I think it was that moment. The moment that Teller realized he had found someone who really deeply didn’t care about how the tricks were done was the moment that he decided to work on a magic show with me. We did the Minnesota Renaissance Festival a few years, added Texas, Maryland, Canada, California, and North Carolina, and during the drives back and forth to New Jersey, we wrote bits and shows and talked over the theories that we’re still carrying out. Nothing is more fun than taking one’s work seriously, and we always have.
I did very well street performing and it was mostly a cash-only enterprise. I did a show that was shorter than fifteen minutes and most of that was crowd gathering and collection. Not a lot of juggling in my juggling show. I didn’t study anyone else who was street performing, and with the exception of the Renaissance festivals, I performed mostly where it was illegal. Most street performers get people to give them money because they look like they need it. People gave me money because I looked like I deserved it. Offstage I’m a slob. I’ve never dressed well. I sit around in gym shorts and a work shirt. I don’t look in mirrors. I don’t shave or get dressed unless I have a show. I have to be paid to brush my hair. “Who’s looking at you?” my mom would ask when I made any comment about the clothes she chose for me to wear. But when I was street performing, I always dressed very nicely and made sure that everything I wore looked expensive. I didn’t play poverty. I tried to work places where people were upscale.
Teller and I were partners, and while we were getting our stage show together we needed to make money, and I always hit the streets. Teller had put his Renaissance act together but there weren’t always festivals, so I dragged him back to my old way of making money. Teller and I staked out the area of Philadelphia where we wanted to do our street shows. Before we did any shows, we sniffed around. We went to all the local merchants and spent money and talked to them. We went to them, bought their shit, and said we were going to be doing street shows, and if we hurt their traffic flow at all, could they please let us know right away. We wanted to help their business.
We found out the area we’d chosen didn’t have other performers because there were a bunch of young men around who considered themselves a gang and made it impossible to work there. Maybe they were a gang. I don’t know how gangs work, but these were young men with a median age of about fourteen. I guess they were scary, but we didn’t think they really hurt people. Maybe they did really hurt people. I didn’t know and I don’t know. We did know that other people who had tried street performing had their props and money stolen and blamed these guys, and we knew they disrupted acts. Teller and I decided to try something bold with them. I decided to gamble about a grand to see what would happen if I tried trusting them. I had one of the first really fancy digital watches. I loved it. It would be worth nothing now, but then it was almost a grand. In our age of iSleek it would be just clunky and ugly, but back then I thought it was really sexy and groovy.
I arrived to do my first street show in that area. I had my juggling balls and my wooden log with my big juggling knives stuck into it. I had a suitcase with my blindfold, apples for juggling, and my bank bags for money and quarter rolls and hundred-dollar paper bill-bands. While I was juggling balls at the beginning of my show, all that other stuff was easy to swipe and run away with. One of the “gang” guys was watching me closely as I set up. I said to him, “I’m going to do a show here in a little bit.” He nodded. He had seen other street performers come and go on his turf. Maybe he was the one who forced them out.
I said to him, “I have trouble juggling with this watch on, and I’m afraid to leave it in my suitcase. I’m afraid someone might steal it. It’s a wicked expensive watch.” I took the watch off. “Would you hold on to it while I do my show so it’ll be safe?” I threw the watch to him. It was a gamble, but it felt right. The story is better if you see this guy as the main potential thief, but I have no evidence of that. He was just a tough-looking child with a different complexion than mine. He caught the watch and said, “No problem.”
I did that whole first show without ever looking back once to see if my props were okay. I never checked on my watch. I gathered a crowd of a couple hundred people and juggled my ass off and blew my voice out. I used to put Chloraseptic in a Coke can and use it to stop my throat from hurting so much. I had no vocal training, I just yelled. The voice I have now is not just my age; it’s a lot of stupid screaming. Some people have told me very kindly that I have a sexy voice. It’s just damage. I guess damage is sexy. Bob Dylan has the blood of the lamb in his voice; I have the blood of screaming for hundreds of people in my voice. It was a really good show. Teller might be right—that street show might be the best thing I’ve done in my life. My crowd gathering was ripped off and is now part of many, many street shows. I asked a guy doing it on the street where he got it, and he said it went back hundreds of years. Some of the lines in my money collection are also used as standards. I’m pretty proud of all that. It was a good show.
After I had gotten the last penny from the crowd, I turned around and there was my newest friend still guarding my watch. He was beaming. He liked my show and he liked holding my watch for me. I asked him if he wanted to help me out and he said yes. His name was Jose, and I threw him the whole moneybag. I asked Jose to separate the bills out, sort them, and count them. At the end of every night, Jose would reach into my moneybag and take a handful of the unsorted money from the last show and that was his pay for helping and protecting me. Some nights he got a twenty-dollar bill in the handful, maybe one or two nights two twenties, and some nights just ones and quarters. He never complained and neither did I. I would arrive at my corner, Jose would run over, take my watch, take my suitcase, set things up, and I would do shows. At the end of every collection, I would throw all the money to Jose and he kept everything safe. He cleaned and organized my props and bought apples for me and made sure I had a fresh one for every show. He said he was part of a gang, and he told me one night about a fight that he got in and I let him “hide” at our house out of the city for a few days. I never knew anything about it. I never asked him about his “gang.” We talked about juggling and how much money we’d made. Maybe he just wanted to see my house. I know he didn’t steal my watch, but maybe he lied about other stuff. I knew Jose for a couple of years. He was a good friend.
Jose and his gang also watched over Teller, and they made it very difficult for any other performers to take over our corner. We had to give our imprimatur for anyone else to work. We shared our area with a harmonica player, an old sailor named Big Al. Occasionally a magician named Chris Capehart shared our space. Chris was one of the finest performers I’ve ever seen. Chris is still working, doing all sorts of shows and he’s great, but his street act was really something else. Chris is African-American, and back then looked really tough. He dressed for his street act in these weird jumpsuits with batwing arms. I don’t if his mom made those outfits for him or a girlfriend or a friend or if he sewed them himself. I never asked him. He didn’t talk during his act, but he wasn’t silent like Teller. Chris whistled. He whistled for the whole show. He was a whistling, scary guy dressed like James Brown in the “hot pants give you con-fi-dance” period.
Chris did the “Miser’s Dream,” a standard magic trick where you pull coins out of all sorts of places and drop them in a champagne bucket. Teller uses a fishbowl instead of a bucket and then turns the coins into goldfish in the P&T show. Some magicians use a beautiful classy bucket and some use a beat-up bucket more like a spittoon (as though I’ve ever seen a spittoon). Al Flosso, one of the best ever at the “Miser’s Dream” would bring a child up and do the routine with him, pulling coins out of the child’s ears and nose and armpits. Flosso was the best. Very much a “Go away, son, you bother me,” W. C. Fields type.
Chris, with balls much too big to fit in his beat-up champagne bucket, would walk around with his wings flapping, whistling and gathering a crowd. With all the people standing around him, he would pick the bigges
t, strongest, meanest Caucasian man in his front row and get in that man’s space. Then he would get in his face. He would stand too close to him, whistling and making eye contact. He had done no magic yet. It was just uncomfortable. He would hang there a little too long and then reach up and slap the guy lightly in the face, not a painful slap, no one was hurt—but it was a real violation of personal space and a racially charged gesture. It was a heavy moment. This is on the street. This isn’t a theater. There’s no one around to make it okay. His mark always had friends standing nearby, and Chris was always alone. The reaction was strong, and as his audience member recoiled and considered how he was going to kick Chris’s ass, a magic coin fell from where the man was slapped and jangled into Chris’s bucket. It was a magic trick. The slap had produced a coin from nowhere. There was a pause and then the crowd would react huge. This was a coin that meant something. The guy would give Chris a dismissive relieved laugh. The guy thought it was over, but it wasn’t over. Chris kept eye contact and kept whistling. It was unbelievable. He’d reach up again, but this time he wouldn’t slap—he just flick the same guy’s nose, and another magic coin would fall. “Fine, that’s funny, magic boy, now quit it.” Chris wouldn’t. He would continue to pull coins from all over the guy, until everyone was laughing. The guy’s only way out of this uncomfortable position was to let it all go, and be the child in the magic act. He had to trust Chris. He had to like Chris. He had to laugh. There was no other choice. He had to be the little boy, to this whistling, jumpsuited, batwinged, crazy African-American authority figure. There was subtext and there was tension and then it was all okay. When we achieve world peace, Chris’s act will deserve some of the credit. Chris’s act identified the problem and then solved it. I watched him do it a lot, and every time my stomach tightened up and every time it worked. He and I had long talks at Burger King after our shows. Chris is very successful now. He works cruise ships, clubs, and even children’s parties, and every time I see him, my heart goes back to those days on the street. What a genius.
Chris, Big Al, Teller, and I would talk to the police on that beat and do little tricks for them and make jokes. Our shows would have been illegal if we were panhandling, but there was no law against entertaining for money. The police liked our acts. Once I got a few policemen to line up behind me for the whole show. During my threatening money collection speech, that show I ended by gesturing to the line of policemen, saying “and they’re on my side.” On my cue, all the police pulled out their billy clubs and brandished them. It would have been a lot funnier if they hadn’t been laughing. Amateurs.
I made a shit-ton of money working the streets. Teller and I bought all the equipment for our theater shows with that money. My parents bought me a sound system with the money they had saved for my college tuition, but most of the rest we made there on the streets. We had spotlights and dimmer packs and all the stuff we needed for our theater show. We could produce our shows ourselves with our own money.
When I was twenty, I went to an accountant and asked what I should do about paying taxes (all taxes are theft!) on the money that I made street juggling. He asked me how much I made and I told him. He said, “If you say you made that much money street performing, they will arrest you as a drug dealer.” Even he thought I was a drug dealer and wouldn’t work for me. So Teller and I bought a van with bundles of tax-free singles.
Some of the tricks we’re doing in our Vegas show now, we’ve been doing since those street days. We’ve done them tens of thousands of times. Our Vegas show is made up of bits we’ve been doing for more than thirty years right alongside bits we’ve been doing for a few weeks. People ask how we can stand doing the same show every night. Do we put the new bits in just for ourselves, to keep it fresh? Nope. There is no need to keep it fresh. It is fresh. It’s Groundhog Day.
There is a myth that improvisational comics are in tune with the audience and really reading what the audience is doing and reacting to that. Bullshit. I’ve done appearances that are improvised and I have no knowledge of the audience except an occasional laugh. I’m just trying to save my ass any way I can. The focus is on survival, not the audience. I’m trying to keep it moving and get laughs. When I’m doing a bit I know how to do, I can tell you everything about the audience. I know who is smiling and where the big laughers are. I know every word I’m going to say and when I’m going to scratch my nose, so I can really feel the audience and go with them. The first time I do a bit, I do big gestures to make sure everyone gets the joke. After a thousand times, I’ve made everything smaller. As small as I can, so the audience can’t even tell how they know what I’m thinking. Repetition in front of different audiences gives me the information about how subtle I can make things. We’ve lost a lot with vaudeville gone. There were people who wrote a twelve-minute act when they were sixteen years old and performed it multiple times a day until they died. They learned things about how people learn things that no one else will ever know. They knew about language and pronunciation and breathing. I tried to see as many of those acts as I could. There aren’t many people around today who can do a real twelve minutes of Groundhog Day.
We have a bit we call “Water Tank.” The gist is that Teller holds his breath completely submerged in a tank of water, which is locked from the outside, until I find the right freely selected card. I find the wrong card and he drowns. After he’s dead, the right card appears on his dead face underwater. It’s a great bit and one that was responsible for one of my stupidest showbiz decisions. We were asked to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. I’m talking the real fucking Tonight Show. We were going to be on with Johnny. I was going to sit on the couch next to Johnny. The couch that meant showbiz. This was going to be it. We wanted to do the “Water Tank.” Johnny’s people said that after we showed the card was right, before we went to commercial, Teller would have to pop out of the tank and wave to show the audience he was okay, and then we’d go to commercial—just a quick wave on the pull back. We said that we wanted to leave Teller dead going to commercial. They said wave. We said that everyone knew Teller wasn’t really dead and we’d go to commercial with him lifeless floating in the tank; that was the respectful way to do it. They said theirs was a happy show, and waving made everyone happy. We pretended to have integrity about something where integrity doesn’t matter and we hung tough. They said that they wouldn’t hang tough. They wanted us on the Tonight Show, and they wanted us on our terms… okay—but we couldn’t do it with Johnny. We could do our bit, as we wanted, but we’d do it when The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was guest-hosted by Jay Leno. We won. And then because we’re loser assholes, we changed to another bit for some reason I can’t even remember and went on with Jay, without doing the “Water Tank” at all. No waving, no not waving, no “Water Tank.” We love Jay and he’s been great to us, but it meant although we were on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson we were never on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson with Johnny Carson.
I never met Johnny Carson face-to-face. But we did e-mail and talk on the phone a lot. I take about one real day off a year, but one year I took more than a week off, in Newfoundland with my bride-to-be. Everyone was told that I was not to be contacted. Not for any reason. I was with my love and the moose and that was it. We got to our hotel room in St John’s and the phone rang. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Jillette, but this is Johnny Carson.” I froze. The voice was perfect. This was after he’d retired, and my heart flew, my heart banged, my heart stopped. “Is this a bad time?”
“No, this is the best time of my life.”
Johnny had gotten my number from the Amazing Randi and he was calling to compliment me on Penn & Teller: Bullshit! He said things about our show that you’d have to be more of an asshole than me to type here. Very complimentary. I reminded him that he was Johnny Carson and that was a bigger deal. We talked skepticism and atheism. We talked showbiz. I told him I was working on a documentary about the dirty joke known as “The Aristocrats.” He said it
was his favorite joke. I said I knew that. I was respectful enough to not ask him to do our movie. He knew I wanted him, and he would certainly have done it if he wanted. I stayed in touch with him, writing e-mails about our movie and how it was going and about atheism. I was writing to fucking Johnny Carson. I told him our movie was going to open at Sundance, and he asked whether the movie’s director, Paul Provenza, and I would come to his house in Malibu after the festival and screen it for him. Holy fucking shit.
We did Sundance and we were a hit. A big fucking hit. There was only one thing more exciting than showing our movie for the crowds at Sundance, and that was the prospect of showing our comedy movie to Johnny Carson. It would be the end of this project. The morning after our debut at Sundance, Provenza and I were having a hot chocolate to celebrate our success. My cell phone rang. It was Randi telling me that Johnny Carson had died. Provenza and I sat and cried into our hot chocolate all morning. The joy was gone. We pulled back the print and added “For Johnny Carson” to the end of the movie. Okay, so fuck you, we made a great movie and people loved it, but we never got to show it to Johnny. Life speeds by and no matter how much joy there is, there is sadness.
Every Day is an Atheist Holiday! Page 13