Penn & Teller

Penn & Teller are a two-man magic and comedy team, comprised of Penn Jillette and Teller. Penn is a raconteur; Teller does not speak while performing. The duo specializes in gory tricks, fake exposures and clever pranks, and have become associated with Las Vegas, atheism, skepticism and libertarianism. They call themselves “a couple of eccentric guys who have learned how to do a few cool things.

By 1985, Penn & Teller were receiving rave reviews for their Off Broadway show and Emmy award-winning PBS special, Penn & Teller Go Public. In 1987, they began the first of two successful Broadway runs. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the pair made numerous television appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live, as well as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Today Show, and many others.

Penn & Teller had national tours throughout the 1990s, gaining critical praise. They have also made television guest appearances on Babylon 5 [2] (as a comedy team Rebo and Zooty), The Drew Carey Show, Hollywood Squares, The Bernie Mac Show, Fear Factor, Home Improvement, and The Simpsons. They also appeared as scam artists in the music video for "It's Tricky" by Run-DMC in 1987.

The pair has written several books about magic, including Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks For Dear Friends, Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food, and Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic.

Since 2001, Penn & Teller perform 6 nights a week in Las Vegas at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino. (Before that, they toured from time to time.)

Their tricks include Teller hanging upside-down over a bed of spikes in a straitjacket, Teller drowning in a huge container of water, Teller being run over by an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, Teller swinging over bear-traps on a trapeze, and knives going through Penn's hands. Many of their effects rely heavily on shock appeal and violence, although presented in a humorous manner. Often, the pair will claim to reveal a secret of how a magic trick is done, but those tricks are usually invented by the duo for the sole reason of exposing them, and therefore designed with more spectacular and weird methods than would have been necessary, had it just been a "proper" magic trick. Penn and Teller perform their own adaptation of the famous bullet catch illusion. Both simultaneously fire a gun at the other and then catch the respective bullets in their mouths.

In one of their more thoughtful and politically charged tricks, they make a U.S. flag seem to disappear by wrapping it in a copy of the United States Bill of Rights, and apparently setting the flag on fire, so that "the flag is gone but the Bill of Rights remains." They normally end the routine by restoring the unscathed flag to its starting place on the flagpole; however, on a TV guest appearance on The West Wing, this final part was omitted for dramatic reasons.