This evening Penn & Teller took the stage of the Gramercy Theatre in New York City for a unique event to benefit the Bill Graham Memorial Foundation & music and arts education in public schools.  The event was unique in that it wasn’t their normal show.  Instead it was a 90 minute discussion with the pair about their career to date with questions both from a moderator and from the audience.  They did manage to throw 3 different tricks in throughout the evening however.  Also everyone in the audience received the poster above, which Penn & Teller stayed and signed for anyone who wanted an autograph afterwards.

Many topics were covered, a lot of discussion was about the pair’s early days.  And yes Teller spoke.  It was actually very odd after seeing them as many times as I have to hear him speak.  He has a Jewish east coast accent (he’s from Philly) for those wondering.

One of the things I found most fascinating was when they were asked about how they collaborate they answered that they really don’t.  Basically for anything to make their show they have to both agree on it.  If one person doesn’t like it, it’s gone.  They never compromise on anything, saying that when people compromise and collaborate usually the product is shit.  This was an interesting take as I’ve heard many different takes on collaboration between people but this one was very different and very interesting.  They said they are both very strong willed people and don’t back down.  And of course this leads to frequent fighting, that they say is now much better since they are at a level where they don’t have to spend 24 hours a day together like early in their career.

A trick being performed (on the volunteer)

I also found the fact that Penn hates magic to be interesting.  He says that now it’s sometimes interesting to him, but he doesn’t really think of himself as a magician and that Teller is the real deal magician.  Also that the reason Teller doesn’t speak comes from when he first started performing in college he hated typical magician patter and didn’t want to do it because it was cheesy.  He also thinks it’s interesting to lie without using words.  He says he never feels the need to speak during a show because everything Penn is saying is exactly what he’d be saying and he feels like he is saying the words for him.

The duo told some great stories like how they’d get reviewers to their shows, and how they never at any point in their career thought that the next step was going to go well, and also how they’d be perfectly happy playing for 25 people in a small theater as long as it paid their rent.  They just love what they do and have no real aspirations beyond that.

They did drop some little nuggets of news.  It was announced a few months ago that ABC had ordered a pilot to star Penn & Teller in a cop show of all things.  They talked about how this came about saying that basically every few months they’re asked to meet with networks and asked if they have any ideas and usually they come up with some weird idea that no one wants and that’s that, but this time someone called up and actually wanted this show.  So their working on a pilot script, which Leonard Dick of House fame is writing, for Warner Bros, and it’s official title is “Penn & Teller Solve Crimes”.  The plot is that someone dies during their show at the Rio and they’re basically blackballed from the entertainment industry so they become cops.  They said it’d absolutely absurd and surreal and didn’t seem to have much hope that it’d ever actually go beyond the script and be made or air.

On the Bullshit front, they said that another season has not been ordered but things look good currently.  They also told the story of how Bullshit actually came to be.  It was one of those network pitch things.  This time all the meetings were scheduled the week after 9/11/01.  They decided that since everyone was being encouraged to live life as normal they’d go in and pitch anyway.  They pitched the idea to a whole bunch of networks, but obviously pitching a show saying there is no afterlife, no god, etc. right after this horrible event didn’t go over too well, but at one pitch Penn remembered saying that he predicted that John Edwards would announce a special where he’d speak to people who died that day and when that happened the networks would feel like shit for being involved with that and not with them.  John Edwards did announce that special, but it never happened thankfully.  But P&T got Bullshit.  Also when asked if there was anything they would not take on in the show Penn gave the honest answer that they purposefully stay away from Islam, because he has a family and he’d be afraid that it might cause threats to his wife and children, not to mention Teller and himself.  Also Showtime wanted them to back off of Scientology, which when he told to Matt Stone & Trey Parker of South Park fame they took and made the famous Scientology episode of South Park, partially as a fuck you.  He credited South Park with the best John Edwards fuck you too.  He said that although they despise religion the one thing he will give the catholics is that even though they despise what they say about their faith and think he’ll burn in hell, they haven’t taken any kind of violent action against them.  Apparently not even a threat.

It was a very interesting talk and really enjoyable.  I hope they come back to New York soon with their regular show as I haven’t seen them actually really perform in probably a decade.