Reality TV started becoming big when I was in college, around 2002. I remember everyone kept saying, 'Man, you guys should do reality.' And I was always like, 'I don't know.'
I think people tend to feel odd when I do my act. Unless you are an ironic person, it's not a good place for you to be.
I'm trying all kinds of crazy stuff at house shows just for my own amusement and to see what the people are gonna do.
I almost never try to make the audience comfortable. I wouldn't want that if I were in the audience.
People do not come to a Penn & Teller show to see a magic show. They just don't. They come to see weird stuff that they can see no place else, that will make them laugh and make the little hairs stand up on the backs of their necks.
If I'm at a party, and there are lots of people running around, you'll most likely find me on the floor, painting... I want to be at the party, but I want to do something. I'm just not very idle at all.
Television is in a different time because of reality television, so it's not as exciting.
We're just a real dirty band. We're raw, and we're rough. None of us are top-scale, top-line musicians. But I tell you what, you get your top-line musicians and see if they can entertain like us.
What's the big deal if I dress casually and dance in my backyard.
Anyone can go out on stage and start beating people over the head with rubber chickens. That'll get people's attention.
I used to run into lampposts. That was my party trick.
The main thing with my shows is that I'm professional but not highly polished. I don't like people to think they're just seeing an album in person.
I'm one of those people who can watch a stupid movie and end up crying.
There have always been and there always will be the peripheral sideline activities which are a form of entertainment, which is to say you pay a couple of cents and you see something freakish. That is what reality TV is.
I am not a conventional hero. I am a regular guy trying to entertain people.
I do strive to be the Andy Kaufman of TV news.
Damn everything but the circus.
I went to a concert once when I was a little kid and ran up onstage, started dancing, started saying anything that came to my head. I was like a little vaudevillian.
It is challenging to communicate attractions which are hard to understand unless you actually touch and experience them yourself. This is especially so with Wii U because it has unprecedented entertainment potential.
You can't satirise darts, because it's hyper-real as it is; there's already enough over-the-top madness to it.
Entertain the people. Give them something they're not ready for, make them talk.
Terrible saloons might be, but they may be terribly wonderful.
I just think it would be super cheesy for this Navy SEAL to start singing.
Professional wrestling in Europe is more of a sub-culture. It is not as popular as it is here in the United States. The people that were drawn to it were also people that were into sub-culture, hardcore sub-culture. It is basically an alternative scene that is sub-culture.
Reality TV is a totally different animal than the infomercial world.
