An Honest Liar

Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom’s documentary “An Honest Liar” is named after James “The Amazing” Randi, a magician who has been deceiving people for entertainment purposes only since his childhood. He has performed magic tricks and managed to get out of impossible situations that were physically challenging throughout his career, which spans more than seven decades on stage as well as American television screens.

For him, those are what he calls honest lies (he won’t tell you how he does it). What makes him mad are the fake fakes people like psychics or faith healers who claim their trickery is real.

Like Houdini before him, Randi has spent a large part of his life outing charlatans and frauds. But there is something else at work here beyond showbiz razzmatazz and gotcha pulpiteering: An honest liar wants to promote science as a way of looking at the world rational skepticism based on critical thinking rather than gullibility born from faith in miracles.

If an honest liar only told us about how great Randi was at being an entertainer or how hard he worked to debunk things, that would be one helluva documentary right there. But then this movie goes into Act 3 with twists I’m not going to give away that make it both startlingly revelatory and profoundly moving.

Randi grew up in a regular middle-class family but always felt like an outsider among his peers. He became involved with magic through watching a performance by one magician when he was young, and within years had become such big deal in the industry that he’d appear on variety shows every week doing escape acts between commercial breaks from TV specials where he’d put himself in straitjackets, handcuffs or sealed coffins hanging over Niagara Falls or buried under Alcatraz. After establishing himself as Johnny Carson’s favorite guest whether performing tricks or exposing con artists he would later become the go to skeptic on Larry King’s talk show, where believers in everything from Bigfoot to alien abductions to the power of prayer would encounter some serious buzzkill.

But Randi’s debunking efforts took him outside U.S. borders as well. After growing tired of New Age Channelers like JZ Knight and Ramtha (a 30,000-year-old spirit warrior who speaks through her), he created his own mystic conduit: a young Venezuelan named José Alvarez, who toured Australia talking nonsense about ancient spirits while under Randi’s coaching. The fake spiritualist’s presskit was filled with articles clipped from non-existent papers, and Randi is still peeved that not one reporter bothered to fact-check these nonexistent sources. The tour went so well that Randi had to ruin it by going on Australian TV and announcing that it was all a con.

When two of his highest-profile targets were at their peaks as media sensations is when this movie starts getting really good. Israeli psychic Uri Geller often appeared on talk shows claiming he could bend keys with his mind or do other acts of telekinesis; when Johnny Carson’s producers asked for advice on how to keep some of Geller’s props from working correctly during a taping, Randi gladly obliged which led to some very awkward moments for the “psychic.” Turns out Randi had been battling Geller for decades, even back in their home country.

I’m telling you way too much about this movie because I love it so much and want everyone else to see it too.

It is, however, his meeting with faith healer Peter Popof that has the most dramatic outcome. In trying to figure out how the televangelist knows what illnesses his audience members have and even where they live, Randi finds out that a simple radio is involved. Specifically, Popof wears a small receiver in his ear and one of his minions transmits information they’ve gathered beforehand, when people who are supposed to be seriously ill but miraculously cured through the flamboyant laying-on of hands at the minister’s services are brought forward. The discovery destroys Popof’s ministry.

Randi also believes that part of his job is showing scientists how to catch tricksters who pretend to have supernatural powers while being studied under artificial conditions say by imitating psychics or bending spoons with their minds. But sometimes he doesn’t know how to counteract them; sometimes he wonders why people want to be fooled and if it’s wrong to disillusion them.

In another sense in every sense but one Randi comes across as a great man: He saves us from lots of toxic waste. Yet this paradoxical scene is not unique. Late in An Honest Liar, some audience members challenge him for “missing” larger truths by debunking smaller lies. Some viewers may agree. At any rate, Randi can only do so much: Geller resurfaces; then Popof who now calls himself a “mystifier” instead of a psychic makes more money with healing.

And there are levels of truth and illusion in personal lives too: José Alvarez was an Australian teenager when James Randi met him on stage during what turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt at “channeling.” They’ve been partners ever since this early ’90s adventure; yet they belong to different generations (Randi didn’t come out until 2009).

The surprises keep coming once we enter this domestic sphere during the movie’s last movement not only because they are shocking, but also because they give the film a human dimension beyond what one might expect from such a tantalizingly one dimensional figure.

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