Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. My guest today,
Speaker 1: Penjollette is the speaking half of the duo Penn and Teller.
Speaker 1: Their act mixes magic and comedy with a subversive element
Speaker 1: that turns the traditional magic act on its head. In
Speaker 1: addition to having one of the longest running shows in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, Penjoleette is also a musician, juggler, and inventor.
Speaker 1: The six foot six outspoken atheist and libertarian also finds
Speaker 1: time to write books, host TV shows, and appear as
Speaker 1: a contestant on Dancing with the Stars and The Celebrity Apprentice. Recently,
Speaker 1: Pendolet performed Defeat harder than any magic trick. He made
Speaker 1: a hundred pounds disappear. I had wicked high blood pressure,
Speaker 1: and I was telling myself, because it's easy to tell
Speaker 1: yourself this, that it's genetic or there's nothing you can
Speaker 1: do about it, and then there is UH. And I
Speaker 1: just started eating in order to fix my blood pressure,
Speaker 1: which ends up as a side effect losing a lot.
Speaker 1: Were you leaner and and and and and kind of
Speaker 1: readier when you were young and you got heavier as
Speaker 1: you got over? Yeah? Sure, I was an American is
Speaker 1: another way to say that, right, Yeah, America that was
Speaker 1: doing you. What was the problem. Well, now I'm eating
Speaker 1: what were you not? What are you not eating? Now?
Speaker 1: I'm eating no animal products, no refined grains, extremely low salt,
Speaker 1: sugar in oil. So I'm not able to do things
Speaker 1: in moderation. One of the reasons I've never had a
Speaker 1: drink or any drug in my life is I'm very
Speaker 1: aware that moderation is not my strongest I can't imagine
Speaker 1: you and I. Yeah, you and I trapped in this
Speaker 1: room with a bowl of cocaine and the two trail
Speaker 1: makes bars and the cacao. We wouldn't need the food
Speaker 1: if we had the cocaine. But so so I've never
Speaker 1: you know, has has so much as a puff of marijuana. No,
Speaker 1: that's true. Never, never a sip of beer, because well,
Speaker 1: my personality is such. Not only do I not do moderation,
Speaker 1: I also don't respect it. If you tell me about
Speaker 1: an author that I need to read I will go
Speaker 1: home and read everything. You know, if you uh, if
Speaker 1: I when I start to listen to a different kind
Speaker 1: of music, you know, if all of a sudden I
Speaker 1: discover alban Berg. I'm listening to all twelve toned German
Speaker 1: opera for months, and I love living like that. I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of people seem to strive from moderation.
Speaker 1: I don't. So you and your wife, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: a family, You're gonna have like twelve Fortunately you're able
Speaker 1: to stop that with a vast activation and you don't
Speaker 1: have to do any moderation. What science can science and
Speaker 1: science can step in on these things. Interviews? But because so,
Speaker 1: what's something that you craved or liked or that you
Speaker 1: stopped eating? It's really interesting? But do you mind me
Speaker 1: as I find that? Uh, it's exactly like situation comedies.
Speaker 1: When you were watching situation comedies every night when you're younger,
Speaker 1: they kind of make sense and you want to watch
Speaker 1: them the next night. But if you stop for two
Speaker 1: months and you go back and watch a situation comedy,
Speaker 1: it's nonsense. Why would anybody watch this? Don't they have
Speaker 1: real friends? Why are they watching this? Where do they
Speaker 1: get all that money? For that apartment. And the same
Speaker 1: thing with with food. Uh I really, for the first
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of months, wanted uh hamburgers and
Speaker 1: you know, fried chicken and all that stuff all the time.
Speaker 1: And then after a couple of months the food I
Speaker 1: was eating tasted great. It's exactly like you you listen
Speaker 1: to music. You listen at four on the floor, three chord,
Speaker 1: rock and roll, and you love it and it's great,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden someone says, oh, and
Speaker 1: there's jazz, and you go, oh, there's whole difference sounds
Speaker 1: and different stuff. It's that salt, sugar, fat is just
Speaker 1: that boom boom boom boom. But you take that away
Speaker 1: and there's a zillion other flavors. Everything changes, including And
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit embarrassed about this because I tend
Speaker 1: to as much as I'm a strong atheist, I still
Speaker 1: catch myself occasionally in a in a mind body separation,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking that there's there's some sort of intellectual
Speaker 1: side different the physical side. I was really surprised how
Speaker 1: my mood changed. Are you ready to become a Catholic?
Speaker 1: Very close? He thinks you're great, there's a great here's
Speaker 1: a great story about Roy of Siegfried and Roy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: meeting the Pope, and Sigfried and Roy met the Pope,
Speaker 1: you know, the great magicians. They meet the Pope and uh,
Speaker 1: Roy gives him a ring and the Pope takes the
Speaker 1: ring and hands it to the assistant as this is
Speaker 1: a gift. And then Roy goes, no, no, that that
Speaker 1: is utual, blessed and give back to me my whole
Speaker 1: Oh my god. That which is all you need to
Speaker 1: know about Roy and the Pope. Now when you when
Speaker 1: you you you just touched on many subjects atheism. You've
Speaker 1: covered everything. We're done. We guys count now. But the
Speaker 1: the let let's talk about that meaning. Did you know
Speaker 1: you were an atheist from from the earlier? You had no? No,
Speaker 1: I was you know, people do this thing that uh
Speaker 1: that I always always feel very um. I feel it's
Speaker 1: very important to point out. They always say, you know,
Speaker 1: religious people must have treated you badly. I'm a religious personal,
Speaker 1: treat you well. The point is religious people treated me wonderfully.
Speaker 1: I have always been treated very well by religious people.
Speaker 1: I was raised, I have a perfect family life. My
Speaker 1: mom and dad and my sister and I were very
Speaker 1: very close. I was raised a Congregationalist Massachusetts wh to
Speaker 1: mess and I went to church an hour you know north.
Speaker 1: When I got to be uh junior high age, my
Speaker 1: parents said I could go to youth group instead of
Speaker 1: Sunday morning services. I wanted to, and I went to
Speaker 1: youth group, and I believe I was the only one
Speaker 1: who took us seriously. And the minister spoke with us
Speaker 1: about religion, and I read the Bible and then came
Speaker 1: in with some questions, and I had a wonderful, wonderful
Speaker 1: minister who was very open and would talk with me
Speaker 1: for hours. I did this exactly the way the church
Speaker 1: would want you to do it. There was no horrible rebellion,
Speaker 1: there was no fuck you, there was no screaming, there
Speaker 1: was no being molested. I have not one horror story.
Speaker 1: I've just kind, wonderful, sweet people and an intellectual discussion.
Speaker 1: And I went, you know, I don't like the idea
Speaker 1: of putting God before my family. My family is more
Speaker 1: important to me, and I don't like the idea of
Speaker 1: their being a love greater than the love I have
Speaker 1: from my family and friends. And I do believe that
Speaker 1: humans are good on their own without this, and I
Speaker 1: don't think anything happens after we die, and my minister
Speaker 1: and I and there's you sound like a moderate Republican.
Speaker 1: There's there's no way to tell this story without making
Speaker 1: him look like a goofball. But he's not a goofball.
Speaker 1: This is a sensible thing. He called that. My mom
Speaker 1: and dad had said, you know, Penn is doing wonderful
Speaker 1: and youth group, but we're having discussions, and I believe
Speaker 1: he's doing a better job at converting the other children
Speaker 1: to Atheism than I am with Christianity. So why don't
Speaker 1: you just not have him come to you group anymore?
Speaker 1: And I talked to my my parents and uh, my
Speaker 1: dad till the day he died, prayed for me and
Speaker 1: would say what he has Carles, and he would say
Speaker 1: to me all stuff all the time, like, well, Pen,
Speaker 1: you were such a good Christian. I say, except for
Speaker 1: that not accepting Christ than Dad, except for that if
Speaker 1: you separate out the dogma of a particular religion. Because
Speaker 1: I'm a Catholic, I was raised a Catholic, and over
Speaker 1: the ark of my present, when I when I've been
Speaker 1: over the ark of my life, I've I've lapsed and
Speaker 1: gone back and laps to go back. But a priest
Speaker 1: who I grew up with, who was a priest in
Speaker 1: the church I went to when I was a boy,
Speaker 1: he said, at best, he said, listen, all the great
Speaker 1: religions have something to offer to me. Hinduism and Judaism
Speaker 1: and Buddhism and so forth, and Muslim he says, He said,
Speaker 1: the Catholics just seem to have the nicest places to
Speaker 1: hang out, the nicest real estate. But you separate all
Speaker 1: the dogma of any particular religion, and to me, atheism
Speaker 1: is you just don't believe there's a God, right. And
Speaker 1: I also, regardless of your individual relationship, there's there isn't
Speaker 1: really there there there is no moral code that goes
Speaker 1: along with that. There's a lot of stuff we've noticed
Speaker 1: about atheists, you know, but there isn't an actual church
Speaker 1: of atheism. And I wanted to say with a great
Speaker 1: deal of pride that my mom when she was eight
Speaker 1: five eight five years old, and what did it? Was
Speaker 1: this this but this is the Great Father was like God, damn.
Speaker 1: My dad used to say, and this is, you know,
Speaker 1: just a tribute to My dad was the most most
Speaker 1: wonderful man I've ever met. My dad would say to me,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to work so hard after I
Speaker 1: die to get you and your mother into heaven. But
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it. I just have to work very,
Speaker 1: very hard. You can make it so much easier for me. Yes,
Speaker 1: you have to know that. My mom and my dad
Speaker 1: never said hell or damn or any absenter hard in
Speaker 1: the house, hardcore, no alcohol, no heller, damn. When I
Speaker 1: started doing card tricks, my my my father was like,
Speaker 1: you won't be gambling though. You can do card tricks,
Speaker 1: but I don't like having a deck of cards in
Speaker 1: the house. I would say, Dad, I'm just doing manipulations
Speaker 1: and tricks. Well, that's fine. Now when people obviously, when
Speaker 1: they think of you, they think of you as part
Speaker 1: of a tandem and your partner. It's always mystified to
Speaker 1: me the mute performer, what's that like for him to
Speaker 1: play that role all these years? It's thirty years forty
Speaker 1: good god, and uh it is a very shut up
Speaker 1: when he's home. Well, that's that's the joke. Everybody in
Speaker 1: the crew will tell you. Penn speaks on stage, doesn't
Speaker 1: speak off stage. Tell there, doesn't speak on stage, never
Speaker 1: shuts up. When if you were to come to one
Speaker 1: of our rehearsals. Uh, it's me sitting over the corner
Speaker 1: reading the paper, and tell their talking to everybody handling.
Speaker 1: They tell us essentially, O Lucille Ball direct and but
Speaker 1: you know, tell her direct Shakespeare. You know he's he's
Speaker 1: directing The Tempest in Chicago, a wonderful production with real magic.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, but more more directing and more writing. And
Speaker 1: he's very articulate. Who's a high school Latin and Greek
Speaker 1: teacher and he is a classic scholar. Where does he live?
Speaker 1: Where as his home Vegas? So you guys both live
Speaker 1: in this Yeah, about five miles apart. And you have
Speaker 1: a theater that your own theater, and it's really near obligated.
Speaker 1: The contract is how many months of the year until
Speaker 1: we die? I mean we do? We do forty six
Speaker 1: weeks a year for now, yeah, when you if we
Speaker 1: ever crossed your if you ever, we don't have time off,
Speaker 1: and we sometimes do run outs on the on the day,
Speaker 1: on the day, supposedly six weeks. In Vegas. We do
Speaker 1: about two d and fifty shows a year a little more.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty easy schedule, but I make it as
Speaker 1: hard as possible because I play upright bass, jazz bebop
Speaker 1: for an hour before the show, and then we meet
Speaker 1: everybody after the show. So we turn a cushy ninety
Speaker 1: minute gig into three and act like Steve Martin yeah
Speaker 1: and everything. Yeah, yeah, I do. When Steve's in town.
Speaker 1: I love to talk music with When you were a child,
Speaker 1: I mean I grew up and anything magic or anything
Speaker 1: of the paranormal, if you will, Eurie Geller, crest Skin,
Speaker 1: all those, I mean, I grew up glued to that.
Speaker 1: I love that where you glued to that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff to come into your life. I was. I was
Speaker 1: horrified by Kreskin Um. I believed when he went on
Speaker 1: he went on a television show and he did an experiment,
Speaker 1: as he called it, and I believed that this was
Speaker 1: an area of science. I was fascinated by science, an
Speaker 1: area of science that I wanted to study. And my parents,
Speaker 1: who I said, weren't wealth. He bought me was a
Speaker 1: little ESP game as piece of ship with little pendulum
Speaker 1: in the ESP cards. And then I would do that
Speaker 1: with my parents over and over and then um, because
Speaker 1: I was becoming a juggler and practicing all the time
Speaker 1: in the library. If you cast your mind back to
Speaker 1: the Dewey decimal system. You know that the nine hundreds
Speaker 1: are religion, magic, juggling. They're all there together, which is great.
Speaker 1: My whole life is in the nine decimal system. I
Speaker 1: happened to see a dune in your book The Mentalist
Speaker 1: from the forties. Yeah, he's he's He was the most
Speaker 1: popular mentalist mind reader. And I opened the book on
Speaker 1: magic and theyre in There was the description of how
Speaker 1: to do the trick I'd seen Christ can do as
Speaker 1: an experiment, And that moment in the library was a
Speaker 1: complete breakdown. I mean I went, I could not believe
Speaker 1: that a scientist, which is the way I perceived it,
Speaker 1: had lied to me. And I went almost humiliated in
Speaker 1: front of my parents. By the way, here's the birth
Speaker 1: of the bullshit show too. By the way, absolutely everything
Speaker 1: my whole life, and I also pretty much at that
Speaker 1: point went from straight a's to failing because I said
Speaker 1: to my physics teachers and scientists, lie. Why am I
Speaker 1: listening to you scientists? Lie? Scientists? And I hated magic,
Speaker 1: hated magic because why would you be fooling people? It's
Speaker 1: hard enough to figure out about the world is hard enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why why are you doing that? And my parents, you know,
Speaker 1: would try to console me. It's just a stupid little
Speaker 1: game pad. God, Dad, It's okay, No, No No, I'm a juggler.
Speaker 1: I'm not a magician all of this. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: until I met Teller, who I met when I was
Speaker 1: in high school. Until there's seven years older than me
Speaker 1: and amazing Randy and may explain to me the very
Speaker 1: simple thing that if you put a procenium around something,
Speaker 1: it's all of a sudden moral. If Robert de Niro
Speaker 1: runs around New York saying he's Travis Bickle and he's
Speaker 1: a cab driver, he is insane. If he does it
Speaker 1: in a movie, he's a genius. Yes, And the same
Speaker 1: thing with magic. If you come to our show, all
Speaker 1: the stuff we do would be immoral if you take
Speaker 1: that proscenium. So you did a lot on the street,
Speaker 1: you were on the street, yeah, yeah, but but always
Speaker 1: as a juggler, it wasn't. Uh. So we try to
Speaker 1: follow this very strict moral code in the penn and
Speaker 1: tell the show, which is what I call the sawing
Speaker 1: a woman in a half code sawing a woman in
Speaker 1: the half, which is we saw a woman in to
Speaker 1: have haves on stage. You see that no one leaves
Speaker 1: the theater thinking they've witnessed a murder. Nobody. That is
Speaker 1: my rule for all magic. If I'm going to do
Speaker 1: a mind reading trick, you cannot leave the theater thinking
Speaker 1: that I can read minds. It must be exactly the
Speaker 1: same as not witnessing a murder. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: intellectual and moral gymnastics that need to be done in
Speaker 1: order to follow that code and tell her and I
Speaker 1: A big part of our writing tricks is trying to
Speaker 1: be intellectually honest. So what is it required of the
Speaker 1: street performer that you had the street and they score well? I,
Speaker 1: you know, I uh, with my parents permission. You know,
Speaker 1: left home when I was eighteen and was essentially homeless,
Speaker 1: hitchhiking around the country hippie and I supported myself juggling
Speaker 1: on streets and juggling in bars. And uh, you need
Speaker 1: to uh, you need to gather a crowd, and you
Speaker 1: need to collect the money for the bit of a
Speaker 1: barker question, what's yeah? Or is they called to the
Speaker 1: carny talker? Um? I was a really really good street performers,
Speaker 1: a matter of fact teller. I'm not sure how to
Speaker 1: take this, but tell her always says, you know, the
Speaker 1: best thing you've ever done in your career was your
Speaker 1: a bit of street act. There was really nothing better
Speaker 1: than that. Where was the money good? What was the
Speaker 1: place that was like? I had a rule that I
Speaker 1: would only work places that it was illegal, because I
Speaker 1: thought that was sexy. And I worked head out Square
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, and uh, I knew all the police officers,
Speaker 1: and the police officers would come to my show and say,
Speaker 1: the second someone can convince me that you're begging, I'll
Speaker 1: arrest you. Until then you're doing a show, and I
Speaker 1: would do. I I was making so much money. I
Speaker 1: was nineteen years old and I was making so much
Speaker 1: money street performing. I went to an accountant and I
Speaker 1: said to file taxes. I said, I want to file
Speaker 1: my taxes and the money I made And he said,
Speaker 1: what do you do when I said, I'm a street
Speaker 1: jungle And he said, how much do you make? And
Speaker 1: I told him and I said, I have you know,
Speaker 1: I keep records of every hat I passed and how
Speaker 1: much I make, and I have it all laid out here,
Speaker 1: and I had when I brought it to the bank
Speaker 1: and when I did everything. And he said, in your nineteen.
Speaker 1: I said yeah, And he said, if you go to
Speaker 1: the I R S And tell the you made this
Speaker 1: much money juggling, they will arrest you as a drug dealer.
Speaker 1: They will assume you're a drug dealer. And then he said,
Speaker 1: and oh, by the way, I think you're a drug dealer.
Speaker 1: By the way, I don't believe. And I said, well, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm really making this. He goes, take the money, don't
Speaker 1: put it in the bank, keep it in cash, walk away,
Speaker 1: And when does that change meaning that you're doing that?
Speaker 1: And then I put all that money. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: totally ruined my voice because I'd work for five people
Speaker 1: outside no training, just scream and put chloris, put chlorosceptic
Speaker 1: in a coke can and just go. Or is your
Speaker 1: costume to try to oh yeah. My rule on street
Speaker 1: performing was you have to look so that people are
Speaker 1: embarrassed to give you less than a twenty. So I
Speaker 1: wore a three thousand dollar watch when I street performed.
Speaker 1: I wore a really expensive suit, really expensive pants, was
Speaker 1: perfectly groomed, much more than what I went, like Michael
Speaker 1: Douglas than the artful does. Absolutely absolutely. My idea was
Speaker 1: I want to make as much money as Johnny Carson,
Speaker 1: so I'll be out there looking like Johnny Carson. So
Speaker 1: the idea was I would gather a crowd and you
Speaker 1: come up and go, man, he's really funny. He's really
Speaker 1: a good juggler. You'd be with your date and go,
Speaker 1: I can't give him fifty cents. I get a twenty.
Speaker 1: You can't do that and uh And then Teller would
Speaker 1: alternate with me in the same spot, which we kind
Speaker 1: of owned, and the um, the local hoodlum children uh
Speaker 1: loved us because what I would do is I, you know,
Speaker 1: have them take care of my money and buy props
Speaker 1: from me and take care of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Trusted them. So anybody else that came in to take
Speaker 1: that spot, the police arrested them and the local kids
Speaker 1: are asked them. So we had that spot to ourselves,
Speaker 1: and I would go to all the store owners that
Speaker 1: are around there. I would go up after every show
Speaker 1: and say, you're getting enough traffic in and out. I'm
Speaker 1: not blocking Everything's okay. The police officers liked us. He
Speaker 1: joined the Chamber of Commerce, yes pretty much, and we
Speaker 1: did that very well. Then then I really got interested
Speaker 1: in doing uh Tell, and I wanted to do a
Speaker 1: full evening show. We thought that the ideas that we
Speaker 1: had were more than just the twelve minutes. So we
Speaker 1: took all the money that we've made street performing and
Speaker 1: put it into buying lights and sound and and producing.
Speaker 1: Our very first shows were at the Walnut Street Theater.
Speaker 1: They had a space that would seat like seventy people
Speaker 1: and they had put that aside with a grant for
Speaker 1: experimental theater, and the experimental theater company UH could not
Speaker 1: get it together in three months to put an experimental
Speaker 1: show on. Now you know, they couldn't in three months
Speaker 1: get it together. So they came to teller they gone
Speaker 1: to college with, and said, you're doing your little show,
Speaker 1: can you just put it in and we'll let you
Speaker 1: have the theater for free. Now they were getting grants,
Speaker 1: we could have the theater for free. So we put
Speaker 1: the show up and we charged whatever it was ten dollars,
Speaker 1: and we got wonderful reviews and put the place up
Speaker 1: and then the UH, the head of the Walnut Street
Speaker 1: Theater called us in and said, uh, so the theater
Speaker 1: company up there, they gave you the they gave you
Speaker 1: the space, and how much money they give you to
Speaker 1: put this on? We said nothing. They just gave us
Speaker 1: a space, which is a big help man, huge help
Speaker 1: not to pay rent. We could really make money on this.
Speaker 1: We're supporting ourselves. This is trip we're getting going. He goes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And they were paid money to put a show on
Speaker 1: in there, and they just give to you afraid. So
Speaker 1: you guys are welcome to use the theater whenever you want.
Speaker 1: And they're losing all their grants. So we became we
Speaker 1: became the people that killed the experimental theater in that particular,
Speaker 1: and they were like, what did you do to us?
Speaker 1: We said, we didn't even we didn't know. We were
Speaker 1: supposed to lie. We could have said we can't make
Speaker 1: money in there, but as it turned out, we could
Speaker 1: make money, you know, and in a hundred seed theater,
Speaker 1: we we could fill it up and make money doing
Speaker 1: nhhos a week. Um. So you you you perform inside
Speaker 1: and you start to do the show. And what kind
Speaker 1: of a show was it back then? We we did
Speaker 1: we was the three person and show that we had
Speaker 1: a we had a third partner who did classical music,
Speaker 1: and it was called the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society and
Speaker 1: h we got we did a thing that was so nuts.
Speaker 1: Teller was in charge of the putting the ads together
Speaker 1: and putting them in the paper, and I was in
Speaker 1: charge of getting critics to the show. So I just
Speaker 1: put on my leather jacket and went, you know, to
Speaker 1: the list of people that were critics, and walked up
Speaker 1: to their desks and said, Hi, I'm Penn. We're doing
Speaker 1: a show next Friday. We can give you free tickets.
Speaker 1: Would you come and review our show? To the you know,
Speaker 1: to the head critic and the Philadelphia inquirer, who went,
Speaker 1: what are you doing here? No, you'd go through your
Speaker 1: press agent and do this, And he said, why should
Speaker 1: I come see your show? And I went, because I
Speaker 1: can do this? And I picked up his little spindle
Speaker 1: that he put papers on and rammed it in my
Speaker 1: head and jammed it in my nose, doing a thing
Speaker 1: called blockhead and old Carney trick and you know, and
Speaker 1: then took out a cigarette lighter and did a little
Speaker 1: bit of fire eating stuff and said, come to our show.
Speaker 1: And he was not supposed to review little shows. He
Speaker 1: was the big credit, but he came to see our show.
Speaker 1: And then he wrote a rave review and which piste
Speaker 1: off everybody because other big shows are opening, and then
Speaker 1: teller said you have to call him up and thank them.
Speaker 1: So I said, okay. So I called him up and said,
Speaker 1: thank you for your review. It's gonna sell a lot
Speaker 1: of tickets. We're doing really well. And he said did
Speaker 1: you like the review? And I said, well, it's gonna
Speaker 1: sell a lot of tickets. It's gonna do really well.
Speaker 1: And he goes, wait a minute, did you like Did
Speaker 1: you like the review? I said, well, it's selling a
Speaker 1: lot of tickets and I appreciate it. Thank you very much, sir.
Speaker 1: And he said, what are you saying. I'm saying it's awful.
Speaker 1: You don't understand the thing we were doing. It's you
Speaker 1: say kind stuff about us. But I did this show
Speaker 1: so someone would understand it. You missed the point of everything.
Speaker 1: I was saying. It broke my heart. And there was
Speaker 1: a long pause and he said, uh, can I do
Speaker 1: an interview with you for like a few hours, and
Speaker 1: then I will write another review. I'll see the show again.
Speaker 1: And I said sure. I told tell her just tell
Speaker 1: us to just take up. I said, yeah, hey, I
Speaker 1: told him his review sucked. What are you doing? And he, uh,
Speaker 1: Two weeks later wrote another bigger review that said, more
Speaker 1: to your liking, this is a retraction of my previous review.
Speaker 1: I said they were wonderful, and they are, but everything
Speaker 1: else I said was wrong. And then he went in
Speaker 1: to wrote a whole other reviews. So now we've got
Speaker 1: a hundred seat theater that have had two front page
Speaker 1: of the Entertainment section reviews within two weeks. So all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, we're selling ticket sold hundred seats. You know,
Speaker 1: selling a hundred seats is not that hard, but it
Speaker 1: was huge to us. And then a producer sauce there,
Speaker 1: and we went out and played in San Francisco for
Speaker 1: three years at a theater there there was a hundred
Speaker 1: or something. Remember reading an article once about because I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about Vegas and when I know about Vegas acts,
Speaker 1: and I've been to Vegas a few times, but not
Speaker 1: not a lot. I'm not a gambler. I go see shows.
Speaker 1: Is that vice? I don't. I don't. I never I
Speaker 1: never get dog gamble. With your background, it seems like
Speaker 1: I always would. I would go and people would gamble,
Speaker 1: I think, and I lost, and I thought, I I
Speaker 1: can't afford this hard money to throw it. And I'd
Speaker 1: see guys who do that. I mean, I don't want
Speaker 1: to name names, but I got some pretty high end
Speaker 1: friends of mine who really blow a lot of dough
Speaker 1: on that. I go, God, how do you do that?
Speaker 1: And so irresponsible? Many other ways to waste money, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: like like boats, I likes the worst than gamp agains
Speaker 1: so because you can drown. But I was reading this
Speaker 1: article once, this wonderful old article about Wayne Newton, and
Speaker 1: they said, how uh you know? The big punch line
Speaker 1: was that the guy goes he and he takes with
Speaker 1: a stop watch the measure of the show, and Newton
Speaker 1: would come out with the encore and say, hey, you
Speaker 1: know we we never do this. I never do this,
Speaker 1: but I just love this crowd. I never played this song,
Speaker 1: but you know, I'm just gonna throw all my my,
Speaker 1: my my preferences to the wind here and he comes
Speaker 1: and we never stayed for another song. I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: one more song and he just teases the oars and
Speaker 1: the guy and every show the show exact and exactly
Speaker 1: the same, exactly. The show was exactly like one hour
Speaker 1: and in fourteen minutes. Have you ever seen Way Newton
Speaker 1: show that it was? It was just great. I'm so
Speaker 1: it was phenomenal. Yeah, it probably still is. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen in a few of the idea of the show
Speaker 1: being for the man who you and your partner do
Speaker 1: two and fifty shows a year, regardless of the fact
Speaker 1: that it's in your own space and you know it's
Speaker 1: it's obviously it's a very lucrative thing. Is like, do
Speaker 1: you go out there and there's a menu, like a playlist?
Speaker 1: We do? We do the same show, you do the
Speaker 1: same show. Now we're always writing new stuff. So when
Speaker 1: I say the same show, it's the same show as
Speaker 1: the night before, not the same show as the year before. Um.
Speaker 1: And I love that. You know, there's this thing that
Speaker 1: happens um in the variety arts. You know, I'm just
Speaker 1: old enough. I'm sixty. You're a yes, I am, I am,
Speaker 1: I'm a I am a proud egg man. Um, I'm sixty.
Speaker 1: So when I was learning to juggle at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,
Speaker 1: I could just me the guys who worked Vodeville their
Speaker 1: whole life, right, I could just meet the guys who
Speaker 1: wrote a show when they were seventeen years old and
Speaker 1: we're doing it when they were eighty and hadn't changed
Speaker 1: in it and the joy. Yeah, but there were guys jugglers,
Speaker 1: you know, because juggling it's not like music. You can't
Speaker 1: do a whole different routine with juggling. You learned that trick.
Speaker 1: It takes you six years to learn the trick. That's
Speaker 1: the trick you're gonna be doing for a while. You know.
Speaker 1: You know how to throw a cigarette behind your back,
Speaker 1: catching your mouth and throw a match catching then light them.
Speaker 1: That's what you're gonna do. That's your closer for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. And there's something you're able to
Speaker 1: do after doing something ten thousand times, not a thousand,
Speaker 1: ten thousand times, where you're able to communicate with the
Speaker 1: audience in ways that you don't even know what's giving
Speaker 1: them the information when you first do a gag. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the things you see on Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 1: You know, I always want to say, boy, I'd like
Speaker 1: to see this sketch after they did a ten thousand times,
Speaker 1: as Dyldan said, I want to play guitar without tricks.
Speaker 1: You know, all the tricks should be gone and it
Speaker 1: would just be the material that you're just selling. And
Speaker 1: I just love that, So tell her and I try
Speaker 1: to be very conscientious and there's some stuff that's only
Speaker 1: a few months old, but there's other stuff that we've
Speaker 1: been doing forty years. There's one trick that actually predates
Speaker 1: Penn and Teller that Teller did alone, that he's doing yeah, actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a Judini trip that Teller does, and god damn
Speaker 1: that we're in rehearsal. So we decided to really spruce
Speaker 1: up the show and worked with John Randall is a great,
Speaker 1: great director, great director. We decided to we haven't worked
Speaker 1: with the director ever, and so we're going through stuff
Speaker 1: we've done ten thousand times, and we're going through with
Speaker 1: the director and going through a moment by moment, getting
Speaker 1: us in in the afternoon to do a trick we've
Speaker 1: done ten thousand times. Like, what the funk are you doing?
Speaker 1: We know how to do this, but we get in
Speaker 1: there and we wanted to do it, wanted to dig in.
Speaker 1: And I'm watching tell Her from the wings, you know,
Speaker 1: just the other night, watching him do a trick that
Speaker 1: is the first trick I ever saw do. So I
Speaker 1: saw him do this trick when I was first meeting him,
Speaker 1: before there was a Penn and Teller watching him to
Speaker 1: the first trick every so, and I'm watching him going,
Speaker 1: you know, and Tell, here's whatever. He is sixty seven
Speaker 1: years old. Now I saw him first do it when
Speaker 1: he was you know, and uh, I'm watching the trick
Speaker 1: and I go, God damn, he's better, you know. And
Speaker 1: we have this thing in our culture that if the
Speaker 1: Rolling Stones are doing satisfaction, oh well, they should have
Speaker 1: outgrown that. They should have done this. We've done this
Speaker 1: temporary thing in our culture that forgets the fact that,
Speaker 1: god damn, people can't get good at ship. People get
Speaker 1: really good at stuff. One thing Penn and Teller got
Speaker 1: very good at was shocking David Letterman during their multiple
Speaker 1: appearances on his show. Here's an unsuspecting Dave suggesting that
Speaker 1: their act was missing something, you know, the originality and originality.
Speaker 1: But you know, I guess the thing that I missed
Speaker 1: most out of the whole deal was it just didn't
Speaker 1: seem to be an element of a real surprise. They
Speaker 1: just continue to be any surprise with the Then Tell
Speaker 1: are lifted a hat off Dave's desk, casually revealing a
Speaker 1: pile of live cockroaches. This is Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to here's the thing you can hear all of
Speaker 1: my other interviews with entertainers, politicians, and entrepreneurs in our
Speaker 1: archives at Here's the Thing dot org. Like my conversation
Speaker 1: with Gillette's friend David Blaine, another world famous magician known
Speaker 1: for extreme feats of physical endurance. You're standing on a
Speaker 1: beam for you were up there thirty six hours hours.
Speaker 1: How is that on your body? Well? You know what.
Speaker 1: When I was a little kid in school and I
Speaker 1: get in trouble and the teacher would say, go stand
Speaker 1: in the corner. I's like, come on, this is easy.
Speaker 1: Like you can stand for forty five minutes is supposed
Speaker 1: to be hard, So yeah, and then you can apply
Speaker 1: that so it's like how long can you stand in
Speaker 1: one place? So that's really what it's about. Take a
Speaker 1: listen at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. In addition
Speaker 1: to his show in Vegas my guest Pen Gillette regularly
Speaker 1: appears in television and film. He's also done some stage acting.
Speaker 1: He had a part in The Exonerated, a play that
Speaker 1: brings to life the stories of a half dozen former
Speaker 1: death row inmates. Pen doesn't strike you as a man
Speaker 1: who was afraid of much. But he says for that project,
Speaker 1: the fear was real. They put me into that with
Speaker 1: Bob Balaban directing it, and I was terrified, you know,
Speaker 1: because I had never done that kind of legitimate acting.
Speaker 1: And I was on stage like me a pharaoh, and
Speaker 1: you know, and uh and Peter Peter Coyote and people
Speaker 1: that can act, you know, and I us loved it.
Speaker 1: I love taking someone else's work. I love thinking about that.
Speaker 1: And a few times I've done little movie things and
Speaker 1: stuff I've just uh, I've just really should do I
Speaker 1: really mean that you should do more. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know that means stopping doing this orphans well, I think
Speaker 1: I can think of a lot of things. Seriously, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of but I I really really like
Speaker 1: Hickey and uh and I did a wonderful but there
Speaker 1: was a wonderful moment when there was they were doing
Speaker 1: that the movie about blacklisting, uh with de Niro, I
Speaker 1: forgot the name of it, but he was having a
Speaker 1: friend um uh. But I was going to play the part.
Speaker 1: I was auditioning for the part of Bunny and I
Speaker 1: got to read with DeNiro. I got that far that
Speaker 1: I get to read this. I'm sitting there in front
Speaker 1: of the camera and we're going through our script and
Speaker 1: he's just kind of mumbling through it. He's not doing anything,
Speaker 1: you know, he's just that I'm going on, this is
Speaker 1: no big deal with DeNiro up reading my part, and
Speaker 1: I'm going, Wow, I'm doing a really good job here.
Speaker 1: I mean, even even compared to the near I'm doing
Speaker 1: really good. And then there comes to the moment where
Speaker 1: he has to grab his friend who sold him out
Speaker 1: to the h to the blacklisted him. You know, who
Speaker 1: is me, who's a college friend, and like, hug me
Speaker 1: and grab me and do this, And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I saw really world class acting like six inches away
Speaker 1: from my face, and I was like, I couldn't even
Speaker 1: stay at the scene. It was like, whoa, you're good.
Speaker 1: And it was just I would love to have the
Speaker 1: experience of somebody, you know, within a scene because I'm
Speaker 1: always addressing the audience and it's so interesting to me
Speaker 1: when you see really really good actors how they get
Speaker 1: into that, get into that moment, you know, and that thing.
Speaker 1: But so for you, you're you're committed to do this
Speaker 1: for a while. The Vegas thing, Yeah, you know when whenever,
Speaker 1: whenever I can find time, you know, whenever I can
Speaker 1: find a week or two. I you know, it was
Speaker 1: like tell her flies back and forth the Chicago to
Speaker 1: direct The Tempest, and I just finished up this movie
Speaker 1: that I crowdfunded, that I that I rived in. It's
Speaker 1: a movie called Director's Cut, and it's a crazy, crazy movie.
Speaker 1: H the idea of the movie. I was really fascinated
Speaker 1: by by the idea that information is out there. Information
Speaker 1: is out there, so now when you make a movie,
Speaker 1: it all gets put into hard drives and it's on
Speaker 1: sharers and people can get it. So I postulated a
Speaker 1: guy who was obsessed with an actress, obsessed with her,
Speaker 1: and the movie was being crowdfunded, and crowdfunded his way
Speaker 1: onto the set and then got the codes to get
Speaker 1: all the outtakes from the movie and then kidnaps her
Speaker 1: and then uses all the footage to make his own
Speaker 1: movie that tells his own story with him as the star.
Speaker 1: So we had Missy Pyle who says, like the sequel
Speaker 1: to Human Centipede, Yeah, well yeah, it's not as sick
Speaker 1: as that, well, not as sexually sick, but intellectually meta
Speaker 1: of a seque, very very many and uh, and uh,
Speaker 1: I play Uh, I play Herbert. There's a guy who
Speaker 1: does this and who's on the on the set, and
Speaker 1: then I get to have the scenes where the two
Speaker 1: men who are acting in it are doing a scene
Speaker 1: with her, but she's in my basement. So I've tried
Speaker 1: to match the scene to match that. So it's all
Speaker 1: about continuity and changing that and all about movie making.
Speaker 1: You and I should do a horror movie, a really
Speaker 1: low something really tawd me and disgusting, and yeah, well,
Speaker 1: cons anything, anything, anything, anything I could do to I'll
Speaker 1: make a couple of atheists, no catholic and an atheist atheist,
Speaker 1: and we'll get someone to do for you, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can, you can do even even the fact that
Speaker 1: you're doing this like this, I'll work with you a
Speaker 1: little bit. It's not that's cool, Yeah, exactly. And now
Speaker 1: the tell me what is movie night? You're a movie fan?
Speaker 1: What's movie nights? Um, Tuesday nights? After my show, people
Speaker 1: come over and we watch in Vegas over my house.
Speaker 1: You have a killer screening room. Yeah, and we have
Speaker 1: about Sometimes people come over love movies and well, yes,
Speaker 1: but this is not showing the love of movies. This
Speaker 1: is just thirty people screaming, and people think when they
Speaker 1: come over that it's going to be witty. It's not witty,
Speaker 1: simply obscenity. It's simply spewing out the bile from the week.
Speaker 1: Is a group it's a group encounter sits mock the
Speaker 1: movie much more than more than. And now we're in
Speaker 1: the middle of we're watching every season of and I
Speaker 1: am so trying to convince Keefer to come by one
Speaker 1: night because I would love to have him there. Yes,
Speaker 1: how how tall are you? Exactly came? You know, juste
Speaker 1: we we And it's just it's just screaming. He's just
Speaker 1: gonna get because you know, I tend to because I
Speaker 1: have my children are nine and ten years old, and
Speaker 1: because I do so many shows and as so much
Speaker 1: stuff going on, I really don't get a chance to
Speaker 1: hang out with friends. So this is my two hours
Speaker 1: a week. That just it's what what's something? Yeah, exactly
Speaker 1: what some guys to do with poker. It's just it's
Speaker 1: just yelling. So when did you become this arbiter of bullshit?
Speaker 1: When did? When? Did it? It? Just the things that
Speaker 1: you strike you as bullshit, that's whatever word you want
Speaker 1: to use. This genuous or false, whatever it sat in
Speaker 1: your craw how long before you decided you didn't do
Speaker 1: a TV show out of this? We we have always
Speaker 1: wanted to do a skeptical TV show always, and we
Speaker 1: started pitching that in the eighties. Tell it to Yeah
Speaker 1: and we're because we're both. You know, there's two very
Speaker 1: strong schools in magic. There's the Houdini school, which is
Speaker 1: the we are or as Robert Houdan said, we are
Speaker 1: actors playing the parts of magicians. Uh. It also starts
Speaker 1: with the sixteenth century the Discovery of Witchcraft, which is
Speaker 1: the first book written that says this stuff is fake,
Speaker 1: we are doing tricks. There's that whole school that believes
Speaker 1: that the magician is someone who helps us study how
Speaker 1: we ascertain truth. In other words, I've studied trickery, so
Speaker 1: let's talk about the truth. Then there's a whole other school,
Speaker 1: which is you know David Blaine, for instance, who's a
Speaker 1: friend of mine and who we get along with. Well,
Speaker 1: we have a very strong philosophical disagreement. He believes that
Speaker 1: the magician's job is to distort reality, that you must
Speaker 1: leave his show thinking things that aren't true. He believes
Speaker 1: that strongly and can make a very coaching argument for it,
Speaker 1: which I disagree with, but I know I like them. Um,
Speaker 1: there's those two schools, and tell him I've always been
Speaker 1: strongly in the Houdini amazing Randy camp on that Ben ps,
Speaker 1: I don't see a David Blaine theater in a Vegy yes,
Speaker 1: by the way, So I don't know I'm putting my
Speaker 1: money on, although we had him on the show and
Speaker 1: he's he's great, he's wonderful. He's a great, great magician
Speaker 1: and and a great guy. Um, So we've been pushing
Speaker 1: this and I would go in and say, the nuts
Speaker 1: always have the passion and the scientists always have this
Speaker 1: low key, measured way. What we will give you in
Speaker 1: bullshit is we will do the best to give you
Speaker 1: the scientific point of view, done with the passion of
Speaker 1: a nut. And I'm willing to give you all that
Speaker 1: passion and rip my heart open and be wrong and
Speaker 1: go off half cocked. But I'm going to do it
Speaker 1: for the other side, and and the and the topics
Speaker 1: came to you, like what was the first show. The
Speaker 1: first show is very complex because the first show was
Speaker 1: about talking to the dead, and we conceived the show
Speaker 1: to attack you know John Edward and those people who
Speaker 1: say they can communicate with the dead. And I conceived
Speaker 1: it intellectually, and then while thinking about it, my mom
Speaker 1: died at the age of ninety in two thousand and
Speaker 1: we started doing the show in two thousand one, and
Speaker 1: this happened. Forgive me for only in this one way
Speaker 1: comparing myself to Hudini. But Udini had this intellectual dislike
Speaker 1: for people who claimed to talk to the dead. And
Speaker 1: it was a lot of Houdini's posturing, I do better
Speaker 1: tricks than them. I do tricks no one can figure
Speaker 1: out their tricks. Aren't that good? And then his mom
Speaker 1: dies and Um, Arthur Conan Doyle Ryla Holmes, writer was
Speaker 1: a big believer in in spiritualist. Judini wanted to be
Speaker 1: around him because Udini um was the son of a rabbi.
Speaker 1: But uh, but it was not well educated, and Arthur
Speaker 1: Conan Doyle was very respected and very well educated. And
Speaker 1: Udini was thrilled to be traveling in that circle. He
Speaker 1: was cheap carney trash, traveling the circle of the intellectuals.
Speaker 1: He loved Eric Yeah, and his mother. Judini's mother died
Speaker 1: and Arthur Conan Doyle's wife did automatic writing, okay, which
Speaker 1: was you would just without thinking, you would just write,
Speaker 1: and it was the spirits talking through you. And Arthur
Speaker 1: Conan Doyle said, well, you know you miss your mom
Speaker 1: so much, because Judini was another similarity, a mama's boy,
Speaker 1: which I was. I was very close to my mom
Speaker 1: and Houdini, you know, okay, it's a little dangerous, you're
Speaker 1: gonna talk to my mom, but okay. So his wife
Speaker 1: sat down and then did automatic writing, and at the
Speaker 1: top of the page, I would have given the bay
Speaker 1: to be there was across and the first words were
Speaker 1: dear Harry, and then it went on. Now, what Arthur
Speaker 1: Kona and his wife didn't know was that his mother
Speaker 1: didn't speak English. He was born in Budapest. He claimed
Speaker 1: to be from Appleton, Wisconsin. He was actually born in Budapest.
Speaker 1: He was the son of a rabbi. Across at the top,
Speaker 1: probably not right, and his mother never once called him Harry,
Speaker 1: that was his stage name. So Judini felt what it
Speaker 1: feels like to have your image of someone you love distorted.
Speaker 1: And Houdini went ape ship and then the second half
Speaker 1: of his career was all busting these people. And so
Speaker 1: we were going to do talking to the dead, and
Speaker 1: I we did that show, uh, you know, within a
Speaker 1: year of my mom dying, And so it was very
Speaker 1: very passionate because the point that people don't make is
Speaker 1: a lot of times the people that do this communication
Speaker 1: with the dead, they say that they're bringing solace to people.
Speaker 1: The most valuable thing I have in my life is
Speaker 1: the memories of my family, my mom and dad, also
Speaker 1: my children. The new memories I'm making, but let's let's
Speaker 1: go from the past, the memories of my mom and dad.
Speaker 1: If I come to you grief stricken about my mom
Speaker 1: and you claim that you're communicating with her, and then
Speaker 1: we have some sort of communication, what you have done
Speaker 1: you can call it bringing solace, but you and also
Speaker 1: see it as distorting my memory. You've now said something
Speaker 1: that she never said. And I cannot think of a
Speaker 1: crueler thing. In order to get power and make money,
Speaker 1: you're doing this, and it's actually the most dis Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's horrible. I am naturally not cynical,
Speaker 1: and when you're naturally not cynical, you bump into this
Speaker 1: stuff all the time. I tend to, uh, I tend
Speaker 1: to be skeptical, but not cynical, and people always put
Speaker 1: those together, and they are very different emotional states. You know,
Speaker 1: Skepticism is is cold and cynicism is hot. You know.
Speaker 1: Cynicism is, uh, everybody's full of ship, everybody's lying to us,
Speaker 1: everybody's doing this. Skepticism is let's get to the truth.
Speaker 1: And those are two very different things. You know. When
Speaker 1: I talked to Bill Maher about this, because Bill Moore
Speaker 1: is proudly cynical and I am proudly skeptical, and we
Speaker 1: are different things. It's a very different reactions. And and
Speaker 1: I think that if you get to Pollyanna and I
Speaker 1: am very Pollyanna, I am much too optimistic. I'm much
Speaker 1: too straightforward. It's one of the things you get, you
Speaker 1: get with a with a perfect You know, everybody in
Speaker 1: show business complains I'm from a dysfunctional family. I drop
Speaker 1: out of those conversations. You know, my my dad never
Speaker 1: got the memo that dad's supposed to give you conditional love.
Speaker 1: He never got that. He was just unconditional love and
Speaker 1: supportive and even thinks he didn't understand. My parents tried,
Speaker 1: from the time I was seventeen until the day they died,
Speaker 1: tried to get me to cut my hair. And the
Speaker 1: really funny part of it was that this boy, this
Speaker 1: baby laugh is my mother when she was in her
Speaker 1: eighties and I was in my forties. My mother actually said,
Speaker 1: I just love this moment. My mom sitting there and
Speaker 1: she goes, you know, Pen, when you were a young man,
Speaker 1: having the long hair was fine. But now that you're older,
Speaker 1: I mean you're older than middle aged and you have
Speaker 1: some gray in there. You need to get your hair cut.
Speaker 1: And I said, Mom, this is how far we've come.
Speaker 1: We've now come to the point where now it was
Speaker 1: okay when I was young, that never happened because every
Speaker 1: single time she saw me, that battle went on. But
Speaker 1: I want to say, and I want to say this
Speaker 1: proudly to the world, that before my mother died, I
Speaker 1: went out one evening when visiting her and we remembered
Speaker 1: to get milk on the way home, something I had
Speaker 1: never done my entire life before. As we sign up,
Speaker 1: I know what play you and I should do. What's
Speaker 1: that We're gonna do a play together? We're gonna do Beckett.
Speaker 1: I would nothing. I would like nothing. Sure, I mean
Speaker 1: we made bomb, made bomb, but we do it for us? Oh,
Speaker 1: I would I would I would do it for us,
Speaker 1: I would do it for I would. Do you have
Speaker 1: anything we set that up, Glenn look. Clan says yes.
Speaker 1: Clan says yes. If you missed Penn and Teller during
Speaker 1: their sick week run on Broadway this summer, you can
Speaker 1: catch them in Vegas by Alec Baldwin. And this is
Speaker 1: here's the thing. M