The Sit-Down: Penn & Teller

[Music] hi everybody you're watching the sit-down on DJ 6 myth look who we got in the building Penn & Teller something doing good you see a movie to meet you I don't think I'm gonna be hearing anything from you today not a lot not a lot how long is this whole gig been going on now oh well tell her and I've been working together 44 years Wow but tell her not speaking publicly has been going longer than that tell her when I first met him teller was already working silently hmm that was just the decision you wanna make I think it was really interested in seeing if he could lie to people without speaking you know it's it's one thing to listen it's another thing to never speak I know it's pretty fascinating how that goes that makes it interesting so so why don't we wind things back talk about you as an illusionist take me back to being a little kid and well I started late no tell us Charlie was five he had had health problems and sent away for a Howdy Doody magic kit and became fascinated by that but the time I met tell he was already a good magician and I sure not as a juggler yeah you're the clown school I went to bring Lee Brothers Barnum Bailey greatest show on earth Clown College did not even know that existed it doesn't a news story yeah anymore just a brief period of time when they wanted to try to bust unions by putting new people into clowning quickly and it was really pretty pretty interesting you know I went right from high school right into Barnaby all the great issue on earth that's a mouthful it is and you had to say it every time and we had a we had a PR class and in the PR class we were taught that we always had to say the complete name of the circus Iran you couldn't say the circus couldn't say the show oh I was gonna say Ringling because they want a Ringling Brothers Barnum Bailey greatest show on earth every time you said it that was their idea of branding and now they've gone out of business but I they lasted over a hundred years how long was the program for it was only a few months but during that we did you know why are walking in trapeze and I went in mostly as a juggler and you had learn clown makeup and falling down and all that all that stupid stuff you would imagine I'm sure you don't miss putting that makeup on I didn't do it for long you know I wasn't I wasn't physically I wasn't a funny physical comedian said the juggler I was mostly juggling they brought me on as a juggler and then I decided that I wanted to do more talking hmm it seems like that's kind of been the best workout yeah that cloud white you know the guys that do those three shows a day they're in there full full clown makeup from you know 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. yeah that sounds crazy forever not fans all right no definitely not so I've read some stuff you've said in the past about where magic was at when you guys were first started now and just in terms of the landscape how have things changed well you know when we started out it was really just you know a greasy guy that talks with a lot of birds torturing women in front of my alarm too bad ripoff mo Tommy yeah I mean that's what it was I was only that that kind of stuff and then we came along that's just in this particular way there are two schools of magic there's the one school of magic that thinks that you're supposed to pretend to be doing real miracles like keep the mystery there right and the religious magicians you could say and then there's the whole other school of skepticism most famously Harry Houdini and then on to amazing Randi that pride themselves ourselves at being honest at saying you know we're we're doing tricks and you know the other side of the of that argument will say that they're doing events or stunts so we don't know what's gonna happen and then we simply say tricks and tricks is of course the more intellectual way to do it illusion is a term of art for something it's mostly visual you know mirror snuff and things like that but trick is really something that explores how we ascertain what's true how do we get knowledge which is fascinating and wonderful lying to people and saying they have real powers has no interest to me at all you know and we see a lot of that and then so it was it was a lot of stage magic and then we watched in the mid nineties as that kind of um street magician thing started like David Blaine and then everybody who ripped off David Blaine David David Blaine did probably the greatest magic TV special ever was Street magic and people loved it and then you know another thirty guys came along doing that same special zillion times and David Blaine's first special he's kind of doing tricks and it's it's pretty charming and pretty great and the idea of that special that was so smart was showing the people's reaction you know it wasn't so much Here I am doing a trick it's Here I am doing a trick this is how these people reacted he was really smart and really cool and then David started doing stuff that was more like maybe I have real power maybe I'm real magic which I always think is so much less interesting you know because you say if you say you're real magic then you've got some people who will believe you which is kind of sad and sleepy and then there's the people who just think you're a where's what you're doing tricks it just comes down to very simple what kinds of shortcuts in human thinking are you exploiting here and also is automatically and I'm using this term very broadly but it's automatically political because you automatically think if these fools cannot scam me like this what are people with real budgets able to do right yeah and I'm sure for you guys it's been hard at times maybe in the beginning just to debunk that and like just you've been very outspoken about talking about your tricks and talking about things yeah you know there's there is this myth that's even believed by those who perpetuate it that there's some sort of code of codes you know that the code of magic is not a it's not a moral code there's nothing morally wrong about giving away magic secrets it's an artistic code you know like you know how many beats a minute you want to do and dance music so you know I mean that doesn't mean that you have to do that because because that's that's that's that's a moral and parent if it just means you know we find this works most the time and most of the time you do want to keep the trick secret because most of the time it's more beautiful but once in a while is interesting and beautiful to let the audience in and Surprise them and also it plays the bigger lie when we come out and show you something that has a really clever trick behind it then you tend to think that all of our tricks are that clever and beautiful and most of the secrets we keep secret because they're so ugly and stupid hmm there seems which dog leads stupid would you like simplicity at the core no no sometimes it's very very complex it's it's sometimes the way we do stuff is just so I mean there's I can tell you how every magic trick is done but I will tell you the secret to everything and that is we're willing to spend more time than you think it's worth so how much time are we talking some tricks it's years and years and years oh yeah we've got stuff in the show well there's there's stuff of the show we've come back to after 25 30 years when they've been counting that right there's stuff that we write and work on and layout and then work four years five years six years in the show yeah and there's some stuff that goes in quicker it has to of course we do up we do a new ending every show fool us we do a new while we do a new trick so we have to we have to come up with about 13 new closers every year and those have to be quicker than six years but some of those are things were working on for a very long time you know magic is very very different you know when you um I don't mean to be in any way disrespectful when you learn music then you learn to play an instrument you learn to play keyboard going to play sax the skills that you've required to do that allow you to play other pieces of music now you know when you're talking about someone like Miles Davis or Bob Dylan or breaking down walls and reinventing things that's a whole different issue I'm just talking about competence on the instrument you know the ability to play those notes I read music gibble and with magic väri there's this exceptions you know once you learn a few things with cards those are reusable saris when you learn you know a pass or a French drop you can use that other places but for the most part in doing magic when you write a piece you have to invent the instrument you're gonna play it on and you have to lose much more creativity I'm not really creativity but there's just a lot more drudgery yeah you know we're just gotta know now we gotta learn this right you know and that's also what's wonderful about it you know you sometimes some of my friends are in music had just been reading down charts for a long time there's a certain kind of boredom that comes over that but with magic you're you have to start fresh all the time as they say in meditation the beginner's mind you you have to have that all the time well I think music is an interesting place to compare because you think about some artists playing the hits and going out and doing those over and over again do you guys ever feel that pressure say if you have something of a trick from 25 years ago and you've been doing it consistently for years is there pressure to get new stuff and the old stuff how do you yeah well the pressure is oddly in both directions you know we didn't think probably our most famous trick that's been you know voted many times and papers and so on the greatest magic trick of all time we did the double bullet catch which is not a not an idea that we invented the bullet catch goes back as an American trick goes back a few hundred years but our version was you know 357 magnums load about its members bullets signed shot each other's faces and ostensibly caught in the teeth which of course we never claimed was dangerous which is really important you know so many magicians especially today try to say to their audience hey we might die doing this tune in this is really dangerous are the time I believe that that kind of hype is not is immoral because if you're lying fine but then you're also debase in the audience by saying you want to come and see us get hurt if you want to come and see us get hurt you shouldn't be going to any reason to payment and so and if you're not lying then you have no right to make the audience morally complicit in your reckless regard for your own life so we did it was completely safe but we did that trick for many many years and it was very very well known and then we just stopped doing and not because we didn't like it we still loved doing the last night we did it we loved doing it it was just that we wanted to do the different thing we've since we've been in Vegas you know the past 18 years we've done what six or seven hours maybe more of brand-new material and it is possible to to be non-monogamous with your material you can love that material very much and still want to do new stuff so I don't like it very much when people try to say well I get bored with those old songs and do new stuff you can say it's those old bits were great we just got new bits we love to do - every time we revisit the old stuff we love doing that - yeah I'm sure you've got to if you're a live performer you've got to while you're doing it it's just in terms of Mental Hygiene you've got to pretend that that bit you're doing right then is the most important in the world right you can't do the first time you can't say I can't wait to get to the new stuff yeah you know and sometimes that takes some some some willpower sometimes it takes some discipline but that's always the goal is to make the bit you're performing because you can't say you know boy you guys should have seen this last night we were good it's really fascinating to me where you draw the moral line when it comes to people trying to dupe you to get there whereas you weren't gonna draw the moral line with exposing secrets to certain things how you very first of all human life is important and I don't think it's right to to make people be part of taking that recklessly I think that love for life is what art should celebrate absolutely in every front so that's an easy more aligned draw the moral line on lying to people I I tend to draw the battle line a different place we had one magician who got very very angry at us when we were giving away the cups and balls with the clear plastic cups and said whose side do you want anyway and we said well the audience's side absolutely no one else says what's no one else draws battle lines Bob Dylan doesn't say the big Jagger who are the audience that's ridiculous and it's really situational like you're saying - but like the fact that other magicians call you guys that how do you deal with the rest of the magician's well what's that like it's changed I mean in the 80s we were where we were come when we were kind of coming up people were getting used to us there there was a lot of hostility but now you know decades have passed we've been around for a long time we went from being thrown out of the Magic Castle to being magician's of the year as many times as anyone else has been I believe what were you gonna start out for we were throwing for giving away Metro and but now it's come around that people understand us and now that we're doing Penn & Teller fool us and we've given so many young magicians their first break you know they go on to other shows get well and all but they many of them will give us credit as being their first national TV exposure and the way we deal with giving away magic secrets I like to think is is not permanent but rather respectful ryegrass sure so one of the things ultimately tip for you guys in terms of really making this a mainstream thing well you know we're from middle-class barely backgrounds my father was a jail guard tellers dad was a commercial artist so it was very early in our careers when we started making the kind of lifestyle that we grew up with and we consider ourselves completely successful you know and we also had this view of how our lives were gonna be that we would always be playing for maybe a couple hundred people a night and you guys would have been cool we would have been very cool sidered ourselves completely successful and then we came to New York on a whim what year was it Richard Frankel in 84 okay producers took it took a shot at us off-broadway we did not expect you to be successful neither one of us we took it as okay they're gonna try to give us the money that give it right where were you guys getting paid for that for for those four shows oh I don't know I mean it was very good money for us at the time I know but when we were playing we were playing fares and and you know outdoor festivals and fairs and stuff like that we were making a lower-middle-class living but we were both single we had no dependents right we're very very happy to do that for our whole lives and we came to New York and all of a sudden it went from doing fairs and carnivals to you know Howard Stern and David Letterman and Saturday Night Live and when we went from off-broadway to Broadway and it turned out we were off by an order of magnitude instead of you know two other people wanted to see is about mm did and we never had a goal to be on Broadway we never had a goal of a venue whenever the gold be in Vegas we just had a goal to do shows together that we thought were pretty great it's astonishing to me how many people get into show business to get out of it you know most of our peers in Vegas put together a show right and get successful with it and then play golf all day I want to make a quick buck and then get out no no they they end up just playing golf all day and then going and doing their same show for years and you guys my hobby is doing magic tricks to tell her so I mean I want to do that you know if we if we stop getting paid we'd still come up with magic so I've read about you guys hanging out at the coffee shop kind of bouncing ideas there how long has that been going on for them well we all mean 44 years we're working together how long and so how long take me inside the coffee shop session while we sit down we sometimes we sometimes bring notes to the meeting well fortunately we go to kind of the same places in Vegas all the time so the the patrons there know us and so we're not we're not bothered right and we sit we sit across from one another with with you know decaffeinated odd beverages no caffeine no and we reject up enough you don't want to see us jacked up we sometimes bring notes or stuff we're thinking about and we have a style of working that's very very out of fashion now which is when one of us gets an idea the other one tries to shoot it down there's no sort of let's go with this there's no sort of improv always saying yes because if we if there are mistakes in that trick we want to find them quickly so we don't waste a lot of time putting them together yeah and then it always starts even when I have felt that I'm bringing something to tell her finished never is never even close usually ends up unrecognizable not only not finished unrecognizable and when tell that brings ideas we we change and we monkey with them but very quickly it becomes a two-person idea and then that whole stage that whole note stage is one whole thing and then we have to bring me crew in and the other people that we work with and build you know the first prototypes out of cardboard and plywood and gaffers tape and go through that whole stage and we're fortunate because we play in Vegas you know we we play at the Penn & Teller theater yeah gives you an idea that we have a little bit of muscle there yeah you got footing in being you don't have to say you know we don't have to clear with anybody we just say you want to put this in yeah throw it in and we we are fortunate to have a show that people seem to enjoy a lot so if we have a bit that's a little bit shaky a little bit weak we put it in between two strong bits maybe the audience doesn't notice until it gets really good and I mean there's nothing we like we like more than doing that we're in a perfect situation we have in our crew you know the new guy is 12 years you know 12 13 years that's the new guy right for most it would be a long tenured guy yeah and we go back forever with these people and it becomes you know Penn & Teller is really kind of when you come right down with 15 20 people I guess even even the the core is six or seven you know and we get these crazy ideas and people try to help us make them happen I mean it really is if you asked me when I was fifteen what my ideal life would be it would be exactly what we have and we go in and we're able to think up ideas that we like and get into onstage people helping us I mean and then people coming to see him I mean every single there could be a breakdown any stage no I mean listen I told you guys I saw your show a few years back and it's a very entertaining experience whether you're into the whole magic thing you're just jumping in for the first time I think that's the cool thing about what you guys have we tried we tried to make it so there's also a lot to think about in magic that it's delicious me that people throw that away like what give me an example as I said earlier if you say I have magic powers then people have two choices or huh but if you say we're doing tricks there and you talked a little bit about how a trick is put together and assembled you're talking about the entire reasoning power that we have you can talk about how how cause and effect you know how correlation is is distorted in magic you can talk about misdirection as a general idea the ideas in magic are really very broad they're the ideas of how we think and how we ascertain knowledge you know just like just like music contains built into it romance and poetry and movement it's built into music and those things are explored with every piece of music that's done and in magic you have how do we tell what's true or what mistakes do we make and perception and those should be explored all the time when you say have real magic powers that part of it goes away the part that says it's almost like you know doing music without dancing right you can't do it you've got to be tapping your foot and in magic you've got to be thinking about how how you establish truth you've got to be what is something that would surprise people about your relationship or about your show well that we didn't start out as friends you know there was never you know with most of your teams with you're talking Jagger and Richards were running two McCartney or Martin and Lewis going back further they start out with with the real affection for one another and when that love falls apart you have a horrible we wouldn't let any McCartney no longer were in love with each other yeah but what television is than we did separately and that makes it colder but it also turns out their respect may last a lot longer than affection and then you know and I got to say this because my daughter makes me say this but teller is my BFF yeah but we don't socialize very often but you know important stuff you know what our when our parents died when my children were born it's really important things your guys they go to one another but we don't pal around much we really don't it's really interesting so when people check out the show on CW what are some big things that they should be thinking about when they check you guys out well you know we when you see magic on TV it's I think I can say this universally it's always faked they decide exactly where the camera goes usually they have what some of our street magician colleagues call friendlies which is to say the people that you're seeing there have been coached I got bubble we're doing fool us the audience knows that those magicians are coming out to do a trick once and for us and they also know that we are not although we make them look as good as we can and there's the shiny black floor and the 12 cameras and everything's beautiful audience everything's all set up we are not doing anything camera wise or cut wise to make it look different because that would be cheating yeah you years you have to see exactly what we see and what I really love about our show is I get so offended on the talent shows that are on TV that like we're doing oh well you know America's Got Talent or American Idol or anything I always think who are these people to judge you know if you show me a show where Bob Dylan's son raw and Tiny Tim win then I'm okay with her but as long as you're getting people winning that are just by the numbers and kind of mainstream I'm not interested in our show we don't make any comments about how good they are how successful they'll be anything they should change in their show it's very simple it's very black-and-white did you fool us not did you fool anybody else it's not a fool anyone else yeah people have come out and fooled us with really dumb tricks and every other magician knew and people had come out with really really smart tricks and not fools you know it's just about the two of us and actually really interesting yeah and it's just it's just I mean what we like to remind people is the most successful people on our show haven't fooled us pif the magic dragon came on the first season he did not fool us but he went on to do America's Got Talent did very well on there and now has his own theater in Vegas and is one of our best friends but in that action rule he did not fool us so it's a very strange show where some of the people who've won and fooled us have gone on to do nothing you know because all they did was fool Penn and Teller right and the audience didn't and others have gone on and lost and done very very well after that and some have done boast Jim lemon you know went on to fool us two times and also went on to win America's Got Talent and all sorts of other stuff but I I want there to be you know a very clear demarcation around what we do and what we do is did you fool us not is this genius like I say so I want to tell everybody where they go check it out yeah check it out on the c-w Monday nights at 8:00 then we played again on Wednesday night Penn & Teller fool us if you didn't see the first show of this season we did something that no other show like this has ever done and for good reason because it's a stupid idea we decided to put ourselves under the same pressure that the people on our show are on oh and we went out to try to fool David Copperfield oh so we put David Copperfield in our seat with the earpiece with the notepad every pressure right then we went out to see if we could on our own show if we could win their own show and I'll tell you I have not seen teller actually tremble in 20 years actually hand shaking like this before doing a card trick and I had to wait before we went on call for a glass of water my mouth when totally cottonmouth totally dry never know we're pros and behaved a copperfield scared the living show and we were very very proud because you know you don't see you know you don't see how a Mandel getting up and going up against the judges that's true we did he was just here last week by the way well guys thanks a lot pleasure thanks so thank you very much hi everybody see you next time your other sit down

Channel: CBS Local News

Views: 6,233

Rating: 4.8490567 out of 5

Keywords: CBS Local Interviews, harry houdini, penn jillette, raymond teller, magic videos, magic tricks

Id: 8iVxLyTWL60

Length: 28min 11sec (1691 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2019