Maybe That Thief Kreskin Will Sue Me This Time
The Amazing Kreskin is an “entertainer” who implies he is psychic and, as far as I can tell, just does cheesy magic tricks. At the beginning of the nineties, I wrote this letter to The Skeptical Inquirer about Kreskin’s involvement with their Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.
Letters to the Editor
Skeptical Inquirer
3025 Palo Alto Dr. NE
Albuquerque, NM 87111
To the Editor:
In 1966, when I was 11, I saw Kreskin on a talk show pimping a game based on the “science” of Extra Sensory Perception. He did some card trick “experiments,” and I was astounded (hey, I was 11). This appearance probably included a half-assed disclaimer, his usual letter-not-the-spirit “truth” that kinda says it’s not REALLY extra-sensory, but I didn’t know he was doing tricks. He deliberately misled me.
I cringe at the memory of begging my parents to buy me the overpriced “Advanced Fine Edition” of Kreskin’s ESP. For their hard-earned money, I got a pendulum (with cards marked “Finance,” “Travel,” “Career,” and “Love”—this is science?), a board, some ESP cards, and a pamphlet—all junk. The pendulum moved (ideomotor effect, like Ouija boards) and the other stuff just didn’t work. My parents sat with me many evenings and we tried to get some results. We were wasting our time.
After several weeks of disappointing “experiments,” I stumbled across a book on “mentalism” (I think it was Dunninger) and realized Kreskin had duped me. I felt humiliated and betrayed. It wasn’t until I was 18 that Teller, James Randi, and Martin Gardner restored my love of science. Since then, a good part of my career has been dedicated to making sure others are not bilked by scumbags like Kreskin.
Don’t say that Kreskin brought me to skepticism. There are others who deserve that credit; Kreskin just stole money from my parents, and time and passion from me. I owe him no thanks.
I don’t care if Kreskin is with CSICOP as an “expert” on hypnotism or because of his “charisma.” If Kreskin does not answer for his “mentalism,” I will find another outlet for my skepticism.
I made a promise to an eleven-year-old boy.
Sincerely,
Penn Jillette
What an asshole, huh?
I don’t mean Kreskin, I mean me.
Soon after my letter was printed, I got a letter from Kreskin’s lawyers saying that he was suing me for writing that he stole money from my parents.
My letter clearly doesn’t mean that, but can you imagine how hard I got? This was before my parents got sick and before I had a family of my own to support. I was starring in a Broadway show, doing movies, TV, and radio, and I had money coming out my ass. I was itching to spend every penny I had on this legal battle. I was going to take the former George Kresge down to Chinatown. I was going to prove, in open court, that he’d stolen money and lots more from my parents and me by selling us his shitty little box of shit. I was ready. I couldn’t wait. I’ve never done cocaine, champagne, ex-wives, or boats, so I would flush my money down this self-righteous rat hole.
I forwarded his lawyer’s threatening letter to my showbiz lawyer, Elliot Brown, and I promised Elliot I would make The New York Times look like pikers for what they spent on NYT v. Sullivan in Alabama. The New York Times was just fighting for freedom of speech, the press, and civil rights; I was fighting to bring down a hack mind-reader. Elliot, who had a computer macro that changed his closing salutation on every letter from “Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys on the Life of the People” to “Very Truly Yours” right before he signed it, sent this to Kreskin’s attorney.
Dear [Kreskin’s lawyer]:
We are the attorneys for Penn Jillette. Your letter of April 9, 1992, to [our manager at the time] has been referred to us. Although your letter refers to Penn & Teller, Penn Jillette was the sole author of the letter to The Skeptical Inquirer.
We are of the firm conviction that the statement to which you refer in your letter is not actionable in the context of Mr. Jillette’s letter.
In fact, any claim that the statement is actionable would, in our view, be a frivolous one.
If you would like to discuss this matter further, please do not hesitate to call.
Very truly yours,
Elliot H. Brown
It was a lot better with “Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys on the Life of the People” as the closing, but of course the threat was frivolous and Kreskin backed down right away. I was heartbroken. Elliot had to patiently explain to me that I couldn’t force someone to sue me if he didn’t want to, just like a few years later when Bob Corn-Revere would have to explain to me that I couldn’t force someone to arrest me. A few hours later I did a National Public Radio show and hijacked my own interview to try to repeat the stuff I’d written about Kreskin. I was hoping he’d pretend to misunderstand again and we could go to court.
Unfortunately, I stayed well within my rights. Sadly, the NYT had already spent enough to protect my opinion. I guess that’s good; I had money to care for my parents as their health declined and my children will have money for whatever recreational drugs are popular in ten years.
In 1994, Kreskin was booked at the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel in Las Vegas. I know Carrie Fisher a bit, and if I’d known earlier that Kreskin was going to be booked, I would have given her a jingle and tried to have her mother fire him, but he was on the marquee before I noticed.
I felt compelled to see Kreskin’s show. Teller and I went with “Master Magician Lance Burton,” a showgirl buddy of mine, juggler and Bullshit! writer Michael Goudeau, and Goudeau’s date, a professional topless mechanical bull rider. We know how to live. The showgirl wasn’t showing, the topless bull-rider was topped, and we were all sober and quiet. We also seemed to be the only ones who had bought tickets at full price.
We got seated in the showroom, and the show didn’t start. When it got way past starting time and the show still hadn’t started, Teller and I got up to go pee. When we came back from the men’s room, an apologetic white-haired maître d’ said, “You Mr. Penn and Teller? I’ve been told not to let you back in. I’m sure you guys understand, professionally.”
We didn’t understand, professionally, and we politely told him we’d paid for our tickets, we weren’t disorderly, and we were going to see the show. We walked past him and sat down. He followed us to the table. “You’re going to have to leave.” He had been ordered to get us out of the showroom before the show would start.
We showed our AmEx receipts and said politely, “I think you should call Metro.” (That’s the cool way to say “police” in Vegas.) I was hard about going limp. I’ve always wanted to do the passive resistance thing and be dragged away by police. I asked Lance Burton to use his big old cell phone to call a news photographer. We could Photoshop the pictures to black and white and add in police dogs. We were willing to fight for our right to see a shitty show.
We sat and waited. No police and no show. There was no nervousness or anticipation in the showroom, just us and a handful of people who had been given complimentary tickets because they bought a buffet lunch or something. Finally, after longer than you’d wait for Guns N’ Roses, the lights went down and Kreskin walked out onstage like a high school vice principal.
Wow. James Bond always has really cool, strong, smart villains. My nemesis was a thin, pathetic guy doing a matinee for six fully paid tickets, some twofers, and a bit of paper. I started to feel sorry for him. It had been twenty-eight years since my parents bought me his shitty toy that I didn’t really need; maybe I could just get over it.
I had won on every front. I’d publicly trashed him every chance I’d gotten. He’d backed down from the lawsuit. We were playing a bigger room in Vegas, and we hadn’t been thrown out of his shitty little show. As he walked out onstage I was ready to forgive him. If not for the first thing he said when he walked onstage, I bet I could have forgiven everything I saw in his shitty show that afternoon. I could have forgiven his boring card tricks done with incompetent sleight of hand; his name-dropping of Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Sammy Davis Jr., Regis Philbin, and Skitch Henderson; his clamming piano performances of “Feelings” and Superman’s “Can You Read My Mind?” I could have shrugged off his desperately explaining over and over again how famous he was and bragging about reciting the lyrics to “One Life to Live” with some pops orchestra, and continued my magnanimous feelings as he then recited the lyrics to “One Life to Live.”
I would have been tested when the mind-reading section came. I think the trick he did was by that 1940s mentalist Dunninger, just right out of his books. Kreskin even ripped off Dunninger’s weasel words about his tricks being done “by natural and scientific means” and saying “I am no fortune-teller.” I’m sure he considers this a disclaimer, but it does lack the important sentence “I’m not using ESP, I’m just doing shitty fucking tricks!” To do his mind reading, he asked us to write down thoughts on little pieces of paper so he could sneak a look (he thought he fooled people by giving them his word that he really wasn’t sneaking a look). Teller wrote on his piece of paper “Dunninger is rolling in his grave,” and I wrote the question “How do you live with yourself?” on mine. Kreskin never got around to reading those thoughts in our minds. He guessed someone’s phone number contained “702,” the area code for Vegas . . . and he was wrong. Even with all this, and his hateful opening, we didn’t disrupt the show. We didn’t make a peep.
He didn’t do many tricks, and no good ones. They were hack tricks that have been around forever, and he’s been doing them forever, and the only astonishing thing was that he hadn’t gotten better with all the repetition. He hadn’t learned a thing. The jokes he told were awful and he insulted the audience for not laughing, pretending he was working over their heads. He said, “You’ll find yourself waking up in the middle of the night laughing.” I hate when performers blame their audiences for not getting jokes. But I could have forgiven all that, I suppose . . . if not for his opening.
He even used Dunninger’s closing line: “To those who believe, no explanation is necessary; to those who do not, no explanation is possible.”
Dunninger was a big swinging dick. You could admire Dunninger’s bravado.
Kreskin is a fucking weasel. Kreskin ended by trying to force a standing ovation, and as the audience walked out, he pretended he got one. Everyone who didn’t have their back to the stage was embarrassed.
I could have forgiven all that. I’ve grown some since I was eleven. I could be bigger than all that. But I couldn’t be bigger than the first thing he said when he walked onstage.
I guess he felt he needed to explain why his show was starting so late. I guess he didn’t want to say it was because he was trying to get Penn & Teller thrown out and they were going to be assholes and go all limp-Gandhi on his ass.
What he came up with will make it very hard for me to ever forgive him.
When he walked out onstage, he took a few deep breaths, pretended to have some trouble pulling himself together, and said the show had been delayed because . . . he had been on the phone awaiting news about the well-being of his sick mother . . . and . . . thank god, she was all right.
Maybe his mother really was sick and he was really waiting on a real phone. Maybe. It’s possible, I guess. And it’s possible that while he was worried sick about his elderly mother’s health, he was putting her on hold and trying to get Penn & Teller thrown out of the Debbie Reynolds casino showroom. I suppose that’s possible. I know what it’s like to have a sick mother and worry about her. I know that all too well. But when I was on the phone worried about my mom, I wasn’t thinking about having people thrown out of anywhere, I was thinking about my mom. It’s also possible that it wasn’t Kreskin himself who decided that we had to go. Maybe while he was seeing about his poor mom, some middle manager decided that having Penn & Teller thrown out would give the boss some solace.
It’s also possible that Kreskin was lying. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone could be scummy enough to lie about his mom’s health, even this guy who ripped off my mom and dad with his shitty little “Advanced Fine Kreskin ESP Set” and made me hate science.
If Kreskin was lying onstage in Vegas about his mother being sick, fuck him in the neck.
I hope he sues me.
“Love Theme from Superman”
—London Symphony Orchestra
“Liar”
—The Sex Pistols