Teller and Penn at the 1988 Emmy Awards.

Penn & Teller (Penn Fraser Jillette and Raymond Joseph Teller) are Las Vegas headliners whose act is an amalgam of illusion and comedy. Penn Jillette is a raconteur; Teller generally uses mime while performing, although his voice can occasionally be heard throughout their performance. They specialize in gory tricks, exposing quacks and frauds, performing clever pranks, and have become associated with Las Vegas, atheism, scientific skepticism, and libertarianism.[1]

Contents

Tricks

Their tricks include Teller hanging upside-down over a bed of spikes in a straitjacket, Teller drowning in a huge container of water, Teller being run over by an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, Teller swinging over bear-traps on a trapeze, and knives going through Penn's hands. Many of their effects rely heavily on shock appeal and violence, although presented in a humorous manner.

Sometimes, the pair will claim to reveal a secret of how a magic trick is done, but those tricks are usually invented by the duo for the sole purpose of exposing them, and therefore designed with more spectacular and weird methods than would have been necessary had it just been a "proper" magic trick. For example, in the reveal of one trick, while Teller waits for his cue, he reads magazines and eats a snack. Another example is their rendition of the cups and balls, using transparent cups.

Penn and Teller perform their own adaptation of the famous bullet catch illusion. Each simultaneously fires a gun at the other, through small panes of glass, and then "catches" the other's bullets in his mouth.

They also have an assortment of card tricks in their repertoire, virtually all of them involving the force of the Three of Clubs on an unsuspecting audience member as this card is easy for viewers to identify on television cameras.[2]

The duo will sometimes perform tricks that discuss the intellectual underpinnings of magic. One of their acts, titled "Magician vs. Juggler", features Teller performing card tricks while Penn juggles and delivers a monologue on the difference between the two: jugglers start as socially aware children who go outside and learn juggling with other children; magicians are misfits who stay in the house and teach themselves magic tricks out of spite.

In one of their most politically charged tricks, they make a U.S. flag seem to disappear by wrapping it in a copy of the United States Bill of Rights, and apparently setting the flag on fire, so that "the flag is gone but the Bill of Rights remains." The act may also feature the "Chinese bill of rights", presented as a transparent piece of acetate. They normally end the routine by restoring the unscathed flag to its starting place on the flagpole; however, on a TV guest appearance on The West Wing this final part was omitted for drama.[3]

One of their more recent tricks involves a nail gun with blanked (missing) nails from its strip of nails. Penn begins by firing several nails (presumably real) into a board in front of him. He then proceeds to turn the nail gun on himself several times while suffering no injuries. His patter builds as he oscillates between firing blanks at himself and firing nails into the board. While performing he explains the need for pseudo-randomness in switching between himself and the board. The bit ends with a bit of prediction when audience members choose where the next shot will be aimed. The whole bit is explained during its performance, except for the prediction.


Television projects

Movies

Other appearances

Books

Awards and recognitions

Video games

References

  1. ^ Penn & Teller Bio
  2. ^ Penn & Teller on force trick
  3. ^ Guide to West Wing on Penn & Teller
  4. ^ IMDB on My Chauffeur
  5. ^ IMDB on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

External links

Sister project Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Penn & Teller
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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller"

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