Penn & Teller set Las Vegas aflame
After more than three decades of performing on stage together, Penn & Teller have finally gone up in flames.
The gregarious Penn Jillette and his mum partner Teller have spent their career together playing with fire — not to mention knives, guns, livestock and obviously lots of blood. So how could they best celebrate their 35th anniversary of being a comedy-magic team?
How about something larger than life — just like their death-defying acts? The "Bad Boys of Magic" put up a 26-story-high image of Penn dangling Teller over an blazing inferno — that comes to 27,000 square feet! — on the side of the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, where they've been performing since 2001.
“Thirty-five years together and everything is right on schedule,” Penn said. “We’re a third of the way through our 105-year plan. We have lots of surprises planned for the world.”
Audiences have long loved the quirky and suspenseful act — whether in person in Sin City or on tour or on television — in which Penn keeps up a patter while performing illusions that threaten to harm or kill himself — or much more often, Teller!
Penn & Teller have appeared in their own Emmy-winning network specials, as well as on all the late-night talk shows, several daytime talk/news shows and some TV series. This spring they'll launch their seventh season of “Penn & Teller's Bull***” — the longest-running series on the cable channel Showtime that's been nominated for an Emmy Award 11 times.
TV aside, it could be said that, in a sense, the pair’s entire career has been based on some form of Bull****. Penn notes that in the beginning, he and Teller were very careful to never mention magic in association with their show because they feared scaring off hip adults.
“We used to call ourselves ‘swindlers’ and ‘cheaters,’” Penn recalls. “Of course, my favorite term was ‘rip-off artistes.’ We do things that appear to be physically impossible — we accomplish miracles by tricks. That is the definition of magic.
"What you’re going to see with us is very, very different than what other magicians do. Our stuff is heavily plotted — it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it has much more visceral content. It also has a real hard edge and a common sense. \
"At no point do we want anyone watching our show to put away his or her intelligence. When we do something that defies the laws of physics, we want people to say that we’re able to do this because we’re good swindlers and good at lying, and not because of some mumbo-jumbo.”
- by Bobbie Katz, Las Vegas Reporter for HelloMetro
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