But I would be miserable living the life most people live.
#Penn jillette into the trash it goes full
I could abandon this struggle and devote full time to making money the way I’ve done it in the past or through some traditional route to wealth and success. (The new video studio I showed you over the weekend is part of that.) As I’ve tried to find the audiences I need to make it commercially, I’ve felt the sort of panic that Jillette did when they played to almost-empty houses.īut I have this crazy idea that I’m going to do original work that will find its audience. I’m still trying to figure out who my audience is. But at the root, something about the person I am - and the way in which I will learn to project that - is the product that I have to sell.
I’ve always known that when I find my right “act,” it’s going to turn out that I am my product. In the last few years, I’ve been struggling to find my artistic and commercial niche. I found an audience writing about politics - you could say I grew some degree of popularity with an “anti-political act” - but as I turned to things that were more authentic and more original, a lot of that crowd disappeared. I stepped away from that world - cutting the ties firmly enough that I couldn’t go back - and started trying to figure out who I am and what I need to make and who my audience is. There was really nothing about it the was honest. There was nothing about it that had integrity. There was nothing about what I did that was original. I followed cookie-cutter formulas, because that’s what worked. I created personas for politicians and sold those false images like bars of soap to gullible crowds. I was a political consultant and I was paid very well for my work. The “carny trash” - to use Jillette’s term for what he expected the pair to be - had become wildly successful stars, not by doing what anybody else had done before, but by struggling to find the right niche in which they could do the original art that represented who they really were.Ībout 10 or 15 years ago, I was sure what I was doing. For almost 20 years now, they have been performing sold-out shows at a Las Vegas theater which bears their names. After years of trying to figure out who they were and what their act would be - and then going through the painful process of failing to find an initial audience, the crowds started showing up.ĭuring the ‘80s and ’90s, they became huge stars. Suddenly, though, they found an audience. Jillette admits that he was working phones trying to line up carnival and festival gigs for when they went back to reality. Jillette said he and Teller were willing to take the job, but they were certain it was going to fail. Then some producers asked them to bring their show to an off-Broadway theater in New York City. They were getting an audience that wanted a smarter act, but there just weren’t enough of them to support the duo. Then something happened - and I can’t stop thinking about how this lesson might apply to me.ĭuring the year or so that they had agreed to try theater shows, Jillette assumed they were going to be a commercial failure - based on the horrible ticket sales they were generating. He said they were selling 10 or 15 tickets in a theater that seated 90 people - so he started trying to line up carnival gigs again. But as they started performing to small crowds, Jillette panicked. They got the idea to take their show to theaters, so they committed to a full year of theater shows to see whether they could make it in that world. They had been making a living - barely - for most of a decade and were still trying to figure out what they were. But they were still essentially a carnival act trying to figure out what they were - what sort of art they were making and who their audience might be. In a recent interview, Jillette says Teller brought the idea of doing magic to the duo and they started incorporating it into their show. As part of that group - and then later as Penn & Teller - they played carnivals and renaissance festivals. In the late ‘70s, he and Teller were two-thirds of an act called the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society. Penn Jillette never expected to be a star.
0 kommentar(er)
