Paul Gertner - Penn & Teller: Fool Us Season Eight. Paul's 5th Fool Us Performance

For those that are keeping score, I've been on Full Us four times. I'm pretty sure that's a Full Us record and a full Penn & Teller twice. My wife Catherine gets really nervous when she watches me perform. After my last appearance, I promised her I'm done. I won't be back on Full Us again. But then I thought of a new trick, and it's a good one. My show in Boston is my testing ground. Every trick I do here, I've done there hundreds of times. But I haven't been doing shows lately. So I'll be facing Penn & Teller with a trick I think will work. Well, it's a little scary. Catherine, I'm sorry, but this is the last time. And we'll finally see how I make out in this best of five series. It's tied two to two. Cross your fingers. Making his record-breaking fifth appearance on Full Us, please welcome Paul Gertner. Thank you. Thank you. Well, Penn & Teller, it is a pleasure to be back here on Full Us again. And I realized, since I'm going for my third Full Us trophy, tonight I have to perform a hat trick. And it's a very simple trick. It uses three objects. It uses three dice, a hat, and it uses a magic wand. Now, the dice will stay here on the table by Penn. The hat will stay over here on the table by Teller. And the wand is going to stay in my hand. And if you watch the three dice, I'll take them one at a time. Die number one. I take it in the hand. I give it a tap. And it disappears and travels through the air, across the table, over by Teller, under the hat. Now, that's the first. I'll do it again. See, if you watch die number two. And, Penn, if you watch very carefully, I'm going to place it in my hand. I'll ask you a question. You can be honest. You're not going to hurt my feelings. Do you think it's still there? Do you think it's gone already? I think it's in the hand. You're right. I didn't do anything yet. But this is die number two, which means I have to tap it twice. And then it disappears, travels through the air, across the table, over by Teller, under the hat. Now, I'll do it one more time. But this time, Teller, I'm going to reveal part of the secret to the trick. Not the whole secret. Just part of the secret. You see, when I pick up the die and I place it in my hand, it only stays here for a few seconds. And when I tap it, I don't just tap it. I give it what we call in the trade a tap and take. You're familiar with that, of course. It's something magicians use all the time. You see, I tap and take it at the same time. Now, let me explain. When I did this the first few times, you didn't see it. Because my hands were moving so fast. Even if you watch this in slow motion video, you wouldn't see the tap and take done at fast speed. But watch what happens when I slow down the process. You can see the tap and the take separated by about half a second. I take it from here over to here. I pretend to place it in my pocket. But of course, in reality, I'm going to take this die and I'm going to flick it under the hat. And it looks like it was there all the while. Now, we'll do it one last time, though. You see, if I take two in the hand, one in the pocket. Penn, how many in the hand? Two. But if I give it a tap, there's one, two, three. I'll do it again. Here, Teller, so you can see. Two in the hand, one stays in the pocket. Yeah. But if I give it a tap, now there's one, two, and three. Penn, Teller, this is your last chance to see how they get from the pocket to the hand. Slow motion. That's one. That's two. This one stays in the pocket. And Penn, if you watch very closely, take a guess. Where do you think the dice are? Under the hat. The hat. You know, those three dice have combined under the hat to form, let me check. Yep, the big one. And I know where this one comes from. But you know what I can't figure out? Where in the world did that one come from? Hey, I don't know if these two surprised you, but I'm kind of hoping this one will. Because we're in Las Vegas. And in Las Vegas, dice always come in pairs. Hey, Penn, Teller, I just produced three jumbo dice, but that's not the hat trick I promised. This is the hat trick. And Penn, you get the hat. Teller, you get the die. And I thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, Gartner, this is your fifth time here. And so far, you fool them every other time. That's true. I have every other time. Yeah. You're right. Is this a trick they'd be familiar with? Well, actually, I've been doing the bulk of the trick for about 40 years. But that ending, it's the premiere here for that ending. Oh, my goodness. Do you try to get into their head space of like, what are they going to be looking for? Completely. Yeah, there's a number of elements designed in this trick just for that purpose. So do they have a blind spot? That's a good question, because I don't know. I'm hoping I found it. All right, Paul. Well, let's see if your hat trick gives you a hat trick. OK. Hey, Paul, we love having you on the show for all sorts of reasons. First of all, we love you and you're great. But also, even if you do classic stuff, you do it better than anyone else. And for anybody who's studying magic, you've got a bowl routine here. You've got two in the hand, one in the pocket. You've got a Max Bellini ending with big things. And a lot of people are very, very happy to do one big finish or two big finishes or rarely three. But you did, like, all nested one in the other. You did, like, four. And then if you add all the dice together, you did, like, dozens, maybe 100 big endings there. It's really great. And when you fool us, I always get a little angry. And I've called you a lot of things, Paul. Not all to your face. Some to tell it here. But the one we haven't called you is a cockroach. I've never called you a cockroach. And when I wanted to call you a cockroach, it reminded us of when we were on David Letterman's program. And on David Letterman's program, we had a top hat that we brought away from the desk and then put back on the desk and then opened it up and pulled it off and had, like, hundreds, hundreds of cockroaches. And I think the way we loaded those final cockroaches was very similar to the way you did the dice there. And when I did all the cockroaches on David Letterman and they covered David Letterman, I called my mother and told her what we had done to David Letterman. And she said to me, you will never work in show business again. You'll never be on that show again. And I want to say to you, Paul, I don't think you fooled us, but I really, really hope you're on this show a lot more in the future. I think you definitely nailed that cockroach thing. Paul, so they know how you did the trick? I think they got me. Well, Paul, we love you so much. Gertner! Thank you. Stay right where you are.