Re: Derren Brown: New show 10PM tonight channel 4
Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 9:51 am
RogueLeader wrote:http://derrenbrown.co.uk/blog/2010/09/hero-answers-questions/
Plenty of good reasons in there why he wasn't / couldn't have been an actor. Also explains the long hypnotising sessions, the train stunt, and the garden visits.
They made a point of saying the guy had to be REALLY suggestable. Otherwise it wouldn't have worked.
Seriously, what would be the point of doing it with an actor? It wasn't a magic trick with a hidden secret, it was a different type of show.
Derren's main reason for why he can't have used an actor is:
Derren Brown wrote:we explain who Matt is and that he has no idea these things are going on or that he’s being filmed etc. These things cannot be lies, as it is a huge legal no-no. Every word of voice-over script and picture is analysed by the C4 lawyer to make sure there is no misleading the viewer. A magic trick is different: there is licence to deceive, and a sense of theatre
So Derren is trying to say that they are legally not allowed to mislead the viewer as the show is not a magic trick. He then explains the train stunt by saying:
Derren Brown wrote:Needless to say, this was all very controlled, unbeknownst to Matt, so there was no way he would have been hurt.
That sounds very much like misleading the viewer as they clearly presented the train stunt as real and with Matt escaping just seconds before the train reached him.
And it doesn't take long to think back to other stunts he's done where he has clearly lied to the viewer. In the Russian Roulette show he tells us that he isn't using blanks and then it comes out that he did use blanks.
A further example is in the show where he attempted to teach an old lady to beat a table of professional poker players in a game of poker. During her 'training' he did a 'test' to see if she could read him by deciding whether cards where high or low. Actually what he wa doing was a classic card trick called "Out of This World" but only those who know about card tricks would be aware of that, to the average viewer it was never mentioned and the whole thing was presented in the same way this programme was and not as a magic trick.
TLDR: It wouldn't be the first time Derren has told us something is not a trick when it was. Most of his act is in disguising classic magic tricks as acts of psychology and more recently he has started to cheat in the same ways David Blaine cheats, by using camera tricks and actors.