As a child, Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller didn't want to be a magician or a comedian when he grew up. "In high school, all I wanted to be was a serious existential atheist writer," Jillette ?said in a recent interview with Play. "But everything I wrote got laughs."
As a child, Jillette was particularly skeptical of magicians. "I stumbled on a book in the library about (The Amazing) Kreskin," a self-avowed mind-reader. "The book explained that Kreskin's experiments were really just tricks."
Jillette recalls he was "devastated." He'd believed that Kreskin's feats of prediction were real magic. "I was filled with rage against magicians for lying to children."
Instead of magic, Jillette spent his free time honing a different craft. "I was a juggler," said Jillette. "It's in the same ghetto of arts, but a different psychology than magic. No subterfuge. You practice and you show. Jugglers, we want to make things harder than they are. There's an easier way to carry three objects."
Only when Jillette finally met his future magic partner, Teller, did he decide to give professional trickery a chance. "Teller and (the Amazing) Randi explained to me that if you first told people that you would be lying to them and only then lied to them," said Jillette, "then it became art.
"If you walk down the street and tell people you're ('Taxi Driver' character) Travis Bickle, you are insane. But if you do it in a movie, you are Robert DeNiro."
Jillette was quickly hooked and began performing magic onstage. He and Teller originally performed separate acts in the same bill, "so we had to keep the integrity of our acts. So Teller kept on not speaking."
Oh, yeah: Teller almost never speaks onstage.
"Teller put himself through college by performing magic at frat parties," Jillette said. "A kind of hell that is unimaginable." In order to reduce heckling at these shows, Teller stopped speaking, "and did creepy stuff, so the crowds would pay attention."
In 1975, Penn & Teller began performing as a joint act. Forty years later, they are still performing magic together, making audiences gasp and laugh, night after night.
Teller remains mostly silent onstage, a tactic that proves useful to the duo. "If one character does not speak, the audience can project all kinds of stuff on them," said Jillette.
"It's lying without words," said Jillette. "There is no stronger lie that the one you tell yourselves. We never lie directly to you."
Along with their regular gig in Las Vegas, the pair stars in a television show called "Penn & Teller: Fool Us." In the program, guest magicians perform a trick, and if Penn & Teller are stumped, the candidate magician wins a chance to open for them in Las Vegas.
"The idea behind 'Fool Us' was to put on TV what happens backstage at our theater every night," said Jillette. "Eventually, every magician comes to Vegas. And most of those magicians come to see the Penn & Teller show. And then many, many of those will come backstage after. And they ask, 'Have you seen this?' and show us a trick. Then they look mostly at Teller for a moment, to see if he figured out the trick.
"And we both thought that moment was pretty beautiful."
In Anchorage, Penn & Teller will be performing magic and making audiences laugh -- and perhaps judging tricks and illusions backstage -- on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 6 and 7.
Jillette kindly answered a few more questions.
Play: On "Fool Us," how do you decide how much of a trick to give away?
Jillette: My goal is that if a family is watching the show, I want the parts of that family who want to be fooled to be fooled and enjoy the show. But I want the young girl or boy who wants to go into magic to take the words I say, do an elaborate search on the Internet and be able to figure out the tricks.
Play: You and Teller have been together for over 40 years. What advice do you have for your performance partners?
Jillette: If you're the best person in the band, quit. It's really easy, easy, easy to work with somebody who is not quite as good as you. It will make you feel great, and you'll have all the power. Don't do that. Only work with people better than you.
Of course, don't tell Teller that's the advice or you'll break us up.
Play: Is Teller a better magician than you are?
Jillette: Oh yeah. I remember, famously, People (Magazine) used to ask John Lennon if Ringo Starr was the best drummer in the world. He would answer that Ringo wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles. Which is true; Paul (McCartney) was the best drummer.
I am not the best magician in Penn & Teller.
Play: What makes a good new magician?
Jillette: You need to be able to act the part of yourself. The people who learn magic the quickest are people who are tremendously good at being themselves on command. Thelonious Monk said, "The genius is one most like himself."
To reach into your pocket and grab something naturally, without sending signals to people that you are not being natural, is the backbone of all magic. I have to walk around the stage with the audience completely seeing my heart. And then I have to lie to them.
Play: Are women underrepresented in the magic community?
Jillette: Yes; it is insanely skewed. There is often a lot of unpleasantness by magicians to women, and it has bothered me my whole career in magic.
But it does seem to be anecdotally changing. The gender equality gap for magicians in their early 20s seems to be much smaller than for those my age.
Play: What is your relationship with Teller like?
Jillette: Very formal. Even after 40 years, very formal. When you meet certain people, you have an affection for them. You want to hug them. Teller and I never had that.
Play: How are you still together?
Jillette: We are a partnership because we feel we do better stuff together.
Play: Are you telling me that you and Teller are not friends?
Jillette: Not at all. It's very important to my daughter Moxie that I say that Teller is my BFF. When my parents died and my children were born, the first person I went to was Teller. We are together at least six hours a day, often 15. But we don't socialize outside of that.
Play: When did you decide to add comedy to your act?
Jillette: Neither of us wanted to be comedians. Dee Snyder of Twisted Sister once told me that I don't do any sarcasm, parody or satire, but just state what I think, and people laugh.
Play: Then what are you guys, exactly?
Jillette: I think, if you woke Teller up in the middle of the night and asked him that, he would say "magician." For me, the answer is "writer." I love every second of what we do, but magician just isn't how I see myself.
Penn & Teller
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 6-7
Where: Alaska Center for the Performing Arts, Atwood Concert Hall
Tickets: $49.25-$108.25; myalaskacenter.com