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Still, Penn and Teller manage to mystify a lot of people.
Everything in their hair-raising show is a surprise. The
audience loves being amazed by Teller as he cuts a rose
by its shadow or pulls the string of needles from his mouth.
Fellow practitioners of the art of magic aren't always that
stoked on the offbeat team. Penn and Teller have been
criticized for telling the audience how their tricks work.
"We are not giving away stuff as
much as letting the audience know
we believe they are not uneducated
fools. And that's the part magicians
get angry about. They want to pre-
tend that when they go on stage and
do a card trick, everybody in the
audience has never even thought of
the idea that someone can manip-
ulate a deck of cards, which is
foolish. Everybody knows this stuff
is fake, with the possible exception
of people 300 years ago and Shirley
MacLaine, who'll believe anything."
Marshall Magoon, 30, a magician
in the more traditional sense, com-
mented on Penn & Teller. "Most of
the magicians who are down on
Penn & Teller haven't seen their act,"
says Magoon. "By the end of the
routine they've really still baffled
you. In magic that's known as the
'sucker routine,' in which you per-
form the trick and tell the audience
how you're going to preform the
trick, you show part of it, then go on
to amaze them even more."
Some who have see their act may
from the table and you see tears rolling down his cheeks,
those are absolutely real. Wow was he angry afterwards."
The team has been together for 14 years, meeting after
Penn saw Teller, who is now 41, on stage working magic.
During the last portion of their act Penn pays homage
to the travelling sideshows that once toured the country,
explaining how both he and Teller (that's his whole name,
by the way) owe much to this lost
part of our culture.
On stage they appear impeccably
dressed in suit and tie. Their illu-
sions are startling, sometimes
bizarre, frequently astounding, but
obviously fake (Penn explains while
they perform) even as the right card
appears miraculously on the bottom
of a bloody palm or handcuffs join
two surprised park bench warmers.
Penn's clever chatter is perfectly
timed to keep the audience involved
in each trick as the clock ticks or ran-
dom acts are employed to pick a
passage from the Bible.
The almost silent Teller plays
Laurel to Penn's Hardy. He is con-
stantly being ridiculed by the patent-
ly loquacious Penn which creates an
atmosphere of sympathy for the lit-
tle guy. When Teller beats Houdini's
record for holding his breath and
floats "brain dead" in the water long
beyond what is humanly possible,
the audience first responds with a
surprised laugh upon seeing the
missing card appear on his face
mask, then with a collective sigh of relief as he walks back
on stage still very much alive.
Everybody knows this stuff is
fake, with the possible excep-
tion of people 300 years ago
and Shirley MacLaine...
feel that Penn & Teller are strange. Their show employs
fake blood for special effects, and they play with leeches
during television appearances. You may know them as
the guys who dumped 500 Madagascar hissing
cockroaches, provided to them by the Museum of Natural
History, in unsuspecting David Letterman's lap.
"He wanted some surprise. We gave it to him. Com-
pletely freaked him out. These are the kind of roaches
that are about that big," says Penn, indicating several
inches length between thumb and forefinger, "and they
will walk toward you, not away, and they hiss." He mimicks
a loud asperate sound. "For the faint of heart it can really
wake you up. We may be the only ones who have gone
on Letterman and done something that grotesque to him
without him having a clue. When Letterman jumps up
"You're watching two people with an incredible amount
of trust for each other creating something up there for
you," Penn says. "If what we were doing were actually
dangerous, that would be a completely different thing.
Teller has never come slightly close to being hurt."
He says they consider themselves to be comedians
first, magicians second, though the cups and balls trick
is really a juggling act. That particular trick is done twice,
the second time so cleverly that even with clear plastic
cups the audience can't follow how the balls and the lime
appear. Penn and Teller may tell you that their feats are
fake, but anyone who's ever seen them in action will
disagree. It's magic, of course.
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