dead the idea of taking really unimportant things and elevating them to life and death or a better way to say that I think is to ignore the life in death I mean the more you hammer away that we're just doing a card trick the funnier it is that tellers drowning I mean that's to me sort of sums up the attitude where he's saying to the audience this is really scary but look it's just a cheap card trick please gentlemen my ex-partner teller and is that your card Chris six of Spades cover there and it's sort of an anti-magic idea of magic the key to their success is that they do something nobody else does I mean there are other people who have their attitude but can't do the tricks and there are some people I suppose who can do the tricks but don't have the attitude what they've done I think is establish an act where the combination of humor and terror isn't something that's truly skillful is put all together in one package that it seems to be unique and when we returned we didn't know any better we thought every time kids did this they don't when I guarantee that you're about to see what easily qualifies is the weirdest magic act we've ever had on the show before they would Henning teller they'd be known as the asparagus valiant courageous on a three-man group that included a young musicologist named we're Chris imir the act was considered a little raw but between the cheap laughs and the ridiculous routines there was no mistaking the satirical tone that would eventually become an intelligence trademark they were just kind of different they had an edge to them and they did things kind of you might say backwards there are people who were even as teenagers very good at something and in tellers case it was magic and in Penn's case was juggling juggling played an important role in Penn Jillette's formative years the son of a former prison guard and a mother who loved practical jokes he would spend hours a day in his Greenfield Massachusetts home practicing on his own I love juggling and still my closest friends will talk about this certain clucking of are calm and I had kind of understanding of the world that comes to me when I juggle I need this there's just something about it it's what I really love to do in high school the six foot six pen became known for being loud and over-the-top but his outrageousness appeared to mask rather traditional values he seems like the kind of guy who would be doing lots of drugs or you know drinking or something in that kind of personality and of course he was completely opposite I've never had a sibling off a whole new drug in my life but I had the hair and have the sunglasses and I had the contempt and that was enough in 1974 pen enrolled in Clown College but he soon discovered he wasn't very good at physical comedy he turned to street performing instead and found it both satisfying and profitable I was so successful in passing the Hat I remember going to an accountant and saying how do I declare this to pay taxes on this and he said if you go and say you made this much money street performing you'll be busted as a drug dealer instantly there's no way you can do this just keep it tell her his interest in magic got its start when he was five the only child of two artists he spent much of his early childhood in Center City Philadelphia alone in his room perfecting his magic skills he had a heart condition as a child and he was in bed and I we took the television set up there and how the duty came on and he he saw a magic one there well that's wonderful that will occupy him he's not allowed out at Ned so we sent for a magic set by the time he was 12 but quiet shy young man was performing magic for kids in the neighborhood this is a child doing this you know and we didn't know any better we thought every time he did this they know someone some people were scientists you know jump ajik here's the drivers crazy I'll tell you that they would take these handkerchiefs you know the magic handkerchief and go like this all the time I'm fireplace enough to drive you a bad seat then he got a whole magicians cape and everything red cape and a hat and all that stuff and he throws a real magician when he was a little kid after graduating from Amherst College in 1969 teller went on to teach Latin for six years although he continued to perform magic on the side that's when he was introduced to Penn who was so impressed by his talent and ideas that he encouraged teller to abandon his career and perform with him and I said you know let's go do this show and he said well okay we'll do it over the summer then I'll be back in September and I said well no I was thinking for real and it was something rather slightly dramatic for that time like saying you know I thought you were a performer and not a teacher and hanging up the phone and him calling back a while later and he never did quit teaching to work with me he took a one-year leave of absence and I don't know I guess at some point you told them that you weren't coming back but if the last I heard it was the one here home of absence by the end of 1975 and Teller and their mutual friend we're Chrissa Murr had created the asparagus valley cultural society an odd combination of magic juggling and music that showcased their respective talents the show played off and on for almost six years first in Philadelphia then San Francisco before the three of them decided to quit we're was very happy and coming in and doing the show eight times a week and going home and having a life and you know being comfortable with that and Penn & Teller wanted to do something different they wanted to try other things they had that bet you know other ideas Penn & Teller chose to stick together and were eventually invited to take their two-man show to New York but the decision was not made easily I would have heated long telephone conversations with them discussing the the details of the contract we wouldn't unload the truck that was a huge thing we had there they were fiercely protective of their own work we would not perform if there were fewer than 8 people in the audience no matter what they were also concerned about their deal and about money the contract for failure was stunning it was perfect it was so well negotiated you couldn't believe it it did not ever consider success beyond anyone's expectations the show became an off-broadway smash and Penn & Teller would have become household names first let me say that my partner teller is the best card magician in the world they began appearing regularly on shows such as Saturday Night Live where on one occasion they seemed to defy the laws of gravity and that is ladies and gentlemen the rising car we went out there completely unprepared we couldn't do really any of the tricks that muffin throw was hitting half the time we didn't really have a script because we kept changing the tricks still edible and we went out there and just just mostly were winging it and just got incredibly lucky watch what you can do right here still with the same rainbow patterns she floats right in the air no friends no wires it wasn't until the end of the bit the television viewers were let in on the secret the studio audience already knew Penn & Teller had been performing upside down it was a very very strong idea but I I am so convinced that if I were had that idea alone and didn't have teller no one would have gotten the idea I took teller I mean I had to explain to tell her two or three times before he got it and there was no way I would have ever been able to present that to an audience and that we remember it not not really you know but haha the guys tried to top themselves in this legendary appearance on David Letterman's show when they auditioned a new number but kept the best part for last what'd you think of the style we tell us get a pencil here um well you know I don't know that much about style of magicians but I just um you know the word lame comes to mind well it was all Letterman's idea let him instead you know come in and hit us hit me as hard as you can be as mean as you can but you know I guess the thing that I missed most out of the whole deal was it just didn't seem to be an element of a real surprise if you want some surprise that is dude okay okay tell her I'll show him some surprise would you please let him it was really free come on now these animals in none of that was faked he was really freaked and he was really upset I'm on over to shake his hand at the end and he swore at me and just turned and I looked like he was gonna hit me and we thought it was terrible no no that's it then the next day somebody from his office called and said that he thought it was the best bit that had ever been done in the show we were welcome back anytime I just wanted to give you a little surprise by 1985 Penn & Teller believed they had achieved the ultimate success they loved what they were doing and felt they were doing it without making compromises they wanted to have financial success like everybody wants to have but I think they really wanted artistic success first and financial success probably would come along with it which it did so was never sitting down and saying I have to make this I have to make that it was really do we have the ability to do what we want to do when we go into that theater if we do we're going a lot of our style can be traced right back to the fact that our very partnership is built on ideas and not even dreams of success or wealth we neither one of us ever want to be on Broadway we had it was all these ideas and we considered ourselves successful when we did these ideas and people paid us enough to make our living and when we returned but you can just open this if you want to get to the door quickly you can step off into space and down you go sponsored in part by Las Vegas conventions and Visitors Authority we moved to Las Vegas Nevada about five years ago tella kept saying that the place you are when you turn 50 is the place you're gonna die don't want to be someplace warm so our choices we're pretty much for show business LA or Vegas and in LA you know for the money we make we could live like in a regular house but here in Vegas cuz I mean the land is like free and building is really cheap we can live like rich guys depends fairly easy to describe which is that if you took a very smart teenager and gave him a lot of disposable incomes and pretty much freedom during the day that would be pet from one angle pen self-designed home in Las Vegas looks surprisingly ordinary look a little closer though and it reflects a personality that may surprise or even shock you I call the house the slammer you just saw from the outside it looks kind of like a prison but you get inside here it's kind of paradise the whole idea behind the house was there's no fancy materials it's all concrete linoleum Formica real American things none of that cedar or tile anywhere pennies in extremis that's a big goddamn teapot everything he does is bigger than life it's such a big teapot you have to yell about it he's sort of halfway in character and half way not this is a picture of Chairman Mao and if you go carrying tea pots of Chairman Mao they couldn't make it with anyone anyhow Penn has a very dark side this is one thing you want to see because this is so illegal very much involved with the devil and death this is my tattoo and it's on someone else's skin this is uh something else that's illegal this is all pretty much illegal video stuff this is probably illegal to pin really is a no-bullshit kind of guy this is an artist in Chicago did this it's the Holy Bible cut into the shape of a of a gun if he thinks it he'll tell you what he thinks because you know if you're really gonna talk about what violence has actually been caused by what literature boom bang and he just puts it out there and he lives large this is the guesthouse I see I'm from New York and I wanted to have friends around and I was afraid that I wouldn't make enough friends in Vegas so I made this beautiful guesthouse which is called the wardens house of the slammer which is where my friends can come and stay for weeks every time I go on a talk show I like to steal the cup this is Jay Leno's night show guest - I have a guest one in the guest 3 as well cuz we've been up and down this is Conan O'Brien everyone has one of these this one is the is my special my special psychotic Mormon collection this is this I'm hoping to get one a date off Hitler then I'll have a complete set this is my my mom my mom my dad my sister my sister as you can see is paid to wear a Penn & Teller t-shirt is when they visited me and stayed out here for a little while now you'll see that the art all around here is all xx Fitzpatrick toni is a buddy of mine he is the greatest artist of life that's not my opinion that's fact and then we have Toni's original artwork on the wall here these are the ones he did in prison there's a serial killer slate series that first got me interested in Toni this was done by a sculptor by the name of Jose Alvarez the atheist blue of Vegas these are bottles that I would have juggled in the Penn & Teller show broken bottles this is the smoking monkey lounge this is kind of just a make-out place these are pickled punks these are fetuses deformed fetuses in jars and this is the the booth they would have worked in these showbiz guys the little my the day a woman's world Stood Still they didn't ask to be born they didn't ask to be born this is a real package from Saudi Arabia SMS thing I bought a lot of backs of these let me tell you them there's just all sorts of it's quite an elaborate library on skepticism atheism rock and roll there are other secret rooms all over some of them I'll show you some of them I won't this is a real real simple one this is a trap doors in all the computer rooms why is the Minelli's panties behind you we had the same dressing room at Bally's Hotel and Casino and she left her panties in my dressing room and I thought well gotta put those up somewhere this is my upright bass guitar I didn't play an electric bass for about 25 years but I've just started on this bad boy look at this thing man oh the best man there ever was Velvet Underground okay this is unpeeled banana cover by Warhol with the picture of Lou on the back full thing and it's sealed it is sealed you know something Lou doesn't have one of these you see a beautiful view of the mountains high walls and stuff those are real fruit trees those are very dangerous cacti if you want to talk about violating las vegas building code well there's a lot of stuff here that does the dangerous place but you can just open this and if you want to get to the door quickly you can step off in his face and down you go this is my office guests are not welcome to my office this is where I spend most of my time as you can see a big old computer monitor so I get my email picture of a smoking monkey nothing funnier than smoking monkey picture of me with various women naked this is great this is my mom and dad now this was taken in the 70s in the backyard of my house in California I was very very close to my mom and dad my mom and I were as far as I know the two closest people that have that have ever lived I loved her dearly don't insult me by asking me if this is a real skeleton of course it's a real skeleton and the great thing is when you buy skeletons you call up a medical supply house and it's like they council you like you're getting an abortion they say do you understand that this is a real skeleton that you'll be having your home and some of your friends will maybe be uncomfortable with that and I said they're my friends come here I have in my office a urinal and a sink I don't know why you need both my mom would be so mad at me for doing this but I'm gonna do it anyway because it's just so it's so cute there's my mom me my mom and a monkey my mom came to our show and we got a monkey and she's making the monkey face and man-boy I miss my mom so much every every second because I called her at least two or three times every day this is one of my most prized possession this is the OED the Oxford English Dictionary you usually see the ones that are that are microscopic this one you can actually look up something and you can really understand English language it's considered to be the best dictionary done in any language ever now see this is my bedroom this is where I live most the windows in the house are hidden behind pictures so you can you can glance out like that it's all leopard skin because boy you know women doing that this is kind of a sex dungeon and this is supposed to be covered with a mirror but it's not really done yet and this has all sorts of equipment in here for sexual purposes and nice walls and soundproof and this is a sex swing that you can ride in and have sex and this is one of the creepiest things you'll ever see this is an electric chair it's a real electric chair from sing-sing in the 20s I want to make it very clear I'm very against capital punishment but at least you know now that this electric chair won't kill anyone else now whether this is my um my home a home theater which which has a whole remote control thing and it's a beautiful big like you really watch a movie in here this is all acoustic with a vaulted ceiling you notice the sound is perfect flat and then perhaps the coolest thing I can run this from anywhere but if I just hit this button here the screen goes up and you have my band set up as guitars on the wall there's a drum set keyboard Mike's mic stand music and the PA is right here and goes into the room and that's my house that's the slammer now you run along and when we return teller learned that he could control a crowd and command their attention by completely being silent every day on Bravo the most intricate part of magic and the background that you have to have in magic a sleight of hand tellers a marvelous light a hand performer and he's a minimalist you know all great sleight of hand performers are you don't see anything it should look like real magic and and he's that type of magician perhaps the single most distinguishing characteristic of Penn & Teller's act is tellers silence a trait he first adopted when he was performing on his own teller learned that he could control a crowd and command their attention by completely being silent because you can't heckle a person who won't answer back when he tells the story it's always I shut up and do these McCobb things and people shut up and pay attention I think think we're still screaming at him but there's a different memory there whether or not it kept hecklers at bay tellers decision to remain silent as well as his decision to drop his first name added mystery to his presentation it does have its effect and you do wonder if not can he talk why has he chosen that stag which is almost as interesting in a trick that seems to define his personal style as a magician teller silently swallows a hundred sewing needles six feet of thread and makes them reappear I saw Ella do the needles and I thought it was the greatest trick I'd ever seen because it was this geeked-out disgusting carny trick that dealt with vomit and yet he did it really classy he did it so classy that you could do it at Carnegie Hall and get away with it the trick is based on an ancient East Indian illusion made famous by Houdini but teller has found a way to make it his own teller does it brilliantly when he swallows the final needle and sort of gets it down look comes over his face of sort of blissful conclusion that makes me laugh every time he does it I've seen it a lot of times he is an enormous ly skilled magician who normally creative magician even though he doesn't do things with great forces another trick that bears tellers signature is called shadows it's a trick unlike any you're likely to see and was developed by him when he was still a teenager he was sitting in his room in candlelight he was a rather melodramatic teenager and he had some blocks from his childhood and they were casting a shadow on the wall and he pushed the blocks and you could see the shadow move and and then it said what a great effect shadows is probably the best bit in our show it's a perfect example of a trick that you have the image you want and the image doesn't have to be a rose falling apart with a shadow with something falling apart the shadow being more important than that the first time I saw a teller do the shadow eluding I actually cried there are moments when magic is so poetic that it just catches me nobody knows how it's done and no one will figure it out but that doesn't matter you could do it a much much simpler way and the idea is so great and so powerful and so interesting that people would fool themselves just to make that image be real to them the notion of envisioning that illusion and carrying it out so beautifully so delicately and small and simple you know I've seen it at least a dozen times live and it always gets me it was beautiful it was a magnificent simplistic looking piece that suddenly something happened that you didn't expect and it was also kind of gory and that aspect of it was also beautiful when he's not performing teller takes refuge in his self-styled home a virtual playground of sorts that reflects his passion for art his fascination with Magic's past and as you're about to see his whimsical sense of humor and when we return I probably do a little more to make it funny and tell her probably does a little more to make it amazing ever call now to book your vacation at Disney's California Adventure Deenie you helped icy bumps in the night our trickery if Penn & Teller's act is a reflection of their unique personalities then it also reflects their artistic influences for Penn it was the comic boldness of Lenny Bruce and the musical message of Bob Dylan teller was intrigued by the writings of Edgar Allen Poe the intellect of Houdini and the dramatic vision of Alfred Hitchcock but of all the individuals who have shaped Penn & Teller's career none is more important to them than James Randi a fellow magician and professional skeptic who has devoted his life to uncovering frauds and faith healers amazing Randi James Randi is not just an artistic influence but is a blueprint for how to be Penn & Teller I mean you he created us you know we met him when we were very very young and just starting out and the idea that we had that you could use trickery to talk about the truth is Randy's this is the place where Penn & Teller's ideas become reality it's a warehouse of sorts filled with various parts from their past tricks and the tools and supplies to build new ones one of the things we try to do is to start with an idea and then we push it and shove it and make it work you know and then this all every time up today the guys are working on the mechanics of an illusion that will involve burning the American flag did you tell us how to do this hold a triangle starting at the stripes and color and I certainly need each other to be successful doing what we do we have developed this thing that neither one of us can do alone at all we fold the flag ceremoniously right and I talked a little bit about the Constitution and the ability for free speech and to burn the flag I probably do a little more to make it funny and tell her probably does a little more to make it amazing that's just as good but it also discovers it's just so much and obviously doing more of the patter would would write the word teller was much more the you know let's work on the staging let's work on the presentation pin they would rehearse it to death and absolutely get it so that they could do it exactly the same way every time but that it would look like they were doing it for the first time what would happen if you were to burn a flag or symbolically burn a flag not in disgust not in protest of anything but rather in celebration of the very freedoms that flag symbolizes if you really listen to pen he has a lot to say and it's often a message Dylan's message or a political message or social message or an outrageous message that's really trying to get you to move more to the center and how you're thinking no matter what happens to the flag in some sense it's always protected by the Bill of Rights and that means we can do anything the Supreme Court says anything piece of chemically treated tissue paper is tender we can take a very eccentric magic wand and we can do this and the Supreme Court says it's okay because even though the flag is gone the Bill of Rights remains there are people that come to our show that are Christian and Jew and Muslim and Buddhist and they come to our show and they like our show which is the show done by two atheists that has blasphemy atheism as a component and that's because that's one of the things that happens in art you should trying to see someone else's point of view spreading the gospel of Penn & Teller has been a mission for them ever since they took their show on the road in the early 1980s but there were some who questioned whether they're literate style an ironic tone would play well across the country a whole idea that New York and San Francisco and LA are smarter than the rest of the countries it's just insane you get these Hollywood guys that can't even construct a sentence as far as you know have not read a book in their lives talking about you know they'll actually be this incredible rudeness you know well we got a plate of those idiots in Topeka and you kind of go we'll give me the idiots in Topeka who can like program in machine code do surgery and fix cars and you can do uh nothing over the course of their remarkable career Penn & Teller have written a number of books together produced a few home videos and appeared in their own feature film Penn & Teller get killed they recently had their own television series - an old-fashioned variety show called Sin City spectacular that's no longer on the air and when they're not performing in Las Vegas they're on the roads performing more than a hundred days a year yet despite their grueling schedule they still find time for themselves Penn works out regularly with a personal trainer and enjoys an occasional bike ride in the Las Vegas desert you think you look really but the whole world thinks for the pluggin jerk teller visits his parents in Philadelphia as often as possible on this day he convinced his father to help him with the painting so fussy he is he said darn fussy yes everything has to be perfect there's me right after the line it's a still life of flowers and brains and he's recently completed a book of his father's cartoons entitled when I'm dead all this will be yours it's a portrait of his father's early work as an artist thank you I join Penn & Teller's years of success and visibility have not distanced them from the public and perhaps their most literal attempt to break down the barrier between magicians and their audience they end every performance by mingling with their fans tell us over there the bigger crowd around them everybody talks about how accessible you are that we're online you know you can you can write his email and you can talk to us after the show we'll hang out we'll go to Denny's with you if you're paying you know and that's not really because there's this huge openness in our heart it's because we've got the right level of fame you have the level of fame where all that means is the world is a little friendlier and people are more polite that's all it means it's being this level of interesting instead of this level of interesting after more than 25 years of making us gasp cringe and question our perceptions Penn & Teller still revel in their ability to fool us and to move us if I go to a show I like to learn the vocabulary thing I like to learn a history thing and I like to learn most important something from the heart of another human being I like there to be some communication uh I believe that if you don't have that you don't have a good show he was standing naked underneath a Nazi flag in the basement of his house I said why do you always stand naked under a Nazi flag in the basement at your house when you negotiated with me and he said well I read somewhere that when you negotiate you have to know something that the other guy doesn't know and I would sit there going there's no way the guy on the other line knows that I'm naked with a donkey hat in front of a swastika he does not know there ya know the rules you just don't come

Channel: Adam Moore

Views: 1,079,174

Rating: 4.8234072 out of 5

Keywords: Penn & Teller (Double Act), Penn Jillette (Author), teller, penn, raymond teller, Documentary (TV Genre), Television Documentary (TV Genre), magic, magician, don't complain

Id: RJhQKw2xZIM

Length: 46min 12sec (2772 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 30 2013

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[u/lumm0r]

More recent post kids tour, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoEP9nU0b-I

[u/Inertia0811]

It starts out so gentle, with an ordinary enough looking kitchen and a pretty big tea pot, but before you know it he's showing off his framed panties, electric chair (in a sex dungeon) and actual human skeleton.

While it's a little weird, it doesn't really surprise me all that much.

edit: Somehow, after all the other shit, I forgot about the preserved fetuses in his "makeout lounge".

[u/anonymousredditor0]

Whoa

[u/kyoorius]

I get the quirky and eccentric stuff, but what’s with the lack of windows and light?

[u/youjustgotzinged]

I'm gonna be honest, that "home" is fucking disgusting. Zero regard for taste, aesthetics or decency. Just a bunch of self indulgent tacky kitsch held together in a place with all the appeal of Guantanamo Bay.