Derren Brown Live: Hero at 30,000 feet, C4 10pm

But if he's an actor, you will see him on other things

which applies to all Derren's shows, has anyone over the last 10 years actually come out and said they were a stooge on his show? I can't remember it happening. And you'd think the tabloiRAB would pay enough to make it worth someones while to come out and say what goes on.

not that the above should lead you to believe that i liked last night show, the whole staging of it just felt too obvious. now whether thats what derren intended or whether he just crossed the line over what is plausible i have no idea.
 
I don't see how anyone could think it was anything other than complete fakery after the ludicrous straightjacket on the railway line scene.

Apart from the obvious point that neither DB nor C4 would ever subject someone to that kind of physical risk or mental trauma, the multiple camera angles - from mysteriously invisible braodcast quality cameras - gave it away.

Almost all of the 'real' people involved appeared to be acting - badly.

The mother was the only one who I thought at all plausible.

As other critics here have pointed out, it was little more than a badly acted, poorly produced work of fiction.

Had it been presented as pure fiction I doubt it would ever have made it into production, let alone be broadcast.

DB's last three 'specials' have been unfathomably bad.
The lottery one did at least present a bit of a puzzle, albeit one that was solved withing minutes on this and other message boarRAB, but the casino fiasco and this one were just very, very, poor TV.

I've always taken DB's psychobabble/NTL flim-flam for the misdirection it is, but in the past he did at least make some effort to use it as subtle and (almost) believable disguise for what were always basically conjuring tricks and slick post-production work.
 
This has been a common theme over several pages of this thread. Somebody will raise a few pertient queries about the show,..then the 'believers' pick out any that have any margin for grey area at all and dwell on those while putting the blinkers on and completely ignoring any questions that are a bit more challenging.

This is because for whatever reason they 'want to believe'. I expect the same people are heavy subscribers to David Icke's website,...where there are countless exaples of the same sort of naive, unworldly, flawed, and highly fragmented/selective approach to an argument
 
Ok Keelbooties,

So you have about 20 posts on here in favour of Matt not being a stooge, plus A couple more you have dragged out from somewhere. vs about 1,100 posts from people who saw it and believed the guy to be an actor.

Doesn't common sense tell you anything here ?

Here's looking forward to your explanation of how the band appeared out of thin air in the middle of the party. And no, I won't forget to ask you again. Hope your TV signal doesn't briefly cut out when that part comes on this time !
 
And this confusion is confusing his fans and everybody else:-

He started with his mentalism and magic but one of the novel things he came up with was a load of bs around suggestibility and the power of the mind to cover up the magic tricks.

A very good example was cited above when Derren got somebody to pick a tractor then went back and showed that he had used the word attractive in an earlier sentence and that had forced them to choose tractor. Thats BS :- he used standard trickery to get the person to pick tractor and then made up the nonsense about attractive to cover the trick.

This was all very entertaining, although some critics had their doubts about the gullible not getting that this psychobabble was all part of the show. As I stated earlier, Derren used to give plenty of magic in jokes to give an overt lie to some of the rubbish he was gleefully spouting. Not everybody got it though.

When he did his Events there became an interesting blurring. Usually somebody did something outrageous or incredible through the POWER OF THE MIND. The only thing that kept these shows somewhat morally ambiguous is that usually all the proving moments up until the POWER OF THE MIND moment were mentalism/magic tricks dressed up with Derrens wickedly funny bs. ( Again though it was still extremely dodgy because a lot of people bought it as THE TRUTH)

And then we have this weeks show where there wasn't a hint of mentalims/magic on display and we are supposed to believe that it all happened through the POWER OF THE MIND. But the difficulty is that, whilst some may say this was a completely different show from previous - on the face of it it looks exactly the same show as those that included large amounts of trickery.

And Derren is out there proclaiming that it was all real and happened exactly as described.

So maybe to avoid confusion he should put out a statement that says. This show is not my usual fare of magic and psychology but is indeed a straight forward documentary on how we changed somebodies life.

Then folk who may have tuned in expecting to see one of Derrens magic shows won't be disappointed.
 
The unfortunate reality is that even for somebody as intelligent as Derren morality must take a second place to entertainment. No doubt there'll be some intellectual justification for it but the reality is that Derren is whoring out his own ethics for fame and fortune.
 
Yes, after years of telling everyone not to be taken in by self-styled gurus and confidence tricksters, he seems to be doing exactly the same sort of thing - but with a straight face.

Very odd.

I'm reminded of Bob Dylan..
"Look out kid, you're going to get hit
But users, cheaters, six-time losers
Hang around the theaters
Girl by the whirlpool looking for a new fool
Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters.."
 
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