Nevada Week | Penn & Teller continue 30 year magical run in Las Vegas | Season 6 | Episode 13

(Amber Renee Dixon) Following a week of negotiations, the Culinary Union will now decide whether to strike.

Plus... (Penn Jillette) I remember the first time we played here.

We had our names up in giant letters right above "Unlimited Shrimp."

You know, it's properly humbling.

- ...magicians Penn & Teller celebrate 30 years as Las Vegas headliners this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Magic and comedy duo Penn & Teller reflect on three decades of performing in Las Vegas ahead, but we begin with the culinary and bartenders unions whose members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a citywide strike if the unions cannot come to terms on a new five-year contract with MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, and Wynn Resorts.

The unions and the three resort companies held negotiations this week.

And joining us now to discuss the progress of those talks is McKenna Ross, a reporter with the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

McKenna, welcome to Nevada Week.

(McKenna Ross) Thank you for having me.

-So as we speak, it is October 5, Thursday.

The union has now met with MGM Resorts as well as Caesars and will meet with Wynn Resorts on Friday.

What can you tell us about how negotiations have gone so far?

-Well, these negotiations have been going on since about April with the major employers that you mentioned, MGM, Caesars, and Wynn Resorts.

We know that this citywide contract ended on June 1, but they've been taking contract extensions until about mid-September, when the Culinary Union decided that they should end those contracts at those properties and have been working under, you know, expired contracts.

-And what are they telling you as far as how negotiations are going?

-You know, the Culinary Union has said that they don't feel that enough is being done.

This week they said that they felt that the companies had come to negotiate, so they felt there was some progress there.

But at the same time, they are still strongly suggesting a strike is possible.

-And if a deal is not reached by the end of the week, then what happens?

-The Culinary Secretary-Treasurer Ted Pappageorge has said, quote, All bets are off on setting a strike deadline.

Now what that means is not necessarily that they would strike the next day, but it would mean that they would set a deadline on when a strike could happen.

That really ups the pressure on the negotiations to get something done by that date, that deadline.

And if that deadline occurs and passes, then, you know, those workers could go on strike.

-And that's something that's been a little bit confusing for people is that they've "authorized" a strike.

They're not striking.

And they haven't yet said, By this date if we don't have a deal, we're going to strike.

But that is the next step, is setting a strike deadline.

And we're talking about tens of thousands of employees who work on the Las Vegas Strip potentially walking out if they don't get what they want.

What is it that the union wants?

And why does the union argue it deserves these benefits?

-The union is fighting for what they call "winning the largest wage increases ever negotiated in its history."

Now, they're not being specific about what they want, exactly, in terms of wages and benefits, but, you know, efforts to increase the wages substantially.

They're also fighting for reduced workloads and lowering steep housekeeping quota some and mandating daily room cleanings.

Other things like on-the-job safety protections, making sure that the extended recall rights are involved, and part of the contract adding something like a no-strike clause that doesn't prevent the union from taking action at nonunionized restaurants on a casino's property.

-Why do they say they deserve-- -Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, they argue that they deserve this because they, the gaming companies, have done exceedingly well since the pandemic, since coming out of the pandemic.

And they want a piece of that profit, you know?

And the negotiations related to workload and workforce safety are meant to address all these changing responsibilities and the staffing sizes that have dropped since the pandemic.

-What are the resort companies saying to you when you reach out to them?

-Now there they're pretty tight-lipped in their responses.

But they do say that the negotiations are something that they're working very hard on, that they have a long history of, of succeeding in these negotiations to achieve a contract that everyone is happy with, and they ultimately want to, um, commit to getting that negotiated contract.

-For some context, when was the last time that the Culinary Union authorized a strike?

And then what was the result of that?

-Sure.

The last time they authorized a strike was actually the last contract negotiation back in 2018.

So they had an authorization vote done sometime in May.

And it said, If a negotiation isn't-- a deal isn't reached by June 1, we, you know, might be able to strike.

And, you know, the negotiations went seemingly well.

They reached tentative deals with all of the major employers shortly after June 1.

-Okay, so it didn't go to a strike then.

When was the actual last time that there was a strike of this magnitude, a city-wide strike that could potentially happen?

-It's been quite a while, nearly four decades.

The last one was in 1984, and it was against about 20 or so Strip properties.

It really caught them off guard, actually.

And so it was a massive event that lasted 67 days and was about 17,000 workers that struck alongside the Bartenders Union and unions that covered musicians and others, stagehands and like that.

So it was a pretty long one.

And experts have told me that it caught the companies off guard at that point, and that's possibly why it took so long to achieve that.

And there were, you know, confrontations.

And there was an estimated, you know-- workers estimated that they lost $75 million in wages and benefits, and it's-- there's an estimate out there that says the region lost a similar number in tourism revenue.

-Wow!

As far as the experts you've talked to about the likelihood of a strike this time, what are they telling you?

-They really weigh it both ways.

In previous years, there have been, you know, there have been negotiations that have gotten very close but always stopped.

But also at the same time there was a more available worker pool of potential strike breakers that they could pull from to staff the resorts if a strike did occur.

And nowadays there's a lot more power on the labor side of things.

We have a very tight labor market as is.

And these people, they really want to make it by, by these major events that are coming up.

That's another part of it they have to worry about, getting this deal done and avoiding a strike before we have a massive calendar of events coming, not including, you know, conventions and, of course, Formula 1 in November and all the way in December or-- sorry.

All the way into next year, the Superbowl.

-Right, of course.

They have some leverage there.

McKenna Ross, thank you for your reporting.

And to follow McKenna Ross, go to Las Vegas reviewjournal.com.

We move now to magic.

Magicians Penn & Teller recently extended their residency at the Rio for three more years.

In total, the legendary pair has performed 30 years in Las Vegas.

A milestone I asked Penn Jillette about, he's the speaking member of the magical duo, when I sat down with him and Teller backstage at the Rio.

30 years in Las Vegas.

-Yeah.

Jiminy Cricket, how'd that happen?

[laughter] -What do you attribute your longevity to?

-I think I have one of the worst vantage points for that.

I don't really-- I'm not really able to tell.

We don't write material in a, "Oh, this will go over well with this particular audience."

We write the stuff we want to do.

I mean, if you talk to Howard Stern or Paul McCartney or Madonna, they'll all tell you they should have been more famous than they were or than they are.

And that's the kind of ambition you really need in showbusiness.

Teller and I never had it.

We intended to play, you know, small theaters, 100 to 200.

And we were very happy doing cruise ships and doing anything that happened to come up.

We hadn't got ourselves into the cruise ship market, but that's what we were working on, because our mentor, our hero, Johnny Thompson, who was our favorite magician, the best magician and who worked with us for years and years on everything, that's what Johnny did.

We just thought that's what a working professional does.

And we always intended to be small-time-- -Which is why-- - --so we could do the stuff we wanted.

-I've read you've said people ask you, Did you always want a show in Las Vegas; isn't this kind of your dream?

And you say no.

-That's the weirdest thing in the world.

And I won't say who it is, because it makes me sick.

But there are magicians in Vegas who say all they ever wanted was to have a theater in Vegas.

And you say, Well, didn't you care about the show?

I mean, if you said to me right now that I could have the level of money that I have, the level of success that I've had, I could have all of that, but I wouldn't be doing this show, it wouldn't even be a decision.

I have no desire to do that.

The idea of wanting, building your career based on a venue is to me so sad.

You know?

I-- we had to answer the question carefully because we did Broadway three times, and people would say, Was it always your dream to be on Broadway?

We would say, No, never.

Never crossed our mind.

And we didn't mean to be disrespectful or in any way unpleasant.

It's just that we've always thought about the show and not the venue.

And Broadway meant nothing to us compared with, We want to do that show.

-It's about the show.

-It's always about the tricks and the stuff we're doing, the bits.

-Before we get too far-- -Are we getting too far?

-We kind of-- I mean, I haven't even gotten past my first page of questions.

-Oh, I'm sorry.

I'll say yes and no from now on.

[laugher] -We better speed this up, huh?

Hey, well, why does Teller not talk?

-Well, actually-- -Or will Teller talk?

- --that predates me.

When I first met Teller, he was teaching high school Latin outside of Trenton, New Jersey.

And he was doing, you know-- -Talking a lot.

- --shows as an amateur.

He was doing weekend shows and evening shows in libraries and so on.

And since college, he had been working silently.

So when we first started working together, we were two acts on the same bill at a Renaissance festival.

And then we started doing bits together.

And in order to keep the integrity of Teller's solo material, he was staying silent.

And then that just developed.

I mean, there's a lot of really smart stuff that we exploited about having one person in the act silent, but it was not by design.

We stumbled into it.

Tommy Smothers said to us that the brilliance of having one person not talk is it allows the audience to project upon one person easier.

And Teller can guide that really, in really subtle and wonderful ways.

But it allows the audience to have more of a presence on stage.

-Okay, so Las Vegas over the last 30 years, how have you seen it change?

-Well, you know, when we first got here, virtually everybody that came to Vegas and went to shows, anybody that was younger than maybe I am now, were coming to--were coming to Vegas ironically.

They went to see bad shows on purpose.

They ate at bad restaurants on purpose.

People that didn't smoke cigars and didn't drink martinis smoked cigars and drank martinis and went to see a bad impressionist, you know?

You know, you go to a steakhouse, and you'd see a show with a guy doing an Elvis impersonation.

And you knew that wasn't good.

If you lived anywhere else, it wasn't-- you were more sophisticated than that.

And then instantly-- I just tried to snap my fingers and couldn't-- instantly in the mid 90s, very quickly, everything changed, and there were actually good shows.

You know, there was Blue Man Group, there were acrobatics shows that were actually interesting, you know, there's Mac King.

There were all these really good shows, so people are no longer going ironically.

And there also ended up being good restaurants.

-The quality has improved.

-I mean, the restaurants in Vegas in the '90s were an absolute joke.

I mean, if you wanted, you know, steak and garlic bread-- I mean, I'm a vegan now, but that was fine.

-Or shrimp coctails.

-Yeah, shrimp cocktails.

I remember the first time we played here.

You know, we had our names up in giant letters, right above "Unlimited Shrimp."

[laughter] -You know, it's properly humbling.

And, but you didn't have good stuff.

You had stuff that people came to make fun of.

You went to a bad show, had a bad dinner, and did things you didn't do.

And then over the past 30 years, that's changed.

So now you can come to Vegas, and we've got better shows than Broadway in many cases.

We've got better restaurants than probably any place, but, you know, New York and in LA, you know.

And so people can now come without the irony.

And that's an incredible change, to be a city that was made fun of to a city that's actually good.

-So there's a New York Times Magazine article from 1988 that you were quoted in.

You were filming the movie Penn & Teller Get Killed , which I see the poster for in here.

It was being filmed in Atlantic City, and you said at the time, "Vegas is either seedy glitz or glitzy glitz; but in Atlantic City, there's this real city out there."

-Yeah, there was.

There was a real city out there, and of course-- -Has your stance changed, though, on Vegas?

-Completely, because Vegas now has a really robust and interesting community outside of the Strip.

I mean-- -And you've raised children here.

-Yeah, both of my children were born in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Moxie is 18, and Zolten is 17.

And they even have, much to my surprise, Las Vegas accents, which always startles me a little bit.

-What's a Las Vegas accent?

-Well, you can hear it.

I can't describe it, but it's certainly not my Northeast accent or Teller's Northeast accent.

But now we've got The Smith Center.

-Right.

-The Smiths Center, you take all of what people see is Vegas away, you still have a community with thriving arts, and we've even got-- there's a place called Vic's, a jazz club.

-Where you performed.

-Yeah.

But it's-- I mean, besides that, it's a good jazz club.

-Las Vegas as a potential Hollywood 2.0, as Las Vegas resident Mark Wahlberg is proposing?

-I don't know.

I looked at that article.

I don't know what it means.

I mean, Hollywood isn't really Hollywood.

They shoot movies and TV shows everywhere.

And executives don't care.

I mean, I guess he has a plan, but Mark Wahlberg knows show business in ways that I never will and don't aspire to.

-Okay.

Well, and he did lobby the Nevada legislature this past session-- -Sure.

- --to get some more tax credits for film production.

-He's one of those grown up people who lobby people.

I don't really think about-- I don't know anything about that.

I just do a show.

-Okay.

Politically, you describe yourself as a Libertarian.

-I used to be.

Once I get an email that said, "We're protesting people wearing masks."

That second, I stopped being a Libertarian.

So I was Libertarian.

Now I'm anything that's not MAGA.

-By being outspoken like this, do you get concerned about who's going to come to your show or not come to your show as a result?

-Yeah, we've been boycotted by people before.

I remember once after we'd done an episode of-- [bleep sound] --about chiropractic, a bunch of people came to our show.

-That was your documentary show.

-Yeah.

And a bunch of people came to the show, like 75 of them, and said, We came here to tell you that after your chiropractic show, we're boycotting your show.

And I said, I don't think you understand the term "boycott."

[laughter] You know, I'm an outspoken atheist, and I listen to gospel music, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, many of the important, you know, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and you can just keep naming.

-Why?

-I listened to that because it was the best music of the time.

And although I'm an atheist, I don't say, These are Christians; I'm not gonna go to see their show.

And I have incredible respect for Christians.

And I think they do the same for me.

I think there's a lot of people who are believers who come see our show, which doesn't have-- doesn't have too strong an atheist message now and again, a little bit of skepticism.

And they come to our show, and we have a lot of people who write us notes saying, "“I love Jesus, and I love your show.

"” And that, that is what it means to be in a-- be in an open, loving society.

And we have a lot of people who are MAGA that come to our show, and I had no secret about my dislike of Trump, and they still come to our show.

And that's the way it should be.

-Had you not had the success that you have had, would you still be street performing as you did earlier in your career?

-I blew my voice out.

Medically, I don't know as I could.

-Okay.

-But I met somebody who was very close friends, very close to Bob Dylan said that if he'd had no success, he'd be playing those same songs wherever he happened to be.

And I would not compare ourselves with a Nobel Laureate, but it's certainly true for us.

I mean, not exactly true.

Because if we hadn't had the success, some of the tricks we do are expensive and we wouldn't be able to do them.

We wouldn't have the best crew in the world working for us.

But we'd still be doing stuff like this.

And I also think-- and maybe this is, this is hubris or something-- but I think that if we'd not had this success, we'd have enough success to support ourselves.

I think, I think we'd be working and we'd be happy working.

I mean, the weird thing is we were really happy doing our shows before we had what other people call "success."

We were paying our rent.

We were, we were feeding ourselves.

We had friends, and we were doing shows that we thought were as good as the shows we think are now.

And if we're deluded about how good our shows are, we were deluded back then.

God bless us.

-Recognizing it.

Okay, back to that 1988 article, you said, quote, Everyone becomes a parody of themselves.

I mean, look at Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen.

But we aren't there yet.

I just hope we don't lose our goofiness.

-Yeah.

-Are you there yet?

-I don't know.

That's, once again, that's a question someone else would have to answer.

I mean, actually, that sounds like I'm being unkind to Bob Dylan or disrespectful.

But Bob said that himself, you know?

There are times that you end up just doing what you were doing and what people like.

And probably the best example of that is Mick Jagger, and he probably doesn't care.

I think he-- and I think he would probably also admit that.

I mean, Mick Jagger said when he was in his early 20s, "I'm certainly not going to be singing 'Satisfaction' when I'm 40.

"” Now he sings "Satisfaction" at 80.

So I don't know.

I mean, I like to think we're always doing new stuff and we aren't in a, in a cookie cutter parody of ourselves.

Once again, I'm not the one that can answer that.

You might be sitting in the audience and think, How can he say that?

They're complete self-parodies.

And we wouldn't be able to see it.

But we aren't doing the same stuff we did last week.

We write new stuff all the time, and we write, I think, more magic than just about anybody else ever has.

-I mean, how many tricks did you do just for the television show Penn & Teller: Fool Us?

How many new tricks-- -For Penn & Teller: Fool Us, we've done so far something like 150.

-Wow!

-They were all unique.

I mean, we just finished-- we just finished season-- the last season, and we did 21 shows.

And they were all new tricks.

-The point of that show is magicians trying to fool you.

-Yeah.

-What kind of impact do you think you've had on magic with that show?

I mean, 10 seasons?

-I don't know, you know.

I don't want to get unpleasantly sentimental, but we've now had people on the show who started magic because they saw the show.

That's why they started, and now they're on the show.

And that's kind of powerful, emotional feeling to see that because I don't know what impact we've had on the world, but that's some impact on those people.

And that, that's kind of enough.

We also worked very hard.

I mean, magic is, I mean, the most damning thing I can say about it is The Magic Circle in London didn't allow women in until the '‘90s.

In the '90s!

I mean, insane.

In our lifetime, they weren't allowing women in.

That's insane.

And magic, you know, at least the turn of this last century, even that late was, was all people who identified as male and identified as white.

And that has-- our producers pushed very hard for that on our show, to get people of color and non binary people and people who identify as women on the show.

They worked very hard for that.

And certainly we can't have anything to do with the booking, or the show wouldn't be fair.

But certainly in our discussions with them, we pushed really, really hard for that.

Now, I don't know as we can take any credit, because the biggest difference you see in magic is people don't look like us.

And that's a huge change.

But I don't know as we can take credit or if that's simply time.

-You bring up The Magic Circle.

I don't quite understand how it works, but they won't let you two in, correct?

-No.

Which is really strange.

And this is true.

-And it's because you explain your tricks?

-We give away secrets, yeah.

But it's crazy because they wrote to us and said, We're doing--in our museum, we're doing a whole Penn & Teller display.

Could we have some of your stuff?

And we said, Well, we'll give you the helmets we wore for the first bullet catch.

-So you're going to give-- -We gave it all to them.

We gave them all this stuff for their, for their museum and then said afterwards-- and I also, when Paul Daniels died, who was the most popular magician in England and also a good friend of ours.

When he died, I wrote the obituary for The Magic Circle newsletter, whatever it was.

That happened at the same time.

We gave them a bunch of stuff, and I also wrote that.

And then we wrote just, just a little email that said, "Oh, by the way, we haven't gotten our membership cards."

-And why share your secrets?

-But then the punchline was they said, "“Well, we love you, but the board of directors has voted you can't be in.

"” Um, because saying that secrets are important to magic is an insult to every magician.

There couldn't be anything more insulting.

It's like saying that you can look at Miles Davis' charts to Sketches of Spain, and that that somehow makes that record less powerful, less real.

Now, you can screw up magic by right afterwards saying how it's done, and that moment can crumble.

That can happen.

But the fact that all our tricks are explained on YouTube is fabulous, because there's people there that want to be doing magic later after we're dead, which is, you know, today, and they need that information so they can do better stuff than we ever did.

-Penn, Teller, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week.

-Oh, yeah.

Well, yes, it's good state.

-It sure is.

Our thanks to Penn and Teller for the time and to McKenna Ross of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and to you for watching.

I'll see you next week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪

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