Penn & Teller: Fool Us, US run on CW

Cafe Society
101

That’s the inherent problem with the technique known as “instant stooge”. As I understand it, “instant stooge” is bringing a volunteer person into the act and getting them to aid you, using the lure of being involved in the act and pressure of not ruining the performance to get them to cooperate.

There is also the technique called “dual reality” whereby two people experience different things. For example, a trick that uses DR is a psychic link. You take two people and claim you’re going to psychically link them. You tell one to close his eyes, then you do some voodoo hand waving, then you clearly and distinctly touch the other person, say on their hand. Then you have the first person open their eyes and state if they felt anything, they say you touched their hand. The audience goes wild. Except what they don’t say is “You told me to close my eyes, you touched my hand, then we stood there for some length of time before having me open my eyes.” The trick involves a surreptitious touch in some manner the audience doesn’t see/catch, and then an very obvious touch on the other person later. The time element is masked.

Blending the two is to let the assistant think the trick is one thing so they cooperate, but the audience sees an effect from their cooperation.

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Dual reality is not completely the same as an in instant stooge, but there is overlap. Trying to find a good definition of dual reality, I found nothing solid. One interesting example is a trick where red backed cards that have been selected by party A are inserted into a deck of blue backed cards. The cards are fanned out in the magicians hand and party B is asked to identify the cards party A selected from looking at the back of the fanned deck. It’s easy for party B, they select the red cards, while party A doesn’t see the back and is amazed at how easily party B does it.

Slydini, one of the greatest of manipulators and misdirection also used something like this by performing close up magic where the general audience could see what he was doing, and 2 or 3 participants sitting at a table with him see nothing. Very simple tricks from someone who could do the very same thing without the whole audience seeing the technique.

No matter whether dual reality has some specific definition or not, we see a range of techniques across the spectrum. It’s hard for me to respect the instant stooge concept in it’s most basic form because it’s not significantly different from using paid stooges who are part of the act.

I’m not convinced the mentalist had ‘brick’ written on his hand on Fool Us. The trick may have had multiple outs, and this one just worked out well. I don’t recall how the volunteer was chosen, but he may have been pre-selected by a screening that revealed he was an easily suggestible lunkhead, and primed with information to lead him to a ‘house’ related answer, or at least to see that he would be a meek instant stooge. Either way, I still don’t have much respect for magic acts that require stooges, instant or the kind requiring full cooking time.

ETA: Another variant of dual reality, P&T on SNL way back in the day. They were performing amazing object levitations and disappearing objects on live TV. They asked the audience if everything shown was live, if there were any wires used, and the audience who heartily shout “NO!” At the end of the act the dual reality was revealed to the TV audience, P&T were hanging upside down, the live audience had seen that the whole time.

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ETA: Missed window, audience shouted “YES!” to is it live? Shouted “NO!” to wires being used.

104

The “Polyester” show was generally disappointing.

A quick change act? C’mon.

Etienne Pradier did 4 tricks. Only one of which was interesting. In particular when he put the king into the band of his watch, turned his hand and when it came back was Teller’s card was quite obvious. You could see that he tucked two cards in and when he flipped his hand over he pulled the king from underneath. It took this guy forever to slip it back into the fan. The card in the bottle thing is a variation of a trick that can be bought from the usual magic trick specialty shops. Any one of these could have made this version. The trick is in the device, anyone who can palm a card can perform it.

A second rate card manipulator.

The only puzzle was guessing Penn’s card. Pencil reading was a good guess. One wonders about the back of the paper being readable in some way. A real trick would have been a camera or some such under the table. (Sending to the phone?) The pinhole opening under some sheer cloth could have hid it. Etc.

But … Did you notice that Penn picked the 4 of clubs? This is the card P&T use in a lot of “Is that your card?” tricks and demos. (Perhaps due to it being considered an “unlucky” card.)

The duct tape thing. Knew instantly the card was going to be in his mouth. So the whole time I was watching for the plant. Lot’s of head bobbing and tapping on the head. Oh well. Then I noticed the card being hidden after it was taken of the mouth. What??? All that and they could be doing a simple switch?

Another possible example of trying to fool P&T by making a non-move.

I am tired of the card guys claiming it’s an ordinary deck of cards. Just have P&T have a stack of unopened decks they bought and let the card manipulators use only those.

But the real, absolute, bottom of the barrel were P&T themselves. The polyester cloth thing was just a variation of the standard rope cutting trick. One of the standard Intro to Magic 101 tricks.

I kept hoping they were going to spin it like they sometimes do. Explain the trick, show how they were doing it, then fool us by clearly not doing it that way. But, nah, just the usual bit. A major disappointment.

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P&T like to use the 3 of clubs.

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Final first season episode: Teller sucks… Helium

First up: Shawn Farquhar

I was watching this trying to figure out why I had seen it, then realized I think I saw it online here from another P&T discussion thread.

Shawn has Penn assist him. He takes a new deck of cards, sealed in packaging. He had Penn inspect it, then opens it to show us it is a new deck. He removes three of the end cards, leaving one joker. He has Penn shuffle, select a card at random, turn it over and sign the face with a marker. Then he has Penn hand it back, slips it into the deck, puts the deck into Penn’s hands and pulls out the remaining joker as “wouldn’t it be great if I pulled your card? Ha ha, it’s a Joker.”

But then he shows he swapped the deck to a new sealed deck, in wrapper. Penn opens it, but the 4 end cards are missing, he fans the deck and reveals all the cards back in order with Penn’s signed card in the deck in order.

Penn & Teller and just about everyone, including me, spotted when he swapped the first deck for the second deck in the box - when he pulls the pen out of his inner coat pocket. I also see a tab sticking up that he has to put down. And it’s obvious the deck he’s holding is a box.

I can even guess how he sealed the package - he has an adhesive label and when he pulls the Joker that is the top card to cover the box, he pulls the tab that reveals the adhesive.

But the part that fools me and fooled Penn & Teller is how he got the signed card back into the new deck in order. So even though they saw the deck switch move, they still called it that he fooled them.

Next up: Manuel Martinez

First thing I said when I heard his accent was “that’s a phony as a three dollar bill”. Manuel uses Jonathan Ross and a volunteer from the audience, he pulls out an industrial staple gun. He demonstrates that the gun fires staples out under force by having Jonathan hold a large wooden board and he staples several coasters to the board. He also fires one staple through the air at Jonathan’s hand to demonstrate the staples come out at speed.

Then he takes that staple gun over to a caddy with 4 other staple guns, has the volunteer place it in the caddy, mix them up, and spin the caddy, so no one can know which stapler is which. He has the volunteer pick one and put it aside as the loaded one, then proceeds to demonstrate that the remaining four are empty. He fires one against his own palm, another against his face, another against his own throat, and the fourth he has Jonathan fire against a coaster against his own forehead. No staples, all 4 good. Then, to demonstrate that the remaining stapler had staples in it, he staples another coaster and a stuffed bear against the wooden board, and then has the volunteer open the bottom and remove staples to show it was loaded.

P&T bust him hard. First, they say there’s a possible method that used a hero mark and careful manipulation of the volunteer, but that’s not how he did it. They say that all five staple guns have staples for the reveal but won’t fire. After the initial demonstrations, it doesn’t matter which gun is used. The final coaster and bear are then attached by some other form of adhesive. And finally, they call him on the fake accent. Busted all around.

Third act: Chris Dugdale

Chris says he has a new act, and he won’t even be on stage, he’s back stage via video so we can see him but he can’t see the stage. (:dubious:) He has a stage manager to direct traffic. He has Penn pull a number from a big bowl of poker chips with numbers on them, and has everyone in the audience pull an envelope from under their seats. The cards inside all have different numbers, so that picks a volunteer #1, and volunteer #1 selects a second volunteer #2 on the way to the stage. The stage manager guy gives them some brochures, then sends V1 to a whiteboard and V2 sits at a desk. V2 is asked to sort through the brochures and select prices for several vacation package features. Meanwhile, he has the audience hold up their cards to show that none of the locations written on them are the same, then has V1 write the destination from his card on the white board. Then Chris reveals that he knows because he’s wearing a T-shirt with that destination: Malaysia.

Next, he has the stage manager guy take the numbers from V2 over to V1 to write on the white board and add up. The total dollar value: $1475. He then has Jonathan Ross pull an envelope he’s been keeping safe, open it, and reveals the same total.

Finally, he says something cryptic about being fooled before, during, or after, and then V1 walks up on stage and proceeds to pull off some elaborate rubber gloves and a rubber mask to reveal he’s not a black man, it’s Chris Dugdale.

Of course, that was a very dramatic reveal. He totally busted me on that, and I was already skeptical about the camera feed thing. I was thinking a recording and he’s in the audience somewhere. I would have guessed the stage manager, but we saw him in the intro video with Chris, so it couldn’t be him. The mask was good enough I didn’t catch on. I figured he was some kind of stooge.

Of course, and Penn points out, once we learn that the volunteer doing the writing is actually the magician, then there’s nothing special about what he writes on the board. The trick was making it so the right person was selected as the volunteer. And he demonstrates the method is that none of the numbers in the bowl match the numbers any of the other people in the audience has, except 408, the number Chris had. That still leaves making sure they got the right number, but that can be accomplished by having the bottom half the bowl have 408. He instructed Penn to dig down deep for the number.

But the thing is, Penn asks if anyone around him said out loud that V1 was going to be Chris, then says that one person who did say it out loud to him was Teller, so Teller spotted it right away.

So no fooling this time, but Penn said it was a great trick. I think using the numbers that way is a great way to get a force while looking mystically random. It’s a great use of misdirection by large numbers. You have an audience with a couple hundred people, so you have a lot of numbers to work with. You have a bowl full of tags with numbers. You have to have a really large audience so it doesn’t seem strange to have numbers like 433 on people’s cards, and you can’t use the seat numbers. But that gives you the ability to put different destinations on every card, because you have the force, and yet to the audience it will be convincing.

Also spotted the trick with getting the costs. V2 sorts through various brochures and selects 4 different dollar values, and writes them in a folder. The stage manager then carries them across the stage and hands the folder to V1 to write. Now V1 can write anything, because the only person who would possibly see it is wrong is V2, and he’s across the stage and has to remember one set of numbers out of a bunch of numbers he was reviewing and sorting. And yes, I checked, the math works.

That kind of gimmick is used often. You have three or four people pick a random 3 or 4 digit number and each write them down on a piece of paper. Then another person is given the paper to add the numbers. Nobody ever sees all the numbers at one time but the guy doing the adding. And he adds correctly, and then the magician guesses the right number. Except after you take down all the random numbers, you swap the paper with you own numbers on it and have the guy doing the math only see the numbers you provided. He magically gets the number that you predicted.

Fourth act: Martin Daniels, son of a famous British magician, Paul Daniels

Martin dresses up in a tux and cape with a Phatom of the Opera mask. (A mask, we all know what this means - he’s going to change places at some point.) Martin lures an assistant out in a trance and has her lie on a bench, then has two more assistants drape a cloth across her. He proceeds to levitate her up up up, the cloth hanging down pretty far and obscuring him from view. He then picks her up, walks forward across the bench, before twirling the cloth and she evaporates, only to show up across the room in the audience. Then he waves to the other side, and Martin is standing next to P&T in the audience, and the man behind the mask is… Paul Daniels.

No fooling, they don’t bother with the formalities, it was a fun presentation with a slight surprise with Paul moving from the audience to be the magician in the mask.

My spots: a mask means the magician will swap out so he can appear somewhere else. The cloth over the lady uses a framework so it holds her shape, she slides out the back while they are doing the levitating. The body goes up above the magician’s head, and the cloth drapes down, so that’s when the magician swaps out. The cape and the black backdrop help with that. What’s left is the surprise of getting Paul Daniels from the audience up on stage. That’s why there’s such a long entry of the assistant in the trance and the time to maneuver her to the bench.

Final Act is Penn and Teller and a bag of helium.

Penn says they are doing an escape act. They say it’s cheesy, but there’s one awesome moment. Penn picks a guy from the audience and explains that often these become macho things because they involve ropes or chains or boxes and things. This will involve … a big trash bag. Teller steps into a giant black plastic bag with a drawstring - a trashbag. There’s a tank of helium and a hose. Penn takes pains to explain that helium is dangerous because it displaces oxygen, so it’s stupid to do this trick, and it’s the juxtaposition of it being dangerous but being funny because it’s used for balloons.

Teller climbs in the garbage bag, Penn sticks a hose in the top and pulls the drawstring, has the assistant hold the top of the bag. He fills the bag, fills the bag some more. The bag is full, sitting on the floor, the hose is removed and the drawstring tied and the assistant is holding the drawstring. Penn counts to three, the lights go out, there’s a flash, the lights come on, and the bag of helium is floating upwards while Teller somehow got out of the bag without losing the helium. Ta da!

Notice how the bag isn’t quite as puffy as it’s floating as it was sitting on the floor. Notice how Penn sends it up to the ceiling so no one can inspect the bag. I think Teller climbed into the bag and out the bottom and sealed the bottom edge before the helium was added, then he’s crouching under the bag and holding it down. During he lights out, he just steps out from under the bag, which starts to float upwards.

And that’s the show. Will CW commission new episodes?

107

Farquhar was brilliant. Clearly the card is inserted into a deck in a box through the bottom flap to get it in position. Somehow those are the cards that end up in Penn’s hands at the end, not in the sealed box. I can’t catch where he does it even slow motion replay, but I believe it’s done when he dumps the cards into Penn’s hands.

It’s easier than that.

There’s another bag inside the bag we see. That’s what’s getting filled with helium so Teller can just step out of the outer bag and it doesn’t require a real seal, just a little gum to hold it apparently shut.

108

Forgot to mention, Farquhar used another deck switch to force the card on Penn to start with. That’s the only way to get it back in the deck in the right place. So he had to do a switch for the force, another switch to put the sealed deck in Penn’s hands, then another switch after the plastic wrap is torn to get the final deck into Penn’s hands. Pretty damn good.

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At the very least stop using decks with backs that are available at your local magic shop and not available at your local place that sells ordinary decks of cards!

CMC fnord!

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It works better than saying “Here is a rigged deck of cards”. Farquhar went to great lengths to show that he was actually using an ordinary deck of non-Canadian cards which made his trick more effective.

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Back in the late 1970s, when I first started following P&T, they appeared at a Renaissance Festival in Columbia, MD, during the day, while doing their stage show at night in Baltimore or Washington (I forget which). This was shortly after their Asparagus Valley Cultural Society days.

At the fair, they performed seperately, Penn doing a comedy juggling act with knives and torches while wearing a leather apron, and Teller doing a silent magic act. The needle trick was the closer.

I watched him doing it at least three times to figure out how it worked. The key was the spool of thread. Rather than an ordinary spool, about one inch tall, this one was more than two inches, with a wide center hole. After “swallowing” the needles, he secretly palmed them out while seeming to have trouble with the last batch (he tossed away one stray), before biting the apple and letting the audience member examine his mouth.

When he picks up the spool, the prepared packet of threaded needles is secreted in the center hole, and he loads it into his mouth as he appears to put the plain thread in. I haven’t seen the video of this episode, but in another video of the trick on YouTube, it’s fairly obvious.

But the real magic is in the business Teller adds: his expressions while apparently swallowing the needles, the silent burps, etc. A classic trick he’s been doing for more than 40 years.

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Oh man, I hope so! I just love this show!

I’ve been watching *Wizard Wars *on SyFy and while it’s magic it’s just…not as good as Fool Us. If we’re going to have shitty reality shows about dancing, singing, baking, “talents”, and whatever…we need one about magic too!

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A few years ago some friends and I went to a Penn & Teller show. I kind of remember their opening trick, and hopefully somebody here will know what I’m talking about and explain how this was done. :slight_smile:

The show starts with the curtains parting, and we see inflated balloon versions of P&T, each about twice the size of their human counterparts. The Penn balloon has an open mouth and Penn’s voice is introducing the show and cracking jokes. The Teller balloon is close-mouthed and smiling. Both balloons are bouncing around, and they leave the ground long enough to show there’s no one behind them. At some point a gun goes off and hits the Teller balloon. Penn keeps on talking like nothing’s wrong, and the Teller balloon completely deflates. The Penn balloon then gets shot, and Teller emerges from inside. I may not have gotten the details entirely right, since P&T are so adept at making you come to the wrong conclusion when something weird happens.

Any thoughts?

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Hmm, an additional deck swap?

[spoiler]Like I said, I see a flap or tag in that stack in his hand as he pulls it into view. That tag could help with finding the right placement.

I think he pulls that tag when he pulls the Joker - that’s why he only shows part of the Joker - the tag is attached. [/spoiler]

That actually makes sense. It doesn’t change the part I mention, but gives better seal for retaining the helium.

Fuck, I’m dropping the spoiler boxes.

So you’re saying he has to swap decks sometime between when he fans the cards to show the original order and the time he fans the cards for Penn to select, with Penn doing a shuffle in the middle of that period? That would create a force to ensure the 7 of diamonds, which would allow him to stage a guide so when he slides the card into place at the end it goes to the right place easily.

Only problem, there doesn’t appear to be any opportunity. Penn holds the cards himself from the time he fans them through the shuffle until he hands them to Farquhar’s hands for the fan to pick the card. Unfortunately, there is a maddening camera swap right then between a closeup of the hands to a frame shot of both of them, see the 4:00 mark here. If he did a deck swap, he is pristine to not be spotted by Penn right there.

It wouldn’t have to be a full deck swap, just palm in a partial stack. He fans them and has Penn select one, so he only needs a dozen or so for that part. Hmmm.

Right at the 4:12 mark you can see the box in his hand under the 1 card (joker) and a flap sticking out the forward end of the box, which he folds down with his finger. It was a little more clear it was a box on my bigscreen, but it’s visible the side of the box is red vs card edge white.

Now here’s the thing - he slides the card in from the side nearest himself, but the flap I mention is on the side nearest Penn. Either he turned the stack around while the camera was zoomed on Penn writing, or that is a real difference. I don’t think it would make sense for him to do that. I would expect him to prep his tools so they were precisely aligned, so I expect that what I see is correct. So that makes the flap at the top distinct from the opening he slides the cards in.

He pulls the joker. I think this serves two purposes, which is why he has to have the silly line about “what if I pulled your card?” First, the joker serves to cover the top of the deck to mask that he’s holding a box. Second, the joker pulls the tab feature I mentioned - either alignment guide or adhesive strip for the box/wrapper.

Next, watching when he takes the deck with the card inserted and puts it into Penn’s hands, I suppose it is just possible he extracts an extra deck from one of his sleeves and palms a deck when he pulls the joker. Notice his right hand stays turned while he flips the joker with his fingers. That would be a different reason rather than masking an adhesive strip or guide. Hmmm.

Now you are suggesting he uses a regular unopened box that he opens the seal, and then somehow palms his stacked deck into Penn’s hands while dumping the box without dumping the actual cards from that box, and doing so with the open end visible to Penn, so Penn should be able to spot if any cards stay in the box. Right at 5:57.

I honestly don’t know which makes more sense, that answer, or that he slips the signed card into the box with a guide for placement, then pulls the tab to seal the box and the plastic. Either way, wow. The skill level is astounding.

Excellent.

Yes, that is what makes a good sleight of hand into a great magic act - the framing and staging and acting details.

Apparently CW only keeps the shows for 5 weeks, so the older ones are rolling off. I did find a youtube of a different performance, and spotted what you’re saying.

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The segment with Farquhar is one of my favorites of the series. The trick itself is great, but Penn’s reaction is priceless. He seems to be genuinely delighted and amazed with the trick. You can even see his hands do a little happy dance as Shawn reveals the box of cards Penn has been holding.

116

Yeah. I loved Penn here.

117

It’s even simpler than that. None of the numbers in the bowl including 408 matched anyone’s number from the audience. Penn could have drawn any number at all from the bowl, and “Leroy” still would have stood up as though it were his. At no point does he demonstrate that there’s even a number on his card/paper slip.

This was quite possibly the weakest trick of the entire series. The only skill it required was the ability to stand there under the lights in that rubber mask. Everything else was automatic.

118

Good call. The only person that might have checked was his stage manager. Knowing that nobody else will have the number makes it easy. I guess I was anticipating someone checking, like looking over his shoulder in the seats.

I don’t think it was the weakest, but it kinda shot itself in the foot as a magic trick by going for the mask bit. The mask bit fooled me, but not Teller. But he was probably sharper than me on where to look for the magician in his reveal - I was looking for him, but the mask bit me. And that explains the shades - too hard to do the make up around the eyes.

Actually, the skill was sitting there in the seats for that long in the mask, then getting up under the lights.

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Frankly we don’t even know if he WAS there the whole time.

In theory a placeholder guy could have just sat there for the whole show, told the guy next to him “I have an appointment, but my friend/coworker/lover is coming to take my place” so that he doesn’t freak out the poor soul next to him…then there’s a black guy there who sits for all of 5 min

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I thought he made some comment about that, having to wait. That’s part of why he was already sweating.