[Closed] Derren Brown - genuine/stooges/remarkable/magic/

Clever, suggestion, a bit of blagging very slickly wrapped up with showmanship. I like him.

What sx-xc said.

According to him at least, many of the things he does have been well known as parlour tricks for many years. One of my faves was essentially the Jedi mind trick being used at a dog track betting office.

Anyone who can actually read minds or consistently influence people will be running the world, not appearing on TV doing cheap parlour tricks.

That's how you know it's just a show.

I'm not trying to detract from what he does, I think he's quite good but it's nothing more than slick presentation.

Anyone who can actually read minds or consistently influence people will be running the world,

Don't believe he claims to read minds. In the show I saw he explained how all the influencing was done at the end, played back video recordings.

Some pretty cool stuff in there, but essentially traditional stage magic dressed up with VERY clever 'marketing' and branding (which for me is where he betrays his real insights into psychology etc.).

Not a mindreader by any stretch of the imagination, but a really interesting character nonetheless.

Saw him live a while back and he totally fluffed the finale of the show (that everything else had been leading up to), but he fronted it out admirably and still got a standing ovation.

slainte 😀 rob

tinribz - Member
Don't believe he claims to read minds. In the show I saw he explained how all the influencing was done at the end, played back video recordings

He would still be a killer advertising exec though.

slainte ➡ rob

[i]Or be rich and famous. [/i]

There's rich and famous, and there's rich and famous. I don't believe he's anywhere near the latter category.

Be making a million a year, net worth about 10m.

Edit - 7.5M USD

Which show was this? Is It on 4od?

He certainly is very good at psychology, did buy one of his books but it was pretty dull (unlike his shows).

I wouldn't trust him being around. You'd end up with a thumb up your bum.

He's a clever lad no doubt. Neaverly all the "tricks" he performs are pretty standard suggestive/suggestion/slight of hand stuff and he explains how to do a lot of these things in his books, you should read them.

But with his skill comes a great responcibility and thankfully he's using his to the enth degree by not manipulating people for material gain, just entertainment otherwise the lad would be a gazzillionaire by now, or Madhoft.

He's been doing this stuff for many years now though, honing his early akills at Uni then the street curcuit and the like so he's put a lot of effort into honing those skills.

Anyone with these kind of "tricks" I'm in ore of, I love this kinda thing, but have absolutly no ability whatsoever..

I liked the one where he debunked religious/spiritual/medium stuff by basically doing what they do, but better.

I thought it was magic. You've all ruined it for me now 🙁

Did anyone see the slightly disturbing show a couple of weeks ago where he was sticking giant needles into Robbie Williams?

He's good I'll give him that:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-%26-entertainment/riots-were-derren-brown-tv-stunt-201108174206/

I like the fact he openly admits its not 'magic' or 'supernatural' and is eager to explain how things work.

Still dont understand how he does most of it though 🙂

Very clever bloke

I got dragged on stage by him a few years ago - was trying to lurk at the back and avoid eye contact...!

Only up there for 5 mins or so whilst he did one or two tricks more down the 'magic' rather than 'psychology' vein. Things like holding and leaning me to one side and making someone with their eyes closed on the other end of the stage stumble/fall at the point where I'd have gone if I were being held... Very convincing and entertaining.

Really enjoy some of his more recent TV stuff, and he's a pretty good artist/portrait painter too.

[img] [/img]

Anyone who can actually read minds or consistently influence people will be running the world,

Nobody needs to read minds. Most people behave according to probability; most of the rest get dragged along by the group(s). Do you live alone in a box? What do politicians and business/marketing leaders and strategists do if not consistently (and constantly) influence people in order to gain more power/control/money/sex? Rupert Murdoch is (was) a prime example of this. It could be argued that he did, to some extent, run 'the world'. John Donne wasn't kidding when he said that no man is an island, but many like to believe that it is so. Derren Brown makes impressive use of this self-delusion.

He explains how it's done on some of his shows - good stuff.

Some of it was very simple suggestion that happens to us accidentally all the time but he just took advantage of how easily distracted many of us are.

Re 3f's point - indeed.. what's the difference between what Brown does and being a good negotiator or salesman? It gets labelled as charisma, magnetism, compelling.. that sort of thing.

[i]Do you live alone in a box?[/i]

Do you read what people write? I'm well aware of how influencial people achieve their goals although I'm not sure how that relates to my original statement. Anyone who could actually read minds wouldn't be messing about on TV or earning a few paltry million, they'd be the most powerful person ever, no argument.

Anyone who could actually read minds

.... would only hear a cacophony of misanthropy and trivia. Driven mad by they misery of it all they'd take a header off the nearest bridge. 🙂

I love Derren Brown. He is a consomethinge genius at what he does.

I'm a bit of a ... well, I lack the talent to be a "magician" but I'm enthusiastic enough to be reasonably well versed in magic theory. Penn & Teller's "Fool Us" is one of the best things on TV right now for me, because they're doing what I'm doing as a viewer which is deconstructing what they're seeing. Far from spoiling magic, knowing what's going on (or thinking you do) and seeing something well performed just makes you appreciate the performance all the more.

Derren's fab because apart from being a brilliant performer, the explanations he gives are the odd truth mixed in with complete lies in a totally believable pitch. The 'startling reveal' is usually the biggest bit of misdirection in the entire set.