If anyone pioneered the Art of the Rant, so ubiquitous in these cranky, egalitarian days of blogging and YouTubing, it was Penn Jillette. The self-described “larger, louder half” of veteran magic-and-comedy team Penn and Teller regularly airs his savage wit on the duo’s Emmy-nominated Showtime series “Bullst!” Now, Sony’s crackle.com brings us “Penn Says,” a series of unedited, spontaneous monologues Webcast at least four times a week from Jillette’s own bedroom, backstage in Vegas, or anywhere else he happens to be when the urge to orate strikes. We recently spoke with him over a morning bowl of Raisin Bran.
Do strangers ever bait you into starting an argument?
I don’t get too much of that. Well, once in a while, a chiropractor. I think I should give you real numbers – I believe three times chiropractors have started conversations with me where they were being confrontational. Of course on the Web, when I do some pro-evolution thing there’s X number of automatic confrontations, but I believe that a lot of the creationist-religious people have just given up on me.
Why did it take a magician to be able to sell skepticism on TV?
Skepticism, like libertarianism and atheism – all of which are kind of joined together – are interesting because you’re dealing with the wealthy and the well-educated in those groups. Therefore, you’re not gonna get the kind of sensationalist stuff. My original pitch for “Bullst!” was very simple. I just said, “In the debate between the scientist and the nut, on television the nut always wins. Everybody prefers to see a nut – they’re more fascinating. I promise you that I will be as nuts and as possessed, as passionate, as any nut on the other side. And everything I say will be true.”
So how do you work yourself into being as passionate as a nut?
If you’re a mama’s boy and your mom dies, you understand a little of the rage over people exploiting grief. When my parents were alive, I could kind of attack, watch, laugh at and dissect John Edward or Sylvia Browne. Then my dad died, and two months later my mom died, and suddenly the fun of the fight went away. You can find earlier things where I’m making fun of what those people were doing, until I felt it.
How do you know what will make for a ripe target?
I saw [radio deejay and storyteller] Jean Shepherd give a talk at Amherst in 1971, and during the Q & A he told the audience that he loved the people he talked about in his stories and broadcasts. It wasn’t satire, it wasn’t aggression. He ended up saying, “Never make fun of anything unless you love it.” Two weeks later I went to see [humorist] Stan Freberg appear. Different crowd, different college. Freberg said, “Don’t make fun of anything unless you hate it.” And they’re both completely and utterly right. I followed the advice of both of them!
You and Teller play Vegas and appear on Showtime. Now you’ve got a video blog. What generation do you think you appeal to?
I used to say that our Sunday shows were full of people who had blue hair, but for different reasons – I’m good friends with [avant-garde band] the Residents and with Phyllis Diller! If you look at our show in Vegas, there are people who saw us on the Hollywood Squares and people who were there because I played with [punk band] Half Japanese. And I like to believe it’s because we’re not pandering to a demographic.
PICKING hIS BRAIN
“There’s no
better feeling
that your life
is on track
than picking
up the phone
and hearing,
‘Hey, Penn –
it’s Ratso.'”
When I was a kid, I didn’t want to be Elvis. I wanted to be the guy who picked up the phone and heard “Hey, Penn – it’s Ratso” [referring to his friend and Harry Houdini biographer Larry “Ratso” Sloman]. Now, Kinky Friedman has got me beat hands down – he’s a two-Ratso man! They have to call up and say, “This is DC Ratso” or “This is New York Ratso.” That’s such a level of attainment.
Jay-Z, he knows precisely who he’s going for – 14-year-old white suburban girls. Broadway, too. Adolescent girls have all the power!
I’ve read the Bible more than most fundamentalists have, and I read religious scholars. I’ve already read all the Jack Chick booklets [Christian pamphlets drawn in a comic-book style]. Maybe for a different reason than they wanted – but I’m conversant with that.
Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Gilbert Gottfried, Picasso, Stravinsky – you could probably get that list to about 50 people who have that combination of having great skill and being totally nuts, along with that incredible ambition. In the 20th century, at the top of that equation, you had Houdini and Elvis. But among the living artists, Dylan’s the only one who’s got that perfect combination.
I had e-mail in 1984! I had an e-mail address then, which means that all you could write to was Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. There were three of us, writing to each other. So I’d try to tell friends about e-mail, and nobody understood it. I’d tell them that it was more personal than a phone call – I write when I think of something, and you receive it and can read it when you want.