Derren Brown. Russian Roulette Tonight.

Mr. Fancypants

So, someone is going to be randomly picked out of a group of 5000 people to load a single bullet into a gun. Derren Brown will then hold the gun to his head and pull the trigger 5 times and hopefully not kill himself.

I know i said quite a few times before that we are becoming so desensitised that it is getting harder and harder to shock (Fear Factor and Jackass pull out all the stops) that it is only a matter of time before someone will be killing themselves on television to make us take notice.....didnt think it would happen so soon though.

Is this taking things too far? Is it still possible to shock people these days? Will it be possible to shock future generations?

Despite my reservations, i know i will be looking at this tonight.....maybe from behind my hands...but i will be looking.

Pigman II

Originally posted by mbroaders

I know i said quite a few times before that we are becoming so desensitised that it is getting harder and harder to shock

I don't think in this instance that it's a case of the viewing public being desensitised. It's just that we've become more sophisiticated as viewers and realise deep down that these is absolutely zero chance of him ending up dead as a result of this trick.

If Brown actually does blow a large hole in his oversized head tonight then I think you'll find that ther'll be plenty of people out there who'll be shocked at the sight and news of it.

Either way, I won't be watching it.

sceptre

The cynic in me reckons that if there was any chance of Brown blowing a hole in his head, the whole thing would be PPV. Having said that if there's no obvious gun switching and they use an old fashioned six-shooter it might be exciting for some (not me unfortunately - if I haven't the patience to sit through 90 minutes of a footie match I'm not going to watch a guy go click click for 60) as even blanks will make an appreciable hole in a temple at blank range.

eth0_

He's not going to blow his head off tonight. Derren Brown is one of the finest magicians in the world IMO, and he has said repeatedly that he's not going to put his life on the line to save face, he would rather pull out at the last moment and face humiliation rather than 'the alternative' of killing himself. Bear in mind he has been practicing the stunt for well over a year with a loaded gun, this isn't the first time he'll ever have had a loaded gun held to his temple.

And C4 aren't going to show something like that happening even if something *did* go wrong, as there is a short delay on the transmission in case of problems.

I'll be watching it, i'm a massive fan of Browns and i've been looking forward to this for a whole year.

One last thing....I don't see anyone giving out about those magicians Siegfried and Ray, saying their performance is going to encourage children to stick their heads through the bars of the tiger enclosure at the local zoo!

eth0_

Originally posted by sceptre
The cynic in me reckons that if there was any chance of Brown blowing a hole in his head, the whole thing would be PPV..

He was interviewed by Chris Moyles on Friday and said he was more than a little offended that Channel 4 have decided to release the DVD of the 'Derren Brown: Mind control' shows in the morning, cashing in on his possible death!

I'd love to know what his mammy thinks of all this :-D

sceptre

Originally posted by eth0_
I'd love to know what his mammy thinks of all this :-D

I'm sure his mammy is very proud and has probably been on the blower with a wee bit of worry more than once over the past few days. Mammys are like that.

Originally posted by eth0_
One last thing....I don't see anyone giving out about those magicians Siegfried and Ray, saying their performance is going to encourage children to stick their heads through the bars of the tiger enclosure at the local zoo!

Ah, but they're just plonkers. Are people complaining that Brown's stunt/show is going to encourage people to start playing with guns? Keep your guns and your tigers well locked up and you'll be relatively all right I reckon.

davelerave

he's a magician it's only a trick but still i think it's irresponsible to televise it

flogen

who the hell would do what a magician does on telly cos it looks cool?

I mean, in the last 30 days or so, i havent seen anyone copy my 'living in a box' routine.

Flogen

Dakeyras

Originally posted by eth0_
One last thing....I don't see anyone giving out about those magicians Siegfried and Ray, saying their performance is going to encourage children to stick their heads through the bars of the tiger enclosure at the local zoo!

just a connected point.......... Roy of that duo was attacked on stage by one of the tigers during the show and is in a critical condition. just thought id mention that.

As for Darren Brown, i think he is one of the finest magicians around and as has been said i don't think theres any chance of him messing up and blowing his head off. I for one will be watching just to see how he's going to attempt this. If he is just playing russian roulette and doesnt actually want the gun to fire, it would be a fairly simple job to weight the chamber so as the one with the bullet would settle at the bottom, if hes using the generic revolving chamber type gun (which i presume he is) . Though getting the random audience member to put it in the right one could be difficult. But of course, he will actually use real magic to do it.

LegacyUser

Originally posted by sceptre
as even blanks will make an appreciable hole in a temple at blank range.

this is true, a blank from a large caliber handgun at pb range will kill u as sure as a bullet, has killed more than one actor in the past

suppafly

What time and channel is it on?

eth0_

Originally posted by Dakeyras
just a connected point.......... Roy of that duo was attacked on stage by one of the tigers during the show and is in a critical condition. just thought id mention that.

Which.....is exactly why I mentioned them :-)
That guy knew there was always going to be a risk of being mauled, just as anyone who works with wild animals does. You don't yank a wild animal around so it's facing the audience....it's gonna get pi55ed at you sooner or later!

I find all the do-gooders on the news complaining about Brown funny ***, 'In a week when there have been three gun related murders...' yeah, the same week 'Kill Bill' was released, one of the most violent movies ever put on general release, i'm sure just as many teenagers will go see that than watch Derren tonight, I wonder will we see an increase in samaurai sword related deaths, or the russian roulette related ones, next week?

Russian Roulette is on Channel 4 at 9pm tonight.

parasite

roy deserved all he got :mad:

suppafly

Originally posted by eth0_
Russian Roulette is on Channel 4 at 9pm tonight.

ah dam i've only got E4. I reckon they'll prbably show it on E4 a couple of days later maybe

eth0_

Originally posted by suppafly
ah dam i've only got E4. I reckon they'll prbably show it on E4 a couple of days later maybe

You could check sky news after the event, they'll probably show a clip.
Or it might be broadcast on the chan 4 website if you have bband

sceptre

I ended up flicking past this around 9 and stayed watching. Much better than that Keith Barry style jiggery pokery. Very interesting to watch for anyone who's ever been fascinated by Desmond Morris shows - or anyone who tends to be fascinated by watching people.

Oh yeah. It's not magic. It's much more impressive than that.

Smithers

WTF , did he think it was 5 ????

Calibos

Well, he's still alive!

I actually reckon this was his easiest trick. Normally in his tricks he'll vet and eliminate candidates he's going to do the trick with. He finds the person he wants and does the trick with them. Say for example the guessing which hand 5 times in a row trick. He's looking for certain signs and tries to invoke signs in the person.....but he also has to factor in if the person will try and give false signs or double bluff him etc

He obviously emphasised "one". By careful vetting of participants he eliminated the type of person who would double bluff or disregard his obvious subliminal "one". With such high stakes he knew that no one would risk double bluffing etc for fear of having his death on their concience. By raising the stakes, he infact made the stunt safer IMHO.

GuanYin

yeah he got it wrong first time an dlooked all paniced.

think it was purposely done to increase the tension tho.

smiaras

This post has been deleted.

Mossy Monk

very good programme. i was in pure amazment at how he eliminated everyone

eoge

Hmmm... yeah. Looks like he ****ed it up alright. Maybe that was just for dramatic effect, but he did look like he was going to cry.

ixoy

Just a quick thing here: I thought Derren Brown never claimed to be a magician and, in fact, refuted any claims that he was. He has ALWAYS said he does his work by factors of suggestion and an ability to read body language. Therefore since he himself doesn't want to be seen as a magician (which implies trickery and faking things), he shouldn't be called one as such.
Good event though - I'm gonna play it at my next house party!

henbane

Good show and it did look like he was going to piss his pants at one stage which added to the attraction.

I still reckon the one he did with walking across the rigged planks was better. It wasn't life or death just severe injury but the fact that the guy was ex-SAS made it seem an awful lot more unpredictable.

Dr. Dre

Quite Good, am a fan of Derren Brown.
But did ya see those feckin weirdos on after him ? Strange guys:(

mr_angry

I thought it was totally f*cked up! You could see and hear beforehand that he was bricking it. His voice was shaking when he asked yer man to count from one to six.

I can't believe he went ahead and pulled the trigger on 6 though. When he got 5 wrong, he put the gun down and tapped his fingers. Then he reached for the gun, but stopped, and went back. At this point, I could hardly watch. And then he went and pulled on the 6th too! That was a cross between insane-bravery and outright-stupidity.

But I take the point - are we just on a timeline to someone killing themselves live on TV? Is that alright with everyone? I got the distinct feeling watching tonight's show that I should turn off - that it wasn't right to watch this kind of thing. In the end, I watched on anyway, but to be honest, I don't think someone killing themselves on TV is acceptable.

jonhate

I really wanted him to see him get his head blown :mad: Ah well maybe some other time

MrPinK

i was in pure amazment at how he eliminated everyone

It was good when he guessed the words the last five were thinking. Thought it was pretty funny when he spent about 30 seconds on each one trying to work out what they're thinking, but then got to the last guy, looked at him for about a second and just said 'cow'

eth0_

Makaveli

I thought it was a really good program.
Also thought it was funny the way he wrote down cow straight away for your man.
Jesus, when he fired that first shot, he did it so fast it was scary.
And how he knew it was in chamber 1 I dunno. That guy can do some weird stuff.
Very impressive.

Calibos

Etho.....Pics?????????

And how he knew it was in chamber 1 I dunno. That guy can do some weird stuff.

I take it you didn't read my post or don't agree with it then Makaveli??

rob1891

But I take the point - are we just on a timeline to someone killing themselves live on TV?

yeppers, and a short one too ....

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-12810815,00.html

edit: actually that story is suicide live over the internet, so perhaps we have a while to wait before rte is showing such stuff ... oops!

eth0_

Originally posted by Calibos
Etho.....Pics?????????

How about you click on the links!
Not my fault if boards uses sh1tty vbulletin which doesn't work with regular HTML. grr.

eth0_

Originally posted by rob1891
yeppers, and a short one too ....

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-12810815,00.html

edit: actually that story is suicide live over the internet, so perhaps we have a while to wait before rte is showing such stuff ... oops!

Oh, how terribly 'metal' of them! Who cares about those fscking hosers, they should kill themselves live on the net.

Calibos

I did click and lovely pictures of Derren they are too.....but what exactly was your point??.....Heart?? Keeping in mind that I only saw the last 5 minutes of the show so maybe thats why I don't 'get it' ...........or maybe I'm just thick..........or maybe there was no point?....................I'll go shut up and stand in the corner now............. :D

Mossy Monk

another picture. captures the mood

ooooo, the tension

eth0_

Originally posted by Calibos
I did click and lovely pictures of Derren they are too.....but what exactly was your point??.....Heart??

Who needs a point, he is a good lookin' chap!
Aww look at him in mossys pic, all *frightened* :0(

ixoy

I also feel this guy really showed up David Bland's london box trick. Derren is better also by virtue of the fact he clues you in on how he's doing it. For a very rough idea of how he did this one you got to understand the participant was:
i) Suggestible (determined when he chose to cross the room in the test)
ii) Nervous (therefore unlikely to formulate a plan to try and counteract Derren's suggestion).

Then of course there's the whole subliminal thing that Derren did: choose ONE number, keeping thinking of that ONE number in your head, focus on your ONE number.

There were probably other instances which allowed Derren to guess the guy's choice in numbers (such as the chair game?) but all-in-all very impressive. I'd NEVER want to play poker with him!! He'd cream the opposition.

eth0_

Originally posted by ixoy
I'd NEVER want to play poker with him!! He'd cream the opposition.

He's actually been banned from every casino/poker hall he's ever been too. They all think he's cheating

Mossy Monk

Originally posted by eth0_
He's actually been banned from every casino/poker hall he's ever been too. They all think he's cheating

proper order too. who'd play poker with him in all fairness

did ye ever see him at the dog track. even though he was losing the whole time the woman behind the till still payed out

chernobyl

Originally posted by mr_angry4
I don't think someone killing themselves on TV is acceptable.

Even if he had blown out his brains you wouldnt have got to see it on your TV. There was a 15 minute delay in the feed and c4's output.

Frank Grimes

Originally posted by Mossy Monk
another picture. captures the mood

ooooo, the tension

This was actually Derren's reaction to the news that he's going to be thrown into the box with Blaine as punishment for last night's stunt.

daveg

I thought it was excellent and I also was impressed with his elimination techniques. WTF was he doing though when he guessed wrong (5th chamber) and went on to pull the 6th. Madness.

Was there really a 15 min delay in the airing?

Frank Grimes

Originally posted by daveg
Was there really a 15 min delay in the airing?

This guy apparently worked on the show and says there was a 10 second delay.

Biffa Bacon

His "cock-up" on chamber 5 was pure showmanship (though still very good). He knew exactly which chamber the bullet was in right from the start.

Makaveli

Originally posted by Calibos
I take it you didn't read my post or don't agree with it then Makaveli??

The former.

woodyg

It was all a big fix purely staged to get fewers which it was succesful at.
Think about it they never showed the bullet hiting the sand bag (cause there never was 1) but they should a wide angle few of when he tought it was the bullet(new to well it wasn't just done to make good tension).It really show's that reallity tv has gone to far. The guy he choose looked like ralph little which was funny

eth0_

Originally posted by Biffa Bacon
His "cock-up" on chamber 5 was pure showmanship (though still very good). He knew exactly which chamber the bullet was in right from the start.

Course he did, because he obviously planted the number '1' in the loaders head, and the guy is very very well trained in reading people, and detected some sort of change in the guys voice when he said 'one'.

There would only have been a 10-15 second delay on that. A delay takes time to build up, and 45 mins isn't long enough to build up a delay of 15 mins on a live trasmission.

Mr. Fancypants

That was some intense television.
Im fairly sure he originally thought it was in chamber 2 as he said he would start at 3 and work his way up. This way he would of eliminated all 5 empty chambers. But when he got to chamber 5 he doubted himself and shot an empty chamber at the sandbag. I really thought he was going to end it there as he didnt seem to have a clue where the live round was but he carried on and at some stage decided it was in chamber one (He did seem to say "one" a lot while the guy was loading the chamber)

He only shot 3 of the six rounds at himself, which suggests to me that he did feck up but it only made it even more intense (better tv?). His reaction when it was over certainly suggested that wasnt sure what way it was going to go.

patch

He picked a person who he knew would give the game away when he counted from 1-6. Simple.

Mossy Monk

Originally posted by woodyg
The guy he choose looked like ralph little which was funny

i thought he looked like Alvares from Oz