Veteran producer Mark Wolper, Executive Producer Star Price and renowned master showmen Penn & Teller deliver a high-octane, weird, wacky, entertaining journey through some bizarre territory that no one else is brave enough to touch, with this Showtime reality series.
By their own admission, Penn & Teller have been dying to do a show like this. Confirmed skeptics and pro-science atheists (they refer to God as "an imaginary friend"), these magicians are big fans of the art of debunking.
Whether demonstrating how history's most perplexing magic acts are performed in their sell-out Las Vegas show and TV specials, or producing their own series that pulls the wool off the public's eyes, Penn & Teller's mission is to expose the truth to an otherwise desperate and gullible public.
In Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, the crusaders utilize principles of magic and trickery, as well as good old fashioned "hidden camera" sting operations, to smoke out these nonsense peddlers and reveal how they operate.
They also call upon the scientific community for back-up. Penn & Teller have discovered that the evidence debunking bogus operatives exists in countless books, scientific papers and government-sponsored exposés — research that nobody else has presented to the public with such zeal, passion, and conviction.
As our increasingly anti-intellectual, anti-science culture moves on each day to new crackpot subject matters, Penn & Teller are there to aggressively shoot down whack-jobs and fuzzy thinkers, no matter where they originate.
Their attitude of serious, sober contemplation can be summed up in this quote about their current Las Vegas stage program: "We have been doing magic together for 25 years and are so sick of it we could spit. So, in the new show, we are moving into the field of religion and will be performing real miracles!"
No matter how popular a form of bullshit is — and regardless of what deep pockets or beloved figures support it — Penn & Teller are pit bulls for the truth, poised to tear down these myths in the most jaw-dropping fashion possible with their trademark wit and off-center comic sensibilities.
Beware faux miracle workers, yogis, dervishes, televangelists, zealots and cult leaders. Penn & Teller have you in their cross-hairs with a new series that strives to spark controversy, headlines and water cooler fisticuffs!
Penn & Teller are a couple of eccentric guys who have learned how to do a few cool things. Together since 1975, their award-winning theater show has been a long-running hit on and off-Broadway. Penn & Teller are now appearing nightly (except Tuesdays) in Las Vegas at the
Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.
After playing small clubs, theaters and the Renaissance Fair circuit, Penn & Teller's off-beat brand of magic and comedy gained national attention when their stage show opened off-Broadway in 1985, leading to appearances on
Late Night with David Letterman,
Saturday Night Live and
Miami Vice. In 1987 their stage show moved to Broadway, the first of two successful runs.
Favorite guests on
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,
The Late Show with David Letterman, and
Live! with Regis & Kathie Lee, Penn & Teller have made dozens of talk and variety show appearances. They've also performed on
Late Night with Conan O'Brien,
The Today Show and
Saturday Night Live.
Penn & Teller have acted in several popular series, guest-starring as "Drell and Skippy" in
Sabrina the Teenage Witch, as attorneys "Penn & Teller" on
The Drew Carey Show, and on
Friends,
Dharma & Greg,
Babylon 5,
Home Improvement and
The Simpsons.
Their 1985 PBS special,
Penn & Teller Go Public, won two Emmys® and the International Golden Rose. Other television projects have included the recent Emmy®-nominated variety series
Penn & Teller's Sin City Spectacular, the special
Penn & Teller's Home Invasion, the SHOWTIME Original Picture
PENN & TELLER'S INVISIBLE THREAD, the NBC special
Don't Try This at Home, the PBS Children's series
Behind the Scenes, and for Britain's Channel 4,
The Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller and
Penn & Teller's Phobophilia.
Penn & Teller Get Killed, directed by Arthur Penn, saw the pair in their big screen debut. They can currently be seen in Walt Disney's
Fantasia 2000.
Penn & Teller have also written two best-selling books,
Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends and
How to Play With Your Food. Their newest book,
How to Play in Traffic, is a collection of practical jokes, miracles and anecdotes that makes travel funnier than ever before.
The duo serves as Visiting Scholars at MIT, which is the highest honor bestowed by the school, and have lectured at the Smithsonian Institute and Oxford University. Penn & Teller were recently named two of the funniest people alive in
Entertainment Weekly's "50 Greatest Comedians Today" issue.
Penn and Teller Living in Vegas, Live at the Rio
Mark Wolper has been producing for television and film for over 20 years and, as president of the Wolper Organization, he has been involved in some of the most influential projects in entertainment including the Academy Award®-winning "L.A. Confidential" starring Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey and Kim Basinger; the multiple Emmy®-nominated mini-series "The Mists of Avalon" starring Anjelica Huston, Julianna Margulies and Joan Allen; "The Thornbirds," starring Richard Chamberlain and Amanda Donohoe; and the Emmy®-nominated and NAACP-winning mini-series "Queen" starring Halle Berry.
Mark Wolper began his producing career for television and film in 1981 as an independent producer working with studios such as Warner Bros., Showtime Networks, MGM and Disney on a variety of projects ranging from short films and documentaries to mini-series and foreign feature films.
In 1987, he joined his father David Wolper, himself a well-known figure in the entertainment industry who founded the company in 1958, in leading The Wolper Organization. Over the years, the company has been responsible for over 500 films, which have won more than 150 awards, including two Oscars®, 50 Emmys®, seven Golden Globes®, five Peabodys, and recognition from Cannes and numerous other respected international film festivals.the festival circuit. In 2002, Price wrote the story and was Co-Executive Producer for the TBS action horror movie "Evil Never Dies."
Star Price is a writer-producer-director who has worked in television since 1978. He attended film school at the University of Southern California, where he graduated in 1983 with a BA in film-television production. Immediately after graduating, he worked for the ABC-TV program "Ripley's: Believe it or Not!" as a story scout, traveling the country for two years in search of the strange and the unexplained.
Since 1985, Price has written, produced and/or directed a number of network and cable TV programs, including the FOX series "The Best of the Worst," the CBS special "Celebration," the syndicated show "Real Stories of the Highway Patrol," MTV's "Celebrity Undercover," TLC's "How'd They Do That?" and the 2-hour sweeps special "Confirmation: The Hard Evidence of Aliens Among Us" for NBC. He's also recently Co-Executive Produced the reality series "Exploring the Unknown" and "Scariest Places on Earth" for the Fox Family Channel. His other credits include "Amazing Race2" for CBS and "Hotel Hell" for FOX. In 2001 he wrote, directed and executive produced a pilot for Lifetime called "Forensics."
In addition to serious documentaries and reality specials, from 1994 to 1996, Price wrote, directed and produced sketch comedy segments for the NBC late-night program "Later with Greg Kinnear" (over 150 segments). And in 1997, he financed, wrote, directed and produced a dark comedy independent film, "Shangri-La." The film won many awards on the festival circuit. In 2002, Price wrote the story and was Co-Executive Producer for the TBS action horror movie "Evil Never Dies."
