Be Excellent To Each Other

I think it is quite a clever move from Derren Brown. Now there is always going to be different theories about what happened because of the 'mystery' of 'missing' footage from the reveal show. So there are people who refuse to believe it was a simple camera trick and instead want to believe that he has done all of that extra stuff, which is exactly the type of misdirection Derren is famous for. Stroke of genius in my opinion.

Far from being genius or anything approaching it I thought the whole thing was a fairly disastrous lunge into David Copperfield territory.

That book's a classic, though.

Sorry, I meant A Tale of Two Cities.

It's telling that the people who seemed to be most familiar with (and fans of) his work before are the most unhappy with the camera trick explanation. So the ones less well grounded in reality are trying to invent alternative explanations.

I haven't really seen anything of him other than the 10 minute show, and so I'm not disappointed. Not wildly impressed either, of course, it plainly being a fairly simple technical trick and a bit of misdirection, but hey, it was more interesting than watching the lottery itself.

I mean the fact that he gave extra info to the audience and then hid the evidence in easy to reach places so as people thought they were solving a huge secret when really he'd led them to it. The actual trick itself wasn't as good as i wanted it to be.

It's not so much that I'm unhappy with the camera trickery thing. I'm very disappointed that, after a career when he has always presented himself as a rational thinker, an atheist, and a skeptic at all times -- and actively debunked mystics and mediums -- he made a big song and dance about showing us that he did it with... automatic writing. Which at least some people probably now believe in thanks to him. That feels like a very odd move.

It'll be a double-bluff for the Christmas special, "You see how I told you all it was done with automatic writing and lots of you believed it? SUCKERS!"

This been posted?

http://poeljames.googlepages.com/HowDerrenDidIt.html

Fair enough, I haven't bothered watching the Friday show, but you're right, that's pish.

I did say though that he wasn't going to admit to a camera trick, and that what he did reveal wouldn't be real or repeatable.
That he's reached an "occult" explanation doesn't surprise me because he left himself nowhere else to go - no other explanation stands up to scrutiny and the truth isn't impressive.

Basically bit off more than he could chew by the sounds of it. Still, I wonder what the mainstream response out in stupidland is - he's probably just made himself 10 times more popular amongst the viewing public.

No. We figured that out for ourselves though

Oh I know but the comparison shots and that are canny.

I'm not going back to re-read the posts, but was someone saying that the coins thing is rubbish?

Because it's the same as a trick I've seen in a book on how to con money out of your friends. It works because you are flipping the coin in one long continuous sequence, but stop when one of the desired outcomes is achieved. By having that stop is what ever so slightly skews the maths. Not 'deep maths'.

The coin thing is just very obvious.

Write out a long list of H or T. Other than at the start or in a sequence of more than 4 consecutive Hs can you have HHH before THH.

And it works for every combination you care to pit against each other as long as you flip the middle one and put it to the start.

Yes but again it is how he presented it. To me watching it, it was an obvious sequence and I understood how it worked, but I have a logical sort of way of looking at things, hence my job.
For loads of other people though, they hear 'maths', or 'deep maths' as he was putting it (to scare even more people away from trying to think about it) and they think oh, I won't understand that' and don't even attempt to think about it. My other half is a clever person but she didn't understand it and didn't want to think about it enough to try to understand it. I just explained it briefly and she said oh right. She didn't care enough about trying to understand it and that's the key thing here. People watching it will have heard 'deep maths' and will then nod wisely and accept it. I can just picture them now, planning to gather on Saturday and try to predict the results themselves.

Well, it's not *obvious* until you get it explained to you. Wiki says the coin game was only discovered in 1969. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penney%27s_game
I would go so far to say it is pretty bleedin' non-obvious!

I agree the lottery trick was pish though.

Mayeb so, in that people rarely work things out unless they are faced with that specific problem.

If someone did the trick on me (for example if I was the one bloke in the group) then I would have worked out very quickly that I was 2 away from getting the result every time the other team 'beat' me.

So whereas it's not something I would have discovered, I think when presented with the question, "Why did this happen?" it's a solution that I think most people with a background in science/logic would work out.

But why is, say, HTT, more likely to come up than TTH?

That doesn't follow the plan...

HTT would be beaten by HHT

Malc

TTH

Flip the middle and put it on the beginning.

HTTH

Take the end off.

HTT

So according to that, HTT should beat TTH. Which is does. But why?

Follow the TTH sequence backward

HTTH or TTTH
HTTTH or TTTTH
etc

Unless TTH comes up as the first three, TTTH as the first four, TTTTH as the first five..., HTT has to preceed TTH

Oh yeah. That does make sense.

I was a bit confused at first, because I thought that blue took 3 flips, then 3 took three flips etc. He didn't clarify the rules. Obvious it's so bafoons like me assume it's a fair test.

Also:
Why does everyone forget he wrote "1. FAKE THE LOTTERY TICKET" on the board but then just gloss over that point in seconds when he takes them in turn? Anyone beliving 2. or 3. is a bafoooon. Well, 3. is slightly plausable, and I would quite like it to be that.

I can't get my head around that coin gubbins, and anything to do with maths stuff just frightens me anyway. I don't seriously think Derren Brown predicted the lotto numbers via magic brainwaves or anything, but I simply went with it as a very entertaining piece of TV. At the most basic level he just said "I will predict the lotto numbers", and this he did.

I never watch any of his shows looking for jiggery-pokery with hidden cameras and such, because for me that just sucks all the fun out of it and I just want to be entertained and go, "Wow, that was cool how he did such-and-such".

Just watched this, and it didn't work on me, I didn't think it would, but tried to let it. My girlfriend didn't stand up when I asked if she could, and she looked like she was trying, she said she didn't want to as she felt REALLY comfortable, but she could if she wanted to, I asked her to stand up and then sit down again, she didn't. She said she could if she moved her arms, but she didn't move her arms, eventually she did, and then she stood up.

Malc

I did not stick to my chair. I partly blame Craig for being in my peripheral vision going 'hahahahaha!' and 'pfffttt' and 'huh' and bouncing around.

Annoyingly he started to stick, but he fought it because he didn't want to stick.

I wanted to stick.



Unstickable me.

He couldn't even make us watch, never mind stick. EPIC FAIL LOL!

Derren Brown's head is slightly crescent shaped. It sort of curves round from his right eyebrow down to his chin on the other side.

I wonder if I should write to him and let him know.

Me too, but I didn't. I was totally open to it and wanted to believe and all those things, but it never bloomin' worked.

Enjoyed the show overall, though, and especially loved the woman in the toy store who he made pick a giraffe.

Fun show. Amusing that he did all the build up to the video, whereas it was him speaking that was doing it.

Anyway, I didn't stick to the chair that much, but I felt like I didn't want to move and was very relaxed. During the video my hands raised up a little from my knees, so only the fingertips were touching my legs. Then when it was over, I did manage to stand up, but I didn't want to, and wanted to stay sitting.

A fun experiment, to try and hypnotise several million people.

Question - did anyone else get a bit weirded out by none of it appearing to be 'Live' at all? I mean, most of the show was him on a video, showing videos. All very 'meta'. Anyway, it just seemed as if it wasn't live at all, and that cut a bit of the realism out of it for me.

I know what you mean. Especially the phone in part.

Just watched the repeat and sadly didn't stick or even feel heavy

I didn't stick, but I was VERY relaxed during it all... I could have stood up very easily, I just didn't want to! Strange.. but probably nothing to do with me being hypnotised. I think I'm just lazy.

I stuck to my chair, because I fell asleep.

The shopping centre where he was "be"-ing a tramp was Charter Place in Watford. That was excellently exciting in an "Oh look! It's my bus! On the telly!" sort've way.

I recognised the shopping centre, too

I thought it may have been the bit before the video that was supposed to do it, but thar's the bit 'someone' kept guffawing through So that was annoying me somewhat and I felt the opposite of relaxed. Next time I will not ask anyone to watch things with me.

I was stuck to my chair. I was watching JCVD and it was brilliant.

Elton John was stuck to his chair because Derren Brown went round every furniture shop in the country and jizzed on everything and David Furnishing did too and... and... oh just ask Riles ok, it was his explanation.

The next time I'm late for work (probably Monday), I am going to tell my boss that I was going to be on time, but I started dreaming about Derren Brown and found myself unable to get out of the bed.

FTFY

Watched the Faith Healing special last night. To be honest, I felt it was overlong and didn't really go anywhere. The scenes showing how the various miracles are performed and the secret footage of healers in action was fascinating, as was how they taught the ordinary member of the public to act like one, but the climatic dénouement at the end just felt unsatisfying. Moreover, the 'conflict' between the pleb and Derren felt contrived.

I thought it was very good, and thought the final speech was close to perfect. He did have to be careful to make it clear that it wasn't anti-Christian, as otherwise the actual point would have been lost.

I enjoyed it, but I think the end felt a bit flat without reactions from the faith healing community or the audience who attended his show.

They certainly could have done with more people.

Watching that pastor squirm during the final (excellent) speech was a delight.

I enjoyed most of it - it was much better than his last special (the landing the 'plane one), which was obviously faked in parts.

Only took you 18 months to come up with that - you're getting wittier.

I normally love Derren Brown but this one felt contrived and pointless. Derren's message that faith healers were con artists of the worst kind was given in the first 5 minutes and simply repeated without any further exposition throughout the programme.

If the purpose was to show that anyone could be a faith healer it was only demonstrated after months and months of intense training. In the same way anyone could be, say, a doctor, lawyer or pastor, with months of training. It was hardly revelatory after you accepted the initial his proposition that faith healers are charlatans, which was hardly difficult when faith healers were shown proclaiming to grow back limbs.

It was over long and didn't confront any of the offenders; failing to dig any deeper beyond faith healers are liars praying on the weak with potentially disasterous consquences for financial gain, which, as I've said, was given in the introduction. That guy squirming in his chair (for all of a second) was the whole reaction to Derren's message before they then dashed from the theatre. They didn't even interview any of the people at the theatre - why were they there, what did they think of the message, had they been to see a faith healer before, would they again? Nothing.

Perhaps we were supposed to be focusing on the pretend pastors journey and conflict with his own faith. I doubt it, as the only conflict was the stress of having to learn all this stuff and the demands placed on him by Derren to get the act right...

I don't know. It was just an extremely disappointing piece of television in my eyes.