An Honest Liar (2014)

1. Some people cannot believe that

2. a magician can fool them in such a way

3. that they can't figure it out.

4. But magicians can and magicians do.

5. Swindlers do, con men do, all the time.

6. They're not magicians.

7. They're fakes.

8. They are lying to us, they're deceiving us.

9. It's okay to fool people

10. as long as you're doing that to teach them a lesson

11. which will better their knowledge of how the real world works.

12. No matter how smart or well educated you are,

13. you can be deceived.

14. Tonight, cross-Canada hit parade has challenged the amazing randi,

15. the world's only challenge escape artist,

16. to break out of a straitjacket

17. while hanging from his feet.

18. Are you ready gentlemen?

19. And now here's miss Joyce Hobbes paying tribute to

20. the amazing randi's “magic touch.”

21. J“ you've got that magic touch j“

22. j“ it makes me glow so much j“

23. j“ it casts a spell, it rings a bell j“

24. j“ the magic touch j“

25. j“ oh when I feel your charm j“

26. j“ it's like a four alarm j“

27. j“ you make me thrill so much j“

28. j“ you've got the magic touch j“

29. j“ here I go reeling j“

30. j“ oh, I'm feeling the glow j“

31. j“ but where can I go from you j“

32. j“ I didn't know too much j“

33. j“ and then I felt your touch j“

34. j“ and now I learn I can return j“

35. j“ the magic touch j“

36. - Hello, how are you doing today? - Very well, thank you.

37. Can I bring you something to, uh...

38. Coffee! Oh yes please, for me coffee.

39. - I'll get you coffee in a minute, okay? - Okay.

40. Oh my heartjust started again, that's good.

41. Always a good sign.

42. See, I've always had my battle

43. with the psychics, the so-called -

44. and I use that word in quotations all the time, remember that.

45. People who are stealing money from the public,

46. cheating them and...

47. And misinforming them.

48. That's the kind of thing that I've been fighting all my life.

49. Magicians are the most honest people in the world,

50. they tell you they are going to fool you, and then they do it.

51. Wait a minute, I have to worship here.

52. Okay.

53. James randi is the author of " the faith healers"

54. and he's best known as an investigator of psychic and miraculous claims,

55. would you welcome please, the amazing randi!

56. Here he is! The amazing randi!

57. What did you... Would you tell us who you are?

58. The amazing randi. Ta-da!

59. I was born at a very early age in a log cabin that I helped my father build,

60. by the time I was seven I was eleven, I grew up very fast.

61. I am a magician, I always have been a magician...

62. A conjurer, prestidigitator, iegerdemainist...

63. Liar, cheat charlatan and fake.

64. You're a master magician,

65. some people have said that you're about the greatest escape artist since Houdini.

66. Randi has a real deep natural affection for magic

67. and this love of deception.

68. Agood magician needs to be a little bit of a con man, I think.

69. He needs to be sort of a criminal type, but...

70. Not have enough guts to actually Rob banks.

71. He loves magic. He spent his whole life as a performer, as a magician.

72. So he really resents anyone applying the techniques of magic

73. for any purpose other than entertainment.

74. Especially to convince people that there is something psychic going on here,

75. he thinks that an abomination.

76. Tonight on this stage you are going to meet a man

77. who claims he can move physical objects using only the powers of his mind.

78. Now, you have been touring our country, debunking psychics haven't you?

79. I have indeed. And I think that the solution is rather simple.

80. Now what I have here is particles of a white plastic

81. which will rather conclusively show

82. that Mr. Hydrick is merely

83. blowing on both the page and on the pencil.

84. - James? - Ready.

85. Randi says the public is being ereced, via trickery

86. I am going to tell you what's happening and more to the point

87. this is going to be crusade to try and change the world.

88. If there is something to the paranormal, let's find out what it is, if anything.

89. And on the other hand lets not be taken in by the clap-trap that is being offered us

90. and at our expense.

91. I just ingested six and a half days worth of homeopathic sleeping pills.

92. Why don't they affect me?

93. People say, we” what's the harm, why do you care about this?

94. Then I saw randi's answer, which was,

95. bad ideas can cause you serious damage or death.

96. The psychic surgeons, they operate with their bare hands

97. and profess to remove tumors, malignant tissue without any marks at all.

98. And believe me, the gimmick is so simple

99. you can buy it for 75 cents in a magic shop

100. now what you're about to see is a bare handed operation...

101. His point isn't to tell you that something isn't true.

102. His point is to widen your scope of vision

103. so that you will question the things that happen in front of you.

104. Oh no, that doesn't come out.

105. Some people think that he's very dogmatic.

106. It's always some tired person in a shack some place in Idaho or Iowa

107. or some place like that who gets picked up by extraterrestrials

108. and they have their genitals examined in great detail

109. and they can't wait to get on Oprah to describe it.

110. Gee, I'll bet you don't believe in the tooth fairy or Santa claus either.

111. Well, I'm looking into Santa claus.

112. He's a great storyteller, and like all good storytellers,

113. well, there's probably some information and detail in there

114. that may not be appearing in his version of events.

115. It is, I will say, interesting, that a man who has devoted his whole life

116. to using the tools of deception to uncover real deception

117. has at the center of his life, a... a deception.

118. And welcome to “to tell the truth.” let's meet our next team of challengers.

119. One of these three men pretended to be possessed... by an ancient spirit.

120. Number one, what is your name please.

121. My name is Jose Alvarez.

122. Number two.

123. My name is Jose Alvarez.

124. Number three.

125. My name is Jose Alvarez.

126. Only one of these people is the real Jose Alvarez,

127. and is the only one sworn...

128. To tell the truth!

129. I first met Jose Alvarez

130. in the Fort Lauderdale public library.

131. I offered to explain something about one of the photographs he was looking at.

132. This is the actual flower here for the cactus.

133. - Yes. - The little ones. And look at this...

134. - Yeah, this is fantastic, look at that. - Yeah, we need to spread that around.

135. See this is the one that I cut for the...

136. We end up spending the whole afternoon

137. talking about our mutual interests

138. about space exploration.

139. I remember we looked at books on telescopes,

140. and I told him I had such a telescope at home, the questar.

141. I went back to my friends and I said “I just met

142. this extraordinary man,

143. and I would like to meet with him again.”

144. We were able to go out at night with a tripod

145. and see the moons of Jupiter and all kinds of good things like that,

146. which is always very exciting to show somebody,

147. certainly if it's for the first time.

148. I just got very excited and I said, I need to...

149. I need to be with him more!

150. When I first met randi I wasn't aware

151. of who he was.

152. Okay, tomorrow, don't tell me about tomorrow...

153. And I was there when he won the MacArthur award.

154. The gentleman announced we are calling from the MacArthur committee

155. and he told me that I had won the prize,

156. and I answered in my most intelligible way, ”ah de be da be da be da be.”

157. Then I got a real feel of the kind of impact that he was having culturally.

158. And little by little I started getting more and more involved

159. in the investigation of paranormal activities that randi was doing.

160. And then he asked me to play the character of a fake channeler

161. in a project that we end up working together.

162. This woman is j.Z. Knight. She's also the one they call ramtha,

163. a mystical male spirit 35,000 years old who claims to be divine.

164. Now you must understand that the so-called channelers

165. were claiming that they could contact long dead spirits.

166. Now, not a few hundred years back, no, no. They were much more ambitious than that,

167. - tens of thousands of years ago. - Indeed!

168. And they would speak in funny voices like this!

169. Mmm hmm, god bless you doctor peep/e!

170. All right I'll say, how are this day of your time as you create time to exist.

171. They were very popular. They gave talks, huge prices for the seats.

172. There are often so many people the ramtha organization

173. can earn up to two hundred thousand dollars for a single appearance.

174. And you're my first thirty-five- thousand-year-old guest.

175. It was such nonsense.

176. I can't think of that technical term...

177. Oh yes, bullshit.

178. What she definitely is, is part of what is being called the new age movement.

179. Lots of people believe this is something genuine

180. because they see something on television and they think,

181. "my goodness, surely this journalist would have checked this stuff out."

182. Trauma from a past life sometimes seems to spill over into the present.

183. We are conditioned to believe that things that

184. look like documentaries, but are not factual

185. must be essentially be true or it wouldn't be presented as if it were factual.

186. Hello?

187. The Carlos hoax started when 60 minutes Australia called randi

188. because they wanted to prove that

189. channelers were a hoax.

190. On that phone call randi told them that you couldn't prove that someone who said

191. that they are inhabited by a spirit forty thousand years old is a false claim.

192. What he said to them was,

193. “what we need to do is create one.”

194. His name is Carlos and you've probably seen him on television

195. or mentioned in the press.

196. Carlos is involved in the mystical field of channeling.

197. Carlos, if you believe him, is a spiritual messenger

198. who occupies the body of this 19-year-old puerto rican artist,

199. Jose Alvarez.

200. The Carlos hoax was to show that the media

201. would fall for most of these stunts if they sounded attractive enough,

202. and they wouldn't really investigate too carefully.

203. So, one of the very first things we did to introduce Carlos to the public,

204. we made up the press package

205. that we presented to the Australian press.

206. What trash this is.

207. We even invented newspapers and magazines that never existed.

208. Theatrical magazines particularly, announcing the appearance

209. of the great Carlos at such-and-such a theater that didn't exist.

210. But no one in the media bothered to check up on one of these details.

211. They could have picked up the phone and just checked

212. and they would have found out that they were being deceived.

213. Hello?

214. - It didn't happen.

215. One man who has been making a name for himself here in the United States

216. is now doing the same in Australia.

217. Jose Luis Alvarez is a nineteen year old channeler.

218. By sixty hours after we had arrived,

219. we had eight major TV appearances,

220. headlines in newspapers.

221. Everyone in Australia pretty well knew that Carlos was there.

222. Wooooooo!

223. It will be astronomical... in nature!

224. Frankly, I was just doing it without thinking.

225. Othennise, I wouldn't have been able to do it.

226. Last Sunday the opera house drama theater

227. was packed with a near capacity crowd of five hundred,

228. there to listen to Carlos

229. and to have their questions passed on to him by his disciples.

230. Crystals are fossils... of long ago!

231. I know he's definitely psychic.

232. It's something that I can feel coming from him.

233. I thought it was great. Very sincere I thought.

234. - Do you believe him? - Yeah, I do.

235. The following Sunday, 60 minutes Australia revealed the whole hoax.

236. He billed himself as a man of the supernatural,

237. a man who could do amazing things.

238. And thousands believed him, making him a celebrity.

239. But it was all an elaborate hoax.

240. The most basic fact about Carlos, was that he simply doesn't exist.

241. That's the real teaching of Carlos.

242. But this doesn't even scratch the surface

243. of just what a phony Carlos is.

244. I am Carlos!

245. Though I had just a year or so before this Australian event

246. actually met Jose Alvarez,

247. I was very pleased at what it did for our relationship

248. because it really cemented it pretty well.

249. We decided after that that we sort of belong together.

250. I recognized, I guess a very early age

251. that my feelings were different from those around me.

252. And it was pretty evident to me that that was heavily frowned upon.

253. I perhaps felt like a bit of an outsider.

254. My father only really spoke to me twice in my whole life.

255. Calling me aside, sitting me down and having a discussion.

256. We did that twice during my life, I was surprised both times.

257. I was pretty well educated on my own.

258. The local education system in Toronto, Canada

259. actually allowed me to stay out of grade school,

260. only going in there to take the tests.

261. I was free to wander around Toronto

262. and I found the casino theatre on queen street.

263. I saw the great blackstone advertised.

264. I had never seen a magician before in my whole life.

265. And Harry blackstone walked out on stage

266. and did wonderful things that I had never dreamed could be done.

267. He had this young lady walk out from the side of the stage

268. and he cast her into a trance. And he said,

269. “Princess astra... rise!”

270. She floated up into the air.

271. And I looked very carefully,

272. and I could not see any means whereby she could be suspended in the air

273. and caused to move in the air!

274. That was wonderful, I was transfixed.

275. How could the man do such a thing?

276. I determined at that moment that I was going to become

277. a professional magician.

278. And so at 17 I decided I wouldn't graduate from high school,

279. I left home and I joined the carnival.

280. I never went home again.

281. Now is it possible that I could have drawn anything on there?

282. Do you want to take one more look? Take one more look,

283. there's nothing in there whatsoever except a crushed piece of chalk, right?

284. Now before you open up the slates,

285. what was the word that you looked at in the book?

286. - Would you mind telling us. - Mackerel.

287. I was doing, well, so-called mind-reading tricks and such,

288. psychic tricks so to speak.

289. It's been in your hands all this time, right?

290. - I assume so. - All right then, would you open the slates

291. and see what the spirits have brought us in the way of a message.

292. Don't tell her how it was done.

293. When I introduced myself as a magician,

294. I used to say to my audience: "Good evening,

295. my name is the great Randall.

296. I am a liar, a cheat and a charlatan.

297. I will blatantly lie to you,

298. but for purposes of entertainment only of course.

299. And those lies may not be discernible from the truth.

300. Randi had this sense of trying to be bigger than life.

301. And the easiest way to be bigger than yourself

302. is to lie.

303. I was 21 years of age when I predicted the outcome of that year's world series.

304. And it was good for me, it moved me up a peg.

305. But it also had some fall out.

306. People would stop me in the street, literally,

307. and start to ask personal questions, family questions and such

308. that they thought I could answer,

309. and even offering me money to predict whether

310. the husband that the girl had chosen was the right one...

311. That was quite a comeuppance for me because I realized

312. you know, people really do believe this nonsense.

313. Mentalism can be a deal with the devil.

314. It's an incredibly seductive feeling

315. for someone to imbue you with that power.

316. It's a very tempting thing.

317. Then you have to make a decision.

318. Are you the sort of person that will look someone in the eye,

319. and even though you have got no idea what their future holds,

320. you're prepared to tell them something that isn't true,

321. that may harm them,

322. just to move money from their wallet into yours.

323. You do not have that influence and power as a magician.

324. You have it the moment you deny you're a magician.

325. I know that surge of power that you feel

326. when you use a cheap trick

327. to manipulate someone else into thinking you have powers that you don't have.

328. And I think it's very much to the good of the world

329. that when randi felt that power, he backed away from it.

330. And out of that feeling of that power,

331. came a rage.

332. I want now to introduce uri geller.

333. He's been denounced by some people as a magician,

334. and certainly he's a showman.

335. He gives demonstrations all over the United States.

336. Ladies and gentlemen, uri geller.

337. They said his name was uri geller.

338. The name didn't mean a thing to me.

339. He's come to the attention of Stanford research institute,

340. and the scientists there are apparently quite convinced

341. that he has psychic powers.

342. What I do is um, telepathy...

343. And that is, as everybody knows, is receiving thoughts and uh,

344. passing thoughts.

345. And then I have the other power which I,

346. which I read that they call pyschokinesis.

347. And that is moving or bending or breaking objects.

348. It's cracking I feel it under my fingers.

349. See how gently it goes.

350. Look it's like it's becoming like plastic.

351. It's breaking... it's breaking.

352. You can... if, look, it's very...

353. In 1972, I got a call from colonel Austin kibler of the defense department,

354. then acting head ofarpa as it was called,

355. advanced research projects agency.

356. He says could you drop everything you're doing

357. and go to the Stanford research institute.

358. There's a psychic down there,

359. and if he can do what they claim he can do, we ought to be involved.

360. Because the Russians have a big program now going,

361. using what they call psyop warfare.

362. This film describes a five-week investigation

363. conducted at Stanford research institute

364. with uri geller, a young Israeli.

365. Here we present a case of a double blind experiment

366. in which someone places an object

367. into a can chosen at random from ten aluminum cans.

368. Geller's task now is to determine

369. which of these ten cans holds the steel ball bearing.

370. Now targ and putoff, the two scientists

371. who were in residence there at the time, were quite a pair.

372. First of all, targ is legally blind.

373. And, uh, he was one of the observers.

374. Duh!

375. He has made his choice, the steel ball is found.

376. He fooled the pants off them, it was astonishing.

377. They saw nobel prizes on the horizon,

378. because if you do discover there really were psychic powers

379. that would certainly bring you a nobel prize or two.

380. In this case, geller guessed that a four was showing,

381. and he was quite pleased to have guessed correctly.

382. When I made my report to the government that geller was...

383. A complete fraud,

384. targ and puthoff realized they were not going to get money from the government,

385. so they took geller on a tour to get publicity for him

386. and to raise some private money to do their research with him.

387. I've been reading a lot of research on him from the Stanford research institute

388. and from science section of the New York times.

389. A lot of publicity on this gentleman whose name is uri, u-r-I uri geller.

390. Ah, and we hope we're going to see some rather astounding things tonight.

391. Would you welcome please, uri geller.

392. Johnny Carson was the man. Everybody watched that program on nbc,

393. and since I had been on the program many, many times,

394. they asked if I could come into California to appear on the show that night.

395. And I said, boy this is rather short notice,

396. but I will talk to your prop man.

397. And I'll tell the prop man how he can prepare the props and such in such a way

398. that if it's real, geller can do it.

399. But if it's a fake, geller won't be able to do it.

400. Are you feeling in the mood yet?

401. - Huh? More questions? - All right, lets...

402. What's the capital of south Dakota?

403. No, um... I don't mean to pressure you.

404. Ok, uh, let me see.

405. I said okay, what I would like you to do with the little aluminum film cans

406. is I would like you to coat them on the bottom with rubber cement.

407. Don't glue them down to the tray, just coat the bottoms and let them dry.

408. When they're put on the tray, they won't skid, then.

409. I said because the way he does the film can thing is he rotates the tray

410. and he sees which ones move differently.

411. We'll start eliminating the ones that do not have the water.

412. Without touching them.

413. He is really suspicious, you know. I am having a hard time with you.

414. Okay I don't mean to be uri, I really don't.

415. Just keep looking.

416. - Okay, let me rest a little, alright? - Alright.

417. They actually shut down the set

418. for 20 minutes or so

419. while he hemmed and hawed and wondered how he was going to do something,

420. then they came back to the live audience after a big long commercial break.

421. All right, we are back. Uri was telling me you don't feel what, strong tonight?

422. I don't feel strong...

423. Geller had to give the whole thing up.

424. It was a real failure for him, definite failure.

425. Because Carson's people had followed the instructions that I gave them.

426. - Don't be disappointed. I'm not... - Okay.

427. We thought he didn't have a future.

428. And we were wrong! Very, very wrong,

429. we didn't know how wrong we were!

430. Try to make a boy scout knot.

431. - Really heave on it now. - There we are.

432. That doesn't feel very tight, put another knot on top of that would you please?

433. Just one more to make sure. I don't want it to fall off around my ankles.

434. What did I ever do to you? Why do you hate me so much?

435. Now I'm going to see if I can take this rope off,

436. it may take me a while, but I'll see how fast I can do it.

437. Would you time me please? Do you have a watch there, just look at your watch.

438. - Uh, yeah. - How about you, you got a watch?

439. I have one. It took, ah, two and a half seconds.

440. I think I deserve a large round of applause for that.

441. One of randi's great heroes is Harry Houdini,

442. and the life of Harry Houdini reads very similar to the life of James randi.

443. Starting out as an amazing magician and escape artist,

444. he was a great showman and debunker and

445. dedicated his life to keeping people from being duped.

446. Well the thought naturally occurred to me

447. that I could base a good deal of my life on Harry Houdini and his adventures

448. perhaps do some of the things that he had done, and perhaps even improve on them.

449. - Open sesame, try that. - Open sesame.

450. Oh, look at it!

451. The door is opening!

452. I wanted to break his records

453. I wanted to stay in a sealed metal coffin longer than he did,

454. get out of a straight jacket faster than he did.

455. Out of chains, out of leg irons and handcuffs.

456. I said if a man could make it, I could break it.

457. There was nothing he couldn't get out of.

458. Or make it at least seem like he was getting out of them.

459. The clock is still going, he has established a world's record.

460. In some cases two hundred feet of rope wrapped up in a chair on stage.

461. You just hope that the theater doesn't catch fire because

462. they're likely to leave you behind to fry.

463. But it's when some of the things like

464. hanging over Niagara Falls in a straightjacket at 20 below zero,

465. that gets your attention.

466. J“ billion dollar babies... j“

467. j“ ohhh billion... j“

468. in '73 with billion dollar babies we said this whole album is about extravagance,

469. so take it to the next level,

470. let's use illusion.

471. If you're going to get your head cutoff,

472. it can be scary and funny at the same time,

473. but it's gotta be professional.

474. So you go to the best guy, and amazing randi was the best guy.

475. Now I had never heard of Alice Cooper.

476. I assumed it was a woman, you see,

477. silly me!

478. And I said, yeah, this might be fun.

479. He really starts to become kind of a pop-culture figure.

480. All the way to... happy days!

481. Good afternoon gentlemen, I am the amazing randi.

482. Hey, the amazing randi!

483. My appearance on happy days really did a lot for my career.

484. Fonzie, thanks a lot. You really saved the day.

485. Are you kidding? Whoa.

486. - Heyyy-

487. - see ya! - Yeah, hang in there.

488. This is show business. The showmanship.

489. That's one respect in which I based a good deal of my efforts

490. on what Houdini had done.

491. He had done it by trial and error,

492. and I benefitted from his example.

493. This actually was invented more than half a century ago

494. by the late, great, Harry Houdini.

495. I was asked to do a show honoring Harry Houdini.

496. I am going to immerse myself inside the can,

497. my body will displace some of the water,

498. the water will be filled right to the very top and the lid will be locked on.

499. And I was going to do the milk can.

500. Now this is rehearsal, maybe 20 minutes before airtime.

501. And I tried to perform the escape.

502. I couldn't get out of the milk can.

503. Something had jammed and I heard a crackling noise.

504. Turned out it was a couple of my vertebrae that had been chipped.

505. And the pain was rather considerable to say the least.

506. I was in deep trouble.

507. I knew that if! Panicked I would - I'd be dead, that's all there is to it.

508. So you don't panic.

509. I had to let myself sink back into the water, I was in a bit of trouble.

510. Finally I heard the noises that they were undoing the padlocks.

511. I roared up out of the water, there I was, I had been saved.

512. It was a close call.

513. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the amazing randi!

514. I came back from the hospital and I was introduced

515. down near the end of the show on a stretcher.

516. I have just returned from the hospital and they tell me

517. that I have a double compression fracture of the vertebrae,

518. and it's not something I recommend you undertake as a hobby.

519. It wasn't a great blow to me.

520. And I was at the point where

521. I thought that maybe it was time to get out of this business.

522. Randi probably coulda kept doing it for a while.

523. I remember him saying to me, “you know there comes a point

524. you just don't want to see a little old guy getting out of a can.”

525. I heard that this gonna be the last escape, you through with it.

526. Yes, the last straightjacket escape, certainly.

527. I may do some jail escapes and a few things like that,

528. but I'm going to leave that stunt to the younger people.

529. Oh yeah. How old are you?

530. I'm 55 now and it's time to get out of that business.

531. I think it gave him the opportunity to focus full time

532. on what he regarded

533. as the bigger, better targets.

534. In the name of Jesus!

535. Everybody with a bone disease,

536. everybody with a back infirmity, misplaced vertebraes,

537. bring them right down over here to the side.

538. Did you ever feel anything like this,

539. it's like warm liquid fire flowing over this whole building!

540. Oh, thank you Jesus.

541. Oh, god. Let her go, that's the power of the holy spirit.

542. During the '80s, the faith healing racket was very, very prominent

543. literally all over the world.

544. Let his leg begin to grow, heal the disk. There it's coming...

545. In the name of Jesus.

546. I did a lot of investigation,

547. I visited a lot of these tent shows as we called them

548. and we didn't see any evidence of healing taking place whatsoever.

549. But I was particularly obsessed with Peter popoff.

550. You've got cancer of the stomach?

551. Are you ready for god to burn that cancer out?

552. A man like reverend Peter popoff, was a very dangerous man.

553. In my estimation; He was a real scoundrel.

554. Because he was taking people's faith in their religion,

555. he was taking away their security.

556. In many cases he was harming them physically because he was convincing them

557. that they didn't have to go to doctors anymore,

558. that Jesus had healed them.

559. If you've got pills,

560. as an act of faith I want you to just throw em out in the isles.

561. Those of you up on the balcony, just throw them over the side, amen.

562. Throw them over the side, throw them over the side.

563. So you have popoff, who's going around a congregation

564. and just seemed to be able to hear the voice of god and know all about people,

565. even their addresses, he would call it out, everyone's impressed.

566. Is that... John? 3784 archwood road?

567. God is burning those blood clots out of his veins, out of his arteries...

568. Jesus! There it is...

569. So he was doing a mentalism act it appeared

570. and we wondered how he got the information.

571. So randi was coming to town,

572. and he said, "would you like to come see

573. this evangelist by the name of Peter popoff,

574. and uh, he's supposedly really well known, and he's going to be downtown

575. and he's going to be doing this whole revival thing

576. and thousands of people will be there." And I said,

577. "yeah, I'd love to come."

578. Is it Ruby, Ruby Harris?

579. So, I'm sitting there with randi and there's thousands of people.

580. Come on up here Ruby!

581. Here she comes!

582. They believe this man has a connection with their god

583. and he can actually heal them.

584. Yes! Yes! Yes!

585. Now listen, I'm going to tell her what's wrong with her,

586. but I'm not going to tell it out loud because it's confidential.

587. How many of you believe the holy spirit's a gentleman?

588. I realized at that moment, something big is going on here.

589. This is a lot more than I thought it was.

590. - Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!

591. God's gonna burn 'em out right now, here they go!

592. Here they go - right now, Jesus!

593. And I have to tell you, it was an absolutely amazing experience, because

594. the emotions that you're feeling when there are people up there

595. who are in tears...

596. Right now Jesus! Ah, hallelujah! He's not gonna need...

597. Who are shaking and you've got this entire energy going throughout this room.

598. It does something to you, even as a skeptic. It truly does something to you.

599. Oh hallelujah, get up on your feet, lets walk!

600. There is no pain, no pain! Twelve years, there's no pain!

601. Look at that! There he goes!

602. There he goes, hallelujah!

603. Ohhh, praise god!

604. How many of you know that burns the devil up?

605. After a while you know, I'm sitting there and

606. after some of the emotion had died down in me,

607. popoff said, "I need people to come down to collect money” for him

608. and basically he had 15 buckets

609. and I'm supposed to go around the auditorium and collect cash.

610. God is touching that thyroid condition right now.

611. These people were throwing like fives, tens, twenties

612. because one of the things popoff always tells them,

613. "whatever you give, you'll get back ten fold."

614. So if you put a dollar in, hey you're going to get ten bucks.

615. You put a hundred bucks in,

616. you're going to get a lot more money back. And these people truly believed this.

617. Here it comes, complete healing in Jesus — whoo!

618. You foul spirit of deafness take your hands off this woman in Jesus' name.

619. Lord let these ears be open! There it is.

620. And as I get up close, I notice in his ear,

621. that there's an earpiece, there's no earhole.

622. It's a little piece of plastic in there

623. and I come back to randi and I said, “I think I know what's going on.”

624. I said what's up?

625. He said, "he's wearing a hearing aid, in his left ear."

626. Now, a man who heals the deaf,

627. you wouldn't think would be wearing a hearing aid.

628. How do I sound now?

629. - Loud. - Loud.

630. At that point I realized we needed some technical help

631. so I enlisted the aid of a private investigator named Alec Jason.

632. Stand by.

633. And... action.

634. One day randi called me

635. and suggested that Peter popoff was using radio transmissions,

636. but they couldn't really figure out how it was done

637. and they wanted to know if I could intercept it or detect it.

638. I said, I certainly couldn't guarantee it. Less than fifty-fifty,

639. maybe, you know, twenty-five percent.

640. We knew that popoff had a "service" as he called it,

641. happening in San Francisco and we figured we'd better be there.

642. Do you support Peter's ministry financially?

643. Every dime I can, yeah.

644. What brings you here today?

645. Well I'm expecting a miracle. Physical healing.

646. The day of the event I dressed as a security guard.

647. Complete uniform - badge, shirt, radio, keys...

648. Everything.

649. I'm not a security guard; I just look like one, part of my cover.

650. And... I was nervous.

651. I appeared in disguise as Adam jersin.

652. And if you put those words together and mix them up, they spell James randi.

653. So I went down a corridor and that's where I set up my equipment.

654. It was sort of concealed, it was in bags.

655. So I have my scanner going

656. and it's looking for new frequencies, anything new that's not there normally.

657. Get ready...

658. Get ready. Praise god.

659. Suddenly on the scanner one of the lights came on

660. saying there is a signal and the scanner has stopped at that frequency.

661. And I hear what I realize are now... Footsteps.

662. High heel footsteps on a hard surface.

663. How many of you believe it's all right to praise the lord!

664. And then I hear someone coming closer and closer to the microphone

665. and a woman's voice said, “hello petey..

666. “Hello petey... can you hear me?

667. If you can't, you're in trouble... ”

668. Yes!

669. They were using a radio frequency, lfound it!

670. In the name of Jesus...

671. Jodi Dean. Jodi Dean.

672. Is it Jodi? Jodi?

673. Dean? Jodi Dean?

674. No, she should be right there on your right side.

675. Here it comes.

676. Okay, she lives at 4267 Masterson.

677. 4267 Masterson? I can see the angels of god all around your house.

678. Rosa?

679. - Cameer. - Is it cameer?

680. You been taking a lot of medication?

681. She's there with her son kipper and he has a lump in his chest.

682. Waitjust a minute, who's kipper?

683. He's got a lump in his chest.

684. You want god to melt it right now? Kipper, stand-up,

685. god's gonna burn that thing out right now.

686. They'd filled out prayer request forms saying

687. I have cancer or I have this problem or that problem.

688. So she's giving that information directly to popoff

689. and then he's reciting that information as if he's getting it from god.

690. Martha zacorski...

691. Is it Martha, is it zacorski?

692. - Weldon krabb - is it weldon...

693. - Krabb. - Krabb?

694. - Peggy white. - Peggy white?

695. - 1305 celono. - 1305 celono?

696. - Turn over to the left. - Hallelujah!

697. There you go. She's had a hysterectomy, she can't take hormones.

698. He's got kidney and eye problems.

699. You want god to touch your kidneys? Now let that ear open!

700. In the name the lord — Right now Jesus!

701. Power of the holy ghost! Here it comes in Jesus - devil back off!

702. And the bondage is broken!

703. Woo! In the name of Jesus!

704. You foul spirit!

705. I thought I'm getting out of here now.

706. So I packed everything up, I turned the equipment off,

707. took my bags and walked down the stairs, outside to the cool air.

708. My heart's pounding now because I've got the goods.

709. Not only did we have the evidence we needed,

710. we had more than what we needed.

711. We had it.

712. So I went on the Johnny Carson show

713. and when the revelation came and you heard mrs popoff's voice

714. hello petey, can you hear me? If you can't you're in trouble...

715. Johnny suddenly realized what the gimmick was and he said,

716. "oh shit."

717. It turns out that god's frequency - I didn't know that he used radio,

718. is 39.170 megahertz,

719. and god is a woman obviously, and sounds exactly like popoff's wife, Elizabeth.

720. - Has he seen this tape at all? - No, he does not know about this

721. - until this very moment. - Interesting.

722. I can't imagine what it would be like to maintain a life

723. where your living and your well-being of you and your family

724. depends upon you lying every single day.

725. I think that they believe that there is some way what they are doing is good,

726. and that there's some moral compass

727. that they've invented that allows them to do this.

728. A double portion of god's power!

729. Well we did it. We had exposed this man

730. on probably the most popular television show of the day.

731. And he announced bankruptcy shortly after that.

732. Oh glory to god!

733. Ok, we'll take a break, we'll be right back.

734. Oh ok, I'll see what I can do, alright, here we go.

735. Wait, I'll do a Jackie gleason here.

736. Yeah, I don't know, hmm.

737. I'll do a plié at the bar okay?

738. Oh no, I don't bend that way anymore.

739. It has been said many times when you're in love you want to tell the world.

740. Maybe it will work, I don't know.

741. And James randi is in love with the truth.

742. The so-called psychics and the other charlatans

743. are making money at our expense

744. and we have to bear some of the blame for it

745. so let's get to work and do something about it.

746. I'll take two eight-by-tens.

747. The man that puts the fear of god into all those psychics,

748. the amazing randi!

749. James randi isn't just about being skeptical of the paranormal.

750. He is about promoting a scientific worldview.

751. Science has created and shaped much of the world in which we live.

752. But constant vigilance can never be relaxed.

753. You want people to be educated,

754. you want to go out and shake these people and say,

755. “listen to me, listen to me."

756. The million dollar challenge is real ladies and gentlemen.

757. Why is there not a line-up outside this organization right now on the street?

758. Why isn't uri geller here?

759. Really pull, come on, make it tight.

760. Ok, I need... I need this chair,

761. sir, would you take the chair and pull it up front?

762. - I got an old one! - First edition. Yes!

763. There we go.

764. The amount that he travels and the amount of people that he engages with,

765. he has genuinely changed thousands and thousands of people's lives

766. by opening their eyes.

767. I've got to bring my camera down here and get some shots of it too.

768. Just to make Jose crazy.

769. Is he on your mind?

770. Always, every minute.

771. Every minute, because he's not here.

772. Sometimes I think what an odd couple we make.

773. He's very rational, and very much driven,

774. by um, the skeptic thinking and all of that.

775. And sometimes I feel I'm a little bit or a lot of the opposite.

776. And somehow we have managed to build a life together.

777. And I like it. I like the fact that we are completely opposites.

778. Randi's always been supportive of my career and my persona.

779. All the way through. From the moment we met up to now.

780. It's just an amazing...

781. No pun intended — life, being with him.

782. I cannot imagine my life without him.

783. Okay, so just let me knowas soon as you ahh... leave the airport.

784. Okay, bye.

785. He said they are waiting for luggage.

786. People find it funny that I call him amazing.

787. But I like to call him amazing.

788. I'm a bit tired, you know that?

789. Oh, it's so good to be back.

790. So good to have you back, amazing.

791. - Good to be here after all that travel. - Good to have you back amazing.

792. - Now I gotta show you something. - Yes.

793. As you can see, I got a new cane.

794. Yes, oh!

795. Yes, and you've got to get the full effect of it now, you're ready?

796. Okay let me see. That's pretty awesome, amazing.

797. This was given to me by cicap and massimo.

798. Oh, oh, nice.

799. Oh, I rememberthis place, yeah. We used to live here.

800. - We are cute aren't we? - Yup, we are.

801. - It's a good picture. - I love that picture.

802. This is the guy that left his home at 17 to join a circus.

803. And go through all the crazy stories

804. that he has lived.

805. Ooh, the inside of this one is icky.

806. Well then take it out.

807. No, no. There's lots that can be saved here.

808. No, no, no, no.

809. Yes.

810. I'll take it out later then.

811. You probably will.

812. It's quite an amazing ride and I just feel

813. very privileged to have been part of it.

814. Once more, let me hold it here gently.

815. I'm not even touching it and it's...

816. Look it, you see, it's plastic.

817. When geller was on the tonight show

818. and randi had helped Johnny set it up

819. such that he would not be able to perform his tricks,

820. it sure looked like that was the end of geller's career.

821. Over, done, three strikes and you're out - gone!

822. No! Two days later he's on the merv Griffin show.

823. And all I'm saying is bend, bend, bend.

824. Ok, look, can you see it?

825. I mean, it's bent, you know.

826. - That is a very bent key. - Now what happens,

827. it's an energy that leaves my mind, nothing to do with my finger,

828. penetrates the metal and alters the molecular structure.

829. Now instead of bend, I say to the broken watches, "work!"

830. 1, 2, 3 — work!

831. Work! Just a second. It's working!

832. Oh my goodness, it's working.

833. Your mother's watch is working. Is that like a miracle?

834. They all started, they're working!

835. The “I am not a crook watch.”

836. First of all, I was born with this. When I was four years old I was eating soup,

837. and that's four years old, and suddenly the spoon started bending in my hands!

838. Now geller probably became the first superstar psychic

839. to be apparently accepted by science and by scientists.

840. Uri has subjected himself or has been subjected to some scientific study,

841. what they call cheat-proof, under rigid controlled conditions.

842. I want to tell you this, that this is not a trick!

843. These are scientists who are putting their whole life at stake

844. in validating these powers.

845. Randi was very upset by geller's using trickery to deceive scientists.

846. He thought that that was very immoral.

847. And he felt that this was a prostitution of his beloved magic.

848. Randi you've been going around the country,

849. somewhat as Houdini used to in the past, trying to debunk

850. those who say that it's psychic power, you say it's magic.

851. - This is my house key. - Mmm hmm.

852. Uri geller took it, he went like this with it,

853. with his finger that's all. No pressure.

854. And the key bent, you can see that.

855. And I've carried it around because I found that I am a believer now.

856. Here is my identical key. Touch it and make it bend.

857. Would you hold the end of it very lightly in between your fingers, Barbara.

858. And I'm just going to stroke it,

859. now I'm not putting enough pressure on it to bend it.

860. - No. - Okay.

861. Will you show it to the camera please.

862. Now is it as bent as much as this key or not?

863. Awww!

864. Are you going to keep this key too, Barbara?

865. In one way I almost followed geller around the country because

866. if he appeared on some major show,

867. I simply went on the show and did his same routine.

868. Bend.

869. Now when mr geller does this he says "bend."

870. I don't say that, I say "broccoli."

871. Because it's a simple conjuring trick

872. that used to be on the back of the cornflake boxes when I was a kid.

873. - Ooh! - Heaven's to Betsy, look at that.

874. Would you say that key is bent?

875. I decided to write a book about him. I wrote a book,

876. “the truth about uri geller,”

877. that hit the market when the interest in geller was at its peak.

878. The psychokinetic energy melts the molecular structure of the metal.

879. It seems to be... oh my.

880. - I want it to bend, I just say bend. - Oh my god!

881. Randi and gellerjust went back and forth like gladiators,

882. it was fun to watch.

883. Can you do the spoon-bending trick?

884. Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?

885. And there's no heat at all - touch it.

886. They wrote that I have laser beams in my buckle belt,

887. and with that I bend keys, yes!

888. Look at this. You can actually see it bending over and turning liquid,

889. right in front of your eyes.

890. These things used to be on the back of cornflake boxes Larry,

891. but apparently some scientists either don't eat cornflakes

892. or they don't read the back of the box.

893. This is my trademark,

894. and you will not find it on any cereal box.

895. - How did you do that? - Very well I thought.

896. It's slight of hand. To explain the tricks to you would give you one solution, but

897. - it wouldn't give you all of the solutions. - In many cases,

898. if not most cases, I simply went on the show and did his same routine.

899. But then I would get the emcee sometimes saying,

900. “oh yes, well it's all very well for magicians to do this,

901. but Mr. Geller doesn't use magic tricks.”

902. But what about people who do come up with the cards...

903. Do you hear the times they don't come up with them?

904. Do you know that uri geller did a hundred tests with sealed envelopes.

905. You think this is all fake?

906. What is the difference between what I did and what uri geller did?

907. Is, uh... because, uh...

908. Well, I guess I really don't have a... a... a real answer.

909. Because magicians can duplicate some of these things with trickery

910. does not mean that genuine psychics do it with trickery.

911. Anyone can imitate the Mona Lisa,

912. but that does not make them Leonardo DaVinci.

913. - You people remember that. - Got that in mind.

914. Magicians say, no, nonsense, I duped the scientists,

915. they say I fooled them.

916. They always find loopholes.

917. I challenge them and tell them, look,

918. why don't you go and do it in a laboratory the way I was tested.

919. My opinion has always been

920. that parapsychologists, no matter how well funded,

921. would not be able to properlyjudge

922. where someone has set out to purposefully deceive them.

923. And I had come to the conclusion

924. that the only way to show them would be to perpetrate an outright hoax

925. by introducing some tricksters into the laboratory that I knew I could trust.

926. I read randi's book “the truth about uri geller,”

927. and, umm from that book I was able to put methods together

928. for bending objects myself,

929. and I created many of my own methods, to the point where kids in high school

930. were stealing silvennare and bringing it to me to bend.

931. And I got so good at it that I'm not sure why, but I wrote randi a letter

932. and I said look,

933. if you ever need a kid to try to fool scientists, I'd be happy to do so.

934. After I read "the magic of uri geller" and got to be pretty proficient

935. as a “psychic metal bender” myself,

936. I took it upon myself to reach out to James randi.

937. Oh Michael, you must be a psychic.

938. I'm causing that to twist 180 degrees, just like that.

939. Very shortly after, a very substantial amount of money had been offered

940. to a university to do parapsychological tests.

941. Maclab was funded by James mcdonnell

942. and he said “go out and find me some star subjects.”

943. And that job fell to a scientist called Peter Phillips.

944. We were told that there were three hundred applicants.

945. And the maclab ended up focusing on only two subjects:

946. Myself, and Steve Shaw.

947. At that point project Alpha was ready to take off.

948. I fly into Saint Louis, and we didn't know what we were getting into.

949. We didn't know if they were going to have one-way mirrors

950. with cameras hidden behind them.

951. We had absolutely no clue what it was we were getting into.

952. I was 17 years old. It was my first semester as a senior in high school.

953. I'm about to pull some basic magic

954. on some people that should be very well skilled

955. and could very likely see through this quickly.

956. I might have stepped in a little bit over my head at that time.

957. I'm Peter Phillips and here with me is Mark shafer.

958. The tape that you're about to see consists of a series of episodes

959. suggestive of psychokinesis.

960. The subjects in these experiments are two men of about 21, me and ss.

961. They presented themselves to us originally as psychic metal-benders.

962. I wrote to professor Phillips in order to advise him

963. on how he should observe the Alpha kids.

964. As a matter of fact, I sent him a list of eleven rules

965. in order to keep control of an experiment.

966. Don't allow the subjects to alter the rules established for the tests.

967. Don't accept excuses like, "the vibrations aren't right" or "I don't feel right.”

968. And above all...

969. You need a professional magician to keep you straightened out

970. on what might be trickery!

971. It was very quickly though that Steve and I tried to, almost line byline,

972. get them to violate every one of those caveats in one way, shape or form.

973. Mike, sitting to your right and dressed in white

974. has just picked up a spoon that he will attempt to influence.

975. One of randi's caveats was, Mark every item with an indelible Mark

976. or a scratch that couldn't be replicated.

977. Something that was permanent and it was something that we couldn't

978. duplicate on the spot.

979. The parapsychologists, in their infinite wisdom,

980. decided that they would simply use paper tags with string.

981. - Can I get this tag off here? - Sure, sure, slide it off.

982. We took these paper hanging tags off of the spoons

983. to make them easier to work with.

984. As everybody was focusing on one spoon

985. it was a simple matter to lean on the control spoon,

986. and later, switch those two tags

987. so the control spoon looked like the experimental spoon.

988. Yeah, it's markedly different, of course it is!

989. It just went down instead of up.

990. - It didn't feel like a thing... - Like anything at all, but there it is.

991. We truly believed that if scientists went in with a pro-biased opinion,

992. and the majority of the parapsychologists were doing just that,

993. they would not use proper science.

994. And if we could replicate

995. what geller and sr! Had done in essence, in terms of

996. establish scientific protocol on testing a psychic,

997. we could undermine geller's claims of being deemed legitimate by scientists.

998. We have been working first of all, to establish

999. the range of abilities that Mike and Steve have

1000. because these have apparently included

1001. being able to move small solid objects across a table top,

1002. influencing a variety of metal objects

1003. such as keys and metal bars and metal rods.

1004. Sometimes touching and sometimes at a distance,

1005. and also influencing photographic film.

1006. We were trying to get the parapsychologists

1007. to break their own rules.

1008. We were then informing randi of the ways that we were beating the tests.

1009. Randi in turn was then communicating back to the maclab

1010. how to safeguard their tests so that we couldn't beat them any longer.

1011. Needless to say, it got very complicated

1012. as we were forced to become more and more resourceful.

1013. Another device designed to illicit pk. In a visible manner

1014. was a light-weight rotor that was mounted atop a thin metal spindle

1015. under a glass dome.

1016. One of the tests was a spindle with a small rotor on top

1017. that had a glass dome that fit over the top of this to protect it.

1018. Ourjobs were to try to move that rotor

1019. without obviously removing the glass dome.

1020. I thought that that was a pretty good test.

1021. It's connected to the base real well.

1022. I really was stumped.

1023. Then I look over to the side of the room and Steve was concentrating on the rotor.

1024. And the rotor starts to move.

1025. Here you see Steve influencing the rotor.

1026. He's causing it to rotate clockwise.

1027. And they said well, to make sure there's no air currents or anything like that,

1028. can you make it move to the right.

1029. So I start concentrating and slowly it starts reversing and it goes to the right.

1030. I had no idea how he was getting this to work.

1031. And if you look carefully, the rotor is moving counter-clockwise.

1032. So Mike turns to me and he says,

1033. "hey, would you like to go get a drink at the machine?”

1034. Now I know what he wants. I know he wants to know how I just did this.

1035. So I go with him down there, and he says,

1036. "Steve, how the heck did you just do that?"

1037. And I said, Mike, after all these hours of sitting in that room and concentrating,

1038. I just found out that I'm really a psychic!

1039. I think I promptly threw him against the wall at that point and wanted to know.

1040. And it turned out it was a very simple deception.

1041. Shortly after that hallway conversation,

1042. both of us could magically make the rotor move any direction that we wanted to

1043. and the maclab personnel never caught on.

1044. I don't believe that they're tricking us,

1045. especially based on the research that we'd done in the last year,

1046. where we have exerted as tight a control condition as we could think of,

1047. even in consultation with magicians to see if the influence holds up.

1048. And we have found evidence that it does.

1049. Not as strongly under these controlled conditions.

1050. It's as if somehow, the extra controls seem to, uh, inhibit it,

1051. but still an effect persists.

1052. Over the course of Alpha, the controls did get significantly tougher.

1053. And the tighter the controls got, the lower the results got,

1054. but their faith in us never diminished.

1055. We do not claim that this tape provides

1056. incontrovertible evidence of p.K.

1057. We regard it rather as a provisional tape,

1058. imperfect, but still with much to offer.

1059. It was over a four-year period, it was about 180 hours total

1060. that we were at the maclab.

1061. And after all those years of convincing people that I was a genuine psychic,

1062. I had a huge doubt about what we were doing

1063. and how it was going to affect these people,

1064. and it came about when there was a BBC producer.

1065. Guy by the name of Tony Edwards

1066. who said he wanted to capture our abilities on tape.

1067. We had taken him from a point where he was an utter skeptic,

1068. we had then gotten him,

1069. by getting to know him and demonstrating our abilities off-camera,

1070. to become a believer.

1071. Randi gave him the same eleven caveats that he had given the maclab,

1072. the difference was Tony took a look at those and said,

1073. "ok, I'm going to follow these.

1074. Because I want to convince randi, and if I can convince randi,

1075. I can convince the rest of the world.”

1076. We were all trying to record that elusive bend.

1077. As witnesses, a conjurer, two metallurgists,

1078. and three simultaneously recording TV cameras,

1079. conditions the benders were happy to accept.

1080. After six hours recording, nothing.

1081. Dammit.

1082. We sat there all day with Tony.

1083. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing happened during the day.

1084. The moment the cameras went off at the end of the day,

1085. we bent everything in the laboratory, absolutely everything.

1086. It's almost as if he had the holy grail in his fingertips

1087. and he let it drop.

1088. Tony Edwards lost it.

1089. He started screaming, started crying, ranting, raving.

1090. "Randi's the devil. It's randi's fault that I couldn't get this on this tape!

1091. I shouldn't have listened to randi.

1092. I shouldn't have followed randi's advice, it's his fault!"

1093. The man had a mental breakdown.

1094. It was scary for two young kids to realize that we had hurt somebody like that.

1095. And it was at that point I think Steve and I realized we can't do this anymore.

1096. We can't be responsible for this kind of psychological damage

1097. by our ability to trick somebody.

1098. Randi said, “it's just a couple more months, we have this TV show coming up,

1099. and that's when we want to tell the world that you're not real."

1100. Randi, he's really the general,

1101. you know the general's rarely on the front lines anyway.

1102. And sometimes he's sending his minions to do his good works.

1103. But always at a distance, he's the one at the strategy table.

1104. He's got the vision for what will come.

1105. The big day comes, the one that Mike and I have been waiting for,

1106. we're going to reveal that everything is a hoax.

1107. I am going to ask these two gentlemen a very simple direct question.

1108. Can you tell us, how do you do it?

1109. As I walked up to the microphone I said, "its very simple."

1110. Well, to be quite honest,

1111. we cheat.

1112. And the flash bulbs started going off

1113. and the murmurs started up nside of the audience,

1114. and Steve and I then at that point admitted

1115. that project Alpha and us as psychics

1116. was nothing more than a bit of illusion.

1117. Magician amazing randi, you have him now on the phone.

1118. Go ahead, you have the last word.

1119. I was wondering what he thought about the claims

1120. that this was sort of an unethical way of carrying out this experiment

1121. and whether or not it's going to affect the scientific community

1122. and the parapsychologists negatively.

1123. I'm happy to say that the president of the parapsychological association

1124. described it as a magnificent experiment that needed to be done,

1125. and from which the results of may benefit everybody

1126. and I think that's what we headed out to do

1127. we also should point that that the director of that program

1128. thought it was a very lousy thing to do.

1129. He was quoted as saying that you probably set back the study of it and that...

1130. If Phillips said that then my answer to

1131. my having set back the study of parapsychology, is no,

1132. they tried to set it back. I brought it into the twentieth century.

1133. I felt really bad.

1134. They truly believed in these things,

1135. and I thought that if they had realized that they had been fooled by somebody,

1136. that they would be more cautious in the future,

1137. but I felt bad that I had fooled them.

1138. So you dropped out kind of in the mid seventies

1139. and just resurfaced lately, what have you been doing?

1140. At that time I wanted to become rich.

1141. And I met a very important man

1142. who was a chairman of the largest mining company in england

1143. and he showed me how to use my talents, my abilities

1144. to look for oil, gold and mineral.

1145. - And I was, I am very successful at it. - You proved it.

1146. But I am still controversial.

1147. There are a lot of people who think I am fake and a magician,

1148. but all those people I love because they do free publicity for me.

1149. Let's try to do the drawing.

1150. Do you know how many times the skeptics tried to shoot me down?

1151. Do you know how many times randi tried to ruin my career?

1152. But they failed miserably.

1153. Pick up the national enquirer or any other paper and you'll find a billion psychics!

1154. Look at movies that Hollywood produces about ufos and the psychic powers

1155. and paranormal activity. Are you kidding me? It's much bigger than ever!

1156. You are negative, you are setting up your own standards

1157. and what you're not understanding is that the key to realizing

1158. any kind of psychic phenomenon is first believing in it,

1159. not the other way around. Once you believe,

1160. - it will happen, it will happen. - Right. Okay.

1161. Even you sir, the not-so-amazing-randi, are psychic.

1162. Whether or not you want to believe.

1163. There are millions and millions of people upon this planet

1164. who have other ways of intuiting and sensing.

1165. I have never said these things have not happened...

1166. Why don't you read the papers and correct yourself!

1167. People think they believe what they choose to believe.

1168. We don't. We mostly believe what we need to believe.

1169. You say that uri geller is a fake,

1170. you came here and you've given everybody a lot of lip service

1171. and you haven't done anything.

1172. We're going for a commercial break and you can piss off!

1173. We'll be back...

1174. The public really doesn't listen

1175. when they are being told straightfonnard facts.

1176. They would rather accept what some charismatic character tells them

1177. than really think about what the truth might be.

1178. I tell you from now on you are going to have a song of victory in your heart!

1179. They would rather have the romance and the lies.

1180. There are a billion believers out there.

1181. A billion people believe in god.

1182. You can't touch that.

1183. There she goes!

1184. This is what randi is trying to do.

1185. He's trying to say this is a big hoax and so everything else is a hoax too.

1186. He is trying to say that nothing divine is being spoken.

1187. But actually our ratings are up!

1188. And the thing is, popoff got back in the business,

1189. all he changed is he doesn't use a radio anymore.

1190. He doesn't need to.

1191. He just does dumber stuff that people accept anyway.

1192. This is water from the pool

1193. that the lord himself led the christians to

1194. during the horrible chernobyl nuclear accident.

1195. Tens of thousands died

1196. and yet every Christian was miraculously spared.

1197. Randi and I once talked about it and I said, you know,

1198. maybe were on the wrong end of the business, we should be on that side.

1199. I mean, he's making like a million dollars a month or more

1200. and I'm not making a million dollars a month.

1201. And, if randi and I got together we could come up with some really nifty tricks

1202. that would fool people.

1203. Con people.

1204. Okay, one, two three.

1205. Happy birthday dear randi,

1206. happy birthday to you.

1207. Let her rip, let her rip.

1208. Happy birthday amazing!

1209. In the early days, I think randi sort of hid his true relationship with Jose.

1210. But I don't think randi hid it for any bad reason,

1211. I think it was just a thing that people would use against him.

1212. And I think it took randi a long time to understand that in this day and age,

1213. you don't have to hide those things anymore.

1214. Let me tell you my story about our birthday boy named randi

1215. who met a guy and thought he was just dandy

1216. well the first thing you know, they form a great team

1217. and both are living the American dream

1218. I remember when randi came out, it was in 2010, at the age of81.

1219. I said, are you sure, are you sure?

1220. But it was just a gesture of complete honesty out there.

1221. And morally, having built a life

1222. around the fact of telling truth,

1223. he needed to come out publicly.

1224. Thank you so much, thank you so much for coming to randi's birthday, and uh,

1225. for being our friends, for being supportive of both of us.

1226. And that's it, that's all I got to say.

1227. Before it was all about becoming invisible.

1228. Now it should be exactly the opposite.

1229. I was here in the house,

1230. and I looked out the window

1231. and I saw a uniformed officer outside.

1232. They were all over the place.

1233. Us marshals and FBI personnel as well.

1234. Circling around, trying to prevent anyone from escaping.

1235. I was terrified.

1236. I had no idea why they were there.

1237. I heard rapid knocking at the door, I went to the door and

1238. they pushed their way in and

1239. said where is Jose Alvarez.

1240. And they put handcuffs on him and marched him out the door.

1241. I just saw him put in a car and driven out the driveway.

1242. What a situation, what a situation.

1243. It's so...

1244. Very disturbing.

1245. When the police showed up and arrested my partner

1246. and took him away in handcuffs

1247. I was desperate, I just...

1248. I was standing at the edge of the dock and there were no ships around,

1249. and I was about to fall into the water.

1250. I didn't know what to do.

1251. No matter what his name is, I know who he is,

1252. and I know what he is as well.

1253. And he's my partner. He's very, very important to me.

1254. For the last twenty-five years everybody has known me as Jose Alvarez.

1255. But in reality my real name is deyvi orangel pena artega.

1256. I was born in Venezuela, I was raised in Caracas.

1257. And in Venezuela to be gay is the most despicable thing that you can be.

1258. You knew that everybody that was your friend, or your loved one or whatever,

1259. they would turn against you. That's for sure.

1260. I just knew that I should hide it.

1261. When I was 16 years old I was at a party

1262. and three guys came and grabbed me from behind

1263. and one of them put a gun to my head

1264. and started just yelling all kinds of things,

1265. "the little faggot" and so on, and so on.

1266. I said, "I have to get out of here or I will be killed."

1267. And um, and I came here to study art,

1268. and I started seeing like, wow.

1269. I don't have to be like, you know, who is looking at me? I have to hide.

1270. But still it stays in your brain,

1271. that in order to survive, I needed to pretend.

1272. But I just didn't have any way to stay in this country.

1273. And then I met randi.

1274. So, I actually found someone who got a name for me.

1275. And they told me that this person was deceased,

1276. and that this name didn't belong to anyone.

1277. So I wrestled with that situation for quite a while

1278. whether to go ahead with this.

1279. But I just didn't have any choice.

1280. So I decided to do it, to take the name.

1281. But I wasn't really that aware of what I was doing, you know.

1282. The thing snowballed.

1283. One of these three men pretended to be possessed.

1284. Number two, what is your name please.

1285. My name is Jose Alvarez.

1286. Only one of these people is the real Jose Alvarez

1287. and is the only one sworn

1288. to tell the truth!

1289. Trying to escape such a terrible situation I kind of gotjailed in a different one.

1290. With the Jose Alvarez identity,

1291. I applied for a passport under that name

1292. and then I went to Australia to play the Carlos hoax.

1293. And I just set off to train him to be a so-called channeler.

1294. I have lived through many reincarnations.

1295. My last one was in Venezuela.

1296. Also keep very wide, keep very wide,

1297. because you are going to be on a big stage.

1298. He learned fast, and uh, we were using the Peter popoff method.

1299. I've heard you described as a fraud and a charlatan.

1300. That's a very rude comment.

1301. Well, that's a very rude comment.

1302. He did a wonderful job, but after all that is the kind of thing he does well.

1303. I am using this body, Jose Alvarez.

1304. He is an artist in the United States.

1305. The whole thing was totally against my persona.

1306. I knew that I was playing this fictitious character.

1307. I just felt, I just felt like a phony!

1308. You know, but I have to go on with it.

1309. It turned out that there was a real person named Jose Alvarez,

1310. and he decided to apply for a passport

1311. after 25 years of me living with this identity.

1312. The moment of truth is about to arrive,

1313. will the real Jose Alvarez please stand up!

1314. The problem is, once you start to tell people that your genuine

1315. it's really hard to step away from that

1316. because you've lied to people, you've lied to their face.

1317. It was extremely difficult when I was fooling the scientists.

1318. You know, at first I saw them as the enemy. It was me against the enemy.

1319. Um, but over time they become your friends.

1320. Were we violating laws?

1321. Probably. Was it fraud in some cases?

1322. Most definitely.

1323. Did it we look at it that way at the time?

1324. I don't think any of us did,

1325. because we thought the ends justified the means.

1326. Deception has so many layers.

1327. I mean, you have the zenith of deception and people go to jail for that.

1328. But then you have magicians - they manipulate the truth.

1329. They are in the business of deceiving people.

1330. Alpha and Carlos and popoff, these incredible revelations of deception,

1331. they're actually sort of giant cons in their own sense, right?

1332. But they're cons on the right side!

1333. This is what it means to be “an honest liar.”

1334. It's the difference between using deception to conceal the truth,

1335. and using deception to reveal the truth.

1336. Up until now, you haven't really said anything

1337. about Jose being deyvi.

1338. - Here's where I'd like to start. - Okay.

1339. I think it would be good if you said something like

1340. “I feel I should come clean..

1341. No, no, no, no. That admits guilt.

1342. I should make something clear.

1343. That's much better.

1344. Are you, are you afraid of the ramifications?

1345. I have all kinds of fear of that, yes.

1346. Fear of what? I'm not clear.

1347. If I don't have to say, “yes I knew that he had a false identity,

1348. and he perpetrated it on the American nation,”

1349. I don't want to say that!

1350. Look at what he was going through, he was going through hell.

1351. If he went back to Venezuela, he would...

1352. No, he would be constantly victimized and abused and attacked.

1353. No I couldn't see that. I...

1354. I had to accept what I saw happening.

1355. Now none of this must be used! I mean really! I...

1356. If I thought that any of this would be used,

1357. I would abandon the film entirely.

1358. - No no no no. - But I'm being honest with you now,

1359. I'm being taped at the same time and I have to trust you.

1360. - Ok, well this... - And I will and I do.

1361. But we had discussed this.

1362. I'm willing to say the story that I gave you on this camera.

1363. That's fine, okay. I'm not asking you to do anything else.

1364. But I want the rest of it to vanish, please.

1365. This last part. Yes, understood. Understood.

1366. No worries.

1367. I trust you or I wouldn't be doing this.

1368. Thank you.

1369. We all spin personal narratives.

1370. And so when an event happens that doesn't fit this idea

1371. that he is this amazing truth-teller and so on,

1372. then something has to happen to that event and like everyone,

1373. he may well change a few facts around or rub it out completely.

1374. In entertainment, there is a kind of an...

1375. Acceptability to deceive.

1376. It's like when there are two Picasso paintings on the wall.

1377. One is a fake, and the other one is real, but they look the same.

1378. There is no harm in that.

1379. At the end of the day,

1380. there is nothing to reveal.

1381. Because of what I do is real.

1382. What you do is real.

1383. I think I slept last night. Some part of it anyway.

1384. Today officially we'll find out what the judge has to say.

1385. It's got to be the right thing

1386. or I don't know what I'm going to do or what...

1387. What Jose is going to do.

1388. He's specifically an immigration judge,

1389. and he apparently likes to...

1390. Suggest removal.

1391. That would be the end of him.

1392. The end of him and the end of us, automatically.

1393. His life literally hangs in the balance.

1394. And I feel somehow that I've got to come up with some

1395. rabbit-out-of-the-hat to try to get him back here where he belongs,

1396. not behind bars.

1397. I was just in a state of total suspension.

1398. You know, and just waiting for him to say what the sentence was.

1399. It was something I had hoped for,

1400. that we'd all hoped for.

1401. We won. We won this one.

1402. People were really beautiful talking.

1403. I'm not really sure how I feel but I'm feeling very, uh, thankful.

1404. That's how I feel, very thankful.

1405. I'm not one person, I've got a partner.

1406. For the last quarter of a century, I've had this partner.

1407. We're one element.

1408. And I have never hesitated to reach out to help him in every possible way.

1409. I know randi.

1410. He has a mission out there in the world, as “the amazing randi.”

1411. But, it's compassion.

1412. People don't know how much he cares when he sees someone in distress.

1413. And it's not just on a social level,

1414. but also on a personal level.

1415. And I include myself specifically in that equation.

1416. He will do what is necessary to...

1417. To save somebody.

1418. Don't worry about it.

1419. Yea, no, a little bit further, over here.

1420. - Okay. - Okay.

1421. What do you think? No? Yes?

1422. Randi said years ago

1423. there is nothing that a man can't make that I can't get out of.

1424. That line is actually a Houdini line.

1425. And the difference was, is that Houdini, you know,

1426. if somebody ever did bring something, like a pair of handcuffs

1427. there's no way he could get out?

1428. Houdini's guys, his goons, would take they guy out back

1429. and beat the crap out of the guy

1430. and the audience never saw the guy again.

1431. But I bet you anything, randi truly believed

1432. there was nothing he couldn't get out of.

1433. Or make it at least seem like he was getting out of them.

1434. And I'll quote him directly.

1435. “I'm a magician.

1436. I know how to deceive people,

1437. and I know how to recognize when people are being deceived.

1438. I can cheat you countless different ways and you won't know.

1439. You won't catch me.”

1440. Some people cannot believe

1441. that a magician can fool them in such a way

1442. that they can't figure it out.

1443. But magicians can and magicians do.

1444. Don't be too sure of yourself.

1445. No matter how smart or well educated you are,

1446. you can be deceived.

1447. Okay, that's weird. This is all that I'm getting,

1448. I have no clue what this is.

1449. My jewelry are a catalyst to the powers of your mind.

1450. - Yes. - It's all in the mind.