I’d turn in down. In a heartbeat. I hate shit like that.
Me too, but then our boss probably wouldn’t have picked me or you, who he wasn’t sure of. He’d have picked our workmate, Janice, who is a laugh a minute and has been heard to profess a liking for Derren Brown in the past.
That’s all it is. No stooges required. To expound, just like you can go pretty much anywhere with merely a clipboard and/or hardhat, it’s not that hard to trick people into thinking they’re dealing with money. Just pretend it’s money and distract them slightly. We’re all a little dumber than we like to admit. I mean, people fall for this:
http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2006/12/coolest_experiment_ever.php
You’re still describing an enormous, perfect conspiracy. Those don’t wash when it comes to the moon landing or the WTC collapse. I don’t see why this one should either.
Also, what you’re doing here might look like scepticism, but it’s not. All you’ve done is discard one explanation (the quasi-metaphysical one where Derren Brown can control minds) and instead, you’re clinging dogmatically to a different one, for no particularly good reason.
Argh! He doesn’t use stooges or paid people. It’s not that. Stop saying that all the time. Imagine how much money he would have to pay people to stop them from speaking up and tumbling his whole enterprise which proudly states he doesn’t do that.
Now, does anyone have some serious ideas? Some of the stuff he does really do seem unlikely.
Ah, the innocence is touching. You mean you actually believe a magician? A man who’s job it is to deceive you.
I’m not. I’ve only involved one person. That’s perfectly acceptable in magic trick terms - to have one confederate. More than one is getting risky and would only be done in extreme situations (if you really wanna do the trick). None is the ideal but sadly the best tricks often aren’t possible with no confederates.
Magic tricks get exponentially better the more confederates you involve. If you have a room of 10 people and 9 are in on the trick, you can do some seemingly amazing things to the one who isn’t.
I’m not clinging dogmatically to my explanation. I don’t know how he does it. I’m just suggesting one way it could be done.
Ximenean above said:
This is possible but then you would get the same problem of lots of people out there who could say well he tried that on me and it didn’t work. So you risk being outed. My way is more sure than that because you eliminate the random element.
Consider 3 possible explanations:
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Derren Brown can read minds - think we’re all agreed that’s unlikely
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He “influences” people into making certain choices - this is what he tries to present himself as doing. Since this is the way he wants us to think, it’s probably misdirection.
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He uses a trick to make it look like he’s influencing people
He does use a certain of amount of “influencing” people in some ways but he also uses a lot of conventional tricks but just dresses them up as “influence” in order to misdirect.
If you read any magic books written by mentalists, you will find that very few (if any) tricks are actually accomplished by “influencing” people. Most use other methods but make it look like influence.
He has performed on more than occasion. If he used the method you’re suggesting on other occasions, that’s more than one person. If he only used it once, and different methods on all the other occasions, it’s not even worth talking about, because it’s a drop in the ocean.
Well, I was only talking about this particular trick. I don’t think he uses confederates as a rule. I would say it’s pretty rare that he does. Which makes it all the more powerful if he throws a confederate trick in every now and then.
And remember all the confeds are bound by a legal contract.
I’m not criticising him if does do that, btw, it’s good magic practice - befuddle the audience by any means possible.
Simple. Start with a non-disclosure agreement. If they sign it, then they are not allowed to disclose whatever it is you subsequently offer, whether they accept or not. If they don’t sign, move on to the next stooge.
Like any “street magician” on TV, everyone he interacts with personally has been paid to do what he wants. Whether it is someone who answered an ad before hand, or just someone his producers went up to just prior to shooting, they are all in on it. Seriously, people…do you think when David Blaine stops someone on the street, asks them to think of their first love, that he just HAPPENS to be able to have that name written on his arm? Well…of course he can. Because that person was paid to say the name that he prepared on his arm before filming. Derron Brown has had many of his paid shills come out and reveal that they were plants. He is not very good at keeping his secrets.
Interesting. Could you give us links to all of these paid shills coming out? I must have missed them.
ps His name is DERREN Brown, not Derron. Mangetout gave the correct spelling in the third post - five years ago when this thread was active!
So how does Derren Brown control zombies, then?
I’ve seen a few of his live shows. He often picks random members of the audience by throwing a frisbee into the stalls and then telling getting the catcher to throw it on. Then he does all sorts of impressive things. So either the entire audience is filled with stooges or he’s very very good at what he does. As part of the last show I saw he did a mass seance with about 100 members of the audience and what he was saying was shockingly and amazingly accurate. Of course he also pointed out that anyone claiming they could speak to your dead relatives was a con-artist and that his technique was not in any way spiritual. I’m sure there’s a lot of trickery but its done very well.
Got a link or citation or something? I’m not denying it’s possible, but asserting it isn’t the same as demonstrating it (which is why I asked the same in post #9)
Paging Ian Zin…
One thing to be clear about, when you see a trick like the OP describes - don’t assume that the only person being tricked is the guy Derren is talking to. You are the audience, not the teller. The teller might be being duped, but don’t assume that the entire trick is the duping of the teller. You are led to believe that the teller was tricked into something. You don’t know what the teller was really tricked into doing. It might have been a component of the larger misdirection that is directed at you, the audience.
I will also point out that there are a couple of very real techniques that can bamboozle people like tellers into doing the wrong thing. A friend of mine is mean enough to try them out from time to time, and they work. Things like getting the cashier to give you your money back after you paid for something, and then walk out with both item and money. I have not seen the clips where Derren does the OP’s trick, but it does sound a lot like this. It is a mean thing to do.
There are various tricks to fool someone about how much money you’ve given them or how much money you’re taken from them or what merchandise they’ve given you. The trick that John Cusack’s character pulls on the bartender at the beginning of The Grifters is an example. Shortly afterwards he tries a similar trick on someone else who notices what’s going on, so Cusack’s character gets beaten up for doing it. It’s a hard way to make a living, since you don’t get a lot of money out of it and you’re constantly in danger:
The trick that he pulls on the other customer at the bar strikes me as really stupid and dangerous.
Bingo. I remember an episode of the series where he did his thing in America, he was using bits of blank paper in place of money, including to buy a diamond ring, and he clearly did it by jabbering like an imbecile to distract the people he was paying. The only person they showed it failing to work on was a man whose first language wasn’t English.
The only other explanation would be to say everyone involved were paid stooges. The problem is that in one of his shows, The Gathering, he does everything with a live audience made up of celebrities. I can’t see them being bought off, because they’re rich enough that it would be too expensive, and I definitely can’t see them keeping their mouths shut.
Here is the episode with blank paper in New York. Derren Brown is a wonderful magician.
I find that hard to believe that a jeweler would accept blank paper for a $4500 purchase. How would he count it?
It used to be that stage magicians on TV had some disclaimer about “done in front of live audience exactly as you see it, no editting, no off-camera trickery”. Recent TV “street” magicians have taken that audience belief and messed with it.
You can google Criss Angel, for example, and find that his flying trick is done with a giant crane and a fine wire, so the “street audience” are paid stooges ignoring the mechanical setup all around them. The woman he “pulls apart” and then her top half scampers off is the girl with no legs who’s been on Oprah. Some of the audience can be idntified as the same from shot to shot in different locations, obviously paid entourange. And so on…
I mean, it’s part of the magic game if the people at the restaurant table on the other side of the glass window surrepetitously stick “your card” to the glass. It’s kind of cheating if they use plants to find out names ahead of time to write on his arm, but it’s possible Blaine’s subject is random and he’s writing what a confederate observed and signalled while he’s “putting out the fire” on his sleeve, or some such trick. A lot of Blaine’s magic is simple stage magic with a good schtick. Criss’s is apparently mainly staged rather than clever, with an paid “impromtu” audience.
Never heard of this Derron guy before.