I know how to deceive people, and I know how to recognize when people are being deceived.
A year and a half after its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, the James Randi documentary An Honest Liar has finally made its way before my eyeballs. Directed, produced, and photographed by Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom, the film takes a close look at the magician and escape artist who billed himself as "The Amazing Randi" and the methods he has used for decades to debunk the claims of psychics and charlatans. It also delves into his personal life, specifically his coming out in 2010 and his 25-year relationship with Puerto Rican artist Jose Alvarez, which injects the film with an extra dose of drama just when it seems like it's winding down.
I couldn't say precisely when I became aware of Randi and his exploits, but I know it was sometime in the early '90s and it was through his acolytes Penn & Teller, who are interviewed alongside MythBusters maven Adam Savage, Science Guy Bill Nye, and Alice Cooper, who tapped him to devise and pull off some tricks for his stage show in the '70s. (Yes, that's Randi as the hooded executioner preparing to behead the rock star in a clip from the 1974 documentary Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper.) Weinstein and Measom also corral a number of the people Randi recruited to help him expose fraudulent faith healers and gullible parapsychology researchers, but the biggest shocker was that bogus psychic Uri Geller -- whose methods were exposed on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for all the world to see -- was willing to go on the record. "Deception has so many layers," Geller says, but it seems self-deception is the most dangerous of them all.