THE PRESTIGE Is Even Better Than You Remember

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Are you watching closely?

[00:00:06]>> Back in 1999, Christopher Priest has this book he wrote about magicians, the prestige, and he's looking to sell the movie rights.

[00:00:14]>> We got three offers, and one was from um Sam Mendes, who just made American Beauty. It was exactly at that point on the day I heard from Mendes, he was up for seven Academy Awards. Seven. For a movie about a plastic bag blowing in the wind, go figure.

[00:00:32]>> Sometimes there is so much beauty in the world.

[00:00:36]>> Nevertheless, Menddees is obsessing over this magic book.

[00:00:39]>> It was going to be his film, next film after American Beauty. So, I was very keen on that.

[00:00:44]>> The deal is practically done. But then, out of nowhere, >> I got a message. There's a motorbike on its way. Don't decide anything. And so then about an hour later a motorbike came to my house and gave me a VHS VHS of following and said and there was a a little note on it said u watch this film and try to imagine what the the filmmaker could do with the Hollywood facilities behind him. So he watches following and loves how the weird timeline messes with his head. He's mesmerized by this little indie film made by this unknown kid and sees Nolan as a magician in his own right. He ditches Menddees and bets everything on the rookie.

[00:01:22]>> I mean, it sounds as if I'm being clever, but it's really true. The thing is, I've always believed in supporting young talent. And Mendes was made. He was okay. But Nolan, I thought, "Oh, he's good. Let's give him a chance."

[00:01:33]>> And here's the thing. Nolan is completely unaware that this is going on. He's never even heard of this priest guy. Nolan doesn't even read the book until months later.

[00:01:41]>> Well, I was given the novel by Christopher Priest. Uh I was given it by my executive producer Valerie Dean about 7 years ago. She sort of just said to me, "Well, you'll see a film in it." And I did. The film isn't really of any genre. It doesn't fit into any neat box, which when thinking about making the film, and indeed making it, uh is tremendously liberating. And it was really one of the very attractive qualities to the story.

[00:02:03]>> And he and his brother Jonathan started working on the script right then and there. you have such a surplus of ideas, so many to work with that really it was just a question of choosing the ones I like the best.

[00:02:15]>> Uh it took a long time for my brother and myself to to write the script to figure out from this sprawling book that has so many possibilities in it to figure out, you know, what what the movie was.

[00:02:25]>> And then what happens? Warner Brothers calls him up to the big leagues to make a Batman movie.

[00:02:30]>> Nice. So Nolan goes off to Chicago to build a tank for a man who sports a utility belt at night while his kid brother finishes the script.

[00:02:38]>> We were going to make the film before Batman Begins and then realized we didn't have time to do it justice and still have Batman Begins ready for 2005.

[00:02:45]>> So years go by and it turns out making a PG blockbuster turns out to be a very good career move.

[00:02:51]>> You start pretending to have fun. You might even have a little by accident. So when Nolan circles back to his magicians movie, the Warner gang hands him a modest $40 million and he begins a search for the lead actors.

[00:03:04]>> I was very determined not to cast people who had done lots of period work and could obviously be seen uh in that period because we wanted every aspect of the film to be more contemporary, more accessible, more real than that.

[00:03:16]Frankly, >> his first pick is Hugh Jackman.

[00:03:18]>> Have you settled on a nine?

[00:03:21]>> Yes, I have. The great Dan. Now, Hugh Jackman, he's a good-looking guy. Broad shoulders, a full head of hair, but at the time, he was mostly known for having metal claws come out of his knuckles.

[00:03:36]Nolan looks at him and thinks, "It's a shame he's only punching mutants. Let's give him a dramatic role." And Jackman is thrilled. He studies authentic illusionists.

[00:03:49]He even gets to play a second character which lets him flaunt his comedic chops.

[00:03:53]>> Do you think you were unique, Mr. Rio? I have been Caesar. I played Foust. How difficult could it possibly be to play the grave dance?

[00:04:01]>> Then Nolan needs his rival. But after Christian Bale reads the book, he practically begs Nolan to consider him.

[00:04:08]>> It definitely helps to uh to to to have that prior relationship.

[00:04:12]>> And Nolan dumps the list of 10 guys in the garbage and hires him on the spot.

[00:04:16]This is the truth.

[00:04:18]>> Is it?

[00:04:19]>> And then Michael Kaine jumps in.

[00:04:21]>> I played the lead in about 79 movie, 80 movies. And so therefore, when you send me a script, I usually go, well, I did that one in 1978. I did that one in 1964 because it goes around a lot. This movie is completely and utterly unique. I've never seen a script like it or a movie like it >> along with Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall.

[00:04:47]How's that?

[00:04:48]>> All magicians have a description for a trick which is in three parts. The first part is called the pledge. The magician shows you something ordinary. And there's the turn, which is where with misdirection they turn it and then they show you to dab the rabbit or something. The part we call the prestige.

[00:05:11]>> It's all about misdirection. And we have the best misdirection you can think of.

[00:05:15]We have Scarlett Johansson in a costume that's one size too small for you.

[00:05:21]>> Andy Ciris plays Nicola Tesla's assistant.

[00:05:25]>> Exactly. And yes, the movie has Nicola Tesla in it.

[00:05:28]>> Well, Tesla is just a a fantastic, extraordinary man. In a lot of ways, I felt too big to deal with uh in a in a film about him himself. I think approaching him in this tangential way where he's a minor character but very important character in a bigger story was a was a very interesting way to address his specialness, his extraordinary achievement really. I mean he's somebody who did things that still haven't been fully explained. So there's a great sense of mystery, a great aura of scientific possibilities that were raised and perhaps not followed fully for various reasons. There's a great great deal of mystery to the man that uh people have enormous fascination with.

[00:06:03]There's also something at the underdog about his story in that he was right about so many things. I mean, the alternating current that we all use today um was his invention. Tesla was right about a lot of things. Uh but a lot of his ideas ultimately were rejected by the scientific community of the day.

[00:06:17]>> Nolan thinks he doesn't need a regular actor for Tesla. He needs a guy with an aura, an alien. So, he goes after David Bowie. And Bowie just flat out refuses.

[00:06:27]>> Go home. Forget this thing. I can recognize an obsession. No good will come of it.

[00:06:33]>> So Nolan hops on a plane, jets off to New York, and demands a meeting. After just two minutes, the thin white Duke accepts the part.

[00:06:42]>> It's it's relatively easy to convince somebody when you you're going to them and saying, "You're the only person that can play this part." So he signed on in the end and uh I got my Tesla.

[00:06:51]>> No one knows what Nolan said to him in those two minutes, but he probably hinted at the significance of the role.

[00:06:57]Because if you think about it for a minute, the whole movie with the magicians sabotaging each other, ruining presentations, burning down buildings, it's really just a story about Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla, two brilliant minds dueling over electricity, which was considered by a lot of folks at the time to be black magic.

[00:07:16]>> The scientists of the day who were essentially the new magicians who were going to take over from the the more traditional form >> was conducting the electricity.

[00:07:23]>> Our bodies, Mr. and are quite capable of conducting and indeed producing energy.

[00:07:29]>> So they got Wolverine, they got Batman and they got Ziggy Stardust.

[00:07:34]>> By about the second day, you know, we were getting on really well and I got over the fact that it was David Bowie and uh I told him how in 1981 I had a ticket for his uh concert in when he came to Sydney and it was 20 bucks and I remember it because it was like half a year's pocket money and I went to school that day and this guy in year 12 senior said uh I'll give you 50 bucks for the ticket.

[00:07:52]>> Oh, and you scalped it. And I was scalped and I told him this and I thought, "Oh, you know, I was" And he goes, "So you're that kind of guy."

[00:08:01]>> Is there a problem, Mr. Tesla?

[00:08:03]>> No, no, no, no. Come back next week.

[00:08:04]>> Next week, Mr. Come back next week.

[00:08:06]It'll be fine.

[00:08:07]>> Now they have to actually shoot this thing. And this is a period piece that takes place in Victorian London.

[00:08:12]>> I want it to be like the Victorian uh version of Tokyo. So, it's very chaotic. It's the start of the modern world. It's like Victorian advertising.

[00:08:22]It's the start of mechanizing his industrial revolution.

[00:08:25]>> But normally, if you're making a movie about London, you get on a plane and you fly to London, but the studio says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's too pricey.

[00:08:33]Find London in California." Which is ridiculous. Have you been to Los Angeles? It's all palm trees and aspiring actors serving lattes.

[00:08:42]>> I promised my family I wouldn't embarrass them with my theatrical endeavors. But Nathan Crowley finds about 70 spots around LA that look depressing and old enough to pass for Victorian England.

[00:08:52]>> So LA doesn't seem like the obvious choice. It's the one town that actually has six or seven ball theaters that aren't being used on a regular basis like in the one we're in now.

[00:09:02]>> And that field of light scene gets shot on top of Mount Wilson. 300 light bulbs get wired into the ground to create the most stunning shot in the entire movie.

[00:09:14]But they're making a movie about magicians after all. So Nolan hires the best consultants available. Ricky Jay and Michael Weber run a company called Deceptive Practices. They agreed to the job, but when they got on set, they refused to tell the actors how the tricks work. They honored the magicians code like it's the hypocratic oath.

[00:09:33]>> We magicians have a circle of trust.

[00:09:35]>> So they show the actors the absolute minimum. I did kind of have aspirations from finishing this movie that I would at least be able to entertain at like children's parties or something like that. But I would be the absolute most useless crap entertainer ever because as you know they taught us the beginning of a trick, they taught us the middle of a trick, they taught us the end, but they never taught us all three, you know. So, uh, it really would be a lousy.

[00:09:58]>> Well, both of us are, you know, >> that's about the extent of it for me.

[00:10:03]>> He's the one I went through.

[00:10:04]>> That's why that's what I came out with.

[00:10:06]It was the greatest magic trick I've ever seen.

[00:10:08]>> There's also a lot of magic in the hidden details.

[00:10:11]>> Without really realizing it, the viewers are also being shown an absolute magic trick throughout. And they're being told they're being shown a magic trick, but you don't kind of realize it um or you don't believe it. And then um by the time you finish, when I read the script and again when I saw the movie, I just want to jump straight back in and see it for a second time because you know that the second time you're seeing it with with a whole different perspective. We were two young men at the start of a great career. Two young men devoted to an illusion.

[00:10:37]>> So, I'll see you again.

[00:10:44]>> Milk and sugar.

[00:10:49]>> You're >> having a a baby.

[00:10:53]>> Oh my god.

[00:10:55]>> We should have told Fallon.

[00:10:56]>> Take the names of the two main characters for example. You got Alfred Bordon and Robert Anger. Now, if you take their initials AB and RA A, it spells Abra as in Abracadabra.

[00:11:08]>> Do you have anything to say?

[00:11:13]>> Then there's this prisoner number. D23 is an illusion to the date when Disney Studios was created. This deal appeared as a result of the collaboration between Warner Brothers and Touchtone Pictures.

[00:11:26]But the most obscure illusion is to the director himself. There's a character in the movie who's based on a real performer from the early 1900s. His name was >> Jungling Su.

[00:11:36]>> Only that wasn't his name at all. His real name was William Ellsworth Robinson. Back then, people dug exotic things. So, Robinson decided to pretend to be an old Chinese magician. Chung became wildly popular and William never broke character in public. But then one night in London, he's doing the old bullet catch trick.

[00:11:56]>> Bullet catch is suicide. All it takes is some smartass volunteer to put a button in the barrel.

[00:12:01]>> A real bullet goes right into his chest.

[00:12:04]His last words, "Oh my god, something's happening. Lower the curtain." Which were the first English words he had uttered in public in 20 years. This is the kind of utter devotion to the craft that Nolan exhibits in his films. The total commitment of the main characters is inspired by Chung Ling Su and also a reflection of the director's own passion for his profession. only way to escape all this, you know.

[00:12:32]>> So, they finally finish shooting and Nolan locks himself up again in an editing room. He's holed up in there for three long months to chop this movie into pieces. There are around 100 time jumps in it. That's more than a time jump a minute.

[00:12:45]>> It's also intended to suggest to the audience some of those ideas about how the film itself is spooling its its narrative out to the audience. We want people really to be aware of uh the effect the film is having on them as it as it's uh uh unfolding before their eyes.

[00:13:04]>> The premiere was in October of the same year, and it makes well over $100 million. Not exactly a Batman Hall, but a solid hit for a movie about guys and tough hats.

[00:13:16]>> Don't forget your head.

[00:13:19]>> Which one is mine?

[00:13:21]>> They're all your heads, Mr. Engine.

[00:13:23]However, the release was uniquely defined by almost uncanny rivalry. At the same time, another studio puts out a movie called The Illusionist. And what's it about? Brilliant magicians in the late 1800s.

[00:13:36]>> Call it a professional rivalry.

[00:13:38]>> Then, The Prestige gets two Academy Award nominations, one for the cinematography and one for the production design. Now, they didn't win, but to lose to Pan's Labyrinth in those categories isn't shameful at all.

[00:13:52]The one truly meaningful award for Nolan though was the Christopher Priest review. By maintaining the central theme of doppelgangers and neverending feuds, Priest stated that both the novel and the film are entirely equally worthy of the title The Prestige.

[00:14:08]>> I think it's probably his best film with the momento of the of the films he's made. Those two are supreme.