Out to Lunch

with comic caperers Penn and Teller, who eat on the double with DAVID HANDELMAN

Penn and Teller's Off Broadway act boasts many startling sights—balloon-sculpture performance art, MOFO the psychic gorilla—but none so breathtaking as Penn swallowing fire or Teller swallowing a hundred needles. So I wanted to see what else they might eat. For a setting, Penn and Teller chose Wally's and Joseph's, a somber surf-and-turfery near Broadway. Not because they're partial to duos, but because they're extremely busy—Saturday Night Live, a Disney Channel series, Letterman, maybe a movie—and the restaurant is around the comer from their office.

Even so, six-foot-six, T-shirted Penn Jillette shows up ten minutes late. "It's our fault,'' he cheerfully admits, and orders a Virgin Mary. Five-foot-nine Teller ambles in and asks for "a cup of hot tea, please.''

Teetotalism is only one of their many self-styled eccentricities. Penn, thirty, sports a punkish forelock and a single blood-red fingernail; Teller, thirty-seven, never speaks onstage and refuses to reveal his first name (it's Raymond). But the affectation can be forgiven: the comedian-magicians had to amuse themselves during eleven years together on the road, living in Motel 6's, playing rowdy Texas carnivals and dead-beat L.A. discos. They developed a mystical, anarchic, unclassifiable shtick aptly titled Penn & Teller, which ran for a year in L.A., is doing the same in New York, and has drawn fans as diverse as Paul Newman, Yoko Ono, Bryant Gumbel, Iggy Pop, and Andy Williams.

It all began when Penn, a clownschool dropout, persuaded Teller, an Amherst graduate, to quit teaching Latin and concentrate on his moonlighting magic. Penn explains, "I'd never work with anybody who had a day job. It makes you less desperate, less hungry."

They seem pretty hungry today, avidly digging into the breadbasket. "Let's have Mr. Manners with us, Teller," warns Penn. "Last time I was here I ate more food than I ever ate in my life."

"It was good," Teller recalls, shrugging. His voice is soft, and he seems content to let Penn do the talking.

Penn scans the menu. "Last time, I had the Fresh Lump Maryland Crabmeat Cocktail. It was so boss I'm gonna get it again."

"I had the Boston scrod," says Teller, "and there were irritating bones in it." A strange plaint from someone who slurps down needles and spits them out strung together.

Agent Sam Cohn lunches here, I report. "Does he?" Penn replies. "I don't see any stains. . ." He asks the waiter, "Now, what are all these different veals?" He takes francese, while Teller opts for Chicken Gizmonda.

"Teller and I have always eaten well," says Penn. "When you're driving a long time between shows, you really do look forward to eating, because you'll be stopping. We used to drive an extra twenty miles if a place was real good."

Teller's face lights up, his eyes widening. "There was that wonderful place in, um, Elvis's town..." "Memphis?" prompts Penn. "Memphis, in the slum, that had only recently started admitting whites through the front door."

"They had great gumbo," Penn says with gusto. "There was a real good steak house in Texas, a crab place in Delaware ..."

"There is much good chili to be had in this country," Teller concludes.

Penn's crabmeat arrives and he attacks it, the tiny fork looking even tinier in his huge juggler's hand. "We eat very fast, no matter what. The Texas years we were making good money, but we always had to get to the gig; my girlfriend used to be appalled, because we would stop at incredibly expensive French restaurants and be in and out in forty-five minutes— fshwoosh!"

The waiter tries to clear the crabmeat remains, but Penn springs to protect his plate: "I'm still doing something with this. I'm going to make a little creation. Kind of spin art. Horseradish gestalt."

Playing the fairs, they could earn a living working just four months a year, just weekends—so that's all they did. "We didn't have the big picture clear," Penn says as the main course arrives. "We thought, We're making lots of money in Texas, but when we do these theater gigs, we don't make shit! So I guess the theater gigs are a hobby and Texas is our real career." Teller snickers.

They seem wary of the highergrade show biz they've been tasting; Penn smirks as he recounts playing a drug dealer on Miami Vice, and working with "those psychedelic guys." "They have a whole different sensibility about everything. They don't tell you how to say your lines; they tell you how to stand so the suit falls right. They hire a big ugly sonofabitch with a square head, then try to make him look like a fashion hog."

It seems like a trick, but after ten minutes they're both pushing away emptied plates. Penn orders sherbet and a cup of decaf. Teller orders nothing.

They're booked until mid-1987, a daunting prospect. Penn says, "We don't need money; the most extravagant thing we've done is buy word processors. We need time. If somebody gave us a gig where it'd be for free but we got five hours more a day, we'd take that in a big hurry." They seem in such a rush that 1 leave the table to pay the check, and they're gone in a flash.