Born in 1928, when he reached the ripe old age of 17 James (The Amazing) Randi ran away from home to join the circus as he wanted to become a escape artist like The Great Houdini. By all accounts from this engrossing new documentary on his life by filmmakers Tyler Measom & Justin Weinstein he eventually achieved his goal and could have possibly been even better than his idol if an injury hadn’t brought a sharp halt to him performing his very dangerous stunts. He succeeded at his craft because he was an avid student of stage magic and escape artistry and with his very particular logical approach to his act he could fathom out the most intricate routines.
For the next part of his life he focused on exposing what he called ‘shameless charlatans’ who used a wide variety of lies and deceit to fool an unwitting public. His success at doing this made him something of a media darling as he triumphantly unmasked some of the more successful fakers. Two of them featured in the movie made for very entertaining viewing included the fraudulent Evangelical Minister Peter Popoff who despicably claimed to be able to heal the incurable by listening to the Word of God : turns out that it was his wife feeding him lines through a tiny radio earpiece. Unmasking Uri Geller the physic also seemed easy for Randi and he even ensured that none of his spoon bending tricks would work on a live performance of a Johnny Carson TV Show. Popoff filed for bankruptcy as a result, but years later he’s now back and thumping his bible and extracting more money by other means from a willing and gullible pubic. A very bitter Geller also reinvented himself and tried to reverse the claims about his trickery by naming Randi as the actual one misleading the public.
Randi wanted to go one further than just debunking the feats of these con-artists, and actually refute the evidence of the scientists who legitimised many of the suspect claims with publishing their research. He not only proved to have a remarkable talent for fooling the experts with a ‘fake’ prophet that he invented, he also surprised them (and us) for falling in love with him too.
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The third part of Randi’s fascinating story deals with his personal life and how he spent the last 25 years of it in a committed relationship with the much younger Jose Alvarez who he had randomly met in a library. After Alvarez played the part of Carlos the fake prophet he established his own career as an artist. It is he that packs the final punch in this tale when the Police turn up unannounced at their home with an Warrant for his arrest. Turns out that Alvarez is not who he said he was and has been living with a stolen identity. It is a cruel twist of fate for the man who is an honest liar, or is it??Randi is undoubtedly a charismatic, highly intelligent and extremely amusing man that you simply cannot help but be drawn too. And people like Alice Cooper and magician Penn Jillette are happy to testify to that. An expert self-publicist he insured that he was always in the public eye, and if it wasn’t doing tricks then he would be doing something equally visible like performing on an episode of Happy Days with the Fonz. He came ‘out of closet’ at the ripe old age of 82 years old and now 4 years later with his partner in jail suddenly his smile finally disappears along with his confidence and he asks the filmmakers to turn the cameras off. However like the expert escape artist that he truly is, this is far from the end.
This was an unexpected treat about a man who I confess I had never heard of prior, but he is an audacious and brave one that I so enjoyed learning about. And anyone who dislikes Mr Geller as much as I do, simply cannot be all bad.
Labels: 2014, biography, documentary, gay
