Speaker 1: Maybe four times a year. We go out to have dinner,
Speaker 1: the two of us, four times a year, and we
Speaker 1: worked together seven days a week. And the reason is
Speaker 1: we go we go out to eat. What you do today, Teller,
Speaker 1: Same fucking thing you did, Penn, Same what you do
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, Same thing you did. What was it
Speaker 1: like to be with Letterman? Same as it was when
Speaker 1: I was with Letterman? What was it like to do
Speaker 1: Saturnight Live? Exactly like it was for you? That's so interesting. Hi.
Speaker 1: My name is Pen Gillette, and I am more than
Speaker 1: half by height of Penn and Teller, but I've been
Speaker 1: known to line Hi there, everybody. Oh, I am so
Speaker 1: excited for today. Welcome back to Off the Beat. This
Speaker 1: is your host, Brian baum Gartner. And today, as you
Speaker 1: just heard, I I'm talking with, well with one of
Speaker 1: the greatest magic men in history, the extraordinary and extraordinarily
Speaker 1: interesting Penn Gillette, who was able to take a field
Speaker 1: that was filled with quote, greasy guys in tuxes with
Speaker 1: a ton of birds. That's his words, not mine, and
Speaker 1: turn it into something truly truly spectacular. You probably know
Speaker 1: him as half of the duo Penn and Teller, because
Speaker 1: the two of them have been working side by side
Speaker 1: for decades. Forty seven years they have known each other,
Speaker 1: Penn told me today, honestly, probably longer than some of
Speaker 1: you have been alive. I know, much longer than many
Speaker 1: of you have been alive. They've had hugely successful TV
Speaker 1: shows like Penn and Teller Bullshit and Penn and Teller
Speaker 1: fool Us. They've had a residency at the Rio in
Speaker 1: Vegas since two thousand and one. Penn has written books,
Speaker 1: had story ideas adapted into amazing television episodes. He played
Speaker 1: Freaking Drell on the nineties version of Supreme at the Teenage,
Speaker 1: which he has done it all all driven by his
Speaker 1: deep intellectual curiosity and his his pure devotion to keeping
Speaker 1: things fun and interesting and much like Greg Daniels on
Speaker 1: The Office, truthful. So with that little primer, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: let Pen come on so you can hear from the
Speaker 1: man himself. I had so much fun talking to Penn today.
Speaker 1: We didn't know each other before today, but I tell
Speaker 1: you this, We're going to be friends for life. Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen. Penn Gillette, Bubble and Squeak. I love it,
Speaker 1: Bubble and Squeak, Bubble and squeaker cooking it every month.
Speaker 1: Lift over from the ny What's up? Pen Boy? That
Speaker 1: countdown told me just when to tense up. I got
Speaker 1: really tense. I got five seconds to get tense, and
Speaker 1: I did it. I'm so good. I am a long
Speaker 1: admirer of you and your work. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming to talk to me today. Well, it is mutual. Uh.
Speaker 1: My son has watched The Office all the way through,
Speaker 1: I believe four times. I can't say that I've watched
Speaker 1: every episode with him every time. But if I want
Speaker 1: to win the home theater to watch something, it's always
Speaker 1: you on the TV. How old is he? He is? Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's it feels now. Whether they like the show
Speaker 1: or don't like the show, it's become cultural required viewing.
Speaker 1: And um over supper, he will do whole hunks. Occasionally
Speaker 1: he'll he'll start speaking a little more wittily than usual
Speaker 1: and we realize he's quoting The Office. Oh that is awesome.
Speaker 1: I oh my gosh, your life, your career is so
Speaker 1: fascinating to me. I'm I'm really excited to dive in.
Speaker 1: I want to start where you started. You grew up
Speaker 1: in what you described as a dead factory town in
Speaker 1: a school system that taught you absolutely nothing, Greenfield, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: So how how did you how did you occupy your time?
Speaker 1: You you are a well educated man. I am not um.
Speaker 1: I uh well, when I was about twelve years old,
Speaker 1: I realized that I couldn't masturbate all the time, so
Speaker 1: I learned to juggle. I didn't think working in show
Speaker 1: business or the arts or performance was a possibility. I
Speaker 1: didn't think anybody ever really did that, you know. And
Speaker 1: what I said I was I want to preface this
Speaker 1: by saying I was very close to my father and mother,
Speaker 1: and my dad was not did not say this in
Speaker 1: any sort of discouraging way. He was just saying what
Speaker 1: we all felt. What I said that I kind of
Speaker 1: felt like I might want to do performing his He said,
Speaker 1: what you think you're Johnny Carson? I mean that, And
Speaker 1: he wasn't saying it like you think. He wasn't being
Speaker 1: an ass at all. He was being just, oh, so
Speaker 1: that's what you think you can do. And I said,
Speaker 1: I I think there are other people besides Johnny Carson.
Speaker 1: I mean they're there are people that like run camera
Speaker 1: and move curtains and stuff. And he went like I guess.
Speaker 1: So you know, um, he was so supportive but had
Speaker 1: no understanding that you could actually make a living wage
Speaker 1: making a joke. So I thought, and I guess I'm
Speaker 1: still like this. I believe that you could solve everything
Speaker 1: with practice. So my idea was, I was in Greenfield, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: I would be a good enough juggler that the art
Speaker 1: talent scouts who we're looking all over the world would say, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a guy who could juggle, Well, let's bring him
Speaker 1: into show business. That didn't happen, Okay. I got to
Speaker 1: be a good juggler. Why I don't know, but I
Speaker 1: got to be a good juggler, and strangely enough, that
Speaker 1: ended up leading me into show business. Which is the
Speaker 1: most amazing part of the story is this twelve year
Speaker 1: old hairbraid scheme actually worked. So what what was it
Speaker 1: about juggling or how how did that? Yeah? How did
Speaker 1: how did it start there? What were you just like
Speaker 1: holding the balls or yearl? I like nothing about it.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be in music, Okay. All I cared
Speaker 1: about was music. I did not care about comedy. I
Speaker 1: did not care about juggling. I cared about music, but
Speaker 1: I didn't have perfect pitch or even relative pitch. My
Speaker 1: my sense of tone was not good. My sense of
Speaker 1: rhythm was very good. I was a drummer. But there
Speaker 1: were people better than me at music at my high school.
Speaker 1: And we all know that everyone in Hollywood was the
Speaker 1: best in their high school at whatever they're doing. There
Speaker 1: was not a better musician. And at Jimmy Hendricks's high school,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Hendrix in Hibbing Public High School, there was not
Speaker 1: a better songwriter than Bob Dylan. Bob. The fact that
Speaker 1: the fact that Phil Tetro was a better musician than
Speaker 1: me at Greenfield Public High School and that Phil Tetro
Speaker 1: didn't have a chance of being a professional, said well,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna so I I loved music tremendously, but
Speaker 1: I thought, well, I'm not going to do that. The
Speaker 1: hand that I'm dealt does not give me that. And
Speaker 1: I thought I wasn't good looking enough. You know, I
Speaker 1: was tall enough for basketball, but I hated sports. So
Speaker 1: you you know, you you fan out the cards you've
Speaker 1: been dealt, and you say, what do you got? And
Speaker 1: I said, I can't do anything, but if I practice
Speaker 1: a lot, I can learn to juggle. So I went,
Speaker 1: now it turns out that probably if I had practiced
Speaker 1: as much on music as I had on juggling, I
Speaker 1: could have probably been with four or five incredibly lucky breaks,
Speaker 1: a D level drummer or bass player, maybe at a
Speaker 1: wedding band level, or maybe at a local local band level.
Speaker 1: But you know, uh, you're gonna enter an arena. It's
Speaker 1: like why I never write anything or talk about love
Speaker 1: because I'm not gonna go one on one with William Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not going to enter a competition where
Speaker 1: I automatically lose. So in juggling, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: You know, ignocked Off was gonna be a much better
Speaker 1: juggler than me, But it didn't matter because I was
Speaker 1: good enough. I was good enough to get to Ringling Brothers,
Speaker 1: and I was good enough to get those places. And
Speaker 1: then I discovered this thing that I would have never
Speaker 1: discovered without juggling, which is I had a had a
Speaker 1: juggling team called the toss Ups with Like Motion, who
Speaker 1: was to win a MacArthur Genius Grant for juggling, and
Speaker 1: the two of us would perform fifteen dollars for a
Speaker 1: nursing home or or due talent shows. And this funny
Speaker 1: thing happened. We started out just coming out and I
Speaker 1: would say hello, where the toss ups? And we would juggle,
Speaker 1: and then I would start doing little introductions to each juggling,
Speaker 1: thing that I would start doing longer introductions to each juggling,
Speaker 1: And then I discovered that the less I juggled, the
Speaker 1: more successful our juggling troop was. Okay, So that gave
Speaker 1: me the confidence that maybe I could do talking as
Speaker 1: well as juggling for a living. And if I had
Speaker 1: not had but I would have never had the bravery
Speaker 1: to attempt stand up or morning DJ or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But when I was hired to juggle and people said afterwards, oh,
Speaker 1: you talk really good, I felt like that gave me.
Speaker 1: It was like, I'm gonna talk a little bit, but
Speaker 1: it's okay because afterwards I'll do really hard stuff. Yes exactly. Now,
Speaker 1: looking back, you were you funny starting out? You were entertaining.
Speaker 1: I think I I think I was. I think I
Speaker 1: was okay funny in my way. And it also gave
Speaker 1: me a kind of freedom that you never get because
Speaker 1: I never prepare heard what I was gonna say, I
Speaker 1: was gonna ask next. You only prepared the juggling. So
Speaker 1: it allowed me, as a fourteen fifteen, sixteen year old
Speaker 1: to do a hundred percent verbal improvisation in front of people,
Speaker 1: which amazing. You never get to do never, never, never.
Speaker 1: So by the time I met Teller and want to
Speaker 1: do magic, I was already very comfortable walking out on stage.
Speaker 1: As you know, as the crew makes fun of me,
Speaker 1: they say, give me twenty minutes and I'll give you
Speaker 1: an introduction to a thirty second trick. I have to
Speaker 1: ask you about this because obviously we're going to transition
Speaker 1: and and talk about where your life went. But I
Speaker 1: read something fascinating that something that was a fundamental building
Speaker 1: lock for you and your life became your disdain for
Speaker 1: the amazing Kreskin. Yeah, now it is amazing. I want
Speaker 1: you to talk to me about that, how how he
Speaker 1: came into your life, and then how you felt when
Speaker 1: when you found out that you'd been duped. To me,
Speaker 1: it's like the mosquito being the most dangerous animal on earth. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, hippopotamus is second. Hippopotamus deserves it. Mosquito does
Speaker 1: not deserve it. This dipshit does not have a right
Speaker 1: to have the influence in my life. That he had,
Speaker 1: but god damnit, he did. He was carrying malaria. Who knew.
Speaker 1: Crestkin appeared on a television show, which I don't remember
Speaker 1: which one, but I know it wasn't Carson because Carson
Speaker 1: would not let people like that on. But he appeared
Speaker 1: on probably a daytime talk show. I would probably guess
Speaker 1: Mike Douglas, maybe MERV Griffin or something. And he did
Speaker 1: a scientific experiment with extrasensory perception and he was flogging
Speaker 1: an ESP Science magic kid that had a little pendulum
Speaker 1: with idiomatic movements and ESP cards and that kind of job.
Speaker 1: And I was a real fan of science. I was
Speaker 1: an avid reader. I considered myself to really like science,
Speaker 1: you know. So I watched him have this demonstration of
Speaker 1: a scientific principle, and I talked to my parents, who
Speaker 1: were not wealthy my dad was a jail guard, you know,
Speaker 1: and said, there's this science thing I want to get.
Speaker 1: It's Christin's ESP kid. And we bought this kid. And
Speaker 1: at the time, my sister was much older than me
Speaker 1: had moved out, so I was essentially we were a
Speaker 1: three person family. And I made my parents run through
Speaker 1: these endless experiments with the SP kit and then and
Speaker 1: I refer you, of course, to the Dewey decimal system,
Speaker 1: which I know you're a big fan of. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of that. Juggling and magic are very
Speaker 1: close together in the Dewey decimal system because Dewey knew
Speaker 1: these were junk art forms. And the Greenfield Public Library,
Speaker 1: where I spent a lot of time, there were two
Speaker 1: books on juggling which I had memorized, and there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of books on magic. And as as chance
Speaker 1: would have it, the way I tell this story is
Speaker 1: probably not true, but it's the way I remember it.
Speaker 1: I picked up the book by dunning Er, who was
Speaker 1: a mentalist in the forties, very famous, and I opened
Speaker 1: it up and I remember it as seeing the same
Speaker 1: trick Question had done on TV. When I think about
Speaker 1: that objectively, I say, probably wasn't true, you know. But
Speaker 1: I saw something that made me see that you could
Speaker 1: do tricks like this with trickery. And my reaction could
Speaker 1: only be justified by being fourteen years old, absolutely inappropriate,
Speaker 1: out of scale. Everywhere, I stopped doing any science. I
Speaker 1: went from an a student to a failing student in science.
Speaker 1: I hated all magicians, I hated all scientists, because these
Speaker 1: were people who would lie to children. And I put
Speaker 1: that chip on my shoulder so strongly and said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Bob Dylan doesn't lie to children. John Lennon
Speaker 1: doesn't lie to children. Jack carro Wact doesn't lie to children.
Speaker 1: To Move doesn't lie to children. You know, Lenny Bruce
Speaker 1: doesn't lie to children. Fuck the scientists, Thuck the magicians.
Speaker 1: I'm going with the people who don't lie to children. Um.
Speaker 1: I also had a chip on my shoulder about magicians
Speaker 1: because you tune into and I'm older than you, I
Speaker 1: believe by quite a bit, but I could tune into
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Palace and even when I was young, Ed
Speaker 1: Sullivan and they would have a great band on like
Speaker 1: The Who, and then before that would be a greasy
Speaker 1: guy in a tucks with a lot of birds, torturing
Speaker 1: women in front of mylar too bad, small dick, rip
Speaker 1: off white boy music, And I was like, stop him,
Speaker 1: break the band down. Why on earth wouldn't The Who
Speaker 1: do three songs and let that you know? And as
Speaker 1: nobody knows, the Beatles first appearance on Ed Sullivan was
Speaker 1: followed by a magician. No, I didn't know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's amazing yeah. Uh So it wasn't until I met
Speaker 1: tell her and tell her told me and an Amazing Randy.
Speaker 1: When I've read Amazing Randy's book Flim Flam and I
Speaker 1: met Teller shortly after that, I understood that you could
Speaker 1: do magic honestly, and then also that magic wasn't special.
Speaker 1: I mean, by my childhood definition of lying, when you
Speaker 1: go on the office, you're lying, you know, because you're
Speaker 1: not actually working in an office, it's a studio. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you can be honest by just saying we're within
Speaker 1: a proscenium. Robert de Niro is not Travis Pickle. He
Speaker 1: does not drive a taxicab. There's a proscenium, and that
Speaker 1: can extend to magic. And then tell her said to
Speaker 1: me a sentence that is complete and utter nonsense that
Speaker 1: we have explored for forty seven years, which is that
Speaker 1: mad jack is an intellectual art form. And that sounds
Speaker 1: like crazy talk until you think that music goes to
Speaker 1: your lizard brain. You can tap your foot right away.
Speaker 1: You know, poetry goes to your heart, even literature goes directly.
Speaker 1: But magic you have to formulate what's impossible and talk
Speaker 1: about what doors are closed to allow that to be done.
Speaker 1: By the means that you know, so magic engages the
Speaker 1: intellect at a level that no other art form does.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: I believe that's a true thing. And what's interesting to
Speaker 1: me is that most other magicians pissed that away. They say,
Speaker 1: put your doubt aside. Come in a magical journey with me.
Speaker 1: No schmuck. The important thing about magic is the unwilling
Speaker 1: suspension of disbelief. Shakespeare says, Okay, we're on an island now,
Speaker 1: and there's been a shipwreck, and this guy you saw
Speaker 1: in the deodorant commercial is actually a king, and the
Speaker 1: audience goes, okay, Bill, what you got right? And in
Speaker 1: magic you come out and go I'm holding this quarter
Speaker 1: in my hand, and now it's gone. And you're supposed
Speaker 1: to look at that with doubt because he doesn't say,
Speaker 1: here's a quarter, let's pretend it's gone, right, And magicians
Speaker 1: presented as though they are doing willing suspension of disbelief,
Speaker 1: whereas the entire art form is the unwilling suspension disbelief, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, the phrase unwilling suspension disbelief was coined
Speaker 1: by the greatest mind in magic, which is teller, who
Speaker 1: have I written on his back for forty seven years? Wow,
Speaker 1: I've never thought about it like that, right, of course,
Speaker 1: because I grew up doing theater, and so it was
Speaker 1: all about you know what I mean. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of discussion, and then of course when I was
Speaker 1: doing more experimental things, it was about, well how do
Speaker 1: we change this? Right? But like, there are rules, and
Speaker 1: the rule is once you sit down, there is a
Speaker 1: willing suspension of disbelief. Right, And you were fifteen years
Speaker 1: old saying you know I'm a salesman. Right, that's right,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. Going, okay, right, we're gonna go with
Speaker 1: you here and see where it transports us. Right, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When the magic show, the audience never says, okay, this
Speaker 1: box is completely empty. Maybe not, we don't show us.
Speaker 1: Bang the back of it, okay, turn it around, Yeah
Speaker 1: it's empty. We're not sure. We don't know. Oh sure
Speaker 1: looks empty. It made it look empty, but we know
Speaker 1: we know you're a magician, so may not be empty.
Speaker 1: So it's very different than other forms of the in
Speaker 1: your show. What's what's more important? Well, what where do
Speaker 1: you feel like you have achieved? Your greatest success. Is
Speaker 1: it the tricks or is it the words in between
Speaker 1: that you started doing when you were twelve or thirteen.
Speaker 1: I I don't think that could be separated. I don't
Speaker 1: even see them as different. I I believe and and
Speaker 1: tell her to that what matters is the ideas, and
Speaker 1: tell her and I usually I can't say always, but
Speaker 1: when we're at our best, we start with an idea
Speaker 1: that we share, that's in our hearts, that we want
Speaker 1: to explore, and the tricks and the jokes come later.
Speaker 1: And for me, uh and this is something that with
Speaker 1: other comedians, even though my social circle is full of comedians,
Speaker 1: there's a difference because I add the jokes last. You know,
Speaker 1: we will run through stuff until I feel the ideas
Speaker 1: are clear, and then I'll kind of try to make
Speaker 1: it funny. I mean, obviously there are exceptions, but there
Speaker 1: are very few where I started out going, this is
Speaker 1: the joke we gotta get to. We gotta get to
Speaker 1: this joke. It may it may surprise lay people that
Speaker 1: I cut a lot of jokes that could huge laughs,
Speaker 1: but that there it's the wrong kind of laugh, or
Speaker 1: it doesn't build the idea that's genius, you know, you've
Speaker 1: got to do that. Uh. I have a really good
Speaker 1: example of that. There's a there's a joke, an obvious joke,
Speaker 1: absolutely clearly obvious joke that three of us in Vegas
Speaker 1: did simultaneously because it's an obvious ad lib. We all
Speaker 1: got huge laughs and we all cut it the next night. Uh.
Speaker 1: That was when Vegas first opened up. You can figure
Speaker 1: the kinds of people that first came to Vegas. They
Speaker 1: were the kind of people that were not risk averse
Speaker 1: for whatever reasons, to be polite, to be polite. And
Speaker 1: it was also, and this is a little bit chilling,
Speaker 1: it was wonderful for the gambling industry. The people who
Speaker 1: came in early without fear of COVID. We're also big gamblers.
Speaker 1: So I was doing an act. Michael Goudeau, a juggler,
Speaker 1: was doing an act. Piff the Magic Dragon, the magician,
Speaker 1: was doing an act at all of us at different places.
Speaker 1: Said there was one moment I was holding a torch
Speaker 1: and I said, if you doubt this is real fire,
Speaker 1: I'll come in to the audience, stick this into your eye. Okay,
Speaker 1: just a little turn. And then I followed it one
Speaker 1: night because it was obvious by saying, but I'll be
Speaker 1: safe about it. I'll put a mask on. Huge laugh,
Speaker 1: after which I hated every person of the audience because
Speaker 1: they weren't laughing like, oh, this is a pandemic we're in.
Speaker 1: They were laughing, Oh, those mass things are bullshit, And
Speaker 1: it was like whoa. And it was really funny because
Speaker 1: I was telling that story to Piff like a week
Speaker 1: later at Piff went yeah, I did the same joke,
Speaker 1: cut it the same night, and then Gougo said me too.
Speaker 1: I was up on a unicycle juggling knives, and I said,
Speaker 1: I want to make the safer. I'll put a mask
Speaker 1: on anyway. Whoa, No, I didn't need to do that, Chike. No, No.
Speaker 1: But that's a case of cutting it for what I
Speaker 1: would call moral or emotional rights. And then there are
Speaker 1: many many more cases of cutting it because that that
Speaker 1: confuses the trick, that confuses the idea. It's so interesting
Speaker 1: to hear you say that. I've discussed this a little
Speaker 1: bit on here, but it's why I consider Steve Correll
Speaker 1: to be maybe the greatest improviser of now and up
Speaker 1: there with any of the legends. And it's because of that.
Speaker 1: I watched it for ten years. He had full license
Speaker 1: to try and do whatever he wanted. But what he
Speaker 1: was able to do was to improvise on character and
Speaker 1: on story, and and the ability to do that after
Speaker 1: day after day and stay there and not take the
Speaker 1: cheap joke, not take a joke that we can land
Speaker 1: because we know we're going to get a laugh that
Speaker 1: doesn't further the story or in your case, what what
Speaker 1: you're wanting to explore in this particular show or whatever.
Speaker 1: And stay true to the character that you've created. Have
Speaker 1: you created a character? Jeez? You know? Of course? I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, Uh, you can't claim to be yourself on
Speaker 1: stage because I don't say the same things every night
Speaker 1: and do the same tricks. However I try, I don't know. Try.
Speaker 1: It gives me too much credit. I don't have a choice.
Speaker 1: I'm not a good actor. I haven't studied acting ever.
Speaker 1: I have no skills in acting. I'm a performer. And
Speaker 1: that distinction is unimportant to lay people, and crystal clear
Speaker 1: to anybody who is one of the So I don't
Speaker 1: think at all about character. I think first person myself
Speaker 1: all the time. I realized that's a cheat, and that's
Speaker 1: a lie. And if we're to analyze it. I'm obviously
Speaker 1: doing a character, but I have removed that line of
Speaker 1: make believe, and I believe that I'm really saying on
Speaker 1: stage what I feel. Therefore, I have to align that
Speaker 1: as much as possible. So when they bring me in
Speaker 1: for acting roles, and I've done quite a few things,
Speaker 1: I always saved them. Listen to me as I walk
Speaker 1: in the room. Look at me. If that's precisely what
Speaker 1: you want for the character, hire me. If you want
Speaker 1: things faster, slower, louder, softer, angrier, pleasanter, sweeter, kinder. I
Speaker 1: can do all of that. But if you want someone different,
Speaker 1: you've got to pick someone else that's in that room,
Speaker 1: because I can't do it. There are people that I
Speaker 1: know who are men of a hundred voices. I am
Speaker 1: a man of one voice and one character. You can
Speaker 1: put me in a different outfit, you can comb my
Speaker 1: hair differently, you can give me a different name. But motherfucker,
Speaker 1: I sound like this. Oh that's amazing. You make Steve
Speaker 1: Carrell even more amazing to me. Right well, he is.
Speaker 1: But your career, it seems to me, which is You've
Speaker 1: discussed this a little bit. It revolves around your commitment
Speaker 1: to representing truth accurately? Do you think everything that has
Speaker 1: come after reverts back to Kreskin? Like, do you think
Speaker 1: your entire career or is really built because of that
Speaker 1: as a young age and you wanting to do something different,
Speaker 1: be defined differently? Well, you know in in Moby Dick,
Speaker 1: which all I ever mentioned is Moby Dick and Bob Dylan.
Speaker 1: In Moby Dick Um, it is said that Starbucks, arguably
Speaker 1: the hero character, doesn't see cause and effect and Ahab
Speaker 1: sees everything as cause and effect. We live in a
Speaker 1: world that we can't understand, where cause and effect are
Speaker 1: the most important thing, and a little bit beyond our grasp.
Speaker 1: Even at a Newtonian level, never minded particle physics level,
Speaker 1: we can never get you know, one pool ball hitting
Speaker 1: another pool ball by the time you get to the
Speaker 1: fourth or fifth hit. You have to know every particle
Speaker 1: in the universe to be able to predict what happens next.
Speaker 1: So if I want to even pretend to be even
Speaker 1: slightly thinking about the truth, I have to say no
Speaker 1: to that. The story that I've created about my life,
Speaker 1: which is definitely not true because Kreskin did not cause
Speaker 1: any of this, but the story I do feel that
Speaker 1: there is a an obsession with what's real and what's
Speaker 1: not that most people go through in their teen years
Speaker 1: that I did now grow. I really really care, and
Speaker 1: it is an impossible task because truth is relative. We
Speaker 1: have not got the experiential skills to really get to
Speaker 1: the kind of truth that I emotionally want. So what
Speaker 1: I I'm doing is impossible. And to even claim that
Speaker 1: I'm trying it is pretentious and presumptuous. But emotionally the
Speaker 1: answer is yes, but it's only emotionally, not in any
Speaker 1: sort of reality. Um, you went, you mentioned this briefly.
Speaker 1: You went to Wringling Brothers and Barnman Bailey Greatest show
Speaker 1: on Earth. Clown College. Thank you? Yes? Are you a graduate?
Speaker 1: Yes you have? Do you have a degree? I have
Speaker 1: a I have a bachelor's in buffoonery. Okay. Clown College
Speaker 1: was a two things. Was a publicity vehicle because they
Speaker 1: got a Sunday magazine story in the New York Times
Speaker 1: every year and also something in Praying magazine every year,
Speaker 1: and uh, that was worth the amount of money that
Speaker 1: they put into it. They also really did train clowns,
Speaker 1: and we're able to get people at a very low
Speaker 1: wage that we're very, very skilled, and because of all
Speaker 1: the hype about it, they got really good people, and
Speaker 1: they got them really cheap, and they got a lot
Speaker 1: of press out of it. It was a good deal
Speaker 1: for everyone. Having said that, I'm afraid that I sound
Speaker 1: a little bit cynical about their motives that made it
Speaker 1: a business decision, But their motives are also pure. They
Speaker 1: wanted to get funny people together and do really funny things.
Speaker 1: For me, it was incredibly important because I was the
Speaker 1: youngest there. I was seventeen. I had just gotten out
Speaker 1: of high school that did not go well, and it
Speaker 1: was the first time, well I I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say this without without any bullshit modesty. So the first
Speaker 1: time I was around in person people who were funnier
Speaker 1: than me, and they were a lot funnier than me,
Speaker 1: but more important than that, because that's just competition, bullshit,
Speaker 1: who cares? More important than that. It was the first
Speaker 1: time I could talk to people who spoke seriously about comedy.
Speaker 1: Now you had that experience probably at nine years old.
Speaker 1: I never experienced until I was seventeen. I would read
Speaker 1: National Lampoon, I would play the Lenny Bruce records, and
Speaker 1: I would say to my friends, isn't it really interesting
Speaker 1: how they're doing? And they would go, ha ha, it's
Speaker 1: really funny. What the funk you're talking about? And uh,
Speaker 1: that's what you're supposed to do, by the way, if
Speaker 1: you're not, if that's not your life, right, you know,
Speaker 1: But to me it was, you know, Lenny bruce Is
Speaker 1: is inventing this whole form, and look at how this
Speaker 1: puts together, and how this goes from the joke to
Speaker 1: his divorce to his trial. Look how all that's happening.
Speaker 1: And look at National Lampoon. How there Michael o'donni he
Speaker 1: was game, and they just shut up, you know, shut up,
Speaker 1: they answered to me. And I got to Clown College,
Speaker 1: and as silly as that name is in everything, I
Speaker 1: was with thirty five people who had spent longer than me,
Speaker 1: every one of them more seriously than me and better
Speaker 1: than me, thinking about those ideas and the fact that
Speaker 1: they were thinking and I know you understand that the
Speaker 1: fact that we're thinking about how to do a pants
Speaker 1: drop right does not change the seriousness that's right, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were trying to find where that part of our
Speaker 1: heart that laughs lives and it doesn't matter whether you're
Speaker 1: using a Seltzer bottle or whether you're Lenny Bruce. There
Speaker 1: is there's something about thinking about that that really matters.
Speaker 1: And those two and a half months where I, you know,
Speaker 1: did trapeze, learned to walk a wire, you know, did
Speaker 1: double backflips on the trampoline. Uh, they only let me
Speaker 1: in because I was a good juggler, right. They didn't
Speaker 1: let me in as I was funny. They let me
Speaker 1: in and I was And I know this for a
Speaker 1: fact because talking to the administration later, I was the
Speaker 1: last person it picked and only in because someone else
Speaker 1: got sick. I was the alternative. So I least least
Speaker 1: deserve to be there, and therefore it might have been
Speaker 1: the best experience for me. Right, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: the worst one, You know, if you're in a band
Speaker 1: and you're the best guy in the band, quit, If
Speaker 1: you're in an improv group and you're the funniest, quit
Speaker 1: you want to be the worst? That's right. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, I don't know if you know this about me,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure that you do not. I don't talk
Speaker 1: about it very often. Now, this is not circus. Are
Speaker 1: you familiar with Jacques Lacock. Sure, of course, yes, So
Speaker 1: I did not go clown college in a way, but
Speaker 1: I studied and did men any many shows in the
Speaker 1: theater with with his direct descendants, and and felt like
Speaker 1: in a way, yes, Tatra de la June lon Uh
Speaker 1: was French and American company performing in Minneapolis. I did
Speaker 1: a lot of shows with them. And there's something you
Speaker 1: just said that I haven't thought about in a long
Speaker 1: long time, which is like analyzing the pants drop, Like
Speaker 1: at what exactly how do we do this thing now?
Speaker 1: It's not exactly the same. It was not circus clowning,
Speaker 1: but clowning in another way. And in fact, this podcast
Speaker 1: that you're on right now is called off the Beat
Speaker 1: because of the director that I worked with there, who
Speaker 1: taught me that comedy and I'm translating that to being
Speaker 1: life happens off the beat, that true comedy happens in
Speaker 1: unexpected moments, not in the moments that we think that
Speaker 1: it should. Yeah, has to be and uh, learning to
Speaker 1: internalize that rhythm is really important. You know, by all association,
Speaker 1: I mean people at the cheesy clown college that I
Speaker 1: went to and the people at the classy clown college
Speaker 1: you were involved in did mate Oka. Of course they
Speaker 1: were the same. They were the same species. Not long
Speaker 1: after you left, you met Teller. I met Telling before
Speaker 1: I went to Clown College. Met you met when I
Speaker 1: was I was in high school. He was teaching high school.
Speaker 1: We met different high which, incidentally, if I hadn't convinced
Speaker 1: and yes, I convinced he did not want to and
Speaker 1: I not convinced Teller to take a sabbatical from teaching
Speaker 1: in Lawrence High School in New Jersey, if I had
Speaker 1: not convinced him to do that. The very next year,
Speaker 1: the first student enrolled in his class was John Stewart,
Speaker 1: who was signed up to take Mr Teller's Latin and
Speaker 1: Greek classics class. I was very excited about it. As
Speaker 1: far as I know, the only person ever excited about
Speaker 1: taking a class was John Stewart. And John Stewart has
Speaker 1: said many times that his only goal in show business
Speaker 1: is to be the more famous person from Lawrence High
Speaker 1: than the teacher who abandoned him from the class he
Speaker 1: wanted to take. Why does your working relationship? Why does
Speaker 1: it work so well? I mean, here, here's the question.
Speaker 1: You've only been asked nine hundred thousand times, but it's
Speaker 1: fascinating to me. So I think it's because of an
Speaker 1: absence of love. Um. Respect is more powerful working relationship
Speaker 1: than love. Many of your greatest teams fell in love, Letting,
Speaker 1: the McCartney were undoubtedly in love, Martin and Lewis whoa,
Speaker 1: I mean embarrassingly in love, UM, Gilbert and Sullivan for
Speaker 1: the first year, probably in love. Jagger and Richards. We
Speaker 1: now I found out actually physically in love certain people.
Speaker 1: You walk into a room with them. We don't know why,
Speaker 1: and maybe the distance their eyes are apart. It may
Speaker 1: be pheromones. But you walk into a room and you
Speaker 1: have a cuddly feeling with them, You want to be
Speaker 1: close with them, you want to move with them. And
Speaker 1: I'm calling it sexual and it is, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean sex, partners. It just means affection, warmth, whatever. And
Speaker 1: there are other people, and I have friends of both
Speaker 1: kinds that your relationship would be exactly as rich if
Speaker 1: it were only over the internet. It's completely intellectual and
Speaker 1: isn't tied to that. When I met Teller, there was
Speaker 1: a complete and utter lack of cuddly feeling. We weren't
Speaker 1: emotionally drawn to each other. We did not want to
Speaker 1: be in the same room together. We did not want
Speaker 1: to be close. But I had never met anyone more
Speaker 1: intellectually stimulating. And we both believed very early on that
Speaker 1: we did better stuff together that we did separately. Now
Speaker 1: what happens is if you're in love, the first moment
Speaker 1: you're not in love is really traumatic. The first moment
Speaker 1: you have a horrible disagreement that gets personal, The first
Speaker 1: moment someone else enters your world. You know, when you
Speaker 1: fall into love with somebody that maybe is more sexual,
Speaker 1: those things crumbled. Tell her and I when we did
Speaker 1: not get along, when we did not particularly like each other,
Speaker 1: that was not consequential, That meant nothing. You're working at
Speaker 1: a seven eleven, the guy who cleans the slurping machine
Speaker 1: pissed off? Who cares? I got gum to sell, you know,
Speaker 1: So tell her and I. Over forty seven years, he's
Speaker 1: my closest friend. I spent all day yesterday with him
Speaker 1: in the hospital. He gets out today. He had bypass
Speaker 1: surgery and he's recovering well. And I cried my eyes out.
Speaker 1: And when my children were born, the first person to
Speaker 1: hold them other than my wife and I was tell
Speaker 1: her when our parents died the first people we talked to.
Speaker 1: My children insist that Teller is my BFF. We are
Speaker 1: very very close. It is an intellectual bond that that
Speaker 1: spread to emotional with a great deal of time to
Speaker 1: have that happen. And still people are a little shocked
Speaker 1: when they work with us at how formal we are.
Speaker 1: We work fairly formally and fairly meanly, but it's formal.
Speaker 1: We arrive on time, we are polite, we we we
Speaker 1: come there to work. And people have been amazed that
Speaker 1: Teller and I have heart wrenching disagreements and the time
Speaker 1: comes to work and we go right to work. And
Speaker 1: that's all because there's no one I respect more than Teller,
Speaker 1: and is a lot of people I love more than
Speaker 1: tell her. And that's absolutely okay. We also don't socialize
Speaker 1: very often. We even have mutual friends who come to
Speaker 1: town and choose one of us. We're going to dinner
Speaker 1: with Penn Tonite. We don't usually go I mean maybe
Speaker 1: three or four times a year. Me now, when he
Speaker 1: was in the hospital, I spent a lot more time
Speaker 1: with them socially, of course, but a normal year, maybe
Speaker 1: four times a year we go out to have dinner,
Speaker 1: the two of us four times a year, and we
Speaker 1: worked together seven days a week. And the reason is
Speaker 1: we go we go out to eat. What you do today,
Speaker 1: Teller saying, fucking thing you did, Penn, same what you
Speaker 1: do twenty years ago, Same thing you did. What was
Speaker 1: it like to be with Letterman? Same as it was
Speaker 1: when I was with Letterman? What was it like to
Speaker 1: do Saturnite live? Exactly like it was for you? So interesting, right?
Speaker 1: I never thought about it like like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: you hear what you know? The stereotypical you know, if
Speaker 1: you if you're working with your spouse and you don't
Speaker 1: have any time away, then you don't have time to
Speaker 1: share what else is going on in your life with
Speaker 1: other people. And yeah, I mean the ability to tell
Speaker 1: stories and to share with someone who was there and
Speaker 1: let those stories, which is really important, really important, let
Speaker 1: those stories drift because the story that you tell yourself
Speaker 1: about your life is who you are, and that story
Speaker 1: has to drift and you can't have someone they're busting you.
Speaker 1: I keep a journal like a teenage girl, which is
Speaker 1: what I am. A teenage girl essentially. I keep a
Speaker 1: journal every day so all it can occasionally be backstage
Speaker 1: in our green room, which we call the monkey room
Speaker 1: and tell they we'll have friends backstage, And for some reason,
Speaker 1: I haven't rushed home, like I want to eat something.
Speaker 1: So I sit in the room and I'll hear tell
Speaker 1: her telling a story to his friends that I was
Speaker 1: there for, and he'll be telling it, and I will
Speaker 1: sit there thinking this is wrong in every detail and
Speaker 1: he's not lying. And then I'll remember that story myself
Speaker 1: and I'll run it. And occasionally, not often, but like
Speaker 1: two or three times, I've gone back and been able
Speaker 1: to get the coordinates to be able to find that
Speaker 1: in my journal and read what I wrote that the
Speaker 1: FBI would accept in court, you know, contemporaneous notes, and
Speaker 1: it does not overlap with the story either of us
Speaker 1: had in any way. What I find interesting is I've
Speaker 1: heard tell her and I tell the same story, and
Speaker 1: tell her gives me the punch line, and I give
Speaker 1: tell her the punch line, which is really interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: we reverse, we reverse who gets who was the clever
Speaker 1: one and who did the setup, because we know you'll
Speaker 1: get a bigger laugh when you aren't self aggrandizing, get
Speaker 1: a bigger laugh setting up. If you're telling a story
Speaker 1: of something someone said on the step that was hysterical.
Speaker 1: You've learned you'll get a bigger laugh if you give
Speaker 1: that line to someone else, and you do it because
Speaker 1: you want the laugh more than you want the credit. Right.
Speaker 1: You guys have been together now in residency at the
Speaker 1: Rio in Vegas twenty one years. Uh longest running headliners
Speaker 1: to ever continuously play the same hotel in Vegas. Is
Speaker 1: this the life you ever imagined for yourself? You know?
Speaker 1: You know? No, never possibly imagined, never within my goal set. Never,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. Paul McCartney has said in interviews that
Speaker 1: the Beatles should have been more successful. Right. He said
Speaker 1: that Elvis Presley wanted to be more popular. If you
Speaker 1: know Howard Stern when he was the king of all media,
Speaker 1: he wanted more. If you've met Madonna, she wanted more.
Speaker 1: If you've read biographies of Houdini, being the most successful
Speaker 1: person in the United States of America was not enough
Speaker 1: for Harry Houdini. I've never felt that my goal was
Speaker 1: to maybe make a middle class living in something like
Speaker 1: the arts show business. My view of show business was
Speaker 1: very similar to my father's. I would have been very
Speaker 1: happy being a you know, segment producer on a local
Speaker 1: talk show setting that up, I would have been really
Speaker 1: happy to be a local DJ who said a funny
Speaker 1: thing or two between songs tell her and I. Our
Speaker 1: goal was maybe two hundred seat theaters, and if not,
Speaker 1: we were thrilled with cruise ships, corporate shows, trade shows.
Speaker 1: Our heroes were people who had lived their whole life
Speaker 1: like that. Some of the funniest, most skilled people I know,
Speaker 1: Johnny Thompson, Billie McComb, all these people no one has
Speaker 1: heard of, and they worked their entire life in show
Speaker 1: business and made people laugh their nutsacks off. They amazed them,
Speaker 1: they thrilled them, and they worked corporate shows and get
Speaker 1: paid really well, you know for a guy, you know,
Speaker 1: not really well for Robin Williams, you know, but really
Speaker 1: well for a guy. And they were the ones we
Speaker 1: were aspiring too. And we did the off Broadway show
Speaker 1: as kind of like, well, we'll see how it goes,
Speaker 1: but we had fair gigs booked for after it, right,
Speaker 1: we were going right back to being carny trash. We
Speaker 1: were very happy, and it was so uncomfortable when people
Speaker 1: would interview me will We're playing on Broadway and it
Speaker 1: was our first run on Broadway. People said, is this
Speaker 1: a dream? Come true? Have you finally lived? And I'd say, no,
Speaker 1: it never crossed my mind to be on Broadway. That
Speaker 1: was sincere when I was off Broadway. It didn't cross
Speaker 1: my mind to be on Broadway. I just didn't think
Speaker 1: that was the kind of thing I did. Also, they said,
Speaker 1: what does it feel like, after struggling for all these
Speaker 1: years to finally have a successful show? And I would say, well,
Speaker 1: I don't mean disrespect, but within six months of Taylor
Speaker 1: and I working together, we were making as much money
Speaker 1: as our dads, and we're doing exactly what we wanted,
Speaker 1: and we were really proud of the show. So I
Speaker 1: considered us wicked successful. You've never even heard of us,
Speaker 1: you know. Neil Simon said, the big difference is from
Speaker 1: zero dollars a week to two dollars a week doing
Speaker 1: what you want, and after that, adding zeros doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 1: It does to Howard Stern, it does to Houdini, it
Speaker 1: does to Madonna, does to Paul McCartney, it does not
Speaker 1: to me. And I remember reading the Silverman biography of Houdini,
Speaker 1: and I had always identified with Houdini as a child.
Speaker 1: And this is a wonderfully written book, very very detailed,
Speaker 1: then later ratso that the Sloman book came out, which
Speaker 1: is also wonderful. And I always felt like I was
Speaker 1: kind of a Houdini guy because he busted psychics and
Speaker 1: he cared very much about the truth and he was
Speaker 1: a magician. And I read this book and went wow,
Speaker 1: I could not be further from Houdini because I am satisfying,
Speaker 1: I'm content, and that he is a star. He was
Speaker 1: a star. I will never be a star because I
Speaker 1: don't feel unfulfilled the fact that nobody in China has
Speaker 1: heard of me does not bother me at all. It
Speaker 1: ate at Elvis. Do you know that Elvis was bothered
Speaker 1: by that that people in China didn't know who he was.
Speaker 1: That bugged him. As far as I'm concerned, people in
Speaker 1: China could keep elected the same guy over and over again.
Speaker 1: At as long as they don't go nuclear, I'm happy
Speaker 1: with them not knowing who Pett is real. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: you're so interesting. I truly I could talk to you
Speaker 1: all day. I I want to hit a couple of things.
Speaker 1: I'm now going to reduce your hit television show Bullshit
Speaker 1: that ran seven eight years in one sentence, what was
Speaker 1: your favorite thing that you debunked on bullshit. Uh, That's
Speaker 1: the most emotional was talking to the dead, because I
Speaker 1: did it right after my mom died, and I had
Speaker 1: intellectually knew that that was morally wrong, but I never
Speaker 1: felt it emotionally. I was parenting what Houdini was saying
Speaker 1: after his mother died, but I never felt it. And
Speaker 1: when I felt as an atheist that all I had
Speaker 1: of my mom was the memory of everything she said
Speaker 1: to me and everything we've done, and that there were people,
Speaker 1: because of a lack of talent and a quest for power,
Speaker 1: we're willing to take people memories of their loved ones
Speaker 1: and distort them. Let me tell you, I don't give
Speaker 1: a funk about the money. I don't even give a
Speaker 1: funk about the truth. The fact that people have someone
Speaker 1: they love and someone comes in and says, this is
Speaker 1: what your loved one is thinking or feeling, and that
Speaker 1: distorts even by that much who that person was to them.
Speaker 1: Fuck you in the neck. That was the one emotionally,
Speaker 1: The one intellectually that I had a fight for was
Speaker 1: when we did the anti anti vax show, which people
Speaker 1: say to me, Wow, how did you guys do that
Speaker 1: so many years before the anti vaxers, and I say,
Speaker 1: Jenny McCarthy was killing people well before, well before the
Speaker 1: santos um. But I had a I had a fight
Speaker 1: for that because they said it's not interesting, it's not sexy.
Speaker 1: And I said, I will promise Shoe, I will find
Speaker 1: a woman with larger breaths than Jenny McCarthy and we
Speaker 1: will have her topless, reading teleprompter with actual facts on vaccines,
Speaker 1: and Bryant I delivered. Now I had to make a deal.
Speaker 1: They said if we wanted to do the anti anti
Speaker 1: vac show, that we had to do a show on cheerleading.
Speaker 1: And I said, give me a fucking break. I got
Speaker 1: to bullshit on cheerleading, and they said, yeah, we think
Speaker 1: it's an interesting subject and we can also get a
Speaker 1: lot of sexy stuff in there. And I went for me.
Speaker 1: And then the cheerleading show ended up being one of
Speaker 1: our better shows because it was fascinating and dealt with
Speaker 1: sexism at the dangers, the dangers of cheerleading and so
Speaker 1: once again proving I'm wrong about everything. Uh, your your
Speaker 1: newest show that's only been been running eleven twelve years,
Speaker 1: Penn and Teller fool Us Uh just premiered October, you
Speaker 1: can check out the new season of fool Us. This
Speaker 1: this is is a take on on what your core
Speaker 1: values are, right, uh kind of you know. Uh, I
Speaker 1: will tell you though. Uh. Everybody puts the emphasis on magic,
Speaker 1: as they should. It's what we do to sell it.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that Teller and I wanted
Speaker 1: to do, and I'm so gratified that people have noticed this,
Speaker 1: is we wanted to treat performers on a talent show
Speaker 1: in the broad sense, uh, with kindness, because I believe
Speaker 1: anyone who opens up their heart in the arts at
Speaker 1: all deserves kindness. And some of the other shows, although
Speaker 1: they have changed over the years, they've mellowed a lot.
Speaker 1: The other shows where we started full Us. Some of
Speaker 1: the other shows were um celebrating cruelty in a way
Speaker 1: that Taylor and I found unwatchable. And also it's very strange.
Speaker 1: But fool Us is in a certain way objective, right.
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, you're gonna make it in show
Speaker 1: business because of that wonderful smile, or oh you have
Speaker 1: a sense of timing. It's I don't know how you
Speaker 1: did that boom. I don't know. Maybe everyone else, which
Speaker 1: it seems on the Internet. Everyone else does, but we
Speaker 1: didn't at that time, and that's kind of objective. And
Speaker 1: I really liked that part of it. I liked the
Speaker 1: part of it that the people we liked the most
Speaker 1: and who did the best warming didn't necessarily fool us,
Speaker 1: and the people who fooled us weren't necessarily best. I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed that. And also I like the fact that
Speaker 1: we weren't putting our thumb on the scale of show business.
Speaker 1: Because I've often said about, you know, American Idol until
Speaker 1: you can prove to me that tiny Tim sun Raw,
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan, and David Allen co win, I don't want
Speaker 1: to watch it unless you can prove to me that
Speaker 1: the absolute nuts that America has embraced they're gonna win
Speaker 1: this show. I don't want someone that's singing perfectly on
Speaker 1: pitch and whose mother is dying of cancer. I want
Speaker 1: someone that opens up their chest, shows me their heart,
Speaker 1: and says so there. I gotta ask you about Black Mirror.
Speaker 1: The Black Museum was adapted from a story idea of yours.
Speaker 1: How did you get involved with that? I I was
Speaker 1: touring with an avant garde band called The Residents out
Speaker 1: of San Francisco. I was touring their opera as the
Speaker 1: narrator and in Barcelona, Spain, I got wicked sick and
Speaker 1: taken to a Barcelona hospital, which we're not the best
Speaker 1: hospitals in the world, where nobody knew where where I
Speaker 1: was because I had been taking an ambulance when no
Speaker 1: one from the crew was watching right. I spoke at
Speaker 1: the time, no Spanish, The doctors spoke no English. I
Speaker 1: had a fever that I only saw in centigrade, but
Speaker 1: was wicked high. I was hallucinating out of my mind
Speaker 1: and all I thought about was if one of these
Speaker 1: doctors could just feel the pain without me having to talk,
Speaker 1: they could diagnose it and fix me. M in a
Speaker 1: fever dream, an actual fever dream. I imagined the whole
Speaker 1: story of the Pain Addict, which is my original short
Speaker 1: story that I published, and I I was taken out
Speaker 1: of that hospital by one of the band members, who
Speaker 1: was a tough American who just said, get your fucking
Speaker 1: hands off them. We're Americans, get your fucking hands off them,
Speaker 1: come on, pat and carried me out of the hospital
Speaker 1: and left me in the hotel room in Barcelona for
Speaker 1: three days with a dancer who has left to take
Speaker 1: care of me until I got better and joined rejoined
Speaker 1: the troop. Then, many many years later, I got to
Speaker 1: meet Charlie through a mutual friend in England. We've been
Speaker 1: out for lunch and we are having a wonderful time.
Speaker 1: And I said to him, you know, I don't want
Speaker 1: to turn this into a business meeting. I'm sure everybody
Speaker 1: pitches you, said, Bob, I have been out of ideas
Speaker 1: for two years. Tell me anything. And I told him
Speaker 1: the story idea and he went, jeez, that that'd be
Speaker 1: really good. And then he said to me, listen, let
Speaker 1: me tell you about me as a collaborator. I don't
Speaker 1: answer the phone. I don't answer text I don't answer emails.
Speaker 1: I will tell you we're doing something, then you will
Speaker 1: hear nothing about it for three months that I'll call
Speaker 1: you and talk for two hours. I will leave you
Speaker 1: out of the process. I'll throw things on your shoulders.
Speaker 1: I'm the worst person to work with in the world,
Speaker 1: but I'd like to do this. I said, good. I
Speaker 1: called him stead, we're gonna work on this nothing. Six
Speaker 1: weeks later he called me, talked for three hours and said,
Speaker 1: I'll send you a script and you can make notes
Speaker 1: on it. I said, great, I have some other notes
Speaker 1: on stuff we've been talking about. This will be great.
Speaker 1: I'll send you my notes. Nothing. Nothing. Uh. Then he
Speaker 1: sent me the script. Eight months later, he sent me
Speaker 1: the script. I called him up. He answered and said,
Speaker 1: we're shooting next week. I said, I have some thoughts.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm sure you do. We're shooting next week.
Speaker 1: I said, you don't. I really wanted to audition for
Speaker 1: one of the roles. He said, I'm sure you did.
Speaker 1: It's cast. I said, what what is the credit? And
Speaker 1: they said, you'll be happy. He then gave me a
Speaker 1: fabulous credit and overpaid me. And my agent said we're
Speaker 1: gonna call him and negotiate the fee. We're sure we
Speaker 1: can get him up from here. And I said, listen,
Speaker 1: for one time in show business someone has paid me
Speaker 1: more than fairly. I think we should reward this behavior
Speaker 1: and say thank you. Yes. And it came out and
Speaker 1: people gave me all this credit and said, oh, was
Speaker 1: your original story? And I said, yes, but a lot
Speaker 1: of what makes it good was not done by me.
Speaker 1: But thank you. That's amazing. He's I will now say
Speaker 1: he's the best person to work with you could ever
Speaker 1: work with. Makes you work not at all, gives you more,
Speaker 1: and it pays you well, goes away and no no
Speaker 1: email or call saying that kid out okay or I
Speaker 1: did a good job, didn't I nothing. We went out
Speaker 1: to dinner afterwards when I was in Britain and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that went well, and that was the entire about we
Speaker 1: talked about it. Oh my gosh, Uh you'r how much
Speaker 1: of your shows now is written? Are you still? Are
Speaker 1: you still making it up as you go along? Obviously
Speaker 1: there's a structure, and I'm I'm and teller. We're both
Speaker 1: the biggest tight asses you've ever met. We do stuff
Speaker 1: that looks really dangerous and really isn't and we're proud
Speaker 1: of that. And we do stuff magic tricks that are really,
Speaker 1: really really hard. That means that although there's a loosened
Speaker 1: provisation to begin with, and there are moments that I
Speaker 1: can improvise. Uh, if you come see our show two
Speaker 1: nights in a row, I scratched my nose at the
Speaker 1: exact same place, I clear my throat at the same place.
Speaker 1: And if I change a line, which I sometimes do
Speaker 1: because the audience or what's going on, there are eight
Speaker 1: people who go on high alert on headsets and say
Speaker 1: pen is off book. Everybody ready, and they will they
Speaker 1: will follow me. But I know fabulous improvisers, and it
Speaker 1: would be disrespectful of me to say that I do
Speaker 1: any improvisation whatsoever. You're you have a new book random
Speaker 1: just released available now. It's about a man who begins
Speaker 1: making life choices based on the role of his lucky dice.
Speaker 1: What what pushed you to write this story? Where did
Speaker 1: this come from? Uh? Well, once again, I don't get
Speaker 1: much credit for it. It's it's an unpleasant story. Thirty
Speaker 1: years ago, I was doing a television show in England
Speaker 1: and I'm going to change details of this story to
Speaker 1: make the story better, but more important, to protect privacy.
Speaker 1: You'll understand as I go on. And there was a
Speaker 1: woman working with us on the show in a rather
Speaker 1: high position, and she called me into her office one
Speaker 1: day while we're doing the show, say can I talk
Speaker 1: to you? Closed the door and I was like, hey now,
Speaker 1: but no, she said, I feel an affinity with you
Speaker 1: and I want to talk to you about something. So
Speaker 1: if you read a book called The Dice Man, and
Speaker 1: I said no, she said, well it's available. You've got
Speaker 1: two days off read it and I went, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: giving homework with a show with my name in it. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I picked up the book and I read it
Speaker 1: and came back and she said, would you think And
Speaker 1: I said, well, you know, I don't like satire and
Speaker 1: I don't like parody, and this is both. It's making
Speaker 1: fun of the Skee movement Warner Airhart, and I don't
Speaker 1: care about making fun of that. I didn't really like
Speaker 1: it much. But the idea that we have a society
Speaker 1: of mind, to use Marvin Minsky's phrase, and m I
Speaker 1: t have a society of mind that makes decisions based
Speaker 1: on a voting within our head, and that the second, third, fourth, fifth, six,
Speaker 1: seventh choices are sincerely part of us, but they never
Speaker 1: get expressed fascinates me. And the idea of throwing a
Speaker 1: monkey wrench into there and making the loser parts be
Speaker 1: expressed fascinates me. Also, the idea of making a decision
Speaker 1: instantly is something I am so envious of. I try
Speaker 1: to do it in my life, to make a decision
Speaker 1: and act on it and stick to it, but it's
Speaker 1: very difficult, all the doubting voices. And she said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to tell you a story. She said, a
Speaker 1: few months ago, I was very close to my brother.
Speaker 1: I went to his apartment and I found that he
Speaker 1: killed himself. He'd hanged himself. And she said, I did
Speaker 1: what I had to do to get the funeral done.
Speaker 1: Then I shut down completely. She said, I was just
Speaker 1: sitting on the couch. Said, I don't even know for
Speaker 1: how long. She said, I guess I fed myself, but
Speaker 1: no talking to friends, nothing. I completely shut down. And
Speaker 1: I had read this silly book a few weeks before,
Speaker 1: and I said I've got to act. And she said
Speaker 1: I had dice at my my apartment, and she said,
Speaker 1: I made a bell curve, but seven the most likely.
Speaker 1: So the things I put on that were very very simple,
Speaker 1: have a sandwich, take a shower, call a friend. Because
Speaker 1: I threw the dice, and the second those dice hit,
Speaker 1: I had a religious feeling and I acted instantly and
Speaker 1: I did it and it made all my decisions that way.
Speaker 1: And I said, wow, how long? How long did you
Speaker 1: do that? And she opened a briefcase because thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: when people didn't have backpacks, hoping to briefcase, and she
Speaker 1: showed me two dice in her briefcase rather ornate, and
Speaker 1: I went, whoa, You're still doing it and she said yeah,
Speaker 1: and I want you know it's it's a weird thing.
Speaker 1: But met the producers thought you would do our show
Speaker 1: because you were too good and our show was just
Speaker 1: starting out. And when you did, everybody was surprised, and
Speaker 1: she said, I rolled the night. I said, so, so
Speaker 1: you decided to do our show? She said it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't my first choice. I said, oh, you're in
Speaker 1: a pretty powerful position. Do you make choices on our
Speaker 1: show based on the dice? She said, only, but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I so there there's random stuff in our
Speaker 1: show brought in by you. She said yes. And needless
Speaker 1: to say, that story stuck with me. And when I
Speaker 1: was out talking with my friends, I tell them about
Speaker 1: this woman I met, and they were all fascinated. And
Speaker 1: I found out later on that bush now what's his name, Bushnell,
Speaker 1: who's started uh Comma our computers and Chuck E Cheese
Speaker 1: lives by dice. I didn't know that obviously, the question
Speaker 1: of why the hell did someone start Chuck E Cheese
Speaker 1: I've now answered for you. I expect a written thank
Speaker 1: you from you for that. Yeah, there's I have so
Speaker 1: many questions, but yes, okay, go ahead, and it's all
Speaker 1: answered by dice. Um that other people do this, and
Speaker 1: that it's on the web. There's people that live dice life,
Speaker 1: as it's sometimes called. And two of my friends, during
Speaker 1: traumatic moments of their life, started doing it, and I
Speaker 1: said to them, I don't think you should. I think
Speaker 1: it's dangerous, but tell me all about it. And then,
Speaker 1: and this is the easy part for anyone to understand. Um,
Speaker 1: I thought it should be a TV show. So I
Speaker 1: pitched it, and Showtime bought it and assigned the show runner,
Speaker 1: and then it fell apart because the show business. Then
Speaker 1: someone else bought it, and then the lockdown came and
Speaker 1: uh avor Trump said everybody should learn the language and
Speaker 1: write a book. So I did, because I do anything
Speaker 1: she tells me too. I just figured, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: so sick of going to meetings and talking about this.
Speaker 1: I can just sit on my keyboard, because God knows,
Speaker 1: I spent enough time with my fucking family during this lockdown.
Speaker 1: I said, a my keyboard, and I can type, and
Speaker 1: I can write it as a book, and I don't
Speaker 1: have to get anybody else on board. So I did
Speaker 1: that and now of course someone's optioning it, making it
Speaker 1: do a TV show. They read the book and thought
Speaker 1: this will be a good idea for a TV show,
Speaker 1: and I went, you know something, that's why you're a producer.
Speaker 1: Oh that's amazing. But that doesn't By the way, you
Speaker 1: know this, but your listeners may not. It will not
Speaker 1: get on the air. It will not happen. I'm just
Speaker 1: telling you it might. Actually this one, this one might.
Speaker 1: Most of them won't. Pen Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: talking to me. I am I will promise you this,
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying this because it can happen. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I am on a plane to Vegas tonight. I would
Speaker 1: come and see your show if it was happening tonight.
Speaker 1: But here's my pledge to you. The next time, when
Speaker 1: you guys are back up and running and I'm in
Speaker 1: Vegas and I'm there quite a bit, I will I
Speaker 1: will come and say hello to you at your show. Oh.
Speaker 1: I would love that so much. We'll we'll go backstage
Speaker 1: and make some jokes. I love that, and maybe maybe
Speaker 1: we can even eat if ready to go someplace that's
Speaker 1: vegan and watch me eat dirt if you're willing to
Speaker 1: do that, and that sounds like a because you know vegan,
Speaker 1: no one wants to eat with the vegan. But if
Speaker 1: you're willing to accommodate that, I will go out and
Speaker 1: have somebody, you know. Okay, Uh, Pen, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pick up random and uh, I can't wait
Speaker 1: to read Thank you so much. Coming on and we'll
Speaker 1: find out what part you want and then tell the
Speaker 1: producers and uh I will I'll say we got we
Speaker 1: got Brian on board. Sorry. Last thing, the nail polish
Speaker 1: on your left hand, it's from my mom. It was
Speaker 1: originally it was originally a joke when I was like sixteen.
Speaker 1: My mom said, if you're juggling, people are looking at
Speaker 1: your hands, you have to make them nice. And I said,
Speaker 1: you mean like this, mom, And I put on a
Speaker 1: nail polish and she was old pen and then I
Speaker 1: did it to mock her. And then later on it
Speaker 1: turned into a thing, um like Carol Burnette's ear. You know.
Speaker 1: When I was on it, I would do that to
Speaker 1: say hi to my mom. Uh. And now Moxie, my daughter,
Speaker 1: has been claiming it was done for her, and I
Speaker 1: think my mother would approve of that. Lot. There you go,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much pleasure, Penn. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for talking to me, for taking so much of your
Speaker 1: time today. Absolutely fascinating stuff. I loved every single minute
Speaker 1: of it. Thank you for stopping by. Uh and I
Speaker 1: might just have to start making some of my own
Speaker 1: decisions by the roll of a dice, as if I
Speaker 1: don't already. H To everyone out there listening, thank you
Speaker 1: once again for your support. Next week, we have got
Speaker 1: a very exciting guest. Here's a hint. They are a
Speaker 1: person who has done great things. Hoo hoo, hoo hoo.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next week. Off the Beat is hosted
Speaker 1: an executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive
Speaker 1: producer Langley. Our producers are Diego Tapia, Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris,
Speaker 1: and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary,
Speaker 1: and our intern is Sammy Cats. Our theme song Bubble
Speaker 1: and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton,