Magician Penn Jillette on Dylan, guns and the US culture of fear
The American magician, author and podcast host confesses on his Bob Dylan fandom, mastery, learning upright bass, money, and 50 years of performing alongside Teller.
American magician, author and podcast host Penn Jillette, 69, on Bob Dylan, mastery, learning upright bass, money, and 50 years of performing alongside Teller.
When we toured Australia in 2022, I noticed … people seem less afraid of each other. The United States has, for the past 20 years — maybe some would say 50; certainly, the past five — been a culture operating on fear. Whether you’re on either side of the political divide, whether you’re pro-gun, anti-gun, or whether you’re pro legalisation of drugs or anti-drugs, the dialogue is all based on fear, and I believe that bleeds into the world. So down in Australia there was just, to me, a more relaxed atmosphere in everything. I don’t feel like I am consumed by fear in the US, but I feel the culture is.
My one quibble about Australia, though, is … I also noticed that they will put a theatre somewhere and have no restaurants open in the area when the theatre gets out [after a show]. I think there’s a million dollars to be made, Andrew, if you opened restaurants from 10 o’clock to midnight near every theatre we play. Why don’t you get on to that?
My partner of 50 years, Teller, and I … are live performance animals, so we are really trying to improve every show. A friend of mine in the variety arts said, “Magicians, jugglers and comedians are people for whom the movie Groundhog Day seems like a really good thing”. It’s really nice to be able to go out and do the same thing – and try to do it a little better. In life, we don’t very often get to do that.
My Bob Dylan fandom is so deep and all-consuming … that my friends have a game they play called I Can Bob to That, where they’ll mention anything and see if I can bring it around to Bob Dylan. [British-American writer] Christopher Hitchens was a friend of mine and we used to play a game where we would say any line from any Dylan song and be able to give the next one — including the Christian period. [laughs] So yeah, I can Bob to that. You can bring up anything and I can bring it around.
When you raise the idea of mastery to me … It seems like the word master has a slight connotation to me of finished. [Danish physicist] Niels Bohr said an expert is someone who’s made more mistakes in a field than anyone else. I think what you might be saying kindly as mastery is that I’ve just f..ked up more things than anybody else. But there’s a great quote by TS Eliot, who says old men should be explorers — and Teller and I, if anything, are fighting against the mastery.
For our TV show Penn & Teller: Fool Us … we have to write 20 new bits a year. To give you an idea: throughout history, the average magician does 24 tricks in their life. We’re knocking on 200, and we’ll soon start on 20 more. I will tell you, from being in meetings with Teller, if one of us says, “I got this idea for a trick that uses a lot of stuff we know how to do; we’ll be able to bang this out really quickly”, the other one is dozing off. The way to sell something is to say, “I’m not sure we can do this. I’m not sure anybody can do this. And if we can do it, I’m not sure the audience will like it.” And the other one goes, “Oh, yeah, tell me more, man!” [laughs]
Now that I’m three score and nine … I want to be crazier. It’s really the opposite of what many, many people – especially in Vegas – [want to do] when they get a certain level of success and comfort: they earn their passion into their job and then play golf during the day. And that seems to me insane. I’m now in a position where I can write and create new stuff, and have an audience that’ll see it.
All I wanted when I was 50 … was that. I didn’t want money. I didn’t want fame. I just wanted to come up with f..ked-up ideas and have somebody watch ‘em. That’s all I wanted, to communicate those ideas — and now that’s been handed to me, not only do I have that, but I also have money to build stuff, and a crew that will help me do stuff. And maybe this is the exact wrong thing to say to someone like you, but I also don’t give a f..k. I want to do stuff that’s really beautiful, and that scares me to death. And if you don’t like it, I’m heartbroken — and I also don’t care. I know that I’ll be OK.
When I was 30 … I was really scared that someone would hate something. Now that I’m this age: “OK, well, I’ll do something else, then.” I think that I’m talking about an incredibly rarefied position: I have been fortunate enough to have bought more of an ability to fail than someone else might.
One thing that’s surprised me about ageing … I am astonished by how little changes. I started playing upright bass 25 years ago and that’s really old to start, at 45. And I got good enough that I can play proper jazz at a professional level. Just the other day I realised I couldn’t start something now that would take 25 years. [laughs] Everybody’s talked about how everything hurts, but people don’t talk enough about how your essence and your drives stay the same. [US physicist] Richard Feynman was a friend of mine, and he talks about how what makes us who we are is a dance. Every cell in your body will have changed by the time you’re my age, multiple times; I think the slowest is seven years, but it’s all out of sync. So what is going to be Andrew in 35 years is nothing that is there molecularly, cellularly [today]. But it is a dance, and what amazes me is that although the corporeal all changes, the dance stays the same.
Penn & Teller will perform at the Sydney Opera House (January 11-18 next year), the Arts Centre Melbourne (January 21-26) and QPAC Brisbane (January 29-February 7).
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