Don’t go too soon. They’re currently doing a Broadway show in New York.
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[quote=“bathosfear, post:3, topic:62014, full:true”]
There’s a (fiction) story about a pretty good stage magician that turns out to be an underachieving actual magician. […] It was long before The Prestige, and more of a noir piece. He wasn’t a magician that discovered some real magic, but a powerful but lazy/burnt out wizard.
[/quote]Are you thinking of Clive Barker’s The Last Illusion? That one has a similar premise, but the magician is dead at the start, and it’s a private detective hired by his widow who figures things out.
Penn does look a bit gaunt but no worries: It’s because he decided to address serious high blood pressure by going vegan and losing 105 pounds for his 60th birthday.
And to add to the chorus above, P&T’s live show is one of the best magic shows ever – intelligent, funny and filled with fantastically clever magic. Really a must-see for anyone interested in the current state of the art.
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Yeah - it’s the one bit of the show I saw here in London 25 years ago that I can still vividly recall in almost perfect detail. The other stuff was impressive, but the shadow illusion was something special.
Not the story you are looking for, but Paul Gallico’s The Man Who Was Magic is kind of the reverse of that idea (it’s a world of “stage” magicians, and a real magician turns up…) Gorgeous fable that has some haunting imagery.
I agree. Maybe we had a better viewing angle.
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There are a lot of bits of Fool Us on YouTube, possibly even full shows.
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The UK shows for sure. Though those they don’t give away trophy’s on but the prize was being able to open for them on Vegas. Also they don’t edit out Fuck and Jonathan Ross had longer hair.
I wonder if the FU trophy is more for seeing what they can get away with on American TV.
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I laughed when I saw FU too.
http://cwtv.com/shows/penn-teller-fool-us/phone-y-business/ for the episode.
Heh, I wonder how many people didn’t get that FU joke.
He’s 60? Dang! I want to see P&T, but they have no shows right now.
Well as my Canadian spouse would say, consider the audience… 
That’s good to know, thanks for the tip. I saw that first episode and was genuinely worried for him. Sounds like it’s reason to celebrate, not worry.
We did have a lot better angles. They only had a fixed head on perspective. I suspect they had a good idea of where the marker could have gone but it was done so well they couldn’t figure out exactly where it had gone.
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there’s a lot of this show on You Tube, which is where I’ve seen it, just wondered if any networks had picked it up, it’s a hell of a lot more entertaining than Duck Housewives and Counting.
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He’s very good, but play the video at 1/4 speed…
At 6:00 and 6:08 you can see the card(s) are double-sided (or back-to back) and he rotates them around to show the other side.
I never understood the desire to “beat” a magician by figuring out the trick by any means possible. Sure, you can see what he did if you go through the footage frame by frame. You can also figure out who the killer is in a murder mystery by reading the last chapter first. Feels to me like breaking the implicit rules of the experience.
Not to mention that the double-sided cards don’t explain smoke and cards appearing in his mouth, twice.
Note I come to this like Penn does from the juggling community where we share everything with anyone who wants to know, there are not any real secrets, but we all are still agog at good skill and presentation. Knowing what was done and exactly how it was done does not ruin things for us when it is done flawlessly because we all understand how much practice time is put in to do it that well. This guy was wonderful at it and doing it at a level that impresses fellow professionals. It isn’t so much beating them as trying to figure out what was done and where because some of us are wired to want to figure it out, however it does not make us less in awe of the performance and that performance was effing amazing.
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Beacause sorcery.
And pitchforks.
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