The first few pitches, I was making apologies for our skeptic show. I peddled with my foot on the soft pedal. I said that the nut side always had passion and the science side always had facts, but although the scientists were correct, they were a little dull. I promised that we would bring the passion of the nuts to the side of truth. But I was also cynical. I argued that people might watch our show because they hated it. I claimed that many people who were watching John Edward’s necro-psycho rip-off sleaze fest weren’t believers. Some skeptics watched to argue with him or to marvel at what an amazing predatory asshole John was.
In the Beatles’ first movie, A Hard Day’s Night, George Harrison wanders into the wrong room and the secretary mistakes him for a boy auditioning as a sidekick to a pop TV star. The TV bigwigs think George is perfect. “Oh, you can come off it with us. You don’t have to do the old adenoidal glottal stop and carry-on for our benefit.” When the TV folk mention their TV star by name, George responds, “Oh, you mean that posh bird who gets everything wrong?” Later in the scene he explains, “Oh, yes, the lads frequently gather round the TV set to watch her for a giggle. Once we even all sat down and wrote these letters saying how gear she was and all that rubbish . . . She’s a drag. A well-known drag. We turn the sound down on her and say rude things.”
I talked about the George Harrison Hard Day’s Night Principle, which I had made up, to explain that people would watch our show because they hated it, and that would be fine for ratings. The network shouldn’t care if they turned the sound down and said rude things. I was cynical. I underestimated our show, our audience, and mankind in general. Most of the reaction to our skeptical TV show is positive (if you ignore a few death threats), but in those first pitches in September of 2001, I didn’t know what the mood was. By the later pitches, I had gotten braver, I was more aggressive, I had said “fuck it.”
At one network, we pitched to a team that included a man who had, at one time, been part of putting John Edward on the air. I said something not quite as clear as this: “I’m not psychic, but I’m going to make a prediction. This is not based on talking to the dead or any supernatural powers. This is a prediction based on experience and knowing what a fucking scumbag John Edward really is. Within a couple of months, John Edward will announce that he is planning a ‘very special’ TV special, probably primetime, probably this network, where he will talk to the dead of 9/11. I don’t have any inside information on this, I’m just guessing, but it’s a really good guess. When Edward does that, and the bile of rage and disgust fills the back of all our throats, we, on this side of the table, will sleep well at night, because we at least tried to tell the truth, but the people who’ve helped him spit in the face of the innocent dead on national TV might feel a little sweaty and creepy in the middle of the night.” When you’re selling something, it’s good to be friendly and flattering to your potential customer.
I gave versions of that “rude, self-righteous bullshit” (in both senses) little speech a few times. The pitch to Showtime went the best, maybe because no one in that room had ever booked John Edward. Showtime ended up buying our show. They didn’t buy it in any cynical “George Harrison Hard Day’s Night Principle” way; they bought it for purer reasons than our pitch gave them credit for.
We considered naming our new show the name Houdini would have used, Hokum. Then we decided to use the modern version of that same idea: bullshit. That ensured that Penn & Teller: Bullshit! would never have a proper ad or billboard. Criss Angel had a jive show called Mindfreak. “Mindfreak” is not a word anyone has ever used, but Criss was smarter than us. He was smart enough to not call his show Mindfuck. If we were as smart as Criss, our show would be called Bullsnot, and we’d be jerking off into piles of money.
Shortly afterward, we started working on what became the longest-running show in Showtime history. John Edward did announce he was going to do a talking-to-the-dead-of-9/11 show. That idea got such a negative reaction that John never went through with it. I was right about how morally bankrupt and socially tone-deaf Edward is, but wrong about the amount of character that TV executives have. They have much more than none.
“Sweet Transvestite”
—The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Bible’s Eighth Commandment
Thou shalt not steal.
Mike Armstrong is a very funny man. He told me a story about seeing a couple in an Indian restaurant in NYC, flirting over samosas. The woman leaned in for a little kiss and her hair caught on fire. The man didn’t know what to do and tried to throw water from his heavy restaurant glass on to her to put the fire out. His hands were greasy and the glass slipped out of his hand and hit her in the head while she continued to burn. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Mike told the story with perfect details. I felt like I was there. A few years later, I told the story as though I had been in the restaurant watching. A friend had to tell me it wasn’t my story. I also don’t feel good about all the Dylan bootlegs I have.
ONE ATHEIST’S EIGHTH SUGGESTION
Don’t steal. (This includes magic tricks and jokes—you know who you are!)
Maybe That Thief Kreskin Will Sue Me This Time
The Amazing Kreskin is an “entertainer” who implies he is psychic and, as far as I can tell, just does cheesy magic tricks. At the beginning of the nineties, I wrote this letter to The Skeptical Inquirer about Kreskin’s involvement with their Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.
Letters to the Editor
Skeptical Inquirer
3025 Palo Alto Dr. NE
Albuquerque, NM 87111
To the Editor:
In 1966, when I was 11, I saw Kreskin on a talk show pimping a game based on the “science” of Extra Sensory Perception. He did some card trick “experiments,” and I was astounded (hey, I was 11). This appearance probably included a half-assed disclaimer, his usual letter-not-the-spirit “truth” that kinda says it’s not REALLY extra-sensory, but I didn’t know he was doing tricks. He deliberately misled me.
I cringe at the memory of begging my parents to buy me the overpriced “Advanced Fine Edition” of Kreskin’s ESP. For their hard-earned money, I got a pendulum (with cards marked “Finance,” “Travel,” “Career,” and “Love”—this is science?), a board, some ESP cards, and a pamphlet—all junk. The pendulum moved (ideomotor effect, like Ouija boards) and the other stuff just didn’t work. My parents sat with me many evenings and we tried to get some results. We were wasting our time.
After several weeks of disappointing “experiments,” I stumbled across a book on “mentalism” (I think it was Dunninger) and realized Kreskin had duped me. I felt humiliated and betrayed. It wasn’t until I was 18 that Teller, James Randi, and Martin Gardner restored my love of science. Since then, a good part of my career has been dedicated to making sure others are not bilked by scumbags like Kreskin.
Don’t say that Kreskin brought me to skepticism. There are others who deserve that credit; Kreskin just stole money from my parents, and time and passion from me. I owe him no thanks.
I don’t care if Kreskin is with CSICOP as an “expert” on hypnotism or because of his “charisma.” If Kreskin does not answer for his “mentalism,” I will find another outlet for my skepticism.
I made a promise to an eleven-year-old boy.
Sincerely,
Penn Jillette
What an asshole, huh?
I don’t mean Kreskin, I mean me.
Soon after my letter was printed, I got a letter from Kreskin’s lawyers saying that he was suing me for writing that he stole money from my parents.
My letter clearly doesn’t mean that, but can you imagine how hard I got? This was before my parents got sick and before I had a family of my own to support. I was starring in a Broadway show, doing movies, TV, and radio, and I had money coming out my ass. I was itching to spend every penny I had on this legal battle. I was going to take the former George Kresge down to Chinatown. I was going to prove, in o
pen court, that he’d stolen money and lots more from my parents and me by selling us his shitty little box of shit. I was ready. I couldn’t wait. I’ve never done cocaine, champagne, ex-wives, or boats, so I would flush my money down this self-righteous rat hole.
I forwarded his lawyer’s threatening letter to my showbiz lawyer, Elliot Brown, and I promised Elliot I would make The New York Times look like pikers for what they spent on NYT v. Sullivan in Alabama. The New York Times was just fighting for freedom of speech, the press, and civil rights; I was fighting to bring down a hack mind-reader. Elliot, who had a computer macro that changed his closing salutation on every letter from “Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys on the Life of the People” to “Very Truly Yours” right before he signed it, sent this to Kreskin’s attorney.
Dear [Kreskin’s lawyer]:
We are the attorneys for Penn Jillette. Your letter of April 9, 1992, to [our manager at the time] has been referred to us. Although your letter refers to Penn & Teller, Penn Jillette was the sole author of the letter to The Skeptical Inquirer.
We are of the firm conviction that the statement to which you refer in your letter is not actionable in the context of Mr. Jillette’s letter.
In fact, any claim that the statement is actionable would, in our view, be a frivolous one.
If you would like to discuss this matter further, please do not hesitate to call.
Very truly yours,
Elliot H. Brown
It was a lot better with “Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys on the Life of the People” as the closing, but of course the threat was frivolous and Kreskin backed down right away. I was heartbroken. Elliot had to patiently explain to me that I couldn’t force someone to sue me if he didn’t want to, just like a few years later when Bob Corn-Revere would have to explain to me that I couldn’t force someone to arrest me. A few hours later I did a National Public Radio show and hijacked my own interview to try to repeat the stuff I’d written about Kreskin. I was hoping he’d pretend to misunderstand again and we could go to court.
Unfortunately, I stayed well within my rights. Sadly, the NYT had already spent enough to protect my opinion. I guess that’s good; I had money to care for my parents as their health declined and my children will have money for whatever recreational drugs are popular in ten years.
In 1994, Kreskin was booked at the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel in Las Vegas. I know Carrie Fisher a bit, and if I’d known earlier that Kreskin was going to be booked, I would have given her a jingle and tried to have her mother fire him, but he was on the marquee before I noticed.
I felt compelled to see Kreskin’s show. Teller and I went with “Master Magician Lance Burton,” a showgirl buddy of mine, juggler and Bullshit! writer Michael Goudeau, and Goudeau’s date, a professional topless mechanical bull rider. We know how to live. The showgirl wasn’t showing, the topless bull-rider was topped, and we were all sober and quiet. We also seemed to be the only ones who had bought tickets at full price.
We got seated in the showroom, and the show didn’t start. When it got way past starting time and the show still hadn’t started, Teller and I got up to go pee. When we came back from the men’s room, an apologetic white-haired maître d’ said, “You Mr. Penn and Teller? I’ve been told not to let you back in. I’m sure you guys understand, professionally.”
We didn’t understand, professionally, and we politely told him we’d paid for our tickets, we weren’t disorderly, and we were going to see the show. We walked past him and sat down. He followed us to the table. “You’re going to have to leave.” He had been ordered to get us out of the showroom before the show would start.
We showed our AmEx receipts and said politely, “I think you should call Metro.” (That’s the cool way to say “police” in Vegas.) I was hard about going limp. I’ve always wanted to do the passive resistance thing and be dragged away by police. I asked Lance Burton to use his big old cell phone to call a news photographer. We could Photoshop the pictures to black and white and add in police dogs. We were willing to fight for our right to see a shitty show.
We sat and waited. No police and no show. There was no nervousness or anticipation in the showroom, just us and a handful of people who had been given complimentary tickets because they bought a buffet lunch or something. Finally, after longer than you’d wait for Guns N’ Roses, the lights went down and Kreskin walked out onstage like a high school vice principal.
Wow. James Bond always has really cool, strong, smart villains. My nemesis was a thin, pathetic guy doing a matinee for six fully paid tickets, some twofers, and a bit of paper. I started to feel sorry for him. It had been twenty-eight years since my parents bought me his shitty toy that I didn’t really need; maybe I could just get over it.
I had won on every front. I’d publicly trashed him every chance I’d gotten. He’d backed down from the lawsuit. We were playing a bigger room in Vegas, and we hadn’t been thrown out of his shitty little show. As he walked out onstage I was ready to forgive him. If not for the first thing he said when he walked onstage, I bet I could have forgiven everything I saw in his shitty show that afternoon. I could have forgiven his boring card tricks done with incompetent sleight of hand; his name-dropping of Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Sammy Davis Jr., Regis Philbin, and Skitch Henderson; his clamming piano performances of “Feelings” and Superman’s “Can You Read My Mind?” I could have shrugged off his desperately explaining over and over again how famous he was and bragging about reciting the lyrics to “One Life to Live” with some pops orchestra, and continued my magnanimous feelings as he then recited the lyrics to “One Life to Live.”
I would have been tested when the mind-reading section came. I think the trick he did was by that 1940s mentalist Dunninger, just right out of his books. Kreskin even ripped off Dunninger’s weasel words about his tricks being done “by natural and scientific means” and saying “I am no fortune-teller.” I’m sure he considers this a disclaimer, but it does lack the important sentence “I’m not using ESP, I’m just doing shitty fucking tricks!” To do his mind reading, he asked us to write down thoughts on little pieces of paper so he could sneak a look (he thought he fooled people by giving them his word that he really wasn’t sneaking a look). Teller wrote on his piece of paper “Dunninger is rolling in his grave,” and I wrote the question “How do you live with yourself?” on mine. Kreskin never got around to reading those thoughts in our minds. He guessed someone’s phone number contained “702,” the area code for Vegas . . . and he was wrong. Even with all this, and his hateful opening, we didn’t disrupt the show. We didn’t make a peep.
He didn’t do many tricks, and no good ones. They were hack tricks that have been around forever, and he’s been doing them forever, and the only astonishing thing was that he hadn’t gotten better with all the repetition. He hadn’t learned a thing. The jokes he told were awful and he insulted the audience for not laughing, pretending he was working over their heads. He said, “You’ll find yourself waking up in the middle of the night laughing.” I hate when performers blame their audiences for not getting jokes. But I could have forgiven all that, I suppose . . . if not for his opening.
He even used Dunninger’s closing line: “To those who believe, no explanation is necessary; to those who do not, no explanation is possible.”
Dunninger was a big swinging dick. You could admire Dunninger’s bravado.
Kreskin is a fucking weasel. Kreskin ended by trying to force a standing ovation, and as the audience walked out, he pretended he got one. Everyone who didn’t have their back to the stage was embarrassed.
I could have forgiven all that. I’ve grown some since I was eleven. I could be bigger than all that. But I couldn’t be bigger than the first thing he said when he walked onstage.
I guess he felt he needed to explain why his show was starting so late. I guess he didn’t want to say it was because he was trying to get Penn & Teller thrown out and they were going to be assholes and go all limp-Gandhi on h
is ass.
What he came up with will make it very hard for me to ever forgive him.
When he walked out onstage, he took a few deep breaths, pretended to have some trouble pulling himself together, and said the show had been delayed because . . . he had been on the phone awaiting news about the well-being of his sick mother . . . and . . . thank god, she was all right.
Maybe his mother really was sick and he was really waiting on a real phone. Maybe. It’s possible, I guess. And it’s possible that while he was worried sick about his elderly mother’s health, he was putting her on hold and trying to get Penn & Teller thrown out of the Debbie Reynolds casino showroom. I suppose that’s possible. I know what it’s like to have a sick mother and worry about her. I know that all too well. But when I was on the phone worried about my mom, I wasn’t thinking about having people thrown out of anywhere, I was thinking about my mom. It’s also possible that it wasn’t Kreskin himself who decided that we had to go. Maybe while he was seeing about his poor mom, some middle manager decided that having Penn & Teller thrown out would give the boss some solace.
God, No! Page 18