Teller | |
|---|---|
 Teller in 2023 | |
| Born | Raymond Joseph Teller February 14, 1948 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Education | Amherst College (BA) |
| Occupation | Magician |
| Years active | 1974–present |
| Website | pennandteller |
| Notes | |
Teller (born Raymond Joseph Teller; February 14, 1948) is an American magician. He is half of the comedy magic duo Penn & Teller, along with Penn Jillette, and usually does not speak during performances. Teller is a H.L. Mencken Fellow at the Cato Institute. [1]
Teller was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, [2] [3] [4] the son of Irene B. (née Derrickson) and Israel Max "Joseph" Teller (1913–2004). [5] [6] His father, who was of Russian-Jewish descent, was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Philadelphia. His mother was from a Delaware farming family. They met as painters attending art school at Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial. [7] [8] His mother was Methodist, and Teller was raised as "a sort of half-assed Methodist". [9] He graduated from Philadelphia's Central High School in 1965, and in 1969 graduated from Amherst College with a Bachelor of Arts in Classics. He became a high-school Latin teacher. [10]
At some point, Teller legally changed his name to the mononym "Teller", his family surname. [11] [12] He had reportedly been using the mononym professionally since, at least, some time before the 1975 formation of the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society. [13] By December 2000, he reported that his own parents were calling him Teller. [14]
Teller taught Greek and Latin at Lawrence High School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. [15] [16] [17] In 2001, he was inducted into the Central High School Hall of Fame. [18]
In 2018–2019, Teller had three back surgeries over 18 months. In late September 2022, he underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery. [19]
Teller began performing with his friend Weir Chrisemer as The Othmar Schoeck Memorial Society for the Preservation of Unusual and Disgusting Music. He met Penn Jillette in 1974, and, with Chrisemer, they became a three-person act called Asparagus Valley Cultural Society, which started at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival and subsequently played in San Francisco. In 1981, Jillette and Teller began performing exclusively together as Penn & Teller, an act that continues to this day. On April 5, 2013, Penn and Teller were honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the live performance category. [20] The following day, they were recognized by the Magic Castle with the Magicians of the Year award. [20]
Teller rarely speaks while performing but regularly speaks in other contexts, such as interviews. [21] Teller's trademark silence originated during his youth, when he earned a living performing magic at college fraternity parties. [22] He found that if he maintained silence throughout his act, spectators refrained from throwing beer and heckling him and paid more attention to his performance. [23]
Teller collaborated with Jillette on three magic books, and is also the author of "When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours!": Joe Teller – A Portrait by His Kid (2000), a biography/memoir of his father. The book features his father's paintings and 100 unpublished cartoons which were strongly influenced by George Lichty's Grin and Bear It . The book was favorably reviewed by Publishers Weekly . Teller's father's "wryly observed scenes of Philadelphia street life" were created in 1939. Teller and his father's "memories began to pump and the stories flowed" after they opened boxes of old letters that Teller read out loud (learning for the first time about a period in his parents' lives that he knew nothing about, such as the fact that his father's name is really Israel Max Teller). Joe's Depression-era hobo adventures led to travels throughout the U.S., Canada and Alaska, and by 1933, he returned to Philadelphia for art study. After Joe and Irene met during evening art classes, they married, and Joe worked half-days as a Philadelphia Inquirer copy boy. When the Inquirer rejected his cartoons, he moved into advertising art just as World War II began. [6]
Teller is a co-author of the paper "Attention and Awareness in Stage Magic: Turning Tricks into Research", published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience (November 2008). [24]
In 2010, Teller wrote Play Dead , [25] a "throwback to the spook shows of the 1930s and '40s" that ran September 12–24 in Las Vegas before opening Off Broadway in New York. The show starred sideshow performer and magician Todd Robbins. [26]
In 2008, Teller and Aaron Posner co-directed a version of Macbeth which incorporated stage magic techniques in the scenes with the Three Witches. [27] In 2014, Teller and Posner co-directed a version of The Tempest , which again made use of stage magic; in an interview Teller stated that "Shakespeare wrote one play that's about a magician, and it seemed like about time to realize that with all the capabilities of modern magic in the theater." [28] In 2018, Teller and Posner co-conceived and directed a brand new production of Macbeth at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in Chicago, Illinois. [29] In 2022, the Round House Theater staged Teller and Posner's adaptation of The Tempest and made a video recording of it temporarily available for purchase, to stream. [30]
Teller directed a feature film documentary, Tim's Vermeer , which was released in 2014. [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] He and Jillette served as executive producers, with distribution by Sony Pictures Classics. [36]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | My Chauffeur | Abdul | |
| 1987 | Miami Vice | Ralph Fisher | Season 4 episode 8: "Like a Hurricane" |
| 1987 | Long Gone | Hale Buchman Jr. | |
| 1989 | Penn & Teller Get Killed | Self | |
| 1995 | The Fantasticks | Mortimer | |
| 1995; 1997 | The Drew Carey Show | Geller | Season 1 episode 6: "Drew Meets Lawyers" Season 2 episode 17: "See Drew Run" |
| 1997 | Sabrina the Teenage Witch | Skippy | Season 1 episode 1: "Pilot" Season 1 episode 13: "Jenny's Non-Dream" |
| 1998 | Dharma & Greg | Mr. Boots | Season 1 episode 20: "The Cat's Out of the Bag" |
| Babylon 5 | Zooty | Season 5 episode 8: "Day of the Dead" | |
| 1999; 2011 | The Simpsons | Self | Season 11 episode 6: "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" Season 22 episode 18: "The Great Simpsina" |
| 2000 | Fantasia 2000 | ||
| 2003–2010 | Penn & Teller: Bullshit! | ||
| 2004 | The West Wing | Season 6 episode 8: "In the Room" | |
| 2011; 2015–present | Penn & Teller: Fool Us | ||
| 2012 | Atlas Shrugged: Part II | Laughlin | |
| 2016 | Director's Cut | Rudy Nelson | |
| 2018 | The Big Bang Theory | Larry Fowler | 3 episodes |
| 2021 | History’s Greatest Mysteries- Season 2 | Self | Episode 2 “Houdini’s Lost Diaries” |
| 2022 | Young Sheldon | Pus | 1 episode |
| 2023 | Mrs. Davis | Magic consultant |
NewTek, Inc., was a San Antonio, Texas–based hardware and software company that produced live and post-production video tools and visual imaging software for personal computers. The company was founded in 1985 in Topeka, Kansas, United States, by Tim Jenison and Paul Montgomery. On April 1, 2019, it was announced that NewTek would be acquired by Vizrt.
Penn & Teller, Penn Jillette and Teller, are American magicians, entertainers, and scientific skeptics who have performed together since the late 1970s. They are noted for their ongoing act that combines elements of comedy with magic.
Penn Fraser Jillette is an American magician, actor, musician, inventor, television presenter, and author, best known for his work with fellow magician Teller as half of the team Penn & Teller. The duo has been featured in numerous stage and television shows, such as Penn & Teller: Fool Us and Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, and is currently headlining in Las Vegas at The Rio. Jillette serves as the act's orator and raconteur.
Penn & Teller: Bullshit! is an American documentary comedy television series hosted by magician and skeptic duo Penn & Teller that aired from 2003 to 2010 on the premium cable channel Showtime.
Exposure in magic refers to the practice of revealing the methods of magic tricks.
Penn & Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour is a 2003 television documentary miniseries starring Penn & Teller. The program was created by the CBC in association with Channel 4 Film. Ric Esther Bienstock was series producer and writer. She also directed the China episode.
Jamy Ian Swiss is an American magician, author, speaker, historian of magic, essayist, book reviewer, and scientific skeptic. He is known for sleight-of-hand with playing cards.
John Max Thompson was an American comedian and Las Vegas illusionist who performed under the stage name The Great Tomsoni with his wife, Pamela Hayes. They had a comedic slapstick act with the well-dressed Thompson and his gum-popping assistant, Pam, performing illusions while enduring a series of mishaps. Within the magician community, Tomsoni was considered a virtuoso, widely known as a mentor and teacher of magic, and a creator of tricks, as opposed to simply a performer. He worked behind the scenes with magicians such as Penn and Teller, Lance Burton, Criss Angel and Mat Franco. In 1999, he was awarded one of the highest honors in the magician community, a Masters Fellowship with the Academy of Magical Arts. January 30, 2020, Showtime released a documentary about Thompson written and directed by Emery Emery called Gambler's Ballad: The Legend of Johnny Thompson.
Michael Carey Goudeau is a juggler and an ex-circus clown who graduated from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. He is a writer and was an executive producer for the Showtime series Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.
Andi Gladwin is a British magician, speaker, and publisher. He has appeared on television, has lectured for magicians throughout the UK, US, and Europe and written/published books on magic. Gladwin is a Member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star and was granted the Maskelyne Literary Award from the prestigious club.
Magic, which encompasses the subgenres of illusion, stage magic, and close-up magic, among others, is a performing art in which audiences are entertained by tricks, effects, or illusions of seemingly impossible feats, using natural means. It is to be distinguished from paranormal magic which are effects claimed to be created through supernatural means. It is one of the oldest performing arts in the world.
Peter Kenneth Wood is a magician and "Collector of the Impossible" based in Maryland.
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Tim's Vermeer is a 2013 documentary film, directed by Teller, produced by his stage partner Penn Jillette and Farley Ziegler, about inventor Tim Jenison's efforts to duplicate the painting techniques of Johannes Vermeer, in order to test his hypothesis that Vermeer painted with the help of optical devices.
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Liang-Shun Lim, known professionally as Shin Lim, is a Canadian-American magician, recognized for his use of card manipulation and sleight of hand. He is known for elaborate close-up card magic routines, during which he remains silent with the tricks set to music. He is self-taught, having learned most of his skills from watching YouTube, and has in turn shared some of his own techniques in videos on the site.
Helen Coghlan is an Australian magician living on the Gold Coast, Queensland.
Teller taught high school Latin for six years before he left to pursue a career in magic with Penn...
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