An Honest Liar Page #3

people really do believe this nonsense.

Mentalism can be a deal with the devil.

It's an incredibly seductive feeling for someone to

imbue you with that power. It's a very tempting thing.

Then you have to make a decision.

Are you the sort of person that will

look someone in the eye, and even though you have

got no idea what their future holds,

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

that may harm them,

just to move money from their wallet into yours.

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

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

I know that surge of power that you feel

when you use a cheap trick

to manipulate someone else into thinking you have powers

that you don't have.

And I think it's very much to the good of the world that when Randi

felt that power, he backed away from it.

And out of that feeling of that power,

uh...came a rage.

I want now to introduce Uri Geller.

He's been denounced by some people as a magician, and certainly he's a

showman. He gives demonstrations all over the United States.

Ladies and gentlemen, Uri Geller.

APPLAUSE:

They said his name was Uri Geller. The name didn't mean a thing to me.

He's come to the attention of Stanford Research Institute,

and the scientists there are apparently quite convinced that

he has psychic powers.

What I do is telepathy...

and that is, as everybody knows,

is receiving thoughts and passing thoughts.

And then I have the other power

which I, which I read that they call pyschokinesis.

And that is moving or bending or breaking objects.

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

See how gently it goes?

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

It's breaking... It's breaking.

You can...

if, look, it's very...

LAUGHTER:

In 1972, I got a call from Colonel Austin Kibler of

the Defense Department, then acting

head of ARPA, as it was called -

Advanced Research Projects Agency.

He says, "Could you drop everything you're doing

"and go to Stanford Research Institute. There's a

"psychic down there and if he can do what they claim he can do,

"we ought to be involved.

"Cos the Russians have a big programme now going, using what they call Psy-Warfare."

This film describes a five-week investigation

conducted at Stanford Research Institute with Uri Geller,

a young Israeli.

Here we present a case of a double-blind experiment

in which someone places an object into a can chosen at random from ten

aluminium cans. Geller's task now is to determine

which of these ten cans holds the steel ball bearing.

Now Targ and Puthoff, the two scientists

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

First of all, Targ is legally blind.

And, er...

he was one of the observers. Duh!

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

He fooled the pants off them, it was astonishing.

They saw Nobel Prizes on the horizon because

if you do discover there really were psychic powers, that would certainly

- bring you a Nobel Prize or two.

- In this case, Geller guessed that a

four was showing, and he was quite pleased to have guessed correctly.

When I made my report to the government that Geller was...

a complete fraud,

Targ and Puthoff realised they were not going to get the money

from the government, so they took Geller on a tour to get

publicity for him and to raise some private money

to do their research with him.

I've been reading a lot of research on him

from the Stanford Research Institute and from the science section

of the New York Times.

A lot of publicity on this gentleman whose name is Uri, U-R-I, Uri Geller.

And we hope we're going to see some rather astounding things tonight.

Would you welcome, please, Uri Geller.

APPLAUSE:

Johnny Carson was THE man.

Everybody watched that programme on NBC

and since I had been on the programme many, many times,

they asked if I could come into California

to appear on the show that night.

And I said, "Boy this is rather short notice,

"but I will talk to your prop man. And I'll tell the prop man how

"he can prepare the props in such and such a way that if it's real,

"Geller can do it.

"But if it's a fake, Geller won't be able to do it."

- Are you feeling in the mood yet?

- No.

- More questions?

- All right, let's...

- What's the capital of South Dakota?

LAUGHTER:

No, I don't mean to press you.

OK, uh, let me see.

I said, OK, what I would like you to do with the little aluminium

film cans is I would like you to coat them on the bottom

with rubber cement.

Don't glue them down to the tray,

just coat the bottoms and let them dry.

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

I said because the way he does the film-can thing is he rotates

the tray and he sees which ones move differently.

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

- Without touching them.

- He is really suspicious, you know!

I'm having a hard time with you!

- I don't mean to be, Uri, I really don't.

- Just keep looking.

- OK, let me rest a little, all right?

- All right.

They actually shut down the set for 20 minutes or so while he

hummed and hawed and wondered how he was going to do something,

then they came back to the live audience

after a big, long commercial break.

All right, we are back.

Uri was telling me you don't feel, what, strong tonight?

- I don't feel strong...

- Geller had to give the whole thing up.

It was a real failure for him, definite failure.

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

- Don't be disappointed.

- I won't.

- I'm not.

- OK.

- We thought he didn't have a future.

And we were wrong! Very, very wrong, we didn't know how wrong we were!

Try to make a Boy Scout knot. Really heave on it.

That doesn't feel very tight, put another knot on top,

would you, please? Just one more

to make sure. I don't want it to fall off around my ankles.

- There we go.

- What did I ever do to you? Why do you hate me so much?!

I'm going to see if I can take this rope off, it may take me a while,

but I'll see how fast I can do it. Would you time me, please?

- Do you have a watch there, just look at your watch.

- Uh, yeah.

How about you, you got a watch? I have one. It took 2 seconds.

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

One of Randi's great heroes is Harry Houdini, and the

life of Harry Houdini reads very similar to the life of James Randi.

Starting out as an amazing magician

and escape artist, he was a great

showman and debunker and dedicated his life

to keeping people from being duped.

Well, the thought naturally occurred to me that I

could base a good deal of my life on Harry Houdini and his adventures,

perhaps do some of the things that he had done

and perhaps even improve on them.

- Open sesame, try that.

- Open sesame.

- Oh, look at it!

- The door is opening!

I wanted to break his records -

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

get out of a straitjacket faster than he did.

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