test
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
Uri Geller pays tribute to the star, remembering their long friendship, recollecting past conversations and presenting previously unseen footage from his private archive, including Michael Jackson’s midnight shopping spree in Harrods and a trip to Exeter City FC. Also including scenes from Geller’s wedding vow renewal ceremony, where the singer was the best man. Following the death of Michael Jackson, a British television station aired this interview with Geller regarding his relationship with Jackson (though it is strongly believed he had not had contact with Michael Jackson since 2003). This documentary aired July 26, 2009.
Uri, a believer in the paranormal, website is at http://site.uri-geller.com/
Uri Geller Freud[1], commonly Uri Geller Hebrew: אורי גלר, born Gellér György (Hungarian name)[2] on 20 December 1946 is an Israeli-British performer of magic tricks, which as part of his act he has claimed are a result of psychic abilities[3], most notably “to be able to bend spoons with the power of his mind.” He used to claim that this was entirely due to “psychic” ability but now prefers the designation of “mystifier.”[4]
Geller rose to fame after performing a series of televised performances, demonstrating what he claimed to be psychokinesis, dowsing, and telepathy.[11] His performance included bending spoons, describing hidden drawings, and making watches stop or run faster. Geller said he performs these feats through will power and the strength of his mind.[12] Critics have said that his performances can be duplicated using stage magic tricks.[13]
In 1975 Geller published his first autobiography, My Story, and acknowledged his performances were usually sprinkled with magicians’ tricks because if the spoon bending didn’t work, his show would be pretty dull. Since then he has been heavily debunked by skeptics such as James Randi, who have demonstrated how his feats could be duplicated through the magician’s art.
Geller performed regularly both in theaters and on television from the 1970s until the mid-1990s, when an Israeli TV documentary exposed him as an entertainer rather than using psychic forces. One slow motion shot revealed him producing a small magnet from behind his ear to influence a compass needle. The Canadian journalist and illusionist Randall James Hamilton Zwinge (James Randi) also exposed him as a fraud, and as a result of the negative attention Geller abruptly canceled his show on Israeli television and avoided all media attention and performances until his 2007 reality show comeback.
In recent years, Geller has been a part of several television programs. Geller starred in the 2001 horror film Sanitarium, directed by Johannes Roberts and James Eaves. In May 2002, he appeared as a contestant on the first series of the British reality TV show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, where he finished eighth place. In 2005 Geller starred in “Uri’s Haunted Cities: Venice,” a XI Pictures/Lion TV production for Sky One (which led to a behind the scenes release in early 2008 called “Cursed”). Both productions were directed by Jason Figgis. In early 2007 Geller hosted a reality show in Israel called The Successor (היורש), where the contestants performed magic tricks and Geller was accused of “trickery.”[14] In July 2007 NBC signed Geller and Criss Angel for Phenomenon, which started airing on October 24 to search for the next great mentalist, which contestant Mike Super won.[15] Geller also hosts the TV show The Next Uri Geller, which started on 8 January 2008, and is broadcast by Pro7 in Germany.[16] In February 2008, Geller began a show on Dutch Television called De Nieuwe Uri Geller, which shares a similar format to its German counterpart. The goal of the program is to find the best mentalist in The Netherlands. He started the same show in Hungary from 29 March 2008 (A kiválasztott in Hungarian). During the show Geller speaks both in Hungarian and in English. Geller also performs his standard routines of making stopped watches start, spoons jump from televisions, and tables move. Geller co-produced the TV show Book of Knowledge, released in April 2008.[17]
Geller claims his feats are the result of paranormal powers[11] given to him by extraterrestrials,[24] but critics such as James Randi argue and have demonstrated that Geller’s tricks can be replicated with stage magic and are simply “parlour tricks.”[13]
As early as 1970 in his home country, Geller was termed a “fraud” for claiming his feats were telepathic.[10] In addition, a 1974 article detailed how Geller got away with trickery and exposed his “eleven tricks.”[25] The article alleged that his manager Shipi Shtrang (whom he called his brother at the time) and Shipi’s sister Hannah Shtrang secretly helped in Geller’s performances.[25] Eventually, Geller married Hannah and they had children.[26]
In 1975, two scientists (Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff from the Stanford Research Institute) said they were convinced that Geller’s demonstrations were genuine. [27] However, since that time, notable scientists, various magicians, and skeptics have suggested possible ways in which Geller could have tricked the scientists using misdirection techniques.[13][28] These critics, who include Richard Feynman, James Randi and Martin Gardner, have accused him of using his demonstrations fraudulently outside of the entertainment business.[29][30] Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, who was an amateur magician, wrote in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985) that Geller was unable to bend a key for him and his son.[31] Some of his claims have been described by watchmakers as restarting stopped mechanical clocks by moving them around.[27]
Geller is well-known for his sports predictions. Skeptic James Randi and British tabloid The Sun (among others) have demonstrated the teams and players he chooses to win most often lose.[32] John Atkinson explored “predictions” Geller made over 30 years and concluded “Uri more often than not scuppered the chances of sportsmen and teams he was trying to help.”[32] This was pointed out by one of Randi’s readers, who called it “The Curse of Uri Geller.”[33]
In another notable instance, in 1992, he was paid to investigate the kidnapping of Hungarian model Helga Farkas, and, although he predicted she would be found alive and in good health, she was murdered by her kidnappers.[34][35]
During the Euro 96 football game between Scotland and England at Wembley, Geller, who was hovering overhead in a helicopter, claimed that he managed to move the ball from the penalty spot when Scotland’s Gary McAllister was about to take a penalty kick. The player ended up missing the chance to equalise for Scotland. On television replays, it was shown that the ball did move before the kick; however, if Geller’s claim was true, the game would have been officially ruled null and void.
In 2007, skeptics observed that Geller appeared to have dropped his 35-year-old claims that he does not perform magic tricks. Randi highlighted a quotation from the November 2007 issue of the magazine Magische Welt (Magic World) in which Geller said: “I’ll no longer say that I have supernatural powers. I am an entertainer. I want to do a good show. My entire character has changed.”[36]
In a later interview, Geller told Telepolis, “I said to this German magazine, so what I did say, that I changed my character, to the best of my recollection, and I no longer say that I do supernatural things. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have powers. It means that I don’t say ‘it’s supernatural’, I say ‘I’m a mystifier!’ That’s what I said. And the sceptics turned it around and said, ‘Uri Geller said he’s a magician!’ I never said that.”[37] In that interview, Geller further explained that when he is asked how he does his stunts, he tells children to “Forget the paranormal. Forget spoon bending! Instead of that, focus on school! Become a positive thinker! Believe in yourself and create a target! Go to university! Never smoke! And never touch drugs! And think of success!”[37]
In February 2008, he said in the TV show The Next Uri Geller (a German version of The Successor) that he did not have any supernatural powers, but he winked when he said it.[38]
Geller admits “Sure, there are magicians who can duplicate [my performances] through trickery.”[39] He claims that even though his demonstrations could have been done using trickery, he uses psychic powers to achieve his results.[39] Skeptic James Randi has stated that if Geller is truly using his mind to perform these feats, “he is doing it the hard way.”[40] Stage magicians note several methods of creating the illusion of a spoon spontaneously bending. Most common is the practice of misdirection, an underlying principle of many stage magic tricks.[41]
According to Randi, there are many ways in which a bent spoon can be presented to an audience as to give the appearance it was done with supernatural powers. One way is through one or several brief moments of distraction in which a magician can physically bend a spoon unseen by the audience.[40] Then the bend is gradually revealed creating the illusion that the spoon is bending before the viewers’ eyes.[40] Another way, if a performer does not bend the spoon with force during the performance is by pre-bending them (for example by heating them) and thus reducing the amount of force later needed to be applied.[40] It is also possible to chemically bend the spoon by applying a corrosive to one edge so that the spoon weakens and bends in a set period of time.
Geller claims in telepathic drawing demonstrations that he is able to read subjects’ minds as they draw a picture. Although in these demonstrations he cannot see the picture being drawn, he is sometimes present in the room and on those occasions can see the subjects as they draw. Critics argue this may allow Geller to infer common shapes from pencil movement and sound, with the power of suggestion doing the rest.[41] James Randi has also suggested that Geller uses tiny mirrors held in his palm in order to see the drawings, noting how in one performance of this trick he both turned around when the participant commenced drawing and, seemingly unnecessarily, covered his eyes with his hands, but no one has seen these ‘mirrors’.
Geller’s “watch fixing” abilities do not impress some watch makers, who note “many supposedly broken watches had merely been stopped by gummy oil, and simply holding them in the hand would warm the oil enough to soften it and allow watches to resume ticking.”[27]
In November 2008, Geller accepted an award during a convention of magicians, the Services to Promotion of Magic Award from the Berglas Foundation. In his acceptance speech, Geller said that if he hadn’t had psychic powers then he “must be the greatest” to have been able to fool journalists, scientists and Berglas himself.[42]
Geller’s performances of drawing duplication and cutlery bending usually take place under informal conditions such as television interviews. During his early career he allowed some scientists to investigate his claims. A study by Stanford Research Institute (now known as SRI International) conducted by researchers Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ concluded [43] that he had clearly performed successfully enough to warrant further serious study, and the “Geller-effect” was coined to refer to the particular type of abilities they felt had been demonstrated.[44]
In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, Randi wrote: “Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ, who studied Mr. Geller at the Stanford Research Institute were aware, in one instance at least, that they were being shown a magician’s trick by Geller.”[45] Moreover, Randi explained, “Their protocols for this ‘serious’ investigation of the powers claimed by Geller were described by Dr. Ray Hyman, who investigated the project on behalf of a the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, as ‘sloppy and inadequate.’”[45] However, the only tests of Geller observed by Hyman at SRI were those performed by himself and his two colleagues. Hyman did not observe any testing by Puthoff and Targ. Puthoff and Targ had suggested that Hyman and co. visit SRI and conduct their own experiments on Geller. This they did, and Hyman and his colleagues spent ‘a couple of hours’ performing their own experiments on Geller independent of Puthoff and Targ. Puthoff and Targ observed and video taped these experiments. According to Puthoff and Targ, the experiments performed by Hyman were conducted in an ‘informal manner’ and ‘largely uncontrolled’. [46]
Critics of this testing include psychologists Dr. David Marks and Dr. Richard Kammann. They published a description of how Geller could have cheated in an informal test of his so-called psychic powers in 1977.[47] Their 1978 article in Nature and 1980 book The Psychology of the Psychic (2nd ed. 2000) described how a normal explanation was possible for Geller’s alleged powers of telepathy. Marks and Kammann found evidence that while at SRI Geller was allowed to peek through a hole in the laboratory wall separating Geller from the drawings he was being invited to reproduce. The drawings he was asked to reproduce were placed on a wall opposite the peep hole which the investigators Targ and Puthoff had stuffed with cotton gauze. In addition to this error, the investigators had also allowed Geller access to a two-way intercom enabling Geller to listen to the investigators’ conversation during the time when they were choosing and/or displaying the target drawings. These basic errors indicate the high importance of ensuring that psychologists, magicians or other people with an in-depth knowledge of perception, who are trained in methods for blocking sensory cues, be present during the testing of psychics.
Geller was unable to bend any tableware during a 1973 appearance on The Tonight Show in which the spoons he was to bend had been pre-selected by Johnny Carson. Earlier in his career, Carson had been an amateur stage magician, and he consulted Randi for advice on how to thwart potential trickery.[24] In 1993 Randi explained in “Secrets of the Psychics” for the NOVA television series: “I was asked to prevent any trickery. I told them to provide their own props and not to let Geller or his people anywhere near them.” A clip of this incident was televised on the NBC show Phenomenon. This two-minute clip has been widely circulated on the Internet since James Randi acquired permission to use it from NBC, and Carson paid for the videotape transfer.[48] In his television special Secrets of the Psychics, Geller is shown failing at psychic “hand dowsing,” not metal bending.[clarification needed]
As part of a mass demonstration, Geller’s photograph appeared on the cover of the magazine ESP with the caption “On Sept. 1, 1976 at 11pm E.D.T. THIS COVER CAN BEND YOUR KEYS.” According to editor Howard Smukler, over 300 positive responses were received, many including bent objects and detailed descriptions of the surrounding circumstances including the bending of the key to the city of Providence, Rhode Island. [49]
Noel Edmonds was a television prankster who often used hidden cameras to record celebrities in Candid Camera-like situations for his television programme Noel’s House Party. In 1996, Edmonds planned a stunt in which shelves would fall from the walls of a room while Geller was in it. The cameras recorded footage of Geller from angles he was not expecting, and they showed Geller grasping a spoon firmly with both hands as he stood up to display a bend in it.[50] Geller later claimed that he knew that Edmonds’s crew had been filming, and that he made the shelves fall off the wall with his psychic powers.[citation needed]
In late 2006 and early 2007 Geller starred in The Successor, an Israeli television show to find a “successor” to him. During one segment, Geller tried to move a compass with paranormal abilities. However, video cameras caught Geller with magnet-on-thumb (magnets cause compasses to move in the direction of the magnet).[51][14] Geller then tried to force YouTube to remove the clips that showed the unflattering thumb.[52][51]
Geller performed this trick in 2000 on ABC TV’s The View, which was then duplicated by Randi on the same show the following week.[53]
On the television show Phenomenon on 31 October 2007, Criss Angel challenged Geller and contestant Jim Callahan to prove they had supernatural abilities.[54] Angel pulled two envelopes from his pocket and said, “I will give you a million dollars of my personal money right now if either one of you can tell me specific details of what’s in here right now.”[54] After some shouting, Angel and Callahan then moved toward each other. Geller and the show’s host, Tim Vincent, moved quickly to keep them apart. Shortly thereafter, the show cut to a commercial break.
On 21 November 2007, Criss Angel again offered Geller $1,000,000 on the finale of NBC’s nationally televised Phenomenon.[55] Geller said, “although we were born one day apart, I was born on the twentieth December and you were on the nineteenth … there are a lot of years between us … forty years ago you were one year old when I came out with my spoon bending.”[55] As Geller was speaking Angel said, “I told you that, correct” and then interrupted Geller to reveal the numbers nine-one-one.[55] Then Angel concluded, “If somebody could predict, tell us on nine-ten that 9/11 was going to happen, maybe that could have prevented it.”
Michael Jackson News
Download Memorial Program