The Prestige
First Look
In Theaters October 20, 2006
From acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan ("Memento," "Batman Begins"), comes a mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences.
From the time that they first met as young magicians on the rise, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) were competitors. However, their friendly competition evolves into a bitter rivalry making them fierce enemies-for-life and consequently jeopardizing the lives of everyone around them. Full of twists and turns, "The Prestige" is set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century London, the exceptional cast includes two-time Oscar winner Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson and David Bowie.
STARRING: Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Andy Serkis, Piper Perabo, David Bowie
DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan
STUDIO: Disney
RATING: PG-13 (For violence, mild language and disturbing images, including the killing of birds)
WATCH TRAILER
Wild About Movies Grade: C+
(The Prestige, a well acted, directed, and all around extremely fantastically put together film, has nothing on "The Illusionist," quite possibly the best magician's movie ever.)
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"The Prestige"
Behind The Scenes
From acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan (“Memento,” “Batman Begins”) comes an innovative thriller woven out of the stuff of illusions. In this twisting, turning tale of urgent mystery, two Victorian-era magicians spark a powerful rivalry that builds into an escalating battle of tricks and an unquenchable thirst to uncover the other’s trade secrets. As these two remarkable men pit daring against desire, showmanship against science and ambition against friendship, the results are dangerous, deadly and definitely deceptive.
Their rivalry is brought to life by two of today’s most compelling screen stars: Tony Award-winner Hugh Jackman beloved on screen for his portrayal of the feral Wolverine in “X-Men” and its sequels and Christian Bale, acclaimed for his intense performances including his recent turn as the Caped Crusader in “Batman Begins.” Joining them is an exceptional cast of diverse characters portrayed by two-time Oscar® winner Michael Caine, Golden Globe nominee Scarlett Johansson, newcomer Rebecca Hall, rising actress Piper Perabo, fantasy film cult hero Andy Serkis and rock star David Bowie as the groundbreaking electrical genius Nikola Tesla.
It all begins in rapidly changing, turn-of-the-century London. At a time when magicians are idols and celebrities of the highest order, two young magicians set out to carve their own paths to fame. The flashy, sophisticated Robert Angier (HUGH JACKMAN) is a consummate entertainer, while the rough-edged purist Alfred Borden (CHRISTIAN BALE) is a creative genius who lacks the panache to showcase his magical ideas. They start out as admiring friends and partners. But when their biggest trick goes terribly awry, they become enemies-for-life – each intent on outdoing and upending the other. Trick by trick, show by show, their ferocious competition builds, until it knows no bounds, even utilizing the fantastical new powers of electricity and the scientific brilliance of Nikola Tesla – while the lives of everyone around them hang in the balance. Rife with sleight-of-hand shocks and revelations, the film delves into a riveting world where the farthest, darkest edges of faith, trust and the possible are probed.
THE PRESTIGE is directed by Christopher Nolan from a screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan based on the novel by Christopher Priest. The film is produced by Emma Thomas, Aaron Ryder, and Christopher Nolan . The executive producers are Charles J.D. Schlissel , Chris J. Ball, William Tyrer, and Valerie Dean.
Creating a mysterious, yet vividly contemporary, portrait of the torch-lit heyday of London’s magic scene is an accomplished behind-the-camera team that includes Oscar®-nominated cinematographer Wally Pfister, production designer Nathan Crowley and editor Lee Smith, all of whom also collaborated with Nolan on “Batman Begins.” Joan Bergin, an Emmy Award nominee for television’s “David Copperfield,” designed the costumes.
THE PLEDGE, THE TURN, THE PRESTIGE:
TURNING A MOVIE INTO A MAGIC TRICK AND VICE VERSA
According to Cutter, the magician’s ingeneur (one who designs illusions behind-the-scenes) played by Michael Caine: “Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called The Pledge: the magician shows you something ordinary, but of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called The Turn. The magician makes his ordinary something do something extraordinary. Now, if you're looking for the secret . . . you won't find it. That's why there's a third act called, The Prestige. This is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before.”
Director Christopher Nolan uses these same principles of carefully constructed secrets and shocking moments of revelation to unfold the winding, surprise-filled story of dueling magicians Robert Angier and Alfred Borden in THE PRESTIGE – an intricate thriller in which mysteries abound, illusions permeate every action and nothing is quite what it seems, except the primal human emotions that drive an epic feud between two ambitious men.
Nolan has already, with just a handful of films, established himself as one of filmmaking’s most creative minds, and one with a striking ability to evoke the mysterious and disorienting, whether in independent classics or major action blockbusters. He first came to prominence after his promising debut “Following,” with “Memento,” the ingenious, backwards-moving thriller about a desperate man trying to avenge his wife’s murder while suffering from the loss of all short-term memory. Lauded as a cinematic masterpiece that played with notions of time, space and subjective reality, “Memento” continues to confound audiences and is now studied by film students. Nolan went on to cut his teeth on a bigger thriller, a remake of the Norwegian noir film “Insomnia,” in a fresh version starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank, which once again took the audience on a dizzying journey into crime and fear. He then made another leap, this time into superhero territory, tackling “Batman Begins,” which unveiled the untold origins of the Dark Knight’s emergence as the savior of Gotham City. The film was hailed as one of the most original and engaging of all superhero movies and went on to worldwide acclaim, the rare summer box-office blockbuster that met with equal critical success.
Now, it seemed that Nolan was the perfect person to tackle material as intricate and unconventionally entertaining as THE PRESTIGE.
Says producer Emma Thomas: “Traditionally, I think filmmakers have avoided the subject of magic because there is this feeling that if you’re not seeing it live that it’s too easy to get the wool pulled over your eyes. But Chris started with the idea that movies are already a kind of magic trick – and instead of concentrating on the magic shows themselves, the story is all about what happens behind-the-scenes in the lives of two driven magicians who are devoted to and obsessed with creating the most baffling illusions.”
The film’s genesis began just after Nolan directed “Memento.” Around that same time, executive producer Valerie Dean read and fell madly in love with Christopher Priest’s acclaimed novel, The Prestige -- and immediately knew that amidst its complex blend of history and science fiction, its tale of an out-of-control magical rivalry would make for an original film.
Dean gave the book to Nolan, who was equally intrigued. “The book created a terrific relationship between the narrative form of the novel and the techniques and ideas used by magicians to fool you and engage you in deception – and I felt the exciting thing about making a film of THE PRESTIGE would be to find the cinematic equivalent,” Nolan says. “There’s quite a strong relationship between what magicians do and what filmmakers do. The filmmaker is very similar to a magician in the way we release information – what we tell the audience and when – and how we draw the audience in through certain points of view. We use our own techniques, blind alleys and red herrings, to fool the audience and, hopefully, to create a satisfying pay-off. With THE PRESTIGE, there was an opportunity to really play with these concepts right before the audience’s eyes.”
Nolan in turn asked producer Aaron Ryder of Newmarket Films to obtain the rights. After his experience on “Memento,” Ryder trusted that Nolan would create something distinctive with THE PRESTIGE. “He’s a truly gifted storyteller,” says the producer. ”Chris was born to direct movies. I feel his films are some of the best films being made today and I just loved the idea that he wanted to make this film to be a magic trick in and of itself.“
Meanwhile, the director approached his brother Jonathan about joining him in tackling the massive task of adapting Priest’s intricate novel, composed in part of confessional diaries, into a suspenseful screenplay. Having previously worked together on “Memento” – which Christopher Nolan adapted from Jonathan Nolan’s time-shifting short story -- Jonathan was intrigued by the prospect of doing something equally challenging, yet entirely different.
This time around the fun would be in trying to write a movie as an illusion – one that would dazzle, deceive and ultimately surprise the audience. “The movie definitely had to function as a magic trick,” Jonathan says. But that concept left him in entirely unexplored territory. He continues: “When I started writing I had a bunch of different classic movies in mind that I thought I might pay homage to, but after I was done, I realized that I’d never seen anything quite like this one before.”
He began by paring through the onion-like layers of Priest’s novel. “The book is a very complicated, very ambitious, sweeping epic with tons of ideas -- and it took me about 18 months to figure out how to cut it down into something that resembles a film,” Jonathan comments. “I had to find the structure, which was tricky, because the story is so complexly interwoven. What we came up with is a three-part flashback structure based on this idea of the three-part structure of a magic trick.”
Utilizing that three-part structure –comprised of The Pledge, The Turn and The Prestige – helped the Nolans cut to the core of why people have always been so fascinated by magic. “A lot of it turns on this idea that Chris and I were fascinated by: that the audience for a magic show knows that what they’re about to see is a trick,” Jonathan explains. “If they actually thought a woman was going to be sawn in half, they would be very upset, and definitely not amused. So they know it’s a trick but they also want to feel fooled, so that’s why that third act, or The Prestige, is so important. The real world is rigid, there’s not a lot of mystery to it, but people don’t want that to be the case – and that’s where magic comes in. If we’ve got all the rules figured out and this is the way the world works where you get a job, save your money and then die – well, who wants to live in that world? I think we all would prefer that the universe have some surprises, some tricks up its sleeve.”
Along the way, Jonathan Nolan delved into researching the secretive world of gifted magicians. This became especially revealing when he met with some of the most shadowy figures in that already shadowy realm – the ingeneurs who come up with wild ideas for never-before-seen tricks behind the scenes. “They’re fascinating figures who eschew the limelight, and for a screenwriter there’s something very familiar about that,” he laughs. “The attraction is that they get to pull all the strings.”
In researching magic’s illustrious past, Nolan also gained insight into why that grand legacy has faded into today’s Vegas acts. “I think part of is that now there are hundreds of different versions of magic out there but we don’t call them magic. We have television, video games, movies – they’re all spectacles that you can disappear into just as one used to do at a Victorian magic show,” he says.
THE PRESTIGE heads into many unexpected directions, including having its two main stars – Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale -- morph from heroes to anti-heroes and back again. Jonathan always intended for the audience to choose sides. “I think you can’t really watch the movie without choosing an allegiance. But whoever you’re rooting for, the idea is that you’re likely to start questioning it by the film’s end,” explains the writer. Yet Jonathan himself doesn’t hold a special loyalty to one character or the other. “I like both Angier and Borden,” he says. “To me, they’re flip sides of the same coin, two complementary halves of one person.”
As he wrote, Nolan never shied away from letting the audience draw their own conclusions about all that is going on in the raging battle between Angier and Borden. “I love contentious stuff,” he admits. “Chris and I still argue about aspects of ‘Memento’ and we’ve had arguments about THE PRESTIGE as well. I think if you get to the point where people are sitting around a table arguing about what your movie means, then you’ve done your job as a writer.”
After Jonathan wrote an initial draft of the screenplay with Christopher’s creative involvement, Christopher then jumped in with his own draft. The unique working relationship between the brothers has always involved the one sparking the creativity of the other. Jonathan has his own theory for why they complement each other so well. “I’ve always suspected that it has something to do with the fact that he’s left-handed and I’m right-handed,” he remarks, “because he’s somehow able to look at my ideas and flip them around in a way that’s just a little bit more twisted and interesting. It’s great to be able to work with him like that.”
Emma Thomas was dazzled by the completed screenplay. “When I read the book, I knew it was going to make a great movie – I just didn’t quite know how!” she laughs. “There were so many different elements to the story, but Jonathan and Chris were able to distill it all while keeping the fun of magic and the excitement of this unusual world alive and keeping the focus on all these fascinating characters. Every role had something juicy about it.”
Aaron Ryder was equally impressed. “The story plays with deception, identity and obsession,” he says. “In much the same way that ‘Memento’ pushed the envelope, I believe on a grander scale, the same could be said for THE PRESTIGE. I truly think that it’s innovative in that same way. Jonathan and Chris adapted a very complicated book into a tension filled thriller. It’s rare to see a film deviate so far from the source material yet still remain true to the story and the theme.
BACK TO THE 20TH CENTURY’S FUTURE:
NOLAN TAKES A FRESH LOOK AT THE GREAT VICTORIAN AGE OF MAGIC
THE PRESTIGE emerges amidst an intriguing period rarely explored on film – the Golden Age of magic at the turn of the century. It was the ultimate era for magicians as they pioneered the nascent beginnings of mass entertainment. On the cusp of a new industrial society, the public was obsessed with the very concept of magical occurrences – whether on the stage or in the life-changing technological advances and scientific secrets of the universe unfolding before them. In this atmosphere, the best and boldest of magicians became huge, headline acts across Europe and the U.S. While few other than Harry Houdini, who began performing in 1899, are remembered today, back then numerous talented magicians had the chance to become household names and international idols.
“Magicians were essentially the rock stars of their day,” observes Hugh Jackman, who plays Angier, the charismatic front-man who will stop at nothing to attain superstar status. “It was very different from today in that a lot of the magic back then seemed truly death-defying to audiences and it seemed there was a lot of danger because something could go wrong at any moment. It was a fantastic time for that new kind of shocking theater which preceded modern entertainment.”
Indeed, the times seemed to be magical themselves, especially with the coming of one of the biggest revolutionary changes in human history: electricity. “Electricity must have really felt like magic to those who didn’t understand it yet,” observes producer Emma Thomas. With mechanical objects suddenly able to come to life, the public became fascinated with such mystical subjects as the after-life, spiritualism and anything that seemed to defy the rational imagination.
But while the Victorian era is yet another layer in the unfolding of THE PRESTIGE, the last thing Christopher Nolan wanted to do was make a typically constrained, demure period movie. “The Victorian Era is often mischaracterized as stuffy and repressive – when it was actually an incredibly exciting time in human development,” he explains. “You had the second Industrial Revolution, the birth of electricity, the birth of cinema, the start of widespread international travel and science being turned on its head by new theories. You also had the beginnings of mass advertising with billboards and posters. It was a period of great adventurousness with changes that are still being felt today.”
To capture this literally electrifying, alternate vision of Victorian times, Nolan wanted to depict the era in a way that would come off to audiences as dynamic, immediate and new. “Every creative choice is opposed to the way period movies are usually done,” explains Thomas. “Wally Pfister shot the film with mostly hand-held cameras with enormous energy and the characters are brought to life by the actors with a very contemporary feeling. The background details are all fairly realistic but Chris has made it so that period doesn’t really matter anywhere near as much as the story.”
Christopher Nolan continues: “I wanted to be accurate to the feeling rather than the details of the period. I think it was one of the first times in which the world felt overwhelmed with visual information. Posters were everywhere, text was everywhere, and there was a lot of imagery assaulting people as they walked down the streets, exceeding even what we have today. So that’s the view we give of Victorian London – one that feels very contemporary and immediate, and I think one that lends a more authentic feeling to what it would be like to be living then. There’s something about a lot of period films that allows the audience to sit at a remove from the characters. But we wanted to dive into this world in a direct way so it was very important to use the camerawork and production design to bring the audience deeper inside.”
Above all, Nolan wanted the film’s multiple layers to be accessible to the audience, inviting them not only into the two main characters’ stunning fall from grace but into the very workings of the narrative. “We wanted the audience to be aware of the effect the film is having on them as it is unfolding before their eyes,” he summarizes.
Despite the design complexities, from the beginning the idea was also to shoot the film in as pared-down and fast-paced a manner as possible. “Coming off of the hugeness of ‘Batman Begins’ we thought it would be great to be light on our feet and as stripped-down as we possibly could be,” says Emma Thomas. “It gave us a tremendous amount of energy.” That energy was parlayed into creativity once production moved into full swing. Notes Christian Bale of Nolan: “Chris really understands movie visuals. He has an iron trap of a mind and knows exactly what he wants to see on the screen. Then, because of that, he’s able to let others really fly and be very spontaneous.”
Nolan collaborated closely on the visual front with cinematographer Wally Pfister, who first worked with Nolan on “Memento,” went on to shoot “Insomnia” and garnered an Academy Award® nomination for his work on “Batman Begins.” “Chris and I have a great collaborative relationship with each other and a great friendship as well,” says Pfister. “There is not another director I could name that I have the same level of respect for. He’s not only on top of every element of the film, from the photography to the set dressing, he’s just a great storyteller and for me, that’s where it begins.”
Nolan came to Pfister with a precise vision. “There’s a distinct relationship between the style of the film and the style of the narrative and that was something I was quite specific about,” says the director. “We did most of the photography with a hand-held camera so that it’s always at eye-level, engaged directly with the characters, while the narrative itself is quite clearly above the characters.”
Nolan continues: “Through framing devices and so forth, we allow the audience to shift between multiple points of view. So the audience is sort of seeing a lot of things that the characters themselves aren't necessarily seeing. They're getting the complete picture. And I thought that would create a very interesting tension between the more subjective sort of storytelling that I've done in the past and the traditional omniscient position that audiences are used to in action thrillers.”
Pfister’s lighting schemes helped to lend the film the dynamic, modern edge that Nolan was seeking. “We use a lot of natural light to really give a sense of immediacy and a tactile quality to each scene and location,” explains Nolan. Pfister and Nolan also wanted to use the anamorphic lenses that have lent their previous films together a distinctive style – but this came with a price. “This is the fourth film we’ve shot together with Panavision Anamorphic lenses. It’s a beautiful, crisp, grain-free image and there’s nothing else that really looks that way on the screen,” notes Pfister. “But the cameras weigh about 60 pounds so my shoulders really took a pounding!”
Throughout, Nolan and Pfister went after a more hand-made, old-school aesthetic – emphasizing organic camera movements and minimalist opticals over elaborate effects. Explains Pfister: “Chris and I wanted to really minimize the technical and equipment idea of this picture. We followed as much as possible the sort of notion that you just put the camera on your shoulder and run in there and capture the scene. It was a very exciting way to shoot for all of us – for me, for Chris and for the actors, who were freed of the usual technical restrictions. It actually put me much more in the story-telling process than if had been sitting back by a monitor with someone else operating the camera and was much more efficient and spontaneous. It’s a liberating, unconventional way to shoot and it gives the film a naturalistic style that makes it very different from how any other period film has been captured in our current era.”
This “old school” approach extended even further in that Nolan and Pfister eschewed the now-standard Digital Intermediate, the phase in which a motion picture is scanned into a computer so that the filmmakers can use digital tools to manipulate colors and other image characteristics. Instead, THE PRESTIGE utilized traditional photochemical printing in which color grading is achieved simply by exposing the film to varying degrees of light. “We wanted to make the film in the most organic way,” continues Pfister. “For what we were looking for, the photochemical process gave us the perfect amount of control and also preserved the integrity of the anamorphic negative.”
Pfister felt that the ultimate goal was to produce an unprocessed facsimile of the darkly imaginative images that swirl around in Nolan’s brain. Observes the cinematographer: “Chris had his eye on every element that went into this film, from the first words on the page to the final color timing that we did together – and all along, he’s trying to get the movie out there as he saw it in his head long before pen even went to paper.”
When it came to palette, Pfister also allowed his color and texture decisions to develop organically, emerging from the radical changes of the times. “A lot of the palette is dictated by the fact that the film’s timeline is riding the cusp of the beginning of electricity which obviously becomes part of the story as well. So in a lot of the earlier scenes we’re using candlelight and oil light and then later on we introduce electricity in a grand way and then we introduce electrical lights in some of the locations as well. So you have lot of orange and yellow in the candle lit and oil-lit scenes and kind of a green moonlight effect mixed with the orange gas lamps for the night scenes. Throughout, I tried to move towards a different look and mood than I’d seen in period pieces before.”
The night scenes were especially vital to the film’s mysterious moods. “What I hope we’ve done with the night lighting is to create a dark, dingy and grungy London, where there’s smoke and soot and the building are dirty. Chris and I have shied away from smoke on previous films, but it’s another visual tools we’ve using to make this picture different in tone and atmosphere,” he says.
For Nolan, this grungy look was essential. “I think there’s often too great a tendency in films to try to clean up the past, to make it look neater and tidier that it was, so I felt it was appropriate to really mess up that kind of world, to shake it up and have it really coming apart at the seems.”
This same philosophy was woven into the production design as well. “We wanted to get massive amounts of texture into each setting so it had the same kind of density as the real world we live in today,” says Nolan.
The task fell to Nathan Crowley, who worked with Nolan previously on “Batman Begins” and “Insomnia.” Crowley created some 68 diverse sets for THE PRESTIGE, helping to forge the anything-can-happen atmosphere of the Victorian theatres where Angier and Borden launch their epic feud. From the first time he read the script, Crowley’s head was spinning with ideas. “THE PRESTIGE is a great mixture of drama with sci-fi, history, horror and more – it crosses all the boundaries,” he says. “We weren’t setting out to make a strict period film so we forged a sort of ‘Victorian Modernism’ that has a real edge to it.”
Crowley began with research, poring in libraries over photographic reference books of 1890s London to get a sense of the mood and feel. Like Nolan, Crowley was taken aback by the sheer visual bombardment of a city that, despite lacking radio, film and television, was lined with all manner of visual advertising. “The streets were littered with advertising and that was something surprising to me,” says Crowley. “It really was the start of mass media in a way, so we wanted to capture that sense of chaos and speed. Another thing I wanted to emphasize was the coming of automation. There is always something mechanized in the images of the film, giving that sense of constant momentum.”
Crowley and Nolan next began tinkering around with models, a method of working out creative ideas they had developed earlier. “On ‘Batman Begins,’ we had started building models in Chris Nolan’s garage, and it was really successful, so we decided to do that again. It was just me and him alone in the garage, trying to find the feel of the film,” recalls Crowley.
One of Crowley’s favorite touches in the bustling metropolis of a newly modern London is the horse-drawn double-decker busses bearing Vaudeville show posters on their side panels. Bringing them to life, however, required ingenuity. “We had to build this stuff from scratch without a lot of resources, so we used old Western wagons and basically turned them into busses! I think they really define the streets of London in that era so I was very happy with the way they came out,” he says.
Crowley found an ally in his search for turn-of-the-century magic posters: magic consultant, Ricky Jay, had an astonishing collection. He also visited David Copperfield’s museum in Las Vegas and surveyed book after book of 19th century posters. “In those days, magicians always had a poster for their new acts so we created print lithographs for each of Angier and Borden’s shows,” he notes. “A lot of the posters of that time were comical, with devils behind the shoulder of the illusionist. Our earlier posters do have a more light-hearted feel but, as they get deeper in their battle, the posters take on a more intense, Black Magic feeling.”
When it came to recreating the Victorian Age theatres, Crowley veered away from the de-saturated, shades of grey he used for the external city and dove into brilliant colors – reflecting the idea that life seemed to take on a vibrancy like nowhere else inside these spaces. The multi-level theatre designs, which feature attics, staircases and basements -- where steam-powered hydraulics help to pull off some of the large-scale mechanical magic tricks -- were also influenced by the mathematical art of M. C. Escher, who often uses visual illusions to profound effect in his drawings.
Another favorite set, especially for Christopher Nolan, was Borden’s workshop where the obsessive magician tests his illusions. To get a better sense of what a magician’s shop looks like, Crowley investigated the workshop of Houdini, among others. “They are sort of like furniture workshops except that they are filled with magic props and all kinds of mechanical machines,” observes Crowley. He forged a warm, sprawling space filled to the brim with all kinds of unusual and unexpected objects.
Crowley also created dozens of turn-of-the-century urban locales – from dark bars and dank prisons to the stark court room where Borden stands trial. But the piéce de resistance for Crowley was the futuristic machine Tesla builds for Angier, which Angier in turn hopes will create the most incredible magic trick ever witnessed. Crowley wanted the machine to give a sense of scientific mastery, mechanism and industrialization all at once – so for inspiration he turned to issues of 1890s-era Scientific American to see what kinds of unusual inventions were being proposed at the time.
When it came to recreating Tesla’s Colorado Springs laboratory, Crowley stayed close to the ample historical record, including building a life-sized version of the famous Tesla Coil. “Tesla is the only real historical figure in the film, even though he brings in a science fiction element, so we wanted to stay true to that,” says Crowley. “At the same time, Tesla pushes the film out of Victoriana and the Industrial Revolution and takes it into science fiction realms which made it all very interesting for me.”
Working closely with Crowley was Special Effects Coordinator David Blitstein, who helped create some of the film’s inventive mechanical gadgetry. This included the folding birdcages that become a mirror of the film’s multi-dimensional structure and view of reality. “Dave created the most amazing harness that fires and splits birdcages in half and pulls them up your arms so quickly that the eye can’t see it,” says Crowley. “The interesting challenge was that we had all these sliding trick panels and pistons that shoot things upwards --- all the things that magicians secretly use – but the camera is always right on them, getting a level of detail the audience wouldn’t usually see.”
Unlike most films, Crowley continued his work into post-production, consulting with the visual effects team to make sure all their fantastical additions would work seamlessly with his designs. Yet, despite all the difficult tasks he had to tackle, Crowley was grateful. “Chris pushes me harder than any other director I’ve worked with. He challenges me constantly, which I really like,” he says.
The cast and crew were equally appreciative of how Crowley’s sets helped to pull them deeper into the film’s realms of science, magic and human ambition. “Nathan’s sets really bring you into this world that Angier and Borden live in. Walking onto the sets was like being transported back to turn of the century London,” says Aaron Ryder. “I really can’t think of another film that looks like this one. It’s very unique in design and vision.”
The costumes of THE PRESTIGE, which also involve elements of illusion and deception, became another vital element of the film’s intricate design. Here, Nolan collaborated with Ireland’s leading costume designer Joan Bergin, who has previously worked on such films on “Veronica Guerin,” “Laws of Attraction” and “My Left Foot,” as well as garnering an Emmy nomination for the television adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield.”
Bergin had a vision right from the beginning for what she wanted. “It’s a look I would call ‘deconstructed Victorian,’” she says. “We took these images of Victorian clothing and then broke them down into something more modern and simplified. In this film, it’s not about every detail of the clothes being correct but trying to be very character-driven and really reveal the character’s journeys through their clothing. This is a sort of a Gothic thriller with layer upon layer upon layer and I hope the clothes help the audience follow the characters through all the twists and turns of the story.”
In choosing the look for each wholly unique character, Bergin wound up on a massive search that took her from collections of 200 year-old dresses to more modern designer interpretations of Victoriana. She spent days roaming the endless racks of a large costume house, searching for inspiration among the hats, capes and extensive assemblage of vintage fabrics. As for palette, she shifted away from the expected. “I’ve kept the palette quite simple but it’s unusually dark, with lots of aubergine, Chinese yellows and black-and-white – and sometimes looking through a mirror you’ll see these very rich colors with a kind of sheen to them that adds another layer to the mystery.”
The core of her work was dressing Angier and Borden – in all their varying and surprising incarnations. To begin with, she wanted to break through the stereotype of the cheesy, over-dressed magician. “We have this image of Victorian magicians wearing big cloaks with stars on them, but if you do the research, you find that actually they presented themselves as gentlemen, in a white bow tie and jacket,” she explains. “They really were the rock stars of their day so I took that a bit further with some splashes of color and lovely fabrics for their waistcoats, especially as they get more and more famous.”
There was also a focus on contrasting the characters. She continues: “It was fun to work with Angier, who is someone who is always very beautifully dressed, because Hugh just wears clothes so superbly well. There’s such elegance to him and, as the film goes on, he just gets grander and grander. Then with Christian Bale’s Borden, who is from the rough end of town and is sort of a self-made man, we use of a more kind of modern, grungier look, not at all old-fashioned.”
On the women’s side, Bergin was equally driven by character. “I wanted there to be sympathy for Sarah Borden and Rebecca Hall, who plays her, looks absolutely glorious in period clothes, so I really went out of my way to show her as someone who has a very simple but wonderful fashion sense. We wanted to emphasize the feeling that she might have become someone else except for her circumstances,” she explains. “What’s interesting is that some of her skirts could easily be from Marc Jacobs or other putting out collections now – you can see how they take inspiration from that era.”
As for Scarlett Johansson’s Olivia, Bergin took a lot of pleasure in working with the actress. “It takes a very particular figure to wear Victorian clothes and Scarlett has the perfect form. Hers are some of my favorite costumes because I tried to design a kind of modern, sexy, foxy interpretation of what a woman in the theatre would wear at that time. It allowed me to be quite inventive.”
The actors were further inspired by Bergin’s work. “Her clothes completely change your whole demeanor,” muses Rebecca Hall. “I’m normally a sort of slouchy person but when I put on these outfits, I felt like the most prim and proper lady.” Scarlett Johansson, on the other hand, was thrilled to play a different sort of Victorian lady. “My character is a Bohemian so I didn’t have to wear those tight, lacy collars and bustles. Olivia has a more unconventional wardrobe which was very exciting to me.”
In dressing David Bowie as Nikola Tesla, Bergin took to heart what she had seen said of the maverick scientist – that he always looked like he was going to the opera. “He was impeccably turned out so we gave Bowie a cashmere coat with a lamb’s wool collar that really suggests this very elegant, brilliant man who was beaten down by minds who could never aspire to his heights,” she explains.
For Christopher Nolan, the hope was that all the elements of THE PRESTIGE would come together like the pieces of a provocative puzzle. “I like films that continue to spin your head in all sorts of different directions after you’ve seen them,” the director concludes. “I hope people walk away from this story feeling very entertained but also all with kinds of resonances and interesting thoughts banging around in their brains.”
THE SHOWMAN:
HUGH JACKMAN PLAYS ROBERT ANGIER
In this time when magicians were the great entertainers of their age, no one else can rivet an audience with the charm and pizzazz of the consummate showman Robert Angier. But when a stage tragedy strikes close to Angier’s heart, it pushes him to invent his greatest trick ever, one that will take him into realms of scientific discovery and magical deception no one could have imagined. To play Angier, Christopher Nolan immediately thought of Hugh Jackman, the multi-talented Australian who has become a major star of both stage and screen. Jackman is known to millions of young fans for his screen portrayal of the hugely popular superhero Wolverine – an angst-filled mutant with animal-keen senses -- but he is also a Tony Award winner for his show-stopping performance as songwriter Peter Allen in “The Boy From Oz” and an Emmy Award winner for his hosting of the televised Tony Awards show.
It was Jackman’s unique mix of innate cool along with his sophisticated showmanship that convinced Nolan he was the only person who could bring out both the theatrical brilliance and the thirst for vengeance at the heart of Angier. He also seemed like the perfect persona to create a chain reaction of fierce competition and rivalry with Christian Bale.
Says Nolan: “When Hugh gets on stage he truly comes to life. He’s extraordinarily comfortable being up there and so knowledgeable about his relationship with the audience. That’s exactly what this character needed – and Hugh presents Angier with a sincerity that’s extremely winning.”
Upon reading the script, Jackman was hooked. He was drawn to Angier’s journey – which takes him from the bright lights of success to the darkest shadows of the human soul. “At the beginning of the story, Angier is very optimistic, hopeful and energetic,” he observes. “His main strength as a magician is as a performer. He simply loves being in front of a crowd. He has an ease and a panache and a great sort of way with the audience. In fact, to be somewhat critical of him, you could say that his style is sometimes far greater than his content.”
But then Angier meets Alfred Borden and everything in his life changes. “It irks me to even say this, but Borden is technically a much better magician,” Jackman begrudgingly admits. “My character can sell a trick to an audience with far more skill, but Borden is a kind of inventive genius. When things go wrong between them, Angier has two conflicting responses. On the one hand, he begins to loathe Borden, to hate him, to want vengeance for what he has done, but on the other, he is driven by a competitive obsession to be better than Borden. So all of Angier’s anger and hate, all his darkness and sadness become focused on one thing -- finding out Borden’s secrets.”
To prepare to play Angier, Jackman conducted his own research into the colorful history of magic, from its creative heyday in the early 1900s till now. “I found it to be an incredibly mysterious and interesting world,” he says. “There is something about magicians that makes them different from non-magicians. They do everything alone, because they don’t want to share their secrets, and they are intensely competitive. They’re fascinating people which makes them great characters.”
The more he learned, the more Jackman began to see that magicians share elements in common with both conmen and scientists, two mainstays of contemporary society. “Great magic is all about misdirection and illusion, the same skills a conman needs,” he says. “But just as scientists are obsessed with the things humans can’t yet understand, magicians tap into that. What’s great about THE PRESTIGE is that it melds the mystical, the magical and the idea of the impossible with elements of science and reality."
As for Angier, Jackman believes he is addicted to the audience’s stunned reactions. “He loves seeing that look in their faces of being fooled. For him, it taps into that human quality of hope and faith, that feeling that the impossible can actually happen. He is driven by that power,” the actor says.
Watching Jackman bring Angier, and his many different sides, to life was a revelation for Nolan, one that would be echoed again with Christian Bale’s performance. “It’s was really interesting to see how both Hugh and Christian took the ideas behind the way magicians really think and work and each made these their own, reconciling them with their own way of looking at the world,” he summarizes.
THE RIVAL:
CHRISTIAN BALE IS ALFRED BORDEN
Christian Bale first heard about THE PRESTIGE while he was playing a very different character – the dark, crime-fighting superhero Batman in Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins.” But it wasn’t until much later, when he read an early version of Jonathan Nolan’s screenplay, that he knew without a doubt that he wanted to be a part of the film.
Bale has already established a reputation as an iconoclast when it comes to the roles he has chosen on his way to becoming one of the most respected actors of his generation. The Welsh-born British actor got an auspicious start from Steven Spielberg at the age of 13, playing the lost boy who finds himself in a Japanese internment camp in “The Empire of the Sun.” More recently his uncommon diversity and intensity has come to the fore. He chilled the blood embodying every frightening inch of a yuppie psychopath in “American Psycho,” lost a startling 60 pounds to descend into the psychological anguish of the thriller “The Machinist” and voiced the title character of Hayao Miyazaki’s acclaimed animated film ”Howl.” Then, just before portraying Pocahantas’ husband John Rolfe in Terence Malick’s “The New World,” he went into deep training and put on pounds of muscle to create the most nuanced portrait of the superhero Batman yet seen in the blockbuster “Batman Begins.” Shortly after, Bale encountered THE PRESTIGE.
“After ‘Batman Begins,’ I had really hoped to find some very high quality scripts, some really good movies, but I was not finding myself surrounded by them. Then, I read THE PRESTIGE,” Bale recalls. “I thought it was a very original, unique piece about a rivalry that knows no limits – and because magicians are involved, you never know what’s real and what isn’t, which makes for a fantastic thriller. It’s so layered, you have to peel it apart. I already knew that Chris is one of the smartest directors around, and that working with him is like having a very solid foundation on which to build a beautiful house -- and I really fancied doing a movie with him that would be so different from ‘Batman.’”
He continues: “So I called Chris and said, ‘Whatever you’re thinking, and you can tell me where to go, but I’m just going to lay it on the line. This is the one of the best bloody scripts I’ve ever read and I want to do it.’ I think my passion for it bowled him over.”
When Bale entered into a deeper conversation with Christopher Nolan about his vision for THE PRESTIGE, his passion only increased. “I’ve always admired actors who are like shape shifters and Chris is that way as a director,” he observes. “I loved the idea that he wanted to radically change styles with this film. I liked the spirit behind it. Whereas ‘Batman’ was a juggernaut, this huge beast of a ship that was hard to maneuver, THE PRESTIGE was like riding horseback – there was a feeling right from the start of being light on our feet and very free.”
Once Nolan had cast him as Borden, Bale dove into the part. He began by reading not only Christopher Priest’s novel but also numerous books about the lives of magicians. “You realize that their stature at the time was so different from what it is nowadays,” he says. Then, he began studying with contemporary magicians and the film’s consultants, Ricky Jay and Michael Weber, to hone his own fledgling skills of prestidigitation. “Actually, my grandfather was a magician but I never saw him perform,” notes Bale. “So it was wonderful to work with Ricky and Michael, who are terrific magicians. Still, they really annoyed me because I can’t stand when someone can do something I can’t do!”
Spending time with authentic magicians was quite revealing to Bale. “It was really good to see up close the kind of competitiveness that happens between magicians because that’s such a strong point in the story,” he says. “It’s really about how far these two men will go to be the winner and you can see that this really goes on in magic circles. It’s a very closed profession and when someone does a trick that no one has else has thought of you watch as their eyes boil over. Of course because they’re so mysterious, they don’t give a lot. So we only learned what was necessary. If you asked too good of a question, they’d find some clever way to distract you away from it!”
With the tricks he did learn, Bale was constantly surprised. “Some of them just flabbergasted me,” he says, “while others were almost disappointing because when you see how it’s done, it’s entirely too simple. But of course our movie really isn’t about the tricks so much as it is about the psyches of the people who perform and create them.”
Borden might be sought-after as an engineer but he hungers for much more than that. Though he comes from a tough, lonely background as an orphan, his ambition is nothing less than to be the greatest magical star of his time – in spite of his inability to connect with audiences. “The thing I love about Borden,” comments Bale, “is that he’s all about the purity of the magic, about the nature of an ingenious idea. He doesn’t care about the showmanship, he doesn’t care about selling the trick, he simply cares about creating the most perfect illusion. He’s totally obsessed with that one thing. Like so many truly brilliant artists, Borden has no concept of how to market himself.”
Yet his obsession soon also becomes about Angier, who possesses qualities Borden both covets and reviles. “Angier is merely a decent magician but he is a great showman, an entire marketing operation unto himself,” Bale observes. “Borden sees Angier as a conman, whereas he’s the real deal. He just doesn’t understand why the public can’t see that.” As for creating such vengeful feelings towards Hugh Jackman, Bale states: “We both had completely different approaches to our characters and we both really believed in our characters so that made the rivalry truly come alive on screen.”
Borden’s life is complicated not only by Angier’s success but by his relationships with two different women – his long-suffering wife, Sarah, and Angier’s assistant, Olivia. “Borden’s first and greatest love will always be magic,” says Bale. “Any relationship will always have to take second place for him and that’s a hard thing for his wife to stomach. He adores his family but magic is the only thing he’s always had that gives him value. He’s an orphan and he’s been on the streets his whole life. He really has nothing else, except this one extraordinary talent. I think he really believes that if you let people in on the secret of who you are, they’ll think nothing of you. It’s only by building a mystery around himself that he can gain any power.”
Like Christopher Nolan, Bale was completely committed to avoiding period trappings in his portrayal of Borden. “I think it can be quite funny to watch actors in period movies because they act just like other actors in period movies! We just take it for granted that people had this very formal way of being in the past – but it isn’t true. Both Chris and I felt that we really had to kick that and get away from it. So the idea was to focus on the characters – who have the same needs and wants and desires as anyone in today’s world. Also, usually period movies are all about the privileged. THE PRESTIGE is much more gritty and hands-on dirty and you get to see the darker side.”
Ultimately, Bale hopes that audiences will be as surprised by THE PRESTIGE as he was upon first reading the script. “It really is a movie that I can’t compare to anything else. It’s a movie where you’ve really got to pay attention. And that’s just what life is like, too – you’ve got to pay attention.”
THE MAGICIAN’S SIDEKICKS:
MICHAEL CAINE IS CUTTER AND SCARLETT JOHANSSON IS OLIVIA
Magicians have long had need for close assistance. Whether behind the scenes – where brilliant imaginations think up the tricks in the first place -- or on the stage -- where sexy, charming women have always served as a delightful means to distract the audience – magicians must rely, however begrudgingly, on the talents of others. In THE PRESTIGE, the assistants of Angier and Borden only serve to further thicken the plot with their own agendas and deceptions.
Some of the most vital behind-the-scenes players in the magic world are the people known as ingeneurs – the dark, secretive figures of technical prowess who actually create the tricks. Angier’s ingeneur is the retired conjurer Cutter, portrayed with wit and verve by one of cinema’s most lauded stars, Sir Michael Caine. Though Caine has played an extraordinary range of characters in a vast array of film stories, he had yet to encounter a world quite like that of THE PRESTIGE. Add to that the chance to reunite with Christopher Nolan, with whom he had worked so successfully on “Batman Begins,” and Caine was immediately interested. He says that Nolan brings to mind another director from the past. “He reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock, the way that everything is about creating the best moments of suspense,” says Caine. “He is tremendous with suspense.”
As for his character, Caine describes him as “a teacher, a father and a guide to Angier.” He continues: “He finds Angier, helps him to create his best tricks, and then watches as it all goes terribly wrong.” In creating his nuanced portrait, Caine even altered his highly recognizable voice. “Cutter is an older man and in those days they smoked like chimneys and drank like fish, so I brought his voice down into the throat with a kind of cough in it,” he explains. “And his accent is very thick and rather menacing.” Body posture was also key to Caine’s reading of Cutter. “He’s a powerful man, but also very relaxed,” he observes. “One thing about him is that he often has his hands in his pocket – but when they come out you better worry!”
The filmmakers knew that Caine would make the role entirely his own. Says Nolan: “Michael Caine’s character really becomes something of the heart of the movie. He has a wonderful warmth and emotion to him that draws you into the story and allows you to have a point of view on these characters without judging them too harshly.”
Meanwhile, when Angier hires an alluring stage assistant – Olivia Wenscombe –she becomes both a pawn and a player in the rivalry between Angier and Borden. Olivia is played by Golden Globe nominee Scarlett Johansson, who says she was immediately attracted by the screenplay. “It was one of the best scripts I’d ever read and I thought it would be great fun to play this vivacious, Bohemian character,” she says. “There’s a spiciness to Olivia that I think Chris really honed in on and I felt there was a part of me that I could bring to her.”
It was easy for Johansson to understand Olivia’s strong attraction to Angier. “She’s very taken with his passion for what he does. He’s one of those sorts of men who seems very untouchable, as well, and I think that’s quite attractive to a young girl – that brooding, selfish behavior. But when he betrays her, it really hurts her.” As for Borden she says: “She’s asked to live amongst the enemy with Borden and I think Olivia and Borden come to a kind of understanding, but she really will always be in love with Angier.”
The chance to work with Christopher Nolan was also a draw for Johansson. “He has that rare, kind of Old Hollywood quality. I don’t know exactly how to describe it but you never want to disappoint Chris because you know he will always hold up his end of the bargain,” she observes.
Johansson especially enjoyed her up-close introduction to the world of magic – finding it not so dissimilar from the world she knows best. “It’s very secretive and competitive,” she observes. “It’s all about the commitment to the illusion, which isn’t that different from any form of entertainer.”
THE SCIENTIST:
DAVID BOWIE IS NIKOLA TESLA AND ANDY SERKIS IS TESLA’S ASSISTANT ALLEY
Amidst all the beguiling fictional characters of THE PRESTIGE lies a historic figure who has long been shrouded in mystery and intrigue: Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), radical inventor, engineer and scientist. A Serbian immigrant to America, Tesla was a modern-day Da Vinci who dreamed up ideas about robots, computers, microwave ovens, radar and fax machines long before anyone else could imagine such “magical” technologies. He received more than 700 patents in his lifetime and helped to forge our modern high-tech society. He discovered the rotating magnetic field, which became the basis for all machinery using alternating current; and also invented the Tesla Coil, an induction device widely used in radio technology. Indeed, it was Tesla’s technology that helped to change the world from an endless chain of disconnected communities to one partly united by information and communication.
Yet so eccentric was Tesla that he was said to be the inspiration for the mad scientist in Max Fleischer’s original “Superman” cartoons. He pushed at the very frontiers of science – going where no one else dared. At his Colorado Springs laboratory, depicted in the film, Tesla conducted all kinds of wild experiments, including forging man-made lightning bolts, and was said to be examining such far-out notions as time travel, death rays and interstellar communication. But, as with most visionaries, Tesla was also surrounded by controversy and hounded by injustices. He had an infamous rivalry with another genius inventor: Thomas Edison. Tesla had originally worked for Edison when he first came to America, but when the two parted ways over a payment disagreement, an obsessive feud ensued – one reminiscent perhaps of Angier and Borden. Mystery would follow Tesla even into death. After his passing, most of his scientific papers disappeared without a trace, never to be found, leading many to wonder what fantastic or dangerous ideas were among them.
In THE PRESTIGE, the character of Tesla blurs the lines between magic and science when he agrees to invent a machine that will allow Angier to out-do Alfred Borden’s most stunningly implausible stage trick. To play Tesla, the filmmakers knew they would need someone entirely out of the ordinary – a magnetic figure so used to operating outside of the lines, he would be instantly believable as a mad genius. Given this description, the obvious choice was David Bowie, the risk-taking rock performer who has also taken a wide range of acclaimed acting roles, from “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” to “The Elephant Man.” But first the filmmakers would have to convince him to take the role.
“Chris has always been a fan of Bowie,” explains Aaron Ryder, “and we felt we needed the kind of persona and weight that Bowie carries as a superstar for Tesla.” Adds Emma Thomas: “He was just so perfect for the role that we couldn’t imagine anyone else who could pull it off – and then, Chris managed to wrangle a meeting with him in New York, which we were all very nervous about.”
Nolan recalls: “I simply went and explained to him why he was the only person in the world who could play this part – and luckily, he agreed to do it.”
Playing Tesla’s fictional assistant -- and the man who serves as liaison between the great scientist and Angier -- is Andy Serkis, who became a cult hero among fantasy film lovers for his extraordinary embodiment of the Gollum in the blockbuster “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and for his work as the famous beast in Peter Jackson’s “King Kong.” Here, he plays the American Roger Alley. “Andy makes for a wonderfully memorable character as the sort of front man for Tesla,” Nolan comments. “It was also really fun to see him in the flesh and to see his real face on screen!”
Says Serkis of the character: “Alley is Tesla’s gate-keeper, manager, minder, book keeper and closest associate all at once. He’s there to pull switches, to get his hands dirty and basically enable things to happen. He’s a mirror in a way of Michael Caine’s Cutter. He’s basically Tesla’s ‘engineer.’” Although Alley never existed in real life, Serkis sees him as “representing the few disciples who saw that Tesla’s work was visionary and decided to go out on a limb for him.”
In preparing for the role, Serkis read up on the period and became even more fascinated. “It was an amazing time when you had people like Edison, Tesla, Darwin and Muybridge who were changing our fundamental views of time and space. The railroads were being laid, the telephone was being invented– and because of all this I think there was a great enjoyment of the mysterious and a cross-over where science could help magic. So it’s great because it’s a very potent era to examine.”
Yet, like the Nolans, Serkis also sees the story of THE PRESTIGE as transcending its era. “I think anyone who has ever obsessed about their work or their family or anything at all will really key into the emotions of this story,” he summarizes.
THE MAGICIAN’S WIVES:
PIPER PERABO AND REBECCA HALL ARE JULIA MCCULLOUGH AND SARAH BORDEN
Magicians may be able to pull off incredible illusions, but even they are not immune to the complex realities of love and relationships. And indeed, it is a dazzling but disastrous trick involving Angier’s wife Julia that sets in motion his increasingly treacherous magical feud with Alfred Borden.
Playing Julia McCullough is Piper Perabo, the rising American star who has come to the fore in a number of light-hearted contemporary comedies, but here takes on a much darker role – as the woman willing to go the dangerous extremes for the cause of a great magic trick. Perabo was fascinated by the chance to explore through Julia the inner world of the magician’s assistant. “Julia is the kind of girl who is willing to be sawed in half and have knives thrown at her and that sort of thing,” explains Perabo. “She’s very young and I think she’s just happy to feel like she belongs in this world of magicians -- to actually have that sense of power of being a woman with a job, where men respect her and take her seriously, which was quite rare in that time. Magicians were really glamorous and glitzy at that point. The vibe was more like a rock concert and it would have been very exciting for Julia.”
Perabo not only had to take on an English accent for the role – something she had honed for the recent British comedy “Imagine Me and You” – she also had to learn to perform the adventurous “water tank” trick, in which she is bound by a rope and dropped from a considerable height into a tank of water, only to be sealed within. “I got pretty good at it by the end,” Perabo laughs.
But while Angier’s wife is a part of the magic show, Borden’s wife Sarah sees it as her competition. Convinced that her husband will always love magic more than he loves her, she is flummoxed and hurt by his constant changes of heart. Starring as Sarah is British newcomer Rebecca Hall, a young actress best known so far for her work on the London stage, who was cast after the filmmakers saw her reading on tape. “We knew right away we were seeing something special,” says Thomas. “This is one of her first film roles but there will be many more.”
Hall was fascinated by the film’s magical nature. “It creates a nice tension between what’s fun and entertaining about magic and what’s potentially scary and dangerous about it,” she comments. She also felt a lot of empathy for her character’s romantic trials. “Sarah’s got a difficult job of it because she’s very much in love with a man who on some days is 100% obsessed with his work and yet, on others, seems completely in love and committed to her,” she explains. “At first, she accepts that the work side of him is going to be secret, but she become increasingly frustrated by the feeling that she doesn’t know the real intricacies of what he is doing or who he really is.”
Since THE PRESTIGE is only Hall’s second feature film, the chance to work one-on-one with an actor of the caliber of Christian Bale seemed almost like a surreal dream to her. “When I met him, I was pretty intimidated because he’s such a huge star,” she says, “but I have so much respect for everyone in this film and I learned so much that it was an incredible experience.”
THE PRESTIGE’S CONSULTANTS:
RICKY JAY AND MICHAEL WEBER TEACH THE CAST MAGIC
With the cast in place, the filmmakers brought in magicians Ricky Jay and Michael Weber to train them in the classic magician’s skills of prestidigitation and misdirection. However, because the magic tricks in THE PRESTIGE simply provide the backdrop for the story of Angier and Borden’s hazardous rivalry – and are not intended to fool the film’s audience – Jay and Weber’s main task was to give the cast a deeper sense of how magicians think, move and perform.
Jay heads the company Deceptive Practices, which provides expertise in magic, con games and card tricks for films involving everything from illusions to gambling. On THE PRESTIGE, he was thrilled to find himself with such devoted and curious students. “One of the greatest pleasures for us was working with Christian and Hugh, who both had remarkable energy and an amazing willingness to practice and rehearse. These guys were terrific in terms of the attention they paid to detail,” says Jay.
As for the story, Jay thinks that, for all its fantastical twists and turns, it rings quite true to a magician. “Those kind of competitions between magicians really did exist,” he remarks. “That was a time in London when five or six magicians would be playing at theatres right next to each other on the same night, a time that has never been duplicated in the history of magic. It’s also interesting because that was a time when there was a strong relationship between early cinema and magic. A lot of the people who worked on the development of the motion picture camera were also magicians. Since then, people have become suspicious of any magic done on film, but one of the things we’ve tried to with this film is bring out the idea that there was a lot of integrity to magic in those days, so it kind of brings everything back full circle.”
Says Aaron Ryder of Jay and Weber’s contributions: “We felt very lucky to have these two on board. They worked with Hugh and Christian extensively, bringing them a little bit more into what is normally an incredibly secretive brotherhood. Still, they basically agreed that they would teach only the tricks that were necessary for the script – and they wouldn’t give away too many secrets!”
