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Penn & Teller Get Killed: Difference between revisions

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''[[Penn & Teller Get Killed]]'' is a 1989 [[Black Comedy]] directed by Arthur Penn, featuring double act [[Penn & Teller]] (who also wrote the movie) playing themselves as their stage personas offstage. Confused yet?
 
At the beginning, they perform on a talk show where, as part of the act, Penn claims he [[Be Careful What You Wish For|wishes someone were trying to kill him, to make life more exciting]]. This is intended as setup for Teller pretending to slit his throat, but it turns out all sorts of people saw the talk show and [[Never Live It Down|now recognize him as the idiot who asked people to kill him on national TV]]. This leads to several attempts being made on their life until, well, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Penn and Teller get killed]]. [[Twist Ending|But not the way you think.]]
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Meanwhile, the two magicians [[The Cast Showoff|do some magic tricks]], [[Edutainment Show|demonstrate that psychic surgeons are]] [[Penn and Teller Bullshit|bullshit]], and [[Escalating War|play increasingly mean tricks on one another]].
 
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=== The movie features examples of: ===
 
* [[Author Tract]]: The duo really do love to expose fakery like psychic surgery. [[Hilarious in Hindsight|Which makes sense considering their television series]] ''[[Penn and Teller Bullshit]]''.
* [[Be Careful What You Wish For]]: Everything starts with Penn wishing [[Death Seeker|someone were trying to kill him]]. {{spoiler|It turns out no ''real'' attempt was made on their lives, however, as they were all part of either Penn or Teller's trick.}}
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* [[Deliberately Monochrome]]: The parodic sequence near the middle where Penn is narrating and writing the "memoirs of the hunted" is black-and-white. When the policewoman comes in and ends their noir fantasy, the color abruptly returns to the picture.
* [[Despair Event Horizon]]: At the end when Teller realizes {{spoiler|he just [[My God, What Have I Done?|killed Penn]]}}.
* {{spoiler|[[Downer Ending]]}}: {{spoiler|It ends with [[Kill'Em All|everyone dying]]. And then Penn's voiceovervoice over at the end takes care to assure the viewer that the pull-out shot of the city is not an implication that they went to heaven; they're [[Cessation of Existence|just dead]]. Every major Western religion disapproves of suicide, after all.}}
* [[Driven to Suicide]]: More than you can count, though most of them are [[Suicide as Comedy|very much]] [[Played for Laughs]]. {{spoiler|First Teller, upon realizing he has actually killed Penn; then Carlotta as she realizes they're both dead; then [[Rule of Three|the actor playing the Fan, as he realizes the whole apartment is set up to make him look like a psycho who wants to kill Penn and Teller, and he thinks he couldn't handle prison]]; then [[Up to Eleven|his friend as he realizes being associated with this would kill his potential career in politics]]; then [[Overly Long Gag|the office-work-loving policeman who never wanted to see something like that]]; then the [[Retirony|nearly-retired other police officer who came with him]]; and then [[Refuge in Audacity|still more unseen people who discover the scene as we pull out over the city]].}} It is implied this starts a worldwide wave of pointless suicides.
* [[Escalating War]]: A lot of the movie revolves around Penn and Teller playing increasingly mean and elaborate tricks on one another. {{spoiler|In fact, it turns out the ''whole'' movie revolves around that.}}
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