Penn & Teller MMT EGYPT

hello my name is Penn Jillette is my partner teller we are Penn & Teller and we are in Cairo Egypt and we're going to be searching for the gali gali the street performers Street magicians of of Cairo it's the it's the Street magicians we're in are you getting this that you we were able to hear me during this so here we are on the very busy streets of Cairo looking for some street performers I don't know how they would work these streets without getting killed [Music] it's Penn & Teller they're on the road together but then you should call his parent got the cups and balls to stomach blood and guts Andorran or the cups and balls is probably one of the oldest tricks in magic back in Vegas we do our own version but the gali gali men of Egypt did it first hundreds maybe thousands of years ago before Penn & Teller Ed Sullivan was the guy you counted on to bring the world to you're living in New York before I go into Europe and greatest of all magicians and new youngsters at home are really gonna love them a great gully gully so listen in 1949 he introduced us to one of the first golly golly man to make his way out of Egypt good evening ladies and gentlemen look closely I have the right of the table three empty cups born mock goober NAAFI in 1902 in Port Syed Egypt the position known as Luxor golly golly comes from a long line of street performers and is one of the rare few to make a name on the world stage his trademark trick was indeed the cups and balls with a little Egyptian twist I got one more hit again now it's gonna be but what of his descendents we've been told that the golly golly men are now gone they're a thing of the past but we're not sure that's true so being the adventurers that we are we decided to see if we can find the golly golly Ben the street magicians of old Egypt for ourselves [Applause] [Music] you know there's nothing teller and I like more than embracing a new culture we're not gonna eat anything we have in our hotel rooms we have cans and cans of tuna fish shipped over well you know one of the best things about going to a new place is trying to destroy that's also a good way to lose thirty pounds that's gonna give you the disease hey Jonah our guide translator and when she's looking where she's going just are driving eat the street food so although we're not you know germaphobic Howard Hughes we are falling about becoming where we are I'm not you know I won't be growing my fingernails out but I am so where we're being very careful [Music] the gali gali man of of Egypt we kind of think of our last chance over they are Tagalog element yeah they're for those of you that don't know the gali gali men are Street magicians they used to perform for all the tourists and I guess also for the locals but they did a different kind of magic than the kind of stuff we picture in the States and we are not particularly liked by Western magicians I mean that we thought maybe the gali gali men would like this because one they couldn't understand this which is always a big advantage and two we do smaller things like I'm gonna have you pick a card just tells you to riffle down the deck and you say stop oh that's a good place and look at the car I'm not gonna look at it I'll be looking over at the pyramids in the far distance and now that car's lost that watch t20 misdirect you right here in his hands me nothing fancier and so on these magicians these Western magicians with their big stage shows they've got you know boxes and they torture women and they got our smoke machine what do anybody and is this Shekhar do diamonds there it is show not the - of course not - diamonds we wanted to prove there was a - a diamonds in the deck because we thought you might be skeptical they have wind machines smoke machines bad white boy Motown music seven arts is that your guard of course is not your car because it changes magically to your card which is the four clubs or getting closer though and that's not good look at all the different guards at the deck it's all different so they have this whole style of doing magic that's different from ours in that we now have the three of hearts always a popular card probably the one you didn't pick because the three of Hearts changes magically into the two of clubs that your card okay so we're not like for Western education with a gali gali man would love us and somewhere Shona in this big beautiful city we're gonna find the magicians of Cairo and is that's your card three of clubs the three of clubs how'd he get that card there and how do you make look at his moss and people his falafel stands [Music] this is teller brushing his teeth with with bottled water I mean teller has goggles here that he wears in the shower so he doesn't get stuff in his eyes and he's showering and he actually put tape over his mouth to shower so he wouldn't get any microbes in there so you know we're Penn & Teller and we're here in Egypt so you don't have to go and don't mind that person there one of the people that works with us we were told that if there were street performers anywhere in Egypt it would be in the cafe's a Muhammad Ali Street in Old Cairo they come here to swap news and look for work of all the magicians someone called Khurram is said to be the best and is rumored to be a relative of Luxor Galaga Kurama hasn't shown up yet but some of the magicians have our first taste of Egyptian magic the Chinese linking rings [Applause] I was sick of that trip Atlantic stable like it over here now the more you see it it grows on finding the magic that was about 12 years old and I was sick of the linking rings by the time I was 13 seems like every guy and his brother and his camel do the do the linking winds starting to pick up the subtleties [Music] the linking rings if properly done is all about the ambiguity of light it's all about the ambiguity of these gleaming things which look so much like their length and then you know a second later look so much like their unlink the overlapping looks so similar to the linking there's a visual ambiguity that's quite quite a beautiful I thought I would show this old guy he's my closing linking and he tried it and he tried it he tried to follow what it was that I was doing and I showed him a second time but there's just such a completely different way of thinking about magic that it didn't connect with him trying to pass this piece of technical information across the language barrier and not quite succeeding was a very powerful sort of the very powerful sort of room and then Karim shows up just back from performing in Dubai we heard he's good very good and were eager to see just what he can do and to find out if he is in fact related to Luxor golly golly oh boy the Chinese linking rings but that's just as warm up and then it's our turn to show the cafe some magic and Aunt Eller style although we're upstaged by the waiter in the corner why don't you reach in there and take anyone you want how about you okay now you look at it we shold it out of the other people eating in this dollar we'll do the same over there and we will lay them out on the table here and now we have the mystic needle of Cairo now the cards are in there teller takes the needle and inserts it into his arm beginning and now the needle through the arm teller bleeds on the cards a little bit and what you tell me please sir which one of those cards as the most blood on it i okay we have the juice bags they were stuff to find your card is that right color first bandages his arm and now takes a takes a razor blade and to show you that it is indeed sharp and watch carefully teller takes his eye Alton open I've done some glass eating in the carnival and I know some clacks eaters and he was up he was showing off a lot he was eating bigger bites than he really should have been YUM [Music] so last night we met our first magician Cara what can he tell us about the golly golly men and their cups and balls and is he a direct descendant of Luxor golly golly we've driven north to aims shops a poor residential district on the outskirts of Cairo this is where kurama lives in a tiny two room apartment with his mother his wife and his five kids his grandfather he was an American he was a galley golly man and that's how he learned from his grandfather who told his father and then his father told him your grandfather worked in America gives a gustavo for America holiday and that put a lot of plays fifty years that he became known there as a magician one day it smooth Kenny smooth so Crom says his grandfather's name is mock goob and Luxor golly galleys name is ma Kubb how many my boobs could there be no there was a famous Egyptian magician in the u.s. called Luxor golly golly he was on all sorts of shows they had Sullivan Show and he was work to Rainbow Room in New York and he was which tell Bella whoop Dee those are his father's and his grandma who used to work with these specifically these cups so you can tell they're old and I've got the indentations cuz they're old he went back and looked at old photos of him you see these are for him in that book there was wasn't it yeah he lived in he lived in Las Vegas where they where they also have pyramids are any of his families to living in in Vegas the goofy Las Vegas la MD la cool Lobos you can ask how can I get DT my grandmother she died Violetta some mouthwash there are relatives but he doesn't know them at all they're not in contact with each other ma who performed in Luxor Egypt for likes of john d rockefeller JP morgan and the auga car he adopted the stage name luxor golly golly for the place of his initial success though Karim never met his relative their style seems to be the same they even resemble one another now one chicken exactly watch the cup nearest the camera can you see him slip out third ball underneath it's classic Egyptian cups and balls but then Karim is interrupted by his mother who also wants to get in on the act [Applause] so how cool was that thank you so much yeah this is what happened here I admired teller his bottle of water so he brought it over to me that's what happened with me or the egg bag teller was trying to compliment her on how good the egg bag was and he ended up getting it as a gift you see in our culture the United States of America if you say boy that's a really nice BMW the guy goes yes it is but over here you said that's a really nice egg back and they they they give you they give you the egg back so this is the big bag that was given to tell her by crumbs mother [Music] [Music] so that's that yeah but even if Khurram is from a long line of golly golly men and street magicians he's never performed in the streets in his life he says he's just our regular magician with a stage show [Music] and it's enormous it's it's it's you know it's big it's big the Sphinx the Sphinx is big it's very big Nefertiti yes and they got to be young one they dated her in high school you know this looks a lot like no you don't have any Elvis memorabilia do you give me with Elvis on it we're from the US we liked our pyramids without your American yeah we god Bless America buddy and how much is this ten dollars ten dollars five dollars it's worth more than five I'll give you seven for they expect you to bargain I have the holy spirit here show the holy Smurf the whole Schmeer yeah I haven't had any Iowa I have no evil eye problem I would get an able I hear a fiery one I mean I don't know I have a computer now ship of the visited yes I know the ship of the desert I'm asked you may see some on the ship of the desert [Music] hello Kim I want a camel now yeah we're trying to find magic unique this is Nathan this is Daisy the Campbell he's going to dad nice play nice t-shirt this was an exciting new experience on a on a spinning beast that wanted me dead these are the the actual cups used for the cups and balls bye bye Penn & Teller and this is the land where the cups and balls started thousands and thousands of years ago and as you saw in the cafe it's still being done we do it in the United States of America with plastic they do it here with the metal cups the ones that Karen was using was a were over 150 years old one last night Karim did a trick for me in which he had three cups and three balls he put one ball under each cup and then after a certain amount of chat revealed that there was one ball under each cup a normal person looking at it would say so what but to a magician this is an absolutely terrific trick because when he covered the first ball he apparently stole that ball out and pawned it and when he covered the second ball he apparently inserted the ball that he had palmed and when he covered the third cup he apparently stole that ball out and then he took one more look under a second cup so to somebody like me who's thinking about moves I thought that he had snuck the balls from each of the N cups under the center cup and then he asked me how many balls are under each cup and I said 1 1 1 that's because when I was playing the role of a sucker I was saying okay I'll be I'll be nice to him I'll be nice to this to the sky from this foreign country I'll pretend to be a spectator and then he lifted the cups and lo and behold it was 1 1 1 when I was absolutely sure that there were all three under the middle because I had seen him do the slides it was absolutely amazing it completely took me in I don't think there's a nicer thing that you can do for a fellow magician and use his knowledge to fool the heck out of it it's really pure magic for magicians and really cross cross-cultural and a very very mean-spirited totally snake the little guy do you like my hat do you think but I look like a tourist I'm worried about that how about some Las Vegas magic here in the Egypt desert see those pyramids remember what they look like because pretty soon they'll [Music] then until the vanish the pyramids oK we've seen the pyramids and now back to looking for the gamma gamma man with the street magicians of old Egypt no one knows how many people live in Cairo but my best guess is seventeen million two hundred and seventy two thousand four hundred and twenty three and every one of them drives it's the second most polluted city in the world and when a Cairo's a beautiful city full of friendly wonderful people that we enjoy everybody we met but the air in Cairo there's seventeen million people in this little Basin with no wind and it's the feeling of being locked in a hermetically sealed closet rubber hose coming off the exhaust pipe of a 1962 Chevy v8 being wrapped [Music] golly golly man these four board ships and entertained passengers with their tricks in Alexandria why not look there maybe the air is cleaner Alexandria named after Alexander the Great home of Cleopatra and also home of Mustafa of Alexandria a magician also called Bafa who if we're lucky is gonna swallow a snake for us by his own admission the greatest magician in all of Egypt bhavas signature trick is a snake swallow he's not the countryside trying to catch a snake and we're on our way to find it I'm still dealing with a little bit of my Cairo cough and congestion but I still can't keep me down that would you see me watching the trick I have a proper time [Music] shall I Lala boffo says he invented the snake swallowing trick and he's the only magician in Egypt who can do it okay did bother finest Nick is that old man honey can you see Bafa doesn't just catch snakes he claims he can hypnotize them by repeating religious texts okay [Laughter] Judy Garland is Dorothy baseman CD less a yogi much RVD none of the five and their shape and children have you found a snake later henna well I mean he said he found one oh good well let's get a little bit of a crowd wanna do it for the kids that [Music] snake is the best crowd gathering I've ever seen the snake doesn't seem to exactly pull them in now if you're gonna swallow a snake you really don't want to be doing it with one that's shedding its skin so although this might look like a man chasing a bunch of kids with a snake to a magician it's classic misdirection because in all the confusion Bafa switched the snake he found for another one in his pocket [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] it looked like to me like he put a snake in his mouth now to come out of his mouth I'm very happy with it you like that you like that that a good trick very good trick we're all very happy with this we spent an hour with Bafa on the pier in the harbour talking about his life as a magician born and bred in the city he used to perform on the ships passing through this ancient port it's a place full of history and faded floor said he's been a magician for 35 years can can under khemsa know viola he began when he was seven years old he said that he would he would stand on the on the pier next to the ship and start doing tricks in the foreign the tourists would see him and say oh a nice small boy you know coming to perform for us and they would lift him up into the boat on croute and he would perform for them he shows us the first trick he learned on the pier as a child [Music] Bava the great of Alexandria a real golly golly man still performing on the streets back of the hotel we start to think about Papa's performance in the village indistinct think of the mouth invented which the same thing in the mouth is this whole level of trick that's very very different from magic it's more just it's a little more equivalent to the kind of thing when you take a school bus in grade school the kind of things you do to try to get the girls to throw up it's much more than that kind of style of entertaining there's a trick because the turbine trip which I guess we do three tricks for that same thing probably about three minutes he you all see this in real time because it wouldn't hold up for television but he took out my 12 minutes 15 20 a long time to do the same trick very methodically people stop their conversations and then go back it's a whole different it is the opposite of the MTV generation and when he camps out there he would just do it different kids would come up and do it again do it again kids kind of cycle through and it's all very very gentle nothing know that stuff I don't know if we ever got to know the real Bafa the only thing we could find out is that he lives in the top story of a condemned apartment building in a seedy part of town and the powers that be would let us film after a bath had finished his little show in the in the village teller went over and through our translator said that it was a really wonderful show and complimented him on the show and talked about some specific things that he'd really liked and bothell of course turned his back because when you're the great Bafa what are compliments from teller [Music] [Applause] Bava of alexandria couldn't be the only golly golly man was anyone still doing magic on the streets of Cairo [Music] come eat so biatch Molly golly golly man of Cairo [Music] the whole Maui family is golly golly the Sun the a grandfather generation after generation of street performance [Music] like their ancestors before them they work a crowd and pass ahead [Applause] I have that kind of chicken in your shoot field the chicken is so happy in my suit we didn't get the whole translation but I think the ash Maui family was claiming to have been golly golly since a couple of generations after to a no source rats [Music] [Music] so do the cups and balls trick really originated here in Egypt we're heading about 200 miles south to the ancient tombs of Beni Assad where we may find the earliest paintings of the cups and balls ever retorted we're talking four thousand years old whoo the mystery of Beni Hasan who the mystery you I got a got a Cairo I can't breathe so we're gonna go up the Nile right to the air which is Minya and we're gonna leave our representation of Cairo all of which ends up in your lungs and we're going to go up the Nile of Cheez Whiz to Minya where teller will see the cups and balls and I will be one of the huddled masses longing longing to breathe free tellers sitting here with more tez who's our government minder easier to make sure that all the wheels are greased on other things and making sure that we we make each look good but you're doing a fine job of Intel there's just uh play with the cups of balls with the more tests when teller was eight or nine years old he was given a book called this is magic I will Dexter killer learns the cups and balls is known to be the most ancient magic trick because there were pictures of it on the walls of the penny Hasan tombs in Egypt since then there's been some controversy as to whether or not that's true some people say it's not the cups and balls at all but just a couple of guys playing some kind of game we're gonna see those two balls for ourselves [Applause] the mystery [Applause] [Music] so here we are in menu Minya was a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism and our government minders are visibly nervous about our security we have an armed escort which one is our armed escort we've arranged to meet up with Lila Brock an Egyptologist working in the Valley of the Kings she'll go to the tombs with us tomorrow but her train is running late [Music] [Applause] [Music] we've been typing in to a little fan club on the internet about our adventures over here since they all heard an art little fan club that we were eating canned pears they've decided to now it's 10 o'clock in the evening over here and they're having canned pears at just about noon on the west coast when we're enjoying it with the same size cans already we didn't tell him about the Cheez Whiz getting on to midnight and Lila still has invaded [Music] Road fatigue are so violent we've had people with guns and trucks following us around all day and how we're doing that to what to be here to go to this tome and what are we gonna see in the tube well um right now we're looking at this sold volume by person Newberry brainy Newburgh the first movie about Beni Hassan and I'm just going to show you the illustration here it shows two men and they seem to have four cups between them now this is on the wall of a tomb yes if someone called back at the third and I think he was one of the governors at Beni Hasan during the middle I guess what I don't get is this would be this guy's life story would be like oh you know a lot of guys danced and then these ladies danced and we all applaud for him you do some some some cattle to market and then we punished some people then we did the cups and balls and now I'm dead could be worse you could be building pyramids oh yeah in some ways it's a demonstration of his wealth and importance to show that indeed these many people I kind of get the impression of what's going on here is he's lifting something up and there's something underneath it or well what do you think they're doing here anyway we could always edit this whole part out but we'll just pretend a lot this is we're really sure this is the cups and balls shouldn't take much to buy Egyptologist to say absolutely that's the cuffs of also we have a waste at our time how much could she does grace or easin know there's Beni Hassan [Music] we are much better protected than you can see they won't let us shoot anyone a uniform which is more than half of the population of this particular group is in uniform and as weapons there's even boats around us that have deterrence and stuff but every time we try to shoot them we get reprimanded like so or being reprimanded right now I got a better gig than the city once the city beasts of burden have it tougher [Music] in some of the tombs they dig a shaft and they put the with a little room down at the bottom and they would have put the actual burial in there and what we're seeing that we call a tun is actually the visiting area I see relatives to come and leave offerings so my guess 15 is down to the left are these the numbers were looking at this 22 I think so yeah that means you really have like seven ago looks like it fun to show off my math skills thanks what you go first I'm afraid no go ahead that's it [Music] this would have been very bright was first done Oh brilliant color [Applause] there does seem to be something more and the thong is on our right we can see his hand there I think you might be holding something I don't see anything at all but teller wants to take a closer look you see anything that could be added there at all we're really hoping to see some sort of ball type thing it's very hard to look for cups and balls stuff cuz the whole room is just so so awe-inspiring I mean even the way it sounds and go is just terrifying and to think that those are up there for 4,000 years weird thing is we're staring here run over the others are kind of pulling a rabbit to take a much closer look but this isn't the only ancient entertainment painting in the tool oh yeah that's that's clearly juggling I started out as a juggler that's what uh that's where I started before I get into magic um I'm much happy about this I guess once again the jugglers who beat the magician's here we have if we have clear proof here that that's Wow and it might have been something here see look at the red it almost looks as if the artist originally had hand in this position but something red in it that's right and then he changed his mind didn't do that out it's hard even thinking here it's hard to talk because the the sound is so reverent and even when you they when you clear your throat it sounds very very important it's all very awesome not in the California sense but in the literal sense and it's pretty cool I mean I know that is this thing is mostly a magic but it's they can gently to see the the juggling is is pretty great it's really great we don't know really whether that painting up there is indeed the cups and balls but we do know that cups and balls have done throughout the world that has been done as far as we know forever and this is our version of it that just uses three plastic cups and uses three in our case aluminum foil ball simple props simple moves stunts like this watch carefully takes the ball place in his hand vanishes it and it appears underneath the cup the second ball place in his hand and it appears once again underneath the cup it's pretty simple plot takes the ball place in his hand to play over well please don't need the cup and then it appears underneath the cup magic okay three cups three balls you take the center ball place it in the center cup each of the side balls put them away and then I need the center cup there is a three ball party three balls I'll eat the guts and then little magic move there's one more under the center cup one more under either side and of course a potato for the finish is your potato drawn up parallel now that's the way done four thousand years ago with we would hope that would amuse and amaze them but it wouldn't would it shock them at all we wanted the end of the 20th century to add something a little bit more American a little bit difference we decided to break a few rules of magic most of which go back probably much more than 4,000 years first rule of magic is you never do the same trick twice we're gonna do the same trick twice second rule of magic is you never let the audience see your secret preparation you can't let anyone know what is hidden in bitch pocket the third rule of matches you never tell what audience how a trick is done I want to tell you exactly how this trick is being done and the fourth rule of magic I guess the pharaohs were never thought of but you never ever do the cups and balls with clean so here's the cups and balls again this time and our version we hit the first ball but everybody's in our hand I've already stuck beneath the first Cup played the second ball simultaneously Socrative leave the cup pretend to play Zaatari and show it treat the third and final ball for anybody's in our hand pretend to show you the cop placed in the cup and secretly secrete and reveal it now we're all set for the second half three cups all loaded three balls on top the center ball placed in the center cup each of the side balls may be put away we don't need them anymore we have three doubles in the second cops these the ball that I'm over here now this is not juggling oh this is called as misdirection where I look over here tell us he's the final ball under there's one more on either side or finish a very Egyptian potato maybe was the blistering heat or the exhausting climb of the side of the mountain maybe it was just the romance of standing in an ancient Egyptian tomb but the more distance we put between us and and those wall paintings unless it seems that there's any chance that they were the cups and balls it seems just as likely they were ancient egyptian bongo players or something there may have been a rich Egyptian tradition of magic but sadly it seems to have faded unless you count reruns of The Ed Sullivan Show the reason we think of Egypt is so magical is because American and English magicians at the end of the 19th century painted hybrid glyphs on their props to make him look more mystical but coming up into the 21st century if you want to find Egyptian magic you're gonna have to come here to Las Vegas Nevada are you done we're out of Egypt let my people go you know we've enjoyed all these gala galley men in their cafes and on their streets and so on but the rings are nice and the cups and balls are nice but we're from the United States of America Las Vegas we like to do big tricks so we're gonna do something with the pyramids how about we float one of the pyramids in the air what do you say now watch carefully has the pyramid floats right in the air [Music] gotta gotta got me ha ha now see that's some American desert magic right out here in the Egyptian desert astonishing [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: 770pratik

Views: 1,312,693

Rating: 4.8036542 out of 5

Keywords: Penn, Tellet, MMT, EGYPT, magic, documentary, history, Magic, Mystery

Id: bWaE5vROvs0

Length: 50min 10sec (3010 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 18 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/blarneyone]

NO TELLER STOP TALKING

[u/Nolon]

HA I ended up watching China and India too

[u/bigrubberduck]

This might be the first time I have ever heard Penn Teller speak before...

[u/MaDDaWg836]

yea, great series, love their stuff.