October 13, 2024 • 44 mins
Magician, comedian, and actor Penn Jillette has been casting spells on audiences for decades, but was his time on season six of Dancing with the Stars magical?
Penn tells Cheryl why he feels DWTS was one of the most manipulative shows he's ever been on . . . and he was on Celebrity Apprentice twice! What he found unsavory, his only regret, what it was like behind-the-scenes before their dances, his thoughts on Tom Bergeron and the judges, and Penn turns the tables on Cheryl!
Penn also talks about his CW show, 'Penn & Teller: Fool Us,' and being one the longest-running headliners in Vegas history! For more information on Penn & Teller, visit pennandteller.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Sex Lies and Sprayed Hands with me Cheryl
Burke and iHeartRadio podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Pendult.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It's been happy to be here. Are you doing the
whole thing on on losers of Dancing with the Stars?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
That You're not a loser?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
A very special episode on Dance with the Stars.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
This is very niche this podcast. It's all about Dancing
with the Stars, hence the title Sex Lies and Spray Hands. Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Is it still on the air.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
It's currently season thirty three.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
That's a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Have you not heard all the rumblings about Anna Delvi
and like all of these.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Now, I there's no way to say this easily. I
have never seen even a moment of Dancing with the Stars.
I mean not a frame.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Wait, even before you did the show, like research, nothing,
I was told stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
But maybe I watched something. I don't know. I don't
think I did though, I don't remember anything.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
So you but you knew that you had to learn
how to dance. You knew the formula or the concept
at least, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I did, and I took it very very seriously. There's
no doubt about that. I always do. I mean, I'm
not going to do it and not do it and
for them to do the show. I lost thirty pounds
and I exercised and I followed the rule which I
think others don't of doing no ballroom dancing practice beforehand.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Wow, so you're not a rule breaker, Huh, I am not.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I am not a rule breaker at all. As a
matter of fact, I'm very very strict in structured. I
remember my whole day and checklists and fifteen minute increments
and all of that. So I am not a footloose
and fancy free.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
That's another great name of a podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I think there's any of a movie what the footloose was?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yes, yes, yes, no, I'm.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I'm a real tight ass in every way. And I thought, well,
this is the this is the way the rules are made,
and I will follow them. And uh, I was, uh,
you know, it was kind of It wasn't a big
(02:29):
deal to me like I think it is to many
other people. You know, I'm good friends with I know
you are.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
She's she's my sister from another mister.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I I I like her. I like her so much,
and you know she was a winner. And you know,
ballroom dancing is a complex thing because they're not it's
only it's only partially skill based. There's so much aesthetics involved,
(03:07):
and in any sort of real competition, the more attractive
person is going to the skill set being the same.
And the thing that surprised me most two things surprised
Dancing with the Stars. Of all the jive ass, bullshit
reality shows I've been on, Dancing with the Stars, I
(03:30):
was surprised to find one of the most manipulative. They
seem to be psychologically pushing people to get very strong,
unpleasant emotional reactions. And I've been on a bunch of
(03:51):
I even did two tours of duty on Celebrity Apprentice,
and Donald Trump has as far as I could tell,
no moral center whatsoever. But the producers were very conscientious
and didn't do too much. They did some of it.
They did some of trying to get people drunk and
(04:11):
making them uncomfortable and putting cameras in their face for
too long and stuff, but they didn't do an awful
lot of the kind of or I guess they did
an equal amount of the psychological manipulation that Dance with
the Stars did, And I found that shocking, because I
thought Dancing with the Stars would be would be very
(04:35):
straightforward in that way, but they were looking to get
you know what it's called, improbably what will be titled
the end of our society good television. We've become so
obsessed with good television that we are destroying our country
for it, and we are killing our daughters for it,
(04:57):
and we're destroying our youth for it. Because good televis
matters more than a good life. And I was surprised
that Dancing with the Stars was on that bandwagon. I
am philosophically and emotionally against competition. I willm up. I
(05:21):
don't play games, and I've never seen a sporting event
on TV or live. I won't watch the Olympics makes
me makes me feel terrible. But I have a job
to do, and my job is to sell tickets to
my stupid magic show. So when they say, when they say,
(05:44):
if you go on Dancing with the Stars, you will
sell X number of tickets in the next eighteen months,
I look at the arithmetic and say, I can spend
seventy five hours on dan with the Stars, and I
can sell more tickets than seventy five hours of doing
(06:05):
other press, and therefore I can skip out of the
press and be able to work harder on where my
heart is. So it's a it's a mercenary decision that's made.
And if you said to me, you know, let's bet
five dollars on who can do X better? Even if
(06:25):
it were something that I was guaranteed to win, like juggling,
I guess I shouldn't presume that about you. But I
was a world class juggler and I haven't heard Okay,
I wouldn't take that bet because it's all distasteful for me.
I don't believe it's morally wrong, but I believe it's distasteful.
(06:46):
So when I went on to do Dancing with the Stars,
all the competition stuff, how are you going to feel
if you lose? You've worked so hard on this. Why
are we going to feel if you lose? It's just like,
why don't you get a job? Motherfuckers? Wow?
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Is that what you mean by psychologically? You know?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
And it doesn't bother me. No, I've done Stern. I
used to do Stern four hours a day, three days
a week in the eighties. You know, I'm twelve feet
tall than bulletproof. You can piss on my face and
I don't flinch. I don't give a fuck. But I
watched them taking young people who look more vulnerable and
(07:36):
making them cry. It was just like, oh, come on,
why are you going to do that for your show?
Your show is beautiful dancers. They do a wonderful job.
The music is glorious, it's really really pretty. You don't
need to make someone cry. You don't need to break
hearts to sell your show. You can sell your show
(07:56):
based on beauty, based on love, based on competence, based
on practice. You can sell it based on that. You
don't need to beat people up, and your judges don't
need to be cruel. As a matter of fact, our show,
we have a little show called Penanteller fool Us. Part
of the inspiration for that, part of my notes from
(08:19):
that came from wouldn't it be beautiful to see a
show where the judges were kind? That was my original
notes for fool Us. And we have done now thirteen seasons.
And although I can play rough, I'm a stand up comic.
I've done Stern. I can do that stuff. I'm proud
(08:42):
to say that in thirteen season, which is not thirty three,
but in thirteen seasons of Dancing of pent and Teller,
fool Us the only way we've made someone cries with joy.
And I've never said anything cruel.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
I love that it's just not needed. It's not needed.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Well, they thought it was, and they've been on the show.
They've been doing the show for over thirty years. So
one would say in America in this century that what
they're doing is automatically right. That's not my morality. That
seems to me the morality of television. I don't believe
(09:23):
that what they were doing was immoral. I just believe
it was unsavory. It was also really funny what they
tried to do with me. And they said, what did
you feel about your score? And I went, oh, I
don't know what my score was. And they said, they
just told you out there, and I said, I wasn't listening.
(09:44):
I had to do two jokes and then split. That's
my job, right, right, I said to them afterwards they said,
I said, I wish my I wish my father were
alive to see me, not remembering what score I got. Oh,
(10:04):
my dad would have been so proud that I didn't
get sucked into the competition. All that being said, I
don't want to represent this incorrectly. I worked as hard
as I could on that I did my job the
best way I could and I lost. Honestly, I am
(10:26):
not in any way making any sort of excuse. And
had there been kind judges and had they'd not done
that slazy stuff, I would have still.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Lost right away, right right.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I was a part of the show for twenty six seasons,
Penn and I just retired two years ago and they
just cast when I going back to this woman named
Anna Delby, she is under house arrest still and they
cast her right and there was a lot of controversy.
She still had an ankle bracelet as of lass or
(11:00):
two nights ago when she got eliminated. What does she do?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
What does she do?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
She's a con Basically she conned lots of banks, people, hotels,
businesses out of time, millions and minds of dollars.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I think, and I believe this strongly, that what people
are known for matters. And there was a time, Uh,
Laurence o'donald Junior, Do you know Laurence o'donald, He hosts MSNBC.
(11:36):
Oh no, you one of my best friends in the nineties.
He said to me, things have changed the only difference
between Joey BUTTAFUCO and you is that he's more famous.
He said, uh, fifty years ago, what's some was famous
(12:00):
for made a difference. We crossed over, and we crossed
over heavily because many people in the United States of America,
many of our citizens, people that we love dearly, are
(12:21):
saying that they want to vote for Donald Trump because
he's more well known than common well known as an
overt racist and avert misogynist. His misogyny is unparalleled even
(12:44):
in the fifties. You know, you have to maybe go
to Jerry Lee Lewis or Chuck Berry to equal it.
And yet the fact that he's famous is considered success.
And I'm very, very glad. They also had they had
other people on Dancing with the Stars that were on Savory.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Right, didn't they have Yes, I mean, they've had a
lot of controversial characters, but no one ever under house arrest. Still, well, when.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
When the story of the United States of America is told,
that will be at least a footnote. That's so crazy
to me that they went for a popular show to
have someone under house arrest on the show. Didn't they
make a I mean a TV show about her too? Right? Yes?
Speaker 1 (13:36):
On Netflix? It was like a loosely based. I don't
know if that was the Yeah, that's what made her
Netflix made her famous, really or else if no one
ever talked about her, she wouldn't have been on period
right so well.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Sure of course, but also after Dancing with the Stars
in uh in a in a burst of timing that
wasn't the best. I suppose I lost one hundred and
thirty pounds after with the Stars. No, when I got
(14:11):
into into uh well, not good shape. A good shape
for someone who does a minimum amount of exercise, you know,
you know, tries to get to half hour a day,
eats properly, and then types all the rest of the day.
Uh right, Well, had I been in better shape, I
(14:33):
would have given Kim getting Kim a better chance of winning.
And really my only my only regret on Dancing with
the Stars, I have only won, and that is that
I from a career point of view, whether I win
(14:58):
or lose I Dance with the Stars not too important.
I mean, on Celebrity Apprentice, doesn't matter if you win,
but coming in second is tremendous because you're on the
same number of seasons, and all you care about is
that during prime time they say Panda Penn and Teller
(15:18):
in Las Vegas. As long as they say those words,
they can step on my dick, spit in my face
and call me a loser. It doesn't matter if they
say those words. And they did say those words, and
if I'd stayed longer I Dance with the Stars, they
would have said those words for seven more weeks. My
(15:40):
only regret is that it was important to Kim to win,
and I wish he'd had a better partner. But then again,
I was going to bond with anybody that I was with,
so someone's going to lose. So I guess that's a
rather self centered point of view. Let's talk about the
(16:07):
Challenger shuttle launch showing what's really interesting about the Challenger
shuttle launch is that I've been to three of them,
is that they explained comedy timing beautifully. Because the difference
(16:28):
between the speed of light and the speed of sound
over five miles is exactly comedy timing. You stand there,
you watch it, and because the speed of light is
so fast, you see under the Challenger. I'm saying Challenger,
I mean Shuttle. I'm sorry forgive me. I was thinking
of the horrible disaster the shuttle. I couldn't have seen
(16:50):
three Challenger launches because there wasn't even one that was
successful shuttle launches. Forgive me for that. What a horrible,
horrible mistake to people. But you see this incredibly bright
light spread under the shuttle and you go, jeez, it's
really quiet. You would think there'd be some sort of
(17:13):
and then the sound hits you in the chest so
hard you can't believe it because sound is going to
be delayed at five miles by about I haven't got
the map, but like three seconds, I think. And it's
really funny because everybody reacts like that. No, no matter
how much you know physics, you look and go, wow,
(17:35):
I thought it was going to be loud. You know,
it's just fabulous. And when you because touch, light, and
sound all hit us at different times to create a
view of reality, which is an illusion inside of us.
(17:57):
Of course, the brain has to delay every thing about
a tenth of a second to pull sound and light together.
And the brain does that even though the sound many
of the dancers, many of the dancers were off the
beat by even more, wow, by milliseconds. And and I said,
(18:26):
because I play upright bass, I play bebop jazz, so
I'm a bass player, and so time really really matters
to me tremendously. And uh, I said to the bass
player and the drummer of the band, I said.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
On Dancing with the Stars, I went over to them because.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I said to them, I said, to the Dance with
the Stars people, you know, I'd love to play bass
or one of one of the other contestants. Yeah, you
know I can. I can read and I can play
with that funny one of the other contestants in the band.
But I said to them, am I wrong or are
(19:13):
the are a lot of the dancers not perfectly in time.
And the bass player and the drummer said, they're never
in time. It makes us crazy. We have to look
away from them because they're not in time. And they said,
to dancers, time is not the same as to musicians
(19:36):
because they know that difference in speed of light and
speed of sound. I'm going to pull it together. You'll
notice if you go to a rock and roll show,
a stadium show, like you know, like Taylor Swift, Beyonce
or something, they delay. They delay the video so the
(19:58):
people in the back, we'll see it lined up with
the sink because it's too far for their brains to
be able to do the work, so they cheat the brains.
So what I discovered was if you're watching the dancers
up really close, you can see that they're not exactly
in time. But if you get a little further away,
(20:19):
your brain pulls it together.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
So how about behind TV, behind a screen.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Well, behind the screen, you do the same thing.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
You pull it through right, Okay.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
But I could still see it, you know, all the time.
And I would say to Kim, because I would say
to Kim when we were rehearsing, I would say, we're
not right on one there, we're coming in a little
late on one. And she would say, no, no, it's
on one. I said, well, you're seeing a fat time
of one and she said, no, no, we're on one.
(20:54):
And I would say, you're jumping it a little bit.
And I would say, just as being in time matter,
and she would just she finally said to me, no,
it doesn't, because I was trying to dance like you
play bass. Oh, and the time you have in dancing,
(21:15):
which makes sense, is going to be a fatter one.
Then you're going to have playing drums. I have had
very close friends who were dancers, and I've talked with
them a lot about this, and they've even said not
badroom dancing, but other kind of dancing, you know, mores more.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Oh my god, I did for a show once.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Oh did you? Yeah? We we we wrote a show
with them and they're good. But they can do they
can do a lot of push ups. Oh.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I was like, you want me to what in this onesie?
Speaker 2 (21:58):
We we It was amazing. We were writing. We wrote
a bunch of magistories for the miscapes. So we're sitting
in the rehearsal room right for eight hours a day
with blobbolists, and we would you know, there'd be a
break in the conversation as I was looking at notes
(22:19):
or tell it was looking at a prop or doing
something like that, and you know, the women jump down
and start doing one arm push ups. You go, okay,
they just go. It's just I just get so so,
you know, just sitting here talking about this stuff, I
get so antsy and I would go, I could sit
here talk about this stuff without standing up for four days.
(22:43):
I have no desire to move, let alone to a
one arm push up, Let alone to a full back
bend and a flip.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
But hey, I get its Blobbylis.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
There's almost what they're doing with time. Yeah, it's more interesting, right.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
I couldn't even do it. I was just following their
lead because I was like, what are you dancing? What
do you I don't hear it like that?
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, yeah, And I thought, I thought that was really
interesting to see that some of the dancers who were
the best were slightly out of time, and that they
It was never mentioned by anyone except the drummer and
the bass player who went drives us crazy.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
I never knew that the orchestra or band felt like
that ever.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
No, no, not the orchestra of the band. Drummer and
bass player got it because they're the ones who are
thinking about.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Time, got it all the time, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Correct, your trump ball players are going to be out
of time anyway, correct?
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yes, no, for sure.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I just to jump. Troumball players, don't get mad at me.
Trump bone players just to jump. But uh uh I
found the dancers to be wonderful. I uh, I found
most of the crew to be wonderful. And I found
some of the people who were interviewing behind the camera
(24:13):
were simply desperate. And the woman who was Jesus I
should know her name. I'm still in touch with her field. Yeah,
but she was terrific.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
I mean, you know, these feel producers are just being
told what to do as you know obviously.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Well do I know, because she would she would say
stuff to me word for word while rolling her eyes.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, so what so there is I keep saying this, like,
what is the psychology behind Dancing with the Stars?
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You think, well, I mean that's there was a My
psychology for Dancing with the Stars was different than the
psychology of the show.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Okay, the psychology of the show. And this is not
the show, this is our culture.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah. One of the things I noticed that I haven't
articulated before is if you watched a comedy special when
they started like an HBO in the late seventies, who
would that have been? George Carlin, Robert Klein, people from
(25:36):
that period, Or if you watched the Tonight Show those
people emerge McCurtain and started doing their show. All comedy
specials now start backstage with a person nervous and getting
ready to go on. There's been this just pulling back
(26:01):
of the curtain to show the reality backstage. And they
did that a little bit, and then the public decided
that that wasn't enough and everything turned into professional wrestling.
So they would say to me behind the camera, say
how nervous you are? And I would say, well, I've
(26:27):
done Saturday Night Live with brand new tricks that no
one else had ever done, that were impossible. I've done,
you know, six thousand live shows. I've done more live
shows than the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Bruce Springsteen
put together. I'm not going to feel nervousness the same way.
(26:53):
And they would say, no, no, we need you, Like,
what if you lose tonight? What if you lose tonight?
I would go, yeah, we can add the shows at
the real or next week. Yes, if I lose to die,
if I lose to din, I make more money.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, my life's not over.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah. And I think, and I think in a small
pond we've proved this on fool Us that if you
don't do that, you know are behind the scenes on
fool us, are not people going to pieces backstage? Are
(27:34):
behind the scenes? Are them practicing at home, them doing
other shows? A little interview of how they get into it?
We don't. We don't expose their private moments. And when
someone doesn't fool us, we don't try to get them
(27:55):
to cry, and we do not do a post interview
when may be feeling uncomfortable where where they have to uh,
they have to do that. And I mean, we are
not and will never be on our best day as
popular is the worst day of Dancing with the Stars.
(28:16):
But we are not abject failures. Absolutely, there is an
audience for kindness, and you know, people can confuse obscenity
and jokes with a lack of kindness. I can talk tough,
but yet I try very very hard to make sure
(28:39):
that that there is some kindness behind it. So when
we first did fool Us, there was huge pressure from
the network if if a trick doesn't go right, let's
show it fucking up. Let's show them really failing. And
I said, good, you can do that. It's just you
(29:01):
won't have me judging. I won't be on the show.
You can call it Penn and Teller fool less, but
neither Pen nor Teller will be there.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
So yeah, maybe a little rough for you just.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Have to decide. And we had someone on the show
who did a trick that absolutely failed. I mean, in
front of six hundred people, there was no show, There
was no trick at all, and he came to me
privately and said, I don't want you to this is
the first season. I don't want you to show that
on the air. And I said, I can't promise you
(29:34):
that we're not going to, but I'm going to work
very hard for that. And I sat down with the
studio and said, can we just go with being kind
you know, and dancing with the stars. And I've been
What I decided to do while being interviewed by you
(29:57):
is I decided to try to give you perhaps some
things that hadn't been said about the show. I wanted
to give you my perspective, but I don't want to
have that overwhelm No. I mean Tom as a host
was one of the greatest hosts has ever been in
live television. Tom always had three things loaded. It was amazing.
(30:24):
He always had somebody to say, something to fall back on,
and something of those two failed to say. He is
one of the quickest, funniest people and in the history
of comedy he has never been given enough credit. Yeah,
you're right, brilliant, an absolute genius. He made that show
(30:46):
fly along and be totally beautiful. Your dancers are the
best ballroom dancers. You and that form, that ballroom dancing form.
Being able to bring that to a mass audience was
(31:09):
a pretty groovy thing to do. I mean, one thing
I love is alien subcultures, you know, ye the quilting bees,
people who make jam, people who do all these things,
stamp collectors, and the fact that Dancing with the Stars
was able to And this may, by the way, the
gate everything I've said before this, because they may have
(31:33):
needed to do all that in order to do that,
in order to bring that to a larger public. But
the idea of saying people can work really hard at
something just because it's beautiful is the most important message
of Dancing with the Stars, and that's a really beautiful message.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Overall.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
I would say that the show was incredibly positive, Yes, beautiful.
It was people involved that are very very kind. Yes,
I was just talking about around the edges, for sure,
the little nuances that struck me. And I hope you
understand that when I said out of time, I was
(32:17):
not talking about their incompetence. I was talking about the
difference in point of view.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
No, And I would love to see you in person
one of these days, because I would actually love to
dissect it like I would love to know if you
think that because I want to. I just I've been
very fascinated with the world of just musicality and just
music and how other people hear it differently. And because
I've been so trained in only the ballroom genre since
I was what four years old, you know, I get
(32:45):
very stuck in my ways and I love to just
be able to learn other ways. And like you said,
with plabulists, and it was just so different, like even
with hip hop dancers versus ballroom we hear music just
completely differently, and it's always fascinating and I kind of
wish that I was able to train in other forms
of dance. However, you know, I'm very happy with my
life and grateful for this life. But still it's just
(33:08):
I love to learn, that's all. So no, I understand
what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Definitely, Well, I love love to do new stuff, and
I jumped at the chance to do dance with the
Stars because here's something I know nothing about and I
get to learn it and that's.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Always a joy. And I also, you know, this is
something that was very noticeable on Celebrity Apprentice, is all
the other people were very uncomfortable doing something they've never
done before. Yeah, because of my job, tell her and
I do weekly something that's never been done before, not
(33:47):
just by us but by anybody, because we have to
create new tricks and learn them. And so I'm very
very comfortable if you tell me you've never done this before,
you have to learn it and do it. Yeah, there's
no tension in my body. I love it. It's interesting.
There's a lot more to say about time with ballroom dancing,
(34:10):
because one of the things ballroom dancing seems to me
is so important visually and conceptually is a smoothness. Yes,
And I think what I'm perceiving, what I'm labeling incorrectly
as not being exactly in time, is really a smoothness.
(34:34):
So I want to get to three, and kid wants
to get to three.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
So it looks good the transition of it.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, yeah, And that means that what I consider to
be the middle of the beat is going to be
different than what she be. And when you say hip
hop dancing, they're hearing music differently because they are odd
the goddamn beat. Oh really, they're hitting, they're hitting their
steps down and so on.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
So when you see hip hop dancers there on time, yeah, fascinating.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
So because I was mislabeling it, I was wrong.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
It's not the time time, but yeah, troubles me.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
It's the smoothness, the smoothness I'm doing this.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
You don't have a clear no, But like in Chacha.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
The accent is on one right. So for me, when
I watched you dance, naturally you want to break on one,
but we can't break until two. And you but you
were able to. I saw that in your body. It
changed with in the music.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
You know. That's the really odd thing about Chasha is
we have been I mean really since what nineteen forty
seven forty six, everything's been the back beat. Yeah, the
backbeat is everything. Everything's everything's doing for. And the rare
(36:03):
songs that aren't doing for I mean the old song
in the sixties Sunshine and Your Love by Cream is
one and three, and the whole thing is you know,
and even your auvant garde music is very very hesitant.
But the beats all one and three. So cha cha
is so interesting for putting the beats one. Yeah, you know,
(36:26):
we've done so much syncopation in our culture that taking
the syncopation away becomes.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Avant garde, Isn't that crazy.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, it's really nice. Who are some of the unpleasant
stunt bookings they did?
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Did they do like unpleasant?
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Did Tucker Carlson?
Speaker 1 (36:46):
They did? Tucker Carlson. Yes, Tom Delay was one of
my partners. I'm not saying he's unpleasant. I'm just gonna
name people off the top of my head. Here. Well
you are still Palin.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
You did? You did Wayne Newton?
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Which must have been I love Wayne Newton.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Yeah, I'll I'll tell you something about Wayne Duton and
this may not be true for you. When I greet
Wayne Newton, he is too affectionate with me that I'm
always afraid he's gonna hurt me. He hugged he and
(37:21):
he hits hey, Pat, how you doing? Boom boom boom.
I go, Wayne, stop hitting me. He stopped. He goes
so good to see you, Frank the sec Wayne, you're
just hitting me. You're you're saying nice things to me,
but you're hitting me.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Well, you're right. His handshake is so like, Yes, I've
never thought about that.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
You're right and you you are a small, delicate creature.
Imagine what his handshake is with a guy who's bigger
than him.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
No, and he's hugs I was like, okay, Wayne, like
I have to You're right, You're right, and he says
a gentleman. Though this man remembers everyone's name, like so.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Wonderful love I love Wayne. Stop hitting me.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
I'll make sure to tell him when he eventually does
this podcast. It's hysterical.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
We were doing interviews and I said this sentence, I said,
and I meant that as a joe, right, But they
didn't take it as a joke. I said, how fair
is it to have someone who won Olympic medal in
ice dancing, that is the word dancing in it, going
up against a fat magician. How the word dancing is
(38:39):
in her Olympic medal? How is this amateurs learning to dance?
And they said, you can't say it's unfair. And I said,
but I called myself a fat magician and they and
here's what I found really interesting, probably coincidence, but really funny.
The next uh, the next day, web page changed my
(39:05):
description from the from the first word being magician to
the first word being atheist. Oh my god, I wonder
if America is going to vote for an atheist.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Oh my gosh, what Wait? That's Is it a coincidence?
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Sure? Maybe, but I just thought it was funny with
They were really pissed at me. And then my manager said,
they've just put in your bio the word atheist right
at the top. I went, oh, well, people go to vote.
Do you want the atheists?
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Do you believe the show is rigged?
Speaker 2 (39:43):
I do know that every one of those shows I've
been on, Yeah, they have a preferred a preferred outcome.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
And there's lots of ways to cheat without cheating. For instance,
if you had someone on the show that were there
was an atheist for it, just crazy and that wasn't
part of what they do. And you move that to
the top of the description. In the United States of America,
they're going to do less well, I'm not even. And
(40:20):
also there's all sorts of ways to decide how you
how you count votes at home. Also, you're not you're
not setting up I mean, for someone who like yourself,
(40:43):
who who loves ballroom dancing, people at home voting is nonsense.
You don't want the public voting on the Nobel Prize,
you know, let's give let's give the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry to one who's best looking.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Okay, oh for sure? Is that the way we're doing
it far right or the Olympian you know.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah, So once again I come back to our show
fool us? You know, we try to make sure that
there's one thing they're being judged on. Did you fool
us Pennanteller today? Yes? Did you fool us? We know
(41:31):
a little bit of magic, right. This is not an
easy thing to do, right. You know, we have more
than a one hundred and ten years, one hundred and
twenty years of magic experience between us. It's a lot. Yes,
did you fool us? We're not saying did you do
(41:52):
the best act? Right? We're not saying were you the funniest,
We're not saying will you be the most famous? The
audience can judge that on their own and enjoy it.
I get so bothered when judges on TV shows are
(42:16):
not qualified for what they're judging me too. As I've
said about America's got talent. Until you can prove to
me that Bob Dylan, Tiny Tim and Son raw Win,
I'm not going to watch it because what those judges
have done in the music industry, and they change all
(42:38):
the time and aren't really up to date. But it's
not the most innovative stuff being done in the world,
and so I would find if I wanted to take
a little swim in the world of ballroom dancing, I
would want the judges to be as conversion is possible
(43:02):
and teach me about ballroom dancing. So they would see
things that I don't see. And I would say on
our show, fool us, we do say this is based
on this magic trick, and this comes out of here,
and this comes out of there. And if you watch
the show, you learn a little bit about this subculture
(43:22):
you may never have thought of before.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Are you still doing your Vegas show?
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yes, we're the longest running headliners in Vegas history.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
That's right, and they're still going still.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
We have been. We've been at the conveniently named Penn
and Teller Theater now for longer than anyone else has
been anywhere. Good for you, which you can either see
a success or a sign of great age you shoot.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Thank you Penn, Thanks so much, what a pleasure, so fun.
Thank you.
This is Sex Lies and Sprayed Hands with me Cheryl
Burke and iHeartRadio podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Pendult.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It's been happy to be here. Are you doing the
whole thing on on losers of Dancing with the Stars?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
That You're not a loser?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
A very special episode on Dance with the Stars.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
This is very niche this podcast. It's all about Dancing
with the Stars, hence the title Sex Lies and Spray Hands. Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Is it still on the air.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
It's currently season thirty three.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
That's a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Have you not heard all the rumblings about Anna Delvi
and like all of these.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Now, I there's no way to say this easily. I
have never seen even a moment of Dancing with the Stars.
I mean not a frame.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Wait, even before you did the show, like research, nothing,
I was told stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
But maybe I watched something. I don't know. I don't
think I did though, I don't remember anything.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
So you but you knew that you had to learn
how to dance. You knew the formula or the concept
at least, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I did, and I took it very very seriously. There's
no doubt about that. I always do. I mean, I'm
not going to do it and not do it and
for them to do the show. I lost thirty pounds
and I exercised and I followed the rule which I
think others don't of doing no ballroom dancing practice beforehand.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Wow, so you're not a rule breaker, Huh, I am not.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I am not a rule breaker at all. As a
matter of fact, I'm very very strict in structured. I
remember my whole day and checklists and fifteen minute increments
and all of that. So I am not a footloose
and fancy free.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
That's another great name of a podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I think there's any of a movie what the footloose was?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yes, yes, yes, no, I'm.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I'm a real tight ass in every way. And I thought, well,
this is the this is the way the rules are made,
and I will follow them. And uh, I was, uh,
you know, it was kind of It wasn't a big
(02:29):
deal to me like I think it is to many
other people. You know, I'm good friends with I know
you are.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
She's she's my sister from another mister.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I I I like her. I like her so much,
and you know she was a winner. And you know,
ballroom dancing is a complex thing because they're not it's
only it's only partially skill based. There's so much aesthetics involved,
(03:07):
and in any sort of real competition, the more attractive
person is going to the skill set being the same.
And the thing that surprised me most two things surprised
Dancing with the Stars. Of all the jive ass, bullshit
reality shows I've been on, Dancing with the Stars, I
(03:30):
was surprised to find one of the most manipulative. They
seem to be psychologically pushing people to get very strong,
unpleasant emotional reactions. And I've been on a bunch of
(03:51):
I even did two tours of duty on Celebrity Apprentice,
and Donald Trump has as far as I could tell,
no moral center whatsoever. But the producers were very conscientious
and didn't do too much. They did some of it.
They did some of trying to get people drunk and
(04:11):
making them uncomfortable and putting cameras in their face for
too long and stuff, but they didn't do an awful
lot of the kind of or I guess they did
an equal amount of the psychological manipulation that Dance with
the Stars did, And I found that shocking, because I
thought Dancing with the Stars would be would be very
(04:35):
straightforward in that way, but they were looking to get
you know what it's called, improbably what will be titled
the end of our society good television. We've become so
obsessed with good television that we are destroying our country
for it, and we are killing our daughters for it,
(04:57):
and we're destroying our youth for it. Because good televis
matters more than a good life. And I was surprised
that Dancing with the Stars was on that bandwagon. I
am philosophically and emotionally against competition. I willm up. I
(05:21):
don't play games, and I've never seen a sporting event
on TV or live. I won't watch the Olympics makes
me makes me feel terrible. But I have a job
to do, and my job is to sell tickets to
my stupid magic show. So when they say, when they say,
(05:44):
if you go on Dancing with the Stars, you will
sell X number of tickets in the next eighteen months,
I look at the arithmetic and say, I can spend
seventy five hours on dan with the Stars, and I
can sell more tickets than seventy five hours of doing
(06:05):
other press, and therefore I can skip out of the
press and be able to work harder on where my
heart is. So it's a it's a mercenary decision that's made.
And if you said to me, you know, let's bet
five dollars on who can do X better? Even if
(06:25):
it were something that I was guaranteed to win, like juggling,
I guess I shouldn't presume that about you. But I
was a world class juggler and I haven't heard Okay,
I wouldn't take that bet because it's all distasteful for me.
I don't believe it's morally wrong, but I believe it's distasteful.
(06:46):
So when I went on to do Dancing with the Stars,
all the competition stuff, how are you going to feel
if you lose? You've worked so hard on this. Why
are we going to feel if you lose? It's just like,
why don't you get a job? Motherfuckers? Wow?
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Is that what you mean by psychologically? You know?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
And it doesn't bother me. No, I've done Stern. I
used to do Stern four hours a day, three days
a week in the eighties. You know, I'm twelve feet
tall than bulletproof. You can piss on my face and
I don't flinch. I don't give a fuck. But I
watched them taking young people who look more vulnerable and
(07:36):
making them cry. It was just like, oh, come on,
why are you going to do that for your show?
Your show is beautiful dancers. They do a wonderful job.
The music is glorious, it's really really pretty. You don't
need to make someone cry. You don't need to break
hearts to sell your show. You can sell your show
(07:56):
based on beauty, based on love, based on competence, based
on practice. You can sell it based on that. You
don't need to beat people up, and your judges don't
need to be cruel. As a matter of fact, our show,
we have a little show called Penanteller fool Us. Part
of the inspiration for that, part of my notes from
(08:19):
that came from wouldn't it be beautiful to see a
show where the judges were kind? That was my original
notes for fool Us. And we have done now thirteen seasons.
And although I can play rough, I'm a stand up comic.
I've done Stern. I can do that stuff. I'm proud
(08:42):
to say that in thirteen season, which is not thirty three,
but in thirteen seasons of Dancing of pent and Teller,
fool Us the only way we've made someone cries with joy.
And I've never said anything cruel.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
I love that it's just not needed. It's not needed.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Well, they thought it was, and they've been on the show.
They've been doing the show for over thirty years. So
one would say in America in this century that what
they're doing is automatically right. That's not my morality. That
seems to me the morality of television. I don't believe
(09:23):
that what they were doing was immoral. I just believe
it was unsavory. It was also really funny what they
tried to do with me. And they said, what did
you feel about your score? And I went, oh, I
don't know what my score was. And they said, they
just told you out there, and I said, I wasn't listening.
(09:44):
I had to do two jokes and then split. That's
my job, right, right, I said to them afterwards they said,
I said, I wish my I wish my father were
alive to see me, not remembering what score I got. Oh,
(10:04):
my dad would have been so proud that I didn't
get sucked into the competition. All that being said, I
don't want to represent this incorrectly. I worked as hard
as I could on that I did my job the
best way I could and I lost. Honestly, I am
(10:26):
not in any way making any sort of excuse. And
had there been kind judges and had they'd not done
that slazy stuff, I would have still.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Lost right away, right right.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I was a part of the show for twenty six seasons,
Penn and I just retired two years ago and they
just cast when I going back to this woman named
Anna Delby, she is under house arrest still and they
cast her right and there was a lot of controversy.
She still had an ankle bracelet as of lass or
(11:00):
two nights ago when she got eliminated. What does she do?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
What does she do?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
She's a con Basically she conned lots of banks, people, hotels,
businesses out of time, millions and minds of dollars.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I think, and I believe this strongly, that what people
are known for matters. And there was a time, Uh,
Laurence o'donald Junior, Do you know Laurence o'donald, He hosts MSNBC.
(11:36):
Oh no, you one of my best friends in the nineties.
He said to me, things have changed the only difference
between Joey BUTTAFUCO and you is that he's more famous.
He said, uh, fifty years ago, what's some was famous
(12:00):
for made a difference. We crossed over, and we crossed
over heavily because many people in the United States of America,
many of our citizens, people that we love dearly, are
(12:21):
saying that they want to vote for Donald Trump because
he's more well known than common well known as an
overt racist and avert misogynist. His misogyny is unparalleled even
(12:44):
in the fifties. You know, you have to maybe go
to Jerry Lee Lewis or Chuck Berry to equal it.
And yet the fact that he's famous is considered success.
And I'm very, very glad. They also had they had
other people on Dancing with the Stars that were on Savory.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Right, didn't they have Yes, I mean, they've had a
lot of controversial characters, but no one ever under house arrest. Still, well, when.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
When the story of the United States of America is told,
that will be at least a footnote. That's so crazy
to me that they went for a popular show to
have someone under house arrest on the show. Didn't they
make a I mean a TV show about her too? Right? Yes?
Speaker 1 (13:36):
On Netflix? It was like a loosely based. I don't
know if that was the Yeah, that's what made her
Netflix made her famous, really or else if no one
ever talked about her, she wouldn't have been on period
right so well.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Sure of course, but also after Dancing with the Stars
in uh in a in a burst of timing that
wasn't the best. I suppose I lost one hundred and
thirty pounds after with the Stars. No, when I got
(14:11):
into into uh well, not good shape. A good shape
for someone who does a minimum amount of exercise, you know,
you know, tries to get to half hour a day,
eats properly, and then types all the rest of the day.
Uh right, Well, had I been in better shape, I
(14:33):
would have given Kim getting Kim a better chance of winning.
And really my only my only regret on Dancing with
the Stars, I have only won, and that is that
I from a career point of view, whether I win
(14:58):
or lose I Dance with the Stars not too important.
I mean, on Celebrity Apprentice, doesn't matter if you win,
but coming in second is tremendous because you're on the
same number of seasons, and all you care about is
that during prime time they say Panda Penn and Teller
(15:18):
in Las Vegas. As long as they say those words,
they can step on my dick, spit in my face
and call me a loser. It doesn't matter if they
say those words. And they did say those words, and
if I'd stayed longer I Dance with the Stars, they
would have said those words for seven more weeks. My
(15:40):
only regret is that it was important to Kim to win,
and I wish he'd had a better partner. But then again,
I was going to bond with anybody that I was with,
so someone's going to lose. So I guess that's a
rather self centered point of view. Let's talk about the
(16:07):
Challenger shuttle launch showing what's really interesting about the Challenger
shuttle launch is that I've been to three of them,
is that they explained comedy timing beautifully. Because the difference
(16:28):
between the speed of light and the speed of sound
over five miles is exactly comedy timing. You stand there,
you watch it, and because the speed of light is
so fast, you see under the Challenger. I'm saying Challenger,
I mean Shuttle. I'm sorry forgive me. I was thinking
of the horrible disaster the shuttle. I couldn't have seen
(16:50):
three Challenger launches because there wasn't even one that was
successful shuttle launches. Forgive me for that. What a horrible,
horrible mistake to people. But you see this incredibly bright
light spread under the shuttle and you go, jeez, it's
really quiet. You would think there'd be some sort of
(17:13):
and then the sound hits you in the chest so
hard you can't believe it because sound is going to
be delayed at five miles by about I haven't got
the map, but like three seconds, I think. And it's
really funny because everybody reacts like that. No, no matter
how much you know physics, you look and go, wow,
(17:35):
I thought it was going to be loud. You know,
it's just fabulous. And when you because touch, light, and
sound all hit us at different times to create a
view of reality, which is an illusion inside of us.
(17:57):
Of course, the brain has to delay every thing about
a tenth of a second to pull sound and light together.
And the brain does that even though the sound many
of the dancers, many of the dancers were off the
beat by even more, wow, by milliseconds. And and I said,
(18:26):
because I play upright bass, I play bebop jazz, so
I'm a bass player, and so time really really matters
to me tremendously. And uh, I said to the bass
player and the drummer of the band, I said.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
On Dancing with the Stars, I went over to them because.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I said to them, I said, to the Dance with
the Stars people, you know, I'd love to play bass
or one of one of the other contestants. Yeah, you
know I can. I can read and I can play
with that funny one of the other contestants in the band.
But I said to them, am I wrong or are
(19:13):
the are a lot of the dancers not perfectly in time.
And the bass player and the drummer said, they're never
in time. It makes us crazy. We have to look
away from them because they're not in time. And they said,
to dancers, time is not the same as to musicians
(19:36):
because they know that difference in speed of light and
speed of sound. I'm going to pull it together. You'll
notice if you go to a rock and roll show,
a stadium show, like you know, like Taylor Swift, Beyonce
or something, they delay. They delay the video so the
(19:58):
people in the back, we'll see it lined up with
the sink because it's too far for their brains to
be able to do the work, so they cheat the brains.
So what I discovered was if you're watching the dancers
up really close, you can see that they're not exactly
in time. But if you get a little further away,
(20:19):
your brain pulls it together.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
So how about behind TV, behind a screen.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Well, behind the screen, you do the same thing.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
You pull it through right, Okay.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
But I could still see it, you know, all the time.
And I would say to Kim, because I would say
to Kim when we were rehearsing, I would say, we're
not right on one there, we're coming in a little
late on one. And she would say, no, no, it's
on one. I said, well, you're seeing a fat time
of one and she said, no, no, we're on one.
(20:54):
And I would say, you're jumping it a little bit.
And I would say, just as being in time matter,
and she would just she finally said to me, no,
it doesn't, because I was trying to dance like you
play bass. Oh, and the time you have in dancing,
(21:15):
which makes sense, is going to be a fatter one.
Then you're going to have playing drums. I have had
very close friends who were dancers, and I've talked with
them a lot about this, and they've even said not
badroom dancing, but other kind of dancing, you know, mores more.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Oh my god, I did for a show once.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Oh did you? Yeah? We we we wrote a show
with them and they're good. But they can do they
can do a lot of push ups. Oh.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I was like, you want me to what in this onesie?
Speaker 2 (21:58):
We we It was amazing. We were writing. We wrote
a bunch of magistories for the miscapes. So we're sitting
in the rehearsal room right for eight hours a day
with blobbolists, and we would you know, there'd be a
break in the conversation as I was looking at notes
(22:19):
or tell it was looking at a prop or doing
something like that, and you know, the women jump down
and start doing one arm push ups. You go, okay,
they just go. It's just I just get so so,
you know, just sitting here talking about this stuff, I
get so antsy and I would go, I could sit
here talk about this stuff without standing up for four days.
(22:43):
I have no desire to move, let alone to a
one arm push up, Let alone to a full back
bend and a flip.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
But hey, I get its Blobbylis.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
There's almost what they're doing with time. Yeah, it's more interesting, right.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
I couldn't even do it. I was just following their
lead because I was like, what are you dancing? What
do you I don't hear it like that?
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, yeah, And I thought, I thought that was really
interesting to see that some of the dancers who were
the best were slightly out of time, and that they
It was never mentioned by anyone except the drummer and
the bass player who went drives us crazy.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
I never knew that the orchestra or band felt like
that ever.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
No, no, not the orchestra of the band. Drummer and
bass player got it because they're the ones who are
thinking about.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Time, got it all the time, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Correct, your trump ball players are going to be out
of time anyway, correct?
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yes, no, for sure.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I just to jump. Troumball players, don't get mad at me.
Trump bone players just to jump. But uh uh I
found the dancers to be wonderful. I uh, I found
most of the crew to be wonderful. And I found
some of the people who were interviewing behind the camera
(24:13):
were simply desperate. And the woman who was Jesus I
should know her name. I'm still in touch with her field. Yeah,
but she was terrific.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
I mean, you know, these feel producers are just being
told what to do as you know obviously.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Well do I know, because she would she would say
stuff to me word for word while rolling her eyes.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, so what so there is I keep saying this, like,
what is the psychology behind Dancing with the Stars?
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You think, well, I mean that's there was a My
psychology for Dancing with the Stars was different than the
psychology of the show.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Okay, the psychology of the show. And this is not
the show, this is our culture.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah. One of the things I noticed that I haven't
articulated before is if you watched a comedy special when
they started like an HBO in the late seventies, who
would that have been? George Carlin, Robert Klein, people from
(25:36):
that period, Or if you watched the Tonight Show those
people emerge McCurtain and started doing their show. All comedy
specials now start backstage with a person nervous and getting
ready to go on. There's been this just pulling back
(26:01):
of the curtain to show the reality backstage. And they
did that a little bit, and then the public decided
that that wasn't enough and everything turned into professional wrestling.
So they would say to me behind the camera, say
how nervous you are? And I would say, well, I've
(26:27):
done Saturday Night Live with brand new tricks that no
one else had ever done, that were impossible. I've done,
you know, six thousand live shows. I've done more live
shows than the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Bruce Springsteen
put together. I'm not going to feel nervousness the same way.
(26:53):
And they would say, no, no, we need you, Like,
what if you lose tonight? What if you lose tonight?
I would go, yeah, we can add the shows at
the real or next week. Yes, if I lose to die,
if I lose to din, I make more money.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, my life's not over.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah. And I think, and I think in a small
pond we've proved this on fool Us that if you
don't do that, you know are behind the scenes on
fool us, are not people going to pieces backstage? Are
(27:34):
behind the scenes? Are them practicing at home, them doing
other shows? A little interview of how they get into it?
We don't. We don't expose their private moments. And when
someone doesn't fool us, we don't try to get them
(27:55):
to cry, and we do not do a post interview
when may be feeling uncomfortable where where they have to uh,
they have to do that. And I mean, we are
not and will never be on our best day as
popular is the worst day of Dancing with the Stars.
(28:16):
But we are not abject failures. Absolutely, there is an
audience for kindness, and you know, people can confuse obscenity
and jokes with a lack of kindness. I can talk tough,
but yet I try very very hard to make sure
(28:39):
that that there is some kindness behind it. So when
we first did fool Us, there was huge pressure from
the network if if a trick doesn't go right, let's
show it fucking up. Let's show them really failing. And
I said, good, you can do that. It's just you
(29:01):
won't have me judging. I won't be on the show.
You can call it Penn and Teller fool less, but
neither Pen nor Teller will be there.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
So yeah, maybe a little rough for you just.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Have to decide. And we had someone on the show
who did a trick that absolutely failed. I mean, in
front of six hundred people, there was no show, There
was no trick at all, and he came to me
privately and said, I don't want you to this is
the first season. I don't want you to show that
on the air. And I said, I can't promise you
(29:34):
that we're not going to, but I'm going to work
very hard for that. And I sat down with the
studio and said, can we just go with being kind
you know, and dancing with the stars. And I've been
What I decided to do while being interviewed by you
(29:57):
is I decided to try to give you perhaps some
things that hadn't been said about the show. I wanted
to give you my perspective, but I don't want to
have that overwhelm No. I mean Tom as a host
was one of the greatest hosts has ever been in
live television. Tom always had three things loaded. It was amazing.
(30:24):
He always had somebody to say, something to fall back on,
and something of those two failed to say. He is
one of the quickest, funniest people and in the history
of comedy he has never been given enough credit. Yeah,
you're right, brilliant, an absolute genius. He made that show
(30:46):
fly along and be totally beautiful. Your dancers are the
best ballroom dancers. You and that form, that ballroom dancing form.
Being able to bring that to a mass audience was
(31:09):
a pretty groovy thing to do. I mean, one thing
I love is alien subcultures, you know, ye the quilting bees,
people who make jam, people who do all these things,
stamp collectors, and the fact that Dancing with the Stars
was able to And this may, by the way, the
gate everything I've said before this, because they may have
(31:33):
needed to do all that in order to do that,
in order to bring that to a larger public. But
the idea of saying people can work really hard at
something just because it's beautiful is the most important message
of Dancing with the Stars, and that's a really beautiful message.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Overall.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
I would say that the show was incredibly positive, Yes, beautiful.
It was people involved that are very very kind. Yes,
I was just talking about around the edges, for sure,
the little nuances that struck me. And I hope you
understand that when I said out of time, I was
(32:17):
not talking about their incompetence. I was talking about the
difference in point of view.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
No, And I would love to see you in person
one of these days, because I would actually love to
dissect it like I would love to know if you
think that because I want to. I just I've been
very fascinated with the world of just musicality and just
music and how other people hear it differently. And because
I've been so trained in only the ballroom genre since
I was what four years old, you know, I get
(32:45):
very stuck in my ways and I love to just
be able to learn other ways. And like you said,
with plabulists, and it was just so different, like even
with hip hop dancers versus ballroom we hear music just
completely differently, and it's always fascinating and I kind of
wish that I was able to train in other forms
of dance. However, you know, I'm very happy with my
life and grateful for this life. But still it's just
(33:08):
I love to learn, that's all. So no, I understand
what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Definitely, Well, I love love to do new stuff, and
I jumped at the chance to do dance with the
Stars because here's something I know nothing about and I
get to learn it and that's.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Always a joy. And I also, you know, this is
something that was very noticeable on Celebrity Apprentice, is all
the other people were very uncomfortable doing something they've never
done before. Yeah, because of my job, tell her and
I do weekly something that's never been done before, not
(33:47):
just by us but by anybody, because we have to
create new tricks and learn them. And so I'm very
very comfortable if you tell me you've never done this before,
you have to learn it and do it. Yeah, there's
no tension in my body. I love it. It's interesting.
There's a lot more to say about time with ballroom dancing,
(34:10):
because one of the things ballroom dancing seems to me
is so important visually and conceptually is a smoothness. Yes,
And I think what I'm perceiving, what I'm labeling incorrectly
as not being exactly in time, is really a smoothness.
(34:34):
So I want to get to three, and kid wants
to get to three.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
So it looks good the transition of it.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, yeah, And that means that what I consider to
be the middle of the beat is going to be
different than what she be. And when you say hip
hop dancing, they're hearing music differently because they are odd
the goddamn beat. Oh really, they're hitting, they're hitting their
steps down and so on.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
So when you see hip hop dancers there on time, yeah, fascinating.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
So because I was mislabeling it, I was wrong.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
It's not the time time, but yeah, troubles me.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
It's the smoothness, the smoothness I'm doing this.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
You don't have a clear no, But like in Chacha.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
The accent is on one right. So for me, when
I watched you dance, naturally you want to break on one,
but we can't break until two. And you but you
were able to. I saw that in your body. It
changed with in the music.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
You know. That's the really odd thing about Chasha is
we have been I mean really since what nineteen forty
seven forty six, everything's been the back beat. Yeah, the
backbeat is everything. Everything's everything's doing for. And the rare
(36:03):
songs that aren't doing for I mean the old song
in the sixties Sunshine and Your Love by Cream is
one and three, and the whole thing is you know,
and even your auvant garde music is very very hesitant.
But the beats all one and three. So cha cha
is so interesting for putting the beats one. Yeah, you know,
(36:26):
we've done so much syncopation in our culture that taking
the syncopation away becomes.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Avant garde, Isn't that crazy.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, it's really nice. Who are some of the unpleasant
stunt bookings they did?
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Did they do like unpleasant?
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Did Tucker Carlson?
Speaker 1 (36:46):
They did? Tucker Carlson. Yes, Tom Delay was one of
my partners. I'm not saying he's unpleasant. I'm just gonna
name people off the top of my head. Here. Well
you are still Palin.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
You did? You did Wayne Newton?
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Which must have been I love Wayne Newton.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Yeah, I'll I'll tell you something about Wayne Duton and
this may not be true for you. When I greet
Wayne Newton, he is too affectionate with me that I'm
always afraid he's gonna hurt me. He hugged he and
(37:21):
he hits hey, Pat, how you doing? Boom boom boom.
I go, Wayne, stop hitting me. He stopped. He goes
so good to see you, Frank the sec Wayne, you're
just hitting me. You're you're saying nice things to me,
but you're hitting me.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Well, you're right. His handshake is so like, Yes, I've
never thought about that.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
You're right and you you are a small, delicate creature.
Imagine what his handshake is with a guy who's bigger
than him.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
No, and he's hugs I was like, okay, Wayne, like
I have to You're right, You're right, and he says
a gentleman. Though this man remembers everyone's name, like so.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Wonderful love I love Wayne. Stop hitting me.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
I'll make sure to tell him when he eventually does
this podcast. It's hysterical.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
We were doing interviews and I said this sentence, I said,
and I meant that as a joe, right, But they
didn't take it as a joke. I said, how fair
is it to have someone who won Olympic medal in
ice dancing, that is the word dancing in it, going
up against a fat magician. How the word dancing is
(38:39):
in her Olympic medal? How is this amateurs learning to dance?
And they said, you can't say it's unfair. And I said,
but I called myself a fat magician and they and
here's what I found really interesting, probably coincidence, but really funny.
The next uh, the next day, web page changed my
(39:05):
description from the from the first word being magician to
the first word being atheist. Oh my god, I wonder
if America is going to vote for an atheist.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Oh my gosh, what Wait? That's Is it a coincidence?
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Sure? Maybe, but I just thought it was funny with
They were really pissed at me. And then my manager said,
they've just put in your bio the word atheist right
at the top. I went, oh, well, people go to vote.
Do you want the atheists?
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Do you believe the show is rigged?
Speaker 2 (39:43):
I do know that every one of those shows I've
been on, Yeah, they have a preferred a preferred outcome.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
And there's lots of ways to cheat without cheating. For instance,
if you had someone on the show that were there
was an atheist for it, just crazy and that wasn't
part of what they do. And you move that to
the top of the description. In the United States of America,
they're going to do less well, I'm not even. And
(40:20):
also there's all sorts of ways to decide how you
how you count votes at home. Also, you're not you're
not setting up I mean, for someone who like yourself,
(40:43):
who who loves ballroom dancing, people at home voting is nonsense.
You don't want the public voting on the Nobel Prize,
you know, let's give let's give the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry to one who's best looking.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Okay, oh for sure? Is that the way we're doing
it far right or the Olympian you know.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah, So once again I come back to our show
fool us? You know, we try to make sure that
there's one thing they're being judged on. Did you fool
us Pennanteller today? Yes? Did you fool us? We know
(41:31):
a little bit of magic, right. This is not an
easy thing to do, right. You know, we have more
than a one hundred and ten years, one hundred and
twenty years of magic experience between us. It's a lot. Yes,
did you fool us? We're not saying did you do
(41:52):
the best act? Right? We're not saying were you the funniest,
We're not saying will you be the most famous? The
audience can judge that on their own and enjoy it.
I get so bothered when judges on TV shows are
(42:16):
not qualified for what they're judging me too. As I've
said about America's got talent. Until you can prove to
me that Bob Dylan, Tiny Tim and Son raw Win,
I'm not going to watch it because what those judges
have done in the music industry, and they change all
(42:38):
the time and aren't really up to date. But it's
not the most innovative stuff being done in the world,
and so I would find if I wanted to take
a little swim in the world of ballroom dancing, I
would want the judges to be as conversion is possible
(43:02):
and teach me about ballroom dancing. So they would see
things that I don't see. And I would say on
our show, fool us, we do say this is based
on this magic trick, and this comes out of here,
and this comes out of there. And if you watch
the show, you learn a little bit about this subculture
(43:22):
you may never have thought of before.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Are you still doing your Vegas show?
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yes, we're the longest running headliners in Vegas history.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
That's right, and they're still going still.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
We have been. We've been at the conveniently named Penn
and Teller Theater now for longer than anyone else has
been anywhere. Good for you, which you can either see
a success or a sign of great age you shoot.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Thank you Penn, Thanks so much, what a pleasure, so fun.
Thank you.
Host
Cheryl Burke
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