Magician astounds Stephen Fry, causes him to say bad word

submitted by maudlin
1 decade 7 years 4 months 4 weeks ago
Never mind that the sound is a little out of synch. This shows the man with the brain as big as Kent not even trying to figure out the trick at the end.

40 Comments

berticussays...

You can see the sleight of hand at the end, switching the cigarette for the rolled up card. But as for knowing the card... priming, I guess. I've definitely seen this on the sift before, did it die?

jonnysays...

I'd never heard of Derren Brown before finding him on the sift. The guy is a true genius. I think the trick here is similar to what's happening in this vid. I remember seeing an explanation of the Russian Scam. It has to do with breaking the expected social schema which puts a lot of people in a temporary suggestible state. There's another vid where Brown is in New York trying to pay for purchases with blank paper. It works on everyone except a street-wise hotdog vendor.

[edit] The cards are never down long enough for Fry to pick one before Derren snaps his fingers - that's the break. (I think.)

Deanosays...

I think Jonny's on the right track here. Those cards were down for a few nanoseconds, far too briefly to allow a truly fresh and independent choice to be made.

The card was already suggested to him but we can't see that from this clip.

lmayliffesays...

I've seen another clip where Derren performs this trick on someone. In that clip, he already had the card rolled up into a cig, and suggested it by playing with the fake cig, but not too much.


I simply love Stephen Fry, though.

antonyesays...

You only see a short clip here - chances are he'd already auto-suggested the card to choose to Fry a long time before he did the trick. Take a search on the Sift for more of Derren (see the Subliminal Advertising or the NLP trick on Simon Pegg on YouTube) for more on how he does this.

BTW, if you like Derren and/or his tricks, get his book "Tricks of the Mind" as he explains a lot of what he does and even helps you learn some of those skills!

papplesays...

At -1:47, he gestures to his head in a way that could be construed as a crown.

Also, Brown sometimes uses the surroundings to manipulate people. Notice the table cloths? And what do you see at -3:13? A top-down view of a crown perhaps?

kilwrathsays...

Derren uses a variant of John Kennedy's Mind Power deck, which has misprinted cards that cycle the same 8 cards when displayed from one side (i.e. the 6 of clubs which has the number "4" printed in one corner). To set up the deck, he removes the matching cards from the other side so that they're missing when he flourshes the deck from that side.

He gets the mark to pick a card from the 8 card cycling side. Then he "fishes" for one of the eight cards by making intelligent guesses and watching for reactions. He starts with the King of Diamonds, as most people gravitate to face cards anyways, and gets an immediate hit with Mr. Fry.

He then lights the cigarette, puts the cigarette case (which has a rolled up version of every card the mark can choose) away, and palms the correct rolled up card. He then flourishes the deck from the other side, and while the mark is stunned, palms the card in for the cigarette. A brilliant effect, all in all.

Grimmsays...

You gotta figure that when ever a full deck is fanned out like that for the mark to visually pick a card that in some way a specific card or as kilwrath pointed out a very limited selection of cards is being forced. Otherwise there really is no point in showing the deck since we all are already familiar with what cards are in a standard deck. One would just have to ask the mark to pick any card in their head without the need to show them the deck.

siftbotsays...

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by phelixian.

siftbotsays...

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by EDD.

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