While most people give up on magic tricks when they hit puberty, the fortunate few who persevere can wind up on a lucrative career path.
To put this into context, the highest paid magician, David Copperfield, earned far more in the last year than the highest paid TV actress, Sofia Vergara, and virtually the same amount as the highest-paid actor in the world Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnsonaccording to Forbes.
While Copperfield, a famed American illusionist, made an estimated $64m (£52m) in 2016, Johnson earned $64.5m (£53m) and Modern Family actress Vergara earned $43m (£35m) in the same period.
Copperfield, who has walked through the Great Wall of China, made the Statue of Liberty disappear and levitated over the Grand Canyon, is a near-billionaire. Forbes estimated his net worth at $800m (£654m) in 2013 and estimates him to be the most commercially successful magician in history. Read more…
So… as I mentioned in my last blog post “What’s the Trick to Fooling Penn & Teller? Part One,” I was booked to appear on Penn & Teller: Fool Us on the CW Network to perform my trick Unshuffled. The problem was that Penn and Teller already knew the secret to how the trick works. How was I going to go about fooling Penn and Teller? There was no way I was going to fool them with a trick they already knew… unless I threw in an unexpected twist. That became the plan.
I rehearsed the routine about 50 times and then began to video tape each performance. Once I had a smooth looking performance, I posted it on a private YouTube Channel and sent the video link to about 10 friends. This included some of the top sleight-of-hand magicians in the country. My request to them was that they view the video once and only once then tell me if it fooled them. Read more at: http://gertner.com/whats-trick-fooling-penn-teller-part-two/
What’s the Trick to Fooling Penn & Teller? Part One…
By Paul Gertner… One of the hottest shows this summer has been Penn & Teller: Fool US, which is now in its third season on the CW Network. I had the pleasure of appearing on the show this season. I was assigned the task of fooling Penn & Teller…with a trick they already knew.
If you have not had a chance to view my recent appearance on Fool Us, you can go to my YouTube page and click on the Penn & Teller Video Link to watch that performance video before reading any further. If you do, this Blog Post will make a lot more sense. You can also link to the video from my website.
Back in February I was contacted by Lee Terbosic an excellent magician and good friend from Pittsburgh who said he had an opportunity to appear on the TV show Penn & Teller Fool Us. But the tricky part (pun intended) was that they wanted him to perform my routine Unshuffled and he was contacting me to get my permission to perform that routine on the show. (As a side note to magicians reading this: That was a very professional thing to do. Unshuffled is a published routine and Lee was under no obligation to do that, but he’s a pro.)
I have to admit, I was a bit surprised that Fool Us wanted someone else to do my trick because to me that show is all about original inventions… or at least magicians adding their own unique presentation to a trick and seeing if their performance was clever enough to fool the Bad Boys of Magic: Penn & Teller. Read more at: http://gertner.com/fooling-penn-teller/
Master Illusionist Ivan Amodei Does The Unthinkable and Crosses All Fifty States in an Attempt to Fool Penn & Teller..
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ – Does Ivan Amodei have super powers? The captivating illusionist has left audience members seriously contemplating that question by his appearance on the world famous duos third season finale of Penn & Teller: Fool Us, which airs on the CW Network on Friday, September 16. (Check local listings in your area).
The premise of the show is that Penn & Teller sit in the audience and watch as magicians try to fool them with a trick that the famous illusionists are unable to re-engineer. Amodei, with the accompaniment of his elegant cellist Irina Chirkova and her transcendental sounds, stumped the audience and its hosts with his “State of Mind” original illusion. Using 1,800 audience members, Ivan was able to leave the hulking Penn and his quirky non-verbal partner Teller shaking their heads.
“Ivan is a top-flight illusionist, but he’s also a consummate entertainer,” said an audience member who participated in the illusion.
Currently in his seventh year of residency with his Intimate Illusions stage show at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, he is also currently embarking on a critically acclaimed national tour that has been selling out at record speed.
From humble beginnings in Cosmo, Sicily, to his formative years in Brooklyn, New York, and finally to his spellbinding career as one of the world’s most revered illusionists, Ivan Amodei (pronounced e-von ah-moe-day) continues to amaze audiences everywhere with his one-of-a-kind approach to the art of illusion. By mixing thought provoking storyline and meaning into each custom demonstration of the human experience, he has proven time and time again that he carries a show that is not to be missed.
The illusion that he performed for Fool Us demonstrates the ability that we have as people to focus on what is important in making your intuition materialize into action, meaning that by ignoring the preponderance of thoughts in our heads we are able to focus on the ones that give us the answers that we need.
“Penn & Teller are the best in the business. Combined, they have over 80 years of experience in magic, and fooling them would be equal to showing Einstein an equation that he has never seen before and was impressed by. I was honored to be on the show,” says Ivan.
Ivan currently has an ongoing residency at the Beverly Wilshire…
