Just saw this, on my wife's recommendation, from (producer) Stephen Colbert's recommendation. Ack! Why couldn't this guy stick to card tricks??
This guy does indeed have a hypnotic presence on his audience, starting with his Russian roulette bit, on to his schtick involving his gay mother, to audience members reading letters (written just for them!), to the utterly bogus last routine--wherein he informs each & EVERY person who picked cards at the beginning of the show, which all start with "I am...," an architect, a brother, a mother, a leader, & on & on. Bill Gates, in attendance, is pronounced by our psychotherapist/magician as "a leader." At this end point in the program, the hypnotized audience would have nodded in agreement to anything that this guy said. (Surprisingly, no one admitted that their "mother is a fish"--with kudos to Faulkner.) Yes, it's quite mesmerizing, but it seems so much like mass manipulation. Stephen: you should go to confession for blessing this!
This guy does indeed have a hypnotic presence on his audience, starting with his Russian roulette bit, on to his schtick involving his gay mother, to audience members reading letters (written just for them!), to the utterly bogus last routine--wherein he informs each & EVERY person who picked cards at the beginning of the show, which all start with "I am...," an architect, a brother, a mother, a leader, & on & on. Bill Gates, in attendance, is pronounced by our psychotherapist/magician as "a leader." At this end point in the program, the hypnotized audience would have nodded in agreement to anything that this guy said. (Surprisingly, no one admitted that their "mother is a fish"--with kudos to Faulkner.) Yes, it's quite mesmerizing, but it seems so much like mass manipulation. Stephen: you should go to confession for blessing this!