Penn & Teller: Fool Us

Jait

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When I saw them in Rio they did two new bits and one did not work so halfway through they gave up. It was kind of weird. Teller also did some artsy bit I hadn't seen before. But the best was....

Teller went into the audience to ask a guy to go up there. Penn then called up someone from the audience halfway through the show. He was typical white trash vegas type complete with the USA hat. He was made to look like a complete fool as Penn put a camera on him and did a bunch of tricks using him as the foil. The big surprise was the man then took off his hat and beard and it was teller. Not a single person in the audience noticed Teller went to PICK the man and was using a camera trick to divert us while he put the hat, shirt, and beard on. There was a full minute ovation for this trick.

And yes they exited the show by waiting in the lobby to shake every guests hand and pose for pictures and autographs. Class act.
 

Jait

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No it was very French. Teller was in a wife beater painting with what looked like blood. I suspect the painting was supposed to complete itself. Instead it was just that depressing French music and him dancing and splattering red substance on a canvas. A couple of excruciating minutes into the act the stage went dark and he looked a little flustered.

Edit

It was also said by Penn during the intro that if everything went right they were going to try a couple of brand new tricks.
 

Hoss

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I think it was card counting. She was good enough to keep track of the card even through all the shuffling. That's my guess, but I'm not sure, i didn't go back and look to see if she ever turned away. But, I did notice what I think penn and teller did, that she was concentrating really hard. .

I don't get how the sword box fooled them. I don't think it fooled me.

Also, they need to stop being so kind to everyone. Like the guy who obviously flubbed his trick with the vase. I thought for sure they were going to tell him to go practice some more.
 

Aychamo BanBan

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I think it was card counting. She was good enough to keep track of the card even through all the shuffling. That's my guess, but I'm not sure, i didn't go back and look to see if she ever turned away. But, I did notice what I think penn and teller did, that she was concentrating really hard. .

I don't get how the sword box fooled them. I don't think it fooled me.

Also, they need to stop being so kind to everyone. Like the guy who obviously flubbed his trick with the vase. I thought for sure they were going to tell him to go practice some more.
For her trick, I think he just "thought" of a card in his hand, the shuffled. Her head was turned the other way. I just don't see how it's possible! Good trick!!

For the sword box, my thought was it didnt fool them, but they said that out of respect for the old magician that was his dad. All of thT set of tricks was shit!
smile.png
 

Vaclav

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For her trick, I think he just "thought" of a card in his hand, the shuffled. Her head was turned the other way. I just don't see how it's possible! Good trick!!

For the sword box, my thought was it didnt fool them, but they said that out of respect for the old magician that was his dad. All of thT set of tricks was shit!
smile.png
Yea, pretty sure for her it was all mentalism.
 

Harkon

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What I like about Penn and Teller is that not every act is going to fool them or even us but even so some of the acts are so entertaining that it does not even matter if you catch them on a few things.

Like Shin Lim's performance for example, what a fantastic act.
 

Jait

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I like them too and some are clearly just showcases for smaller acts, with little magic involved. The French kid in one of the first couple episodes didn't even have any real deception to his pre-recorded Mirror act. It was just a good act with a lot of careful practice and timing. Camera work was such that you could see every single one of his "tricks" unfortunately, but that wasn't the point and despite a language barrier it was never a question if he fooled P&T.

In the original show they also had a few of those.
 

Aychamo BanBan

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Couple of interesting acts this week. The first card trick was great. I played it back several times at "super slow speed" and can't for the life of me see what he did. The cards were jumbled, they placed the cards in at random, and showed they were still jumbled, then he seems to flip half the deck over in his hand and then lays them out and they're all fixed. In the "discussion" it looked like Teller thought "I don't have a fucking clue."

.. Then the shitty magician with the watch trick. P&T were wrong how he did that. If you pause it, clearly can see the watch never had hands, but that he drew the hands on with a sharpie. And to make the hands disappear he just rubs his finger on the watch face at some point to wash off the ink. (There's a similar stupid trick people do with coke cans, where you make a small hole in it and crush the can, and then you put sharpie ink on the mouth area to make it look open. Then you put finger over the poked hole, shake the can, and it re-inflates back to a normal looking can, and at same time you rub off the sharpie on the mouth hole to make it look like a brand new can.) It was my suspicion but I had to verify it by pausing when he shows the watch hands, and how terrible and not even straight they looked. I'm glad P&T didn't "get fooled" by that guy because it was such a terrible and stupid trick.
 

Hoss

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Penn's reaction to the first trick was pretty funny and strange. There was a point in the trick when they both got sort of agitated. It was towards the end after all the shuffling fluff. I got the impression that they knew at that point something had happened, but couldn't figure out what. Did you notice how they were both obviously looking around and peeking behind the table? They don't normally do that. They also don't normally touch the props at the end of the trick without asking permission.

The watch trick was pretty weak even if it had fooled them. Without showing us the hands moving, even the slowest audience members had to know something was gimmicked. I was actually wondering if had just forgotten to show us the moving hands. Thanks for the info on the coke can trick. How do you re-inflate the coke can so it looks new? There would still be creases in it after being crushed, wouldn't there?
 

Hoss

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Here's the trick that angered Penn. At 4:05 was the part I was talking about where it looked like they knew they'd just missed the trick. I see him doing a little move where he's flipping over half the cards, but I have no idea how that would help him get them all facing the same way.


 

Turgur_sl

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I don't get how the sword box fooled them. I don't think it fooled me.
I think they just pretended that he fooled them because he brought out those two old people who were apparently the first magicians on TV. They didn't even take a guess at how it was done and there's 0% chance that that trick actually fooled them.
 

Vaclav

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I think they just pretended that he fooled them because he brought out those two old people who were apparently the first magicians on TV. They didn't even take a guess at how it was done and there's 0% chance that that trick actually fooled them.
Or that a different aspect (like how his parents were snuck in) were in fact the part that fooled them. Remember they're "fooled" if they don't know any element even if they know SOME elements of how the trick as a whole operated.
 

Kedwyn

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This is a pretty bad ass show but its also terrible for people like me who googles what he says to the performers and learn all the secrets. Kind of like finding out Santa isn't still alive kind of thing. I guess I expected the information to be a little harder to come by? Not sure why I felt that way, this is the Internet age after all but I don't know I guess my magic cherry got popped.

I think what amazes me about it is how little variation there are in the tricks. Only so many ways to do them and that isn't super obvious until you start learning a little about how they are done. Once you know a few of the secrets the magic kind of is gone. Still impressive though because some of these performers are amazing. There is something lost though by learning about it.


Watch this if you want to fully understand why he looked upset

Penn Talks About Being Fooled by Kostya Kimlat on Fool Us - YouTube
Pretty ballsy move to take a trick they did themselves and one up them with it. Explains Penn's reaction and what happened really well. That guy was amazing and the fact that he pulled the wool over Penn and Teller's eyes, with their own trick, right in front of them is pretty fucking impressive.
 

Adebisi

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The Prestige is what taught me to questioneverysingle aspect of a magic trick.
 

Aychamo BanBan

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BUMP!

P&T's trick tonight was a variant of one that I've seen millions of times. It's the one where they let the girl write a random word (her password), and they had a bottle suspended with the password supposedly in it, and then once the word was generated, they broke open the bottle and it had the word in the bottle.

My question... how the fuck do they do this? In their variant, I could see where they could have replaced what was in the bottle with another piece of paper, but the piece of paper was like 8 feet long and had the word painted or drawn on it. So somehow they would have had to paint it on paper, let it dry, fold it up, and then slip it in. This trick has always gotten me.