Penn Jillette on Penn & Teller’s New Jersey return
It would be nearly impossible to overstate the importance of the role New Jersey has played in the career of Penn and Teller.
The magical duo has been entertaining audiences since their very first performance, a 1975 engagement in Princeton.
Prior to that Teller — the silent and diminutive half of the pair — spent six years teaching Latin at Lawrence High School in the Trenton suburb of Lawrence Township, and early in their career the tandem lived for years in Trenton.
After a 15-years-and-counting residency in Las Vegas, Penn and Teller return to the state that’s been so good to them for a Oct. 27 performance at the State Theatre in New Brunswick.
Hub City also happens to be the hometown of the pair’s manager, Glenn Alai, so this particular show “is a big deal for us,” Penn Jillette told the Asbury Park Press’ “Fan Theory” podcast.
Perhaps the biggest contribution that New Jersey has made to the lives and careers of Penn and Teller can be found in the influence of iconic magician and skeptic James Randi, formerly of Rumson.
“They’ve always given me credit for having introduced them,” Randi recounted to the Asbury Park Press in a 2015 interview. “They knew one another from working in the streets, Penn as a juggler and Teller as a mime doing some magic tricks. They were working out in Philadelphia, as a matter of fact.”
Randi said he first met Penn and Teller following one of his lectures.
“I approached them, they knew one another to speak to one another in the street,” he said. “But I said to them, ‘You look like a combination that should be together. Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy — it seems like a natural (fit). The difference in physical appearance and your size and the difference in your attitudes.’ And so, they thought about that and they called me some weeks afterward and said, ‘Yes, we’re together.’ ”
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Like Randi and Harry Houdini before them, Penn and Teller have spent years providing their audiences with both entertainment and reasoned enlightenment.
They even had an eight-season documentary series on Showtime, “Penn and Teller: Bullsh*t,” that largely served as a celebration of skepticism.
“I don’t think it’s any exaggeration at all to say that without Randi, there would be no me in my present form,” Jillette said. “I don’t think there’s a way to get from who I was at 14 years old to who I am at 61 without Randi. I just can’t see anybody else who would have filled that gap, and I can’t see any way my own thinking would have brought me there.
“I had a deep-seated hatred for the lying in magic,” he continued. “I would never have considered being a magician as a performer. I would never have considered working with Teller if not for Randi.”
Jillette said that while Randi’s artistic influence on him is plain to see, his philosophical and ideological impact was far more important.
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“I don’t believe that I could have had this job without Randi’s philosophy telling me that lying could be moral if you put a proscenium around it,” he said. “Strangely enough, you might want to credit Randi as being the impetus for my … fighting nonsense and fighting pseudoscience, but it’s actually backwards from that. I think that being able to understand that you could use some of the tools that the bad people use in a good way is actually more important and comes sooner.”
To some, Jillette may seem like a man of contradictions. Not only is he a world-famous magician who believes in pulling back the curtain on frauds, he’s also a headlining theatrical star who regularly opens performances with a piece alternately known as “Turn on Your Cell Phones” and/or “Cell Fish.”
In a time when performers regularly call out audience members for using their mobile devices during performances, it’s a routine that with one line up-ends expectations for what a night at the theater is expected to involve.
“That was the line that started the whole bit,” Jillette said. “It was not a trick. It was not a routine, nothing. I just loved the idea of walking out and saying, ‘Turn your cell phones on.’ It just seemed so funny to me, and so wild.”
Jillette’s show business career has taken him on a pretty wild ride over the last 40-plus years.
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Beyond the live stage, he’s worked in the worlds of film, podcasting and reality television. But with his latest book, he’s giving readers an inside look at a very personal side of his life: “Presto! How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales,” is now available through Simon and Schuster.
The book chronicles Jillette’s journey from approximately 330 pounds to his current weight of around 225.
Discussing reader response to the book, Jillette said, “I’m pretty amazed. We have a running tally a fan is keeping on Twitter, and so far we’re just knocking on 19,000 and something pounds, almost 20,000 pounds, that people have claimed to have lost inspired by me.
“Now, that isn’t a real number, of course. People can write whatever they want on Twitter and we’re not testing it. We don’t even know what ‘inspired by me’ really means.
“But all of that being said, I don’t think there’s ever a night that goes by that at least two people don’t come up to me and say they’ve lost 30 to 80 pounds and feel better and they’re off meds and all this stuff. I’ve never had people talk about feeling better because of stuff that I’ve done after the show.
“I get a lot of people talking philosophically and theologically and laughing and stuff, and all of that puts you over the moon with joy.
“But it’s just a different feeling to have people say, ‘I don’t have high blood pressure anymore.’ Of course, I deserve next to no credit for that, but the fact that they’re willing to give me a little means I’ll take a little.”
PENN AND TELLER
WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27
WHERE: The State Theatre, 15 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick
TICKETS: $55 to $100
INFO: 732-246-7469 or www.statetheatrenj.org