by Vegas Inside Tips Staff

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Up in Flames...

After more than three decades of performing on stage together, Penn & Teller have finally gone up in flames.

But not to worry. Even though they have spent their career together playing with fire – not to mention knives, guns, livestock and obviously lots of blood – this is merely a reference to the fact that in celebration of their 35th anniversary of being a comedy-magic team, a 27,000 square-foot-image of Penn dangling Teller over an blazing inferno has been put up on the side of the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, where they have been performing since 2001.

The 26-story-high picture is testimony to the fact that the “Bad Boys of Comedy,” as they have been nicknamed, have achieved their earliest burning desire – being known as just “a couple of eccentric guys who have learned to do a few cool things.”

“Thirty-five years together and everything is right on schedule,” Penn says. “We’re a third of the way through our 105 year plan. We have lots of surprises planned for the world.”

The duo has definitely been one of entertainment’s biggest stories, which is more than just a reference to the picture or to Penn’s 6-foot 6-inh height. Having been in the forefront of the industry throughout the years, Penn & Teller have appeared in their own Emmy-winning network specials, as well as on all the late-night talk shows, several daytime talk/news shows, and TV series, and will be launching their seventh season of “Penn & Teller Bullsh*t” this spring. The latter is Showtime’s longest running series and the recipient of 11 Emmy nominations.

TV aside, it could be said that, in a sense, the duo’s entire career has been based on some  form of Bullsh*t.  Penn notes that in the beginning, he and Teller used to be very careful about ever mentioning magic in association with their show because no adult hip person would come to see them..

“We used to call ourselves ‘swindlers’ and ‘cheaters,’” Penn recalls. “Of course, my favorite term was ‘rip-off artistes.’ We do things that appear to be physically impossible – we accomplish miracles by tricks. That is the definition of magic. What you’re going to see with us is very, very different than what other magicians do. Our stuff is heavily plotted – it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it has much more visceral content. It also has a real hard edge and a common sense. At no point do we want anyone watching our show to put away his or her intelligence. When we do something that defies the laws of physics, we want people to say that we’re able to do this because we’re good swindlers and good at lying and not because of some mumbo-jumbo.”

It’s obvious that if you want to see rabbits or doves appear, you’re going to have to go to the pet store. Penn & Teller take pride in the originality of their act as well as the fact that they think up stunts off the top of their heads, feeling that traditional magic is not where it’s at. Nor do they believe in taking something old and recycling it. When it comes to the creative process, it took 10 years for the pair to make their biggest discovery -- to stay out of each other’s way in the things in which they each excel.

“We have a real division of labor,” explains Teller. “We discovered long ago that if I tried to write lines for Penn, it drove him crazy, and if he tried to stage the show or deal with the physical or visual end of it, it drove me crazy. Even though we do help each other a great deal in our individual areas of specialty, we keep those terrains clear enough that we’re able to work. “

“Penn’s the talk and I’m the action,” he continues.” He’s concerned with plot and structure and I’m concerned with theme and idea. But we plan the whole idea together and come up with the image together and we have mutual respect for one another. We both firmly believe that we do better things together than each of us does individually, though we both do individual projects in quite a goodly number.”

Teller admits that constantly coming up with something new that no one has done before is hard work but that it has gotten easier for them as the years have gone by. Where they once used to stifle one another’s creative process, now they know how to both understand an idea before they throw it away. It can take months for them to come up with something new and Teller says that waiting for the idea is the hard part of it.

“We sit and stare at each other for hours on end – if you’ve seen what we look like, you know that’s really hard work, Teller quips. “And once we get the image, the real hard work starts.”

“Strangely enough,” adds Penn, “the comedy and magic are the last two things to come to anything we write. We write based on the image and the content emotionally and intellectually that we want to get across. Then we figure out how the trick is done, then how to make it funny.”

“Other magicians find a trick and find a way to dress it up – the term is ‘old wine in new bottles,’” he sums up. “We always start with the idea and then figure out how to do it later, which means that we end up with some technological nightmares in trying to figure out how to make it work. But we end up with tricks that look like nobody else’s. And everything we do works – we’re not interested in the screw-up magic thing but the few things we do in the show that we intentionally screw up have to be very well planned. Our act is more theater and while there’s not a heavy message, everything we do has to have a reason to be in the show. The swindle, lying, rip-off is where real magic is. It’s purely an adult form.”

Imagine Barry Manilow standing in front of a tour guide as she excplains the significance of the Eiffle Tower or some other historic location in Paris, France.

Barry Manilow sat with me recently in the Four Seasons lobby recently to talk about his new show that opened last Saturday night here in Vegas. He said he went to Paris looking for inspiration and the perfect French Fry. He says he found them both.

And he plans to bring a lot of the romance that seemed to be everywhere in Paris (the real one in France) with him into this new show. (NOTE: Show was supposed to open Friday, but an electrical failure caused the show to go dark and moved the open to Saturday.)

Barry's new home is the Paris Theatre at the Paris Las Vegas, where he will be singing love songs and fan favorites for a while every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night at 7:30 pm. He says he has designed his show around that theatre, taking advantage of the intimate setting and the romantic atmosphere. He told me he was actually excited about this engagement, and neven though he loved the Hilton and the people he worked with over there for five glorious years, he thinks his show will be even more successful here in the Paris. "I'm bringing romance back to the Las Vegas Strip, isn't that cool?" he asked me. Yes, Barry, that is very cool. It's been a very good year for Barry. Besides his shows at the Las Vegas Hilton on the same stage that Elvis entertained on, Barry performed concerts in Pittsburgh (PA), Rochester (NY), Uncasville (CT) and the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel (NJ) during the Summer of 2009. Barry opened and closed the 29th Annual A Capitol Fourth Celebration on the 4th of July, then returned to London for a special concert performance at the 14th Annual Proms in the Park, including appearances on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, Claudia Winkleman Arts Show and BBC Breakfast News.

In October, Barry gave a special concert at the Hollywood Bowl to benefit the L.A. Unified School District. Barry closed out 2009 with re-releases of the Happy Holiday! DVD and Grammy-nominated In the Swing of Christmas; promotional appearances at Christmas in Rockefeller Center, the Today Show, Joy Behar Show, NBC Nightly News, The Jay Leno Show and on BBC Radio 2 ("A Magical Manilow Christmas"); "A Gift of Love" special holiday concerts at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, California, benefiting 25 local charities; holiday shows at Chicago's Rosemont Theatre; and the final performances of his 5-year run as headliner at the Las Vegas Hilton.

2010 marked the beginning of a new chapter in Barry's career with a brand new show opening at the Paris Theatre at Paris Las Vegas in March, and the release of The Greatest Love Songs of All Time, supported by appearances on QVC's QSessions Live, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, the Today Show, Entertainment Tonight, Rachael Ray and Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Rolling Stone Magazine captured the enduring appeal of Barry Manilow when it anointed him "a giant among entertainers" and proclaimed him to be "the showman of our generation." The London Times recently declared Manilow "one of the greatest popular entertainers of the age." Barry's unparalleled career is made up of virtually every facet of music, including performing, composing, arranging and producing. He has triumphed in every medium of entertainment. He has filled concert halls, broken records on television, scored for films and written for the Broadway stage. The industry "bible," Radio & Records Magazine has already named him the undisputed #1 Adult Contemporary Artist of all time. His record sales exceed 75 million worldwide. He has received Grammy, Emmy and Tony Awards and been nominated for an Academy Award.

What more can be said?