[jazz music]
♪ ♪
[applause]
- From the Penn and Teller Theater
at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas.
Here's our host, Brooke Burke.
[cheering]
- Welcome to the show, everyone.
It's high noon here on the Fool Us stage,
so get ready to watch some dramatic magic duels.
But before we pull the trigger on tonight's show,
we have to make our legends walk ten paces to center stage.
So giddy up, Penn and Teller!
[cheering]
- Any magician who hits the bullseye
and fools our gunslingers
wins a trip back to the southwest
to perform in the desert alongside Penn and Teller.
And now it's time for our first magician
to take their best shot.
- Magic is an Irish tradition.
Older than time.
Our folklore is alive with witches and the banshee
and the queens of the fairy realm.
And that's why I call myself Nikola Arkane,
to connect myself to the old and arcane ways.
I'm actually a trained actress,
so I like to create characters.
I fell into magic accidentally.
I took a job in a theater
without knowing the director did magic on the side.
I took to it instantly.
It must have been the Irish in me.
Now in Belfast, the town I call home,
I'm a bit of a fixture on the magic scene.
Magicians have welcomed me and encouraged me,
and I really feel I've found my voice.
It's an ancient one connected to enchanters and tricksters.
The changes that have happened are pretty darn awesome.
I've grown as a person thanks to magic.
[applause]
- It's time for some magic by Irish wizard Nikola Arkane.
[applause]
- Is this everyone? Yeah?
Good, you're all just in time for the ritual.
Penn, Teller, Brooke.
Each of you have a pen and a tarot card,
like the one I have here.
If you could now take the pen
and sign your name right across the card,
make it big and bold
so that your cards cannot be duplicated.
Perfect.
Thank you, Penn.
Thank you, teller.
And thank you, Brooke.
Oh, Penn. - Yeah.
- This is your signature, correct?
- Yeah.
- Hmm. - Sorry.
- Oh, no. Let's try something.
Try and pull your signature out from in between the cards.
- Pull my...
- Without touching the other cards.
- Without touching the other cards, pull my card out?
- Yeah. - I don't think I can do that.
- So you would say that's impossible
to pull your card out when it's in between
without touching it.
- I would think so, yeah.
- Okay. Remember that.
- Okay.
- So, being a magician...
being from Belfast,
and being a woman,
I am quite often accused
of witchcraft-- cheating.
And I do not want to be accused of cheating here in Las Vegas.
So, I have brought along something to help.
My anti-cheating device,
or as I like to call it,
my lucky Irish handkerchief.
Over here, I have four more tarot cards.
These represent parts of me, my personality.
We will use these, and of course,
our signed cards.
Let the ritual begin.
The devil,
the devilish part of me,
is laid down first.
On top of which, I put your signed contract--
card that you signed, Brooke.
Thank you.
The magician is next.
The magical part of me,
and it goes on top,
trapping your card from above and below,
making it slightly troublesome to remove.
As you might have noticed when you tried earlier, Penn.
- I did.
- I have waited so long for your signature.
Judgment is next, and this does not mean
that I am a judgmental person.
You guys are the one judging me.
But I will judge this signature,
and it is a valuable one for my collection.
Thanks, Teller.
The fool and foolish part of me,
and of course, the final signed card,
which hopefully you will remember
and recognize and symbolizes...
my name.
The cards are now isolated and interlaced
with the parts of me.
And I'm now wrapping them up inside this handkerchief
to isolate them further from my feminine wiles.
Despite all that,
I will attempt to pull them out.
Pull our signed cards from in between the parts of me
wrapped tightly within this handkerchief.
And if I manage to do that,
that must mean...
I'm really good.
[laughing]
♪ ♪
[audience gasps]
[applause]
And all that is left
at the end of this ancient ritual...
are the four parts of me.
And that is hocus pocus, bitches.
[cheering]
- Nikola Arkane.
Ireland must be a very magical place, is it?
- Very, very magical, yes.
- And who is Fiz Wizz Pop?
- Fiz Wizz Pop is a character that I perform for children
and she's kind of a bit bonkers and crazy.
She has crazy hair.
- What do you think magic brings to the life of a child?
- I think imagination is a wonderful thing.
And if you give children the key to unlocking the door
to their imagination, anything is possible.
- Amazing. - [applause]
- Okay, let's see if your hocus pocus has earned you a trophy
to take back to Ireland.
Boys?
- Nikola, Nikola, Nikola.
You're doing something very difficult,
which is you've got a trick
that has a lot of procedural stuff in it.
And procedural tricks put all the emphasis
on your character, your personality,
and holding the stage.
You did all that so well
and using the Ireland stuff and the witch stuff
and all that was very good.
And it was also really targeted to us,
people who know the card through the handkerchief trick,
and gave us a wrinkle in something
to really have to work on.
And we did have to work on this and we did get a few ideas,
but you know, we're not going to give you too much
because we magicians have to stick together.
But I think I give you a rough idea of how we think you did it
and we don't think you fooled us as great as it was.
But what do you think, Nikola?
- They know I'm a witch.
[laughing]
- But we're not burning you. We're not burning you.
- Thank you.
- Thank you so much.
Nikola Arkane, everyone.
[cheering]
- This party is far from over.
In fact, we are just getting started.
More "Fool Us" is coming up.
♪ ♪
- Welcome back, everyone
and focus up because our next magician is coming your way.
- I'm one of the worst dancers in the world,
but I love to go dancing.
I come on the stage clumsy as hell
and I think people can see themselves in me a little bit.
I'm one of the worst painters, too.
So what?
I do it anyway?
Two things I'm pretty good at our music and magic.
My parents are both musicians
and they shared that world with me.
Magic usually is a very visual art and I love the sound, too.
So when I perform magic, I try to do magic with the sound
and I think it's something very interesting.
People say I'm like a child always hunting for fun.
And I think this is a good way for a magician to be
because a child sees magic everywhere all the time.
I try to get the people to see the world as a game.
Today is a very important game for me.
So I want to play it.
[applause]
- From Spain, please welcome the magic of Rubi.
[applause]
♪ ♪
[laughing]
[record scratch]
[laughing]
[record scratch]
[laughing]
[applause]
[record scratch]
[audience gasps]
[applause]
[audience gasps]
[applause]
[audience gasps]
[applause]
[record scratch]
[audience gasps]
[applause]
[audience gasps]
[applause]
[record scratch]
[audience gasps]
[applause]
[ding]
[coin clangs]
[audience gasps]
[applause]
[audience gasps]
[applause]
[audience gasps]
[dings]
[coin clangs]
[coins rattle]
[rattling stops]
♪ ♪
[audience gasps]
[applause]
[audience gasps]
[applause]
- Rubi, everyone!
Hi. - Hey.
- That was amazing. - Thank you.
- How do you prepare for a trick like this?
- The mirror. - The mirror.
- Always the mirror, yeah. Always, always.
- I'm gonna wipe some of this yogurt off of you, okay?
- Thank you. - That's okay.
You seem very in touch with your inner child.
Do you bring those emotions into all of your acts?
- Yeah, I love it.
And I love clowning, you know, clown.
The clown is a great art for me.
- So you took those qualities and you made it work for you?
- Yeah, I think so.
- All right, it's time to put Penn and Teller on the spot.
- Are you ready? - I love it.
- Boy, what a nice routine.
The audience just loved you all the way through.
We loved you all the way through.
The whole kind of magical object there
in the middle was just wonderful.
Now let's get to the difficult part.
This is a really tough one for us, really hard.
We had a tough time because you're doing coin moves.
And there are only so many things you can do with coins.
And there's only so many moves you can do with a cup.
And we kind of felt like we knew those moves.
But here's where it gets tough.
Everybody else where we say this kind of,
oh, we knew the moves you were doing.
We knew what you were doing. We knew this. We knew that.
Every one of those people we say,
well, we saw something we shouldn't have seen.
There was one glimpse. There was one moment.
And when we see that,
we see one mistake in a whole routine, our whole heart sours.
And we go, ah, well, we kind of know the other stuff too.
We feel like if you'd made one damn mistake,
we would have busted you on everything.
But you did everything. And this is hard stuff.
And it's stuff that we probably know it.
But you were perfect so you fooled us.
[cheering]
- Congratulations. Really well done.
Thank you so much. Rubi, everyone.
Looks like our boys just got got.
- Got got. - Got got.
Is that a real thing? - That's right. Sure.
Will they be fooled again?
Well, come back and find out.
♪ ♪
[applause]
- There you are.
You are just in time for our next magician.
Take a look.
- I came on "Fool Us" to make Penn and Teller laugh.
How many of you get the sense that something cheesy
is about to go down?
[laughing]
- I was willing to do pretty much anything
to make that happen, and I fooled them.
Then people started taking my magic seriously.
So I put together my own show right here in Las Vegas.
I've learned a skill called regurgitation.
Every night I got better at reading the room,
landing the jokes, blending the magic and the comedy.
I met my fiancé when she came to my show,
a show that I would not have had if it weren't for "Fool Us."
So I'm back to say thanks,
and this time I'm not here just as Vinnie Grosso,
the guy who does comedy.
I accept the job description now.
I'm here as a magician, and that's who I'll always be.
[applause]
- Welcome back, two-time fooler Vinnie Grosso.
- [applause] - Thank you.
In the many years of "Fool Us"
I have found that there are two types of magicians
that fool Penn and Teller.
The first is the really clever kind.
These folks have a tremendous amount of talent
and diabolical methods.
Then there's me,
someone with no shame in using gimmicks
to distract Penn and Teller.
Now, since my last appearance,
I've spent a lot of time honing my magic skills.
But having said that, I'm still going to use a gimmick tonight.
[laughing]
Let's start with Brooke.
Do you mind bringing your phone with you?
- Sure. - Your phone?
- Sure.
We're going to start with something random,
literally random.
Penn, your book, "Random."
- Okay. - You have it right there?
- I do. I carry my book with me all the time.
[laughing]
- What I would like you to do is open your book
to a random page facing me.
- With hands are the pages? - Yeah, there we go.
Okay, you can close the book.
- Okay.
- I have a photo and you can hold on to your phone again.
- Okay.
- Penn is not the only author here.
I have some more books.
This one is Teller's.
"When I'm dead, All This Will Be Yours."
I also have Brooke's, "The Naked Mom."
- Ooh.
- It's not a picture book.
It's a lovely, honest memoir.
- So not naked. - Yes.
- And I have a copy of my book.
Well, I have lots of copies of my book and priced to sell.
But this is "Exposed and Fearless,"
which you all will be happy to know
there are no photos in this book.
Penn, I would like you to choose one of these books.
But before you make that choice,
I also want you to know we're all judging you.
- Okay. One of those three books, "Naked Mom."
- "Naked Mom." Did that feel like a free choice?
- The only choice I was going to make.
- Thanks, Penn.
- But I said we're all judging you, right?
- Yeah.
- So in your mind, you're like, oh, Brooke is the host.
I mean, people are going to want me to choose the host's book.
I mean, what kind of monster wouldn't do that, right?
- Right. - Okay.
So now that you know how I could have influenced your choice,
if you'd like to choose a different book you can,
or if you think I'm full of it,
we can stick with the "Naked Mom."
- "Naked Mom," please. - All right.
Brooke. - Yes.
- I'm going to flip through your book like this.
- Okay.
- And I'd like you to just say stop whenever you'd like.
- Stop. - All right.
Is this good? Or do you need me to adjust it?
Go back some pages, forward some pages.
- I'm good with that. - You're good with that?
Okay.
So we have a magnifying glass here.
- Okay.
- Can you see that if I move this magnifying glass
around on the book, I can isolate different words, right?
- Yes. Yes. - Okay.
That's exactly what I'm going to do here.
But Teller, I'm going to ask you,
if you wouldn't mind indicating to me
when you would like me to stop, okay?
Down, left, right, or down.
Okay.
Brooke, can you let us know what word we stopped on?
- "Maybe." - All right.
Let's think about this.
We have a lot of words in these books, and we chose one book.
Not just the book, but the spot in the book.
And then from the spot, we chose a specific word.
Every time we had a choice,
we had an opportunity to change our mind.
Now, sometimes we didn't, but sometimes we did.
And we got to the word "maybe,"
and that had to be random, right?
- Yeah.
- Random. Penn's book, "Random."
Brooke, can you open the phone up
and go to the photo that we took of Penn's book?
- Okay.
- Now, Penn has a very distinct finger.
What word lies beneath his finger?
- Oh, my gosh. It's "maybe."
- "Maybe."
Let's show it to the camera.
- Oh, my goodness. - Maybe not so random.
- Wow.
And maybe Penn and Teller would like these.
- Thank you. - You're welcome.
- Vinnie Grosso, everyone.
[cheering]
- Very super cool.
So you've been here several times.
- Two times. - Two times.
- Yeah.
- But one of those times, you were naked?
- Yes. That was the first time I was here.
- Slightly bummed I missed that.
- No, I think you should be very relieved that you'd missed that.
- How important do you think comedy is
in the experience of magic?
- To me, it's the most important thing.
- Because I think when it becomes just about magic,
it's then a puzzle.
And then people are just trying to figure out how it's done,
as opposed to maybe just having an overall great experience.
- Okay, Vinnie. Are you ready?
- Ready or not. - Let's see if you have
to make room on your bookshelf for a third "Fool Us" trophy.
Boys?
- Hey, Vinnie. - Hi, Penn.
- Now, you know this. You're a good friend of ours.
And it's a great trick,
and it's a wonderful trick that would fool almost anybody.
But you fooled us twice, you bastard.
[laughing]
And you want to play rough, we'll play rough.
You said you were going to use a gimmick.
You actually used two gimmicks.
One of them is really old, really, really old,
based on a thing called the erasure shield,
which you may not even know, but that's what it's based on.
And the other one is really new, new, new technology.
And then you did this incredibly flattering thing,
using Brookes' book, using Teller's book,
and of course, using your book,
just to keep it even, you know.
And then you kind of made a big mistake, Vinnie,
because you let me hold my book.
And I know this book.
And I also know that if you had someone else hold this book,
they wouldn't have held it the way I held it,
because I was playing to win.
You know, some other people, if they're from, like,
Korea, or Sweden, or Spain, we don't play that rough.
But you are a friend of ours,
so we are going to kick your ass.
So when I was holding the book, Vinnie,
I noticed some things.
You know, Teller and I, we've been around.
You know, we're wise guys. We notice things.
I held the book open, then I closed it.
And you know, I noticed things, Vinnie.
Two out of three ain't bad, Vinnie,
because we notice things. We notice things.
- Aw... - See you for coffee.
- Okay. Thank you, guys.
[laughing]
- Thank you. - What do you think?
- I think, for certain, they know exactly how I did this.
Thank you, guys.
- Nicely done, Vinnie.
- Vinnie Grosso. - Thank you.
- [cheering]
Stay where you are, because we've got something
really special for you when "Fool Us" returns.
♪ ♪
- Welcome back to "Fool Us".
Here comes our next world-class act, check them out.
- Hi, my name is Gonzalo, I'm 14,
and I came from a small town in Spain, Cáceres.
Magic wasn't a common sight in Cáceres when I was growing up,
at least not until I discovered my passion
for it at the age of four.
First, I did small tricks with my sister,
who is an excellent assistant.
But before long, I was doing bigger appearances and even TV,
and I even got to meet some of the greatest magicians in Spain.
I'm good in school, and I can speak English,
French, and Chinese.
And along with the school, I attended a technology academy,
which taught me robots and coding.
And so I learned twists to mix all these things with magic.
Now, I will face Penn and Teller with some magic
I programmed on my own.
Penn, Teller, I've watched "Fool Us" since I was a baby,
and I can't wait to show you
what you have inspired me to create.
[applause]
- Please welcome 14-year-old wonder kid, Gonzalo Mateos.
[applause]
- I am so excited to be on this show
with two of the greatest magicians of all time.
First of all, Penn, I'd like you to give this deck a shuffle.
- Okay, I'll do my best.
I'm not a good shuffler.
- I came from Spain to show you something I invented.
It's an artificial intelligence
that's able to find any freely selected card.
As you know, one of the greatest magicians of all time
was named Dai Vernon.
So, in his honor, I call my invention AI Vernon.
Thank you, Penn. - Okay.
That's the hard part of the trick. Done.
- And Teller, I want you to shuffle as well.
Awesome. - Much better than mine.
- Now, think of any suit. Don't tell me what it is.
Do you have one? Great.
Now take all the numbered cards of that suit out of the deck
and put them in a pile face down in the order that you find them.
While, he does that, Brooke, could you join us, please?
I'd love to.
[applause]
- Hi. - Hi.
Hi, boys.
Now, Brooke, I want you to take one of Teller's cards.
- Okay.
- Don't look at these or let anyone else see it.
And please put it in your pocket.
- Don't look at it or show it to anyone.
- That's right.
- And I don't have a pocket, but I'll hide it for you.
- Okay.
Now, Penn, it's your turn to pick a card
from the rest of the deck.
- The rest of the deck, okay.
- You can show it to everyone. I won't look.
And then put it back in the deck.
- Okay.
Like the Master Robo Detective, that he is,
AI Vernon will now hunt down Penn's chosen card.
Penn, please, could you come here?
- I will, yeah. - And rotate the phone.
[beeping]
Rotate it, please.
[beeping increases]
Getting closer.
- Observe how it narrows down the possibilities
to these few cards.
Let's get rid of the rejected ones.
You can go back to your seat.
- Okay. - Thank you.
[applause]
- I am over here if you need me.
[laughing]
- Penn, out of these four cards,
Vernon thinks one of them is yours.
[beeping]
Saying it's this one.
- Yeah. - But let's make sure.
Saying it's this one again.
Penn, for the first time, what was the card you chose?
Jack of Clubs.
- Just as Vernon predicted, the Jack of Clubs.
[cheering]
- Now, my invention would try to find Brooke's card
using a second method.
For these, I'll need a new deck.
I'm going to pass this deck in front of Vernon
one suit at a time,
until it identifies Teller's chosen suit.
Spades, not this one.
Hearts, not this one.
- [beeping] - I think it's this one.
Let's make sure.
Not this one.
[beeping]
Saying it's this one again.
Teller, is this the suit you selected?
Great, it's working.
[applause]
Now...
Let's look for something more difficult, the value.
First, I'll change the setting.
My invention will now scan and analyze each card
and indicate which ones I should eliminate
until only one card remains.
[beeping]
Not this one, not this one, not this one.
[beeping]
We're getting closer.
It's saying it's this one.
Brooke, for the first time.
Could you take out the card you chose and show it to everyone?
- Yes. Okay.
- The four of clubs. - Yes.
If it's true that my invention found the suit correctly
and discarded all of the wrong cards,
then this could only be the four of clubs.
[applause]
- But wait, wait, wait.
AI Vernon is not done yet.
Penn, Teller, do you remember at the beginning
you both shuffled the deck?
- Oh, yeah.
And then Teller randomly selected a suit
and removed all of the numbered cards.
My invention has one final surprise.
And in the process of finding all of your cards,
if it worked correctly, it has done something else.
It has magically arranged
the remaining cards into a matching order.
Ace, three, seven, two, nine, five,
and the whole order matches.
[applause]
- Wow, wow.
It's amazing. Gonzalo Mateos, everyone.
Come on over here.
[cheering]
- You were great and you really managed the boys so well.
- Thank you. - Such confidence.
- Thanks.
- Tell me about Vernon, for most of us who don't know
who that great magician is.
- Dai Vernon was a Canadian magician,
most known as The Professor.
He is an awesome magician
and he created some awesome techniques, tricks.
- And now you've captured his spirit
and you've put it into a mobile phone?
- An AI. Yeah.
- How did you come up with this idea?
- I love technology. I love magic.
And I felt like magic was starting to get outdated.
So I wanted to mix my two passions,
technology and magic to make something new.
That's how I came up with Vernon.
- What does your family think about you being here with us?
- They love it.
- I've seen these shows since I was a baby.
So they've known this show as well
and they're as excited as I am.
- Okay, Gonzalo, let's see if you
and your incredibly smart phone have Fooled Penn and Teller.
Are you ready? - Yes.
- All right, let's check in with the boys. P&T?
- Oh, Gonzalo, you're 14 years old.
- Yes. - [bleep].
[laughing]
- Now the programming on the phone, did you do that?
- Yes. - That's yours?
- Yes. - All of that?
- Yes. - Amazing.
And you use that brand new technology
coupled with some very, very old things.
There's one thing, I don't know if you know this or not,
but it's Charles T. Jordan
that had the one idea that you used there.
You're 14 years old and you do so much better than we do.
- Thank you. - Or specifically than I do.
I think that we should give you incredible accolades
for simply not bursting out laughing aloud
by saying the greatest magicians of our time
and then you big dope, you can't even shuffle,
what the hell is wrong with you?
You were raised so properly
so that you didn't spit in my face
when I shuffled so badly.
Incredible poise.
There's stacks and stacks of things
you do so much better than we do.
And the combination of the old technology
and the new technology which you did yourself is phenomenal,
but I don't think you fooled us.
But you will next time, I'll guarantee you that.
- Gonzalo, sounds like they have a pretty good handle
on your trick.
- They got me.
- We really enjoyed that. You were incredible.
- Thank you. - Thank you so much.
They got you.
- We love you. We'll see you soon.
Gonzalo Mateos, everyone.
Don't even think about going anywhere.
We've got more of TV's best magic on the way.
♪ ♪
[applause]
- Welcome back to "Fool Us."
Las Vegas is known for its celebrity impersonators.
Cher, Elvis, Prince, you name it.
So it's only right that we bring out the top
Penn and Teller impersonators that Vegas has to offer.
So please welcome Teller and Penn.
[applause]
[laughing]
Good evening.
My name is Penn Jillette, and this is my partner Teller.
We are Penn and Teller.
We hate magic.
In fact, we hate card tricks, because card tricks
seem to us to be intrinsically wimpy.
- Ha! That's all I do?
Good. Fine.
- Harder to keep quiet, isn't it, than you thought, Teller?
[laughing]
- I'm going to take this deck of cards,
and I'm going to riffle down the cards.
And, miss, I'd like you to yell, yo, or stop,
or whatever seems appropriate to your character.
Ready? - Yes.
Stop.
- That's the card. We're going to use.
That's the card we must all remember.
And now I'm going to lose the card in the deck
and make it very difficult for Teller to find.
We'll make it even more difficult for Teller to find,
because we are going to blindfold him.
We're going to blindfold him with this
absolutely opaque velvet blindfold.
I'll prove it to you.
You, sir, in the second row in the white jacket
and the plaid pants.
You can't see my eyes, can you?
- No, I cannot.
- No, he cannot see my eyes.
Now we will blindfold Teller.
Here we go, just like this. Yeah.
Yeah, making it a little more challenging,
by cutting off not only your sight, but your oxygen.
Now let's see.
I'll mess up the cards a little to show you can.
Oh, Teller, that's a sharp knife.
You should be more careful.
Let me move the cards around, and now go ahead, stab.
There we are.
And is that your card, the Queen of Hearts?
- No. - It's not the Queen of Hearts?
Ha!
- Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Oh, God, jeez.
Blood, mother, mother, blood, blood, blood.
Is that your card?
- The six of clubs. - Yes.
- Thank you.
- [applause] - And...
And you can see, the kids just love it.
The kids love it.
You'll be talking about this to a court appointed psychiatrist
in about 20 years.
This is perhaps the best example
of what Penn and Teller stand for.
We take an ordinary dull card trick,
and we add just a little bit of class.
Call me a sentimental old fool,
but I'd like you to have this.
Thank you. - Thank you.
- Teller and Penn. - Gross.
Great job, Penn and Teller. Or is it...
Penn and Teller.
Either way, we've got to go,
and we'll see you next time on a brand new "Fool Us."
Good night, everyone.