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Transcript

The Prestige with Kayla Drescher · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast. The questions asked if movies have women
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: best start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Jamie, any last words.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: What a day, What a day it is for men
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: being bitches to each other?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I am.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Just so thrilled. Welcome to the Prestige episode of the
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: Bechdel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftis.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: My name is Caitlin Dorante or the Great Durante.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, this movie this second I we'll talk
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: about I haven't seen this movie in like eight or
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: nine years. And the second it started, you're like, oh right,
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: this movie is so silly. This is a silly one.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: It's serious.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: Every scene is like, what's the trick? What's the trick?
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: And at the end of the scene they're like, ah,
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: I still don't know the trick. And then the next
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: scene is him going to another guy being like, I
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: didn't find out the trick. It's it's just all the trick,
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: the secret, the trick, the secret, the trick, the secret,
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: the daughter, the wife, the trick, the secret.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Sometimes there's a cipher.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Sometimes there's a cipher, and sometimes there's a journal. This
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: is ultimately a movie about men reading each other's journals,
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: and that is important, beautiful, that's important.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Men should write more journals.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: There's tricks in the journals. They can't be vulnerable in
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: the journals. At the end, they're like, just kidding, bitch like.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: But in theory, men should write more journals and then
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: exchange those journals so that they can understand each other's
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: feelings better.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: But when does a journal become a manifesto? You know,
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: it's a slippery slope. It's a slippery slope. I don't know.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: These are journals, but they neg the whole journal. At
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: the end of the journal, they're like, actually, this was
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: not a real journal, work of fiction. And I'm fucking
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: your girlfriend, and how do you like that? And you're
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: in jail.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: And also I framed you for murder, bitch.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: And you're in jail. How does that feel? I And oh,
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: I adopted your daughter spoiler alert, I forgot about I
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: know that he stole his daughter. The twist at the end,
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: I know is the twist everyone remembers. But the twist
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: that I forgot that like hit me even harder than
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: the end is when he shows up with the daughter,
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: I was like, this is just these divas. I love it.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Okay Bybolical, all right, all right, this is the Bechdel cast, Caitlin.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: What is the Bechdel Test? Tell them? Tell them?
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: It's a media metric created by best friend of the show,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Alison Bechdel. Yes, there are many versions of the test.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: The one that we use requires that two people of
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: a marginalized gender have names, they must talk to each other,
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: and their conversation has to be about something other than
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: a man. And we also like it when it's something
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: narratively significant and not just throw away dialogue.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: And let's get one thing out of the way. This
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: movie does not pass the Bechtel mast and not a
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: little bit and even close. I think two women are
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: in the scene at the same time, but like, not really.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: I found that barely.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: I found this great letter box list called Christopher Nolan
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: films that fail the Bextel tests. Bonus points if the
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: leading man is haunted by his dead wife, and this
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: movie does meet both, and it's and the list is
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: guess how many movies are on this list?
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Ten.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: Nine, they're nine?
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, can you name.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: All of the Christopher Nolan films that fail the back
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Let's bring our guests in and let's let's.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Let's collaborate on this.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: This is a group project. This is a returning guts
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: an incredible returning guest.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Indeed, she's a magician. She runs a magic venue in
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Chicago called the Cosmic Underground Theater where she performs every
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Friday and Saturday night. So be sure to check her out.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: And you remember her from our episode on Now you
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: see Me. It's Kayla Dresher.
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: Hell, welcome, We thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: This is awesome.
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: Thanks for doing this because I agree this movie is
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: just silly, so I'm excited to talk about it.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: It's a silly one there, it's so much movie. I'm
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: so curious what your perspective is as a magician. But
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: before it, but before we can get to that, can
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: you both I have I have the cipher, so I actually, oh, true, true,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: But can you, between the two of you guess the
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: Christopher Nolan films that fail the Bechdel test? All nine
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: of them?
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: Uh?
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe going in chronological order of release. Okay, Memento,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: although there might be one before that that I haven't seen,
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: but let's start with Memento.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: Correct.
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: I had to look up just various Christopher Nolan films,
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: so already I'm starting from way behind. But I mean,
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: I'm trying to remember the Dark Night and it feels
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: like that might be on there.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: It definitely is cool. Kind of haunted by a dead girlfriend,
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: I guess, more so a girlfriend.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Right right?
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: And then Memento definitely. Wait, I haven't seen mymenta in
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: a long time? Dead wife, living wife? Are we trying
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: to save the wife?
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: The whole thing is that she's dead but he doesn't
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: remember about it or something I forget.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: But I know that Christopher Nolan's wife is his producing partner.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: But at some point it's like I get it. I
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: get it. You think your work will be better when
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: I die? Okay, Like okay.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: But then we've got Inception.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: It is a big one. Yeah, dead wife haunting.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, Interstellar.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: Correct, I haven't seen that one.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Insomnia, No, that that's not on that one that must Pass? Wow,
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: you know I've never seen that one.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: Let's throw in this movie. The Prestige is one of them.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: The prestige, of course, Big Dead, wife Dead, everyone dead,
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: everyone sure, everyone dies?
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: Is dark, Knight rises on there?
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: It is as is Batman begins. Yes, okay, two more?
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: Two more more?
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Is Oppenheimer on there?
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: No, it is not okay, Tenant Tenet is on it.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: And the last one, perhaps the least factel test passing
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: this movie ever made by Christopher Nolan. Oh shit, it's
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: a movie I think I called when it released, I
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: still haven't seen it.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: I called, Oh, Dunkirk Boy Island.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, those are the nine movies that do not pass.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: And that's all I have to say. Beautiful, all right,
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: the prestige, the prestige, Kayla. I'm so curious what your
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: history with this movie is.
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: So really, the last time I saw this movie was
• 6:11
  Speaker 5: when it was in theaters, so I we're talking like
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: junior year of high school maybe, and I remember not
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: caring for it for just a load of reasons. But
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: the friends I was with, who were very intelligent people,
• 6:25
  Speaker 5: were like analyzing the whole timeline jumping and like.
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: All this just how it was real.
• 6:31
  Speaker 5: They were like, oh, this is so good, and I
• 6:33
  Speaker 5: just kept thinking that magically this is a mess. And
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: I think that's why I didn't like it is that
• 6:40
  Speaker 5: it's both incredibly accurate and also incredibly inaccurate to magic.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Interesting and had you started magic at that point when
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: you were that age?
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, okay, yeah, yep.
• 6:51
  Speaker 5: So I had been doing magic for maybe about ten
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: years at that point, because I started when I was.
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: Seven, So it's quite inciting.
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: Okay, So being like very involved in the magic community
• 7:00
  Speaker 5: but also not knowing a lot about magic history, I
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: just remember going, I think that some of these things
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: are historically pretty accurate, but also like what.
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: So there was just a lot of that and I
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: remember not caring for it.
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: So when you suggested that we do this movie, I
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: was like, Oh, this is gonna be fun and I
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: want to rewatching it again. I felt the same, very similar,
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: and I'm excited to like dive into the details. But
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: it definitely feels in terms of personality, it's very similar
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: to It's like a kind of an exaggerated way to
• 7:31
  Speaker 5: explain the magic community, and a lot of magicians just
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: this over the top, like jealousy and stealing stuff and
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: all that is pretty accurate, But then a lot of
• 7:41
  Speaker 5: the historical figures they discuss or don't discuss is so
• 7:47
  Speaker 5: inaccurate that it makes me a little bit like, well,
• 7:50
  Speaker 5: you could have added in anybody to make this just
• 7:55
  Speaker 5: more accurate, or you could have changed this one detail
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: to make this better. So now a lot about magic history,
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: especially magic history of magicians who are not white men.
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: I now look at this movie going, oh, we needed help.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: Oh I'm so excited to hear more about the history.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: It's really wonderful talking about a movie with someone who
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: has historical context on why the movie is frustrating in
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: a way that you don't. It is just a treat.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: I'm very excited, Caitlin. What's your history with this movie.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: I saw the movie when it first came out, I
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: believe in theaters, and because I don't have a background
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: in magic and wouldn't have been annoyed by any historical inaccuracies,
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: I loved it. I was like, this is awesome, and
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: as an appreciator of magic, and again not knowing any better,
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: I was like, well, this must be the pinnacle of
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: magic history. And then I bought it on DVD and
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: I watched it pretty regularly, maybe like once or twice
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: a year for the next like five years or so.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: But then it tapered off. For me, I hadn't seen
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: this movie and I think fifteen or so years, but
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I would still consider it probably my second favorite Christopher
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Nolan movie behind Inception. It's mostly based on vibes and
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: the men being bitches to each other aspect of the movie.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: You know, it's not gonna fare well on the nipple scale,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: but on the rompo meter, I still think it's a
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: ten out of ten. I have boatloads of fun watching
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: this movie, and I'm so excited to talk more about it.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: Jamie.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: What's your relationship with it?
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: I think I sort of in part of my career
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: in podcasting to this movie where I was thinking about
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: it truly because I was thinking about I mean, we
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: had started the Becdel Cast at this point, but I
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: covered this movie on the Cracked Movie Club in twenty seventeen.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: It was the first time I had seen it. I
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: was like, this movie is terrible for women and great
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: to watch. Unfortunately many such movies right So I really
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: enjoyed it and I went on the Cracked Movie Club
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: and then I met Jack O'Brien off of that who
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: started listening to the Bechdel Cast brought us onto the
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: house stuff Works Network brought us onto iHeartRadio. Anyways, that
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: was all like the better part of a decade ago.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: So I was like, wow, I kind of owe it
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: all to the prestige in a way. Wow, I could argue.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Me found it in a ditch your podcast partner.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: No, it was like, this is because I met Jack
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: O'Brien that we came onto the net.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, no, that huge catalyst.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah yes. So it was like a big thing to like,
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: why we're sitting here in this way? In a way
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: I don't know. So I had a fun walk down
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: memory lane thinking about that and rewatching this movie, which
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: I remember little bits of but I did not remember.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: It was basically like watching it for the first time again.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: I had some Mandela effect thing going on where I
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: was so sure Rachel McAdams was in this movie.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: This is a really Rachel McAdams coded movie.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: I think we should have swapped her out with Scarlett Johanson.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: Who is you know, outside of disputing her shitty politics,
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: I'm also just like the most diabolical accent work, Like
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: the woman cannot do an accent to save her life.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: I was like, where's Rachel McAdams. She could do an accent.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: Maybe I think I think she did in the guy
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: Ritchie lock Holme's movie. Oh right, she's in those sense.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's why it feels like she should be in
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: this movie.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: They look very similar. They whatever they you know, And
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: and it's another silly one, hmm.
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: There's also the I don't remember her name. I earlier
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: definitely called her Pati Poblo, and I think it's Piperblo.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: That's a parable Petoo Pablo. Yeah, by preparable. Yeah. She
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: was always always happy to see her and something she feels.
• 12:06
  Speaker 5: Like an easy person to confuse for. Rachel McAdams liked they.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: I see it.
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: Their their look is similar, like the way. So when
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: you said that, I was like, oh, yeah, you're right,
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: that wasn't her.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I There are a lot of women who
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: could be Rachel McAdams in this movie, and that's you know,
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: white women, brown hair. Rebecca Hall, who I love Rebecca.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: I love Rebecca Hall, and I love her in this movie.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: And we'll talk about her character because I did clearly
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: remember what happened to her character, and it's and it's
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: a crime. I did remember. David Bowie, Nicola Tesla. I'm
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: very curious on your thoughts on that, Kayla. I feel
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: like men are obsessed with Nikola Tesla and they love
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: to bring him. I mean one comes to mind, certainly,
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: but you know many guys are obsessed with Nikola Tesla.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Wasn't surprised, I thought, Andy, Sir, I guess ooh, I
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: was so happy to see him. I forgot he was
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: in this and he's everyone's doing a little accent in
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: this movie, and some people are doing it well, and
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: other people are Scarlett Johansson and David. I don't know
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: if David. I don't know what David Bowie is doing
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: rip to him.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: And mostly because okay, I kept I was watching this
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: movie and I was like, I was like, David Bowie's
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: performance as Nikola Tesla is reminding me of something and
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: I could not figure it out. And what I concluded
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: is that his voice sounds exactly like Pierce Brosnan's voice. Yeah,
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: but David Bowie, I think it is supposed to be doing.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Was Tesla Russian? Where was he from or somewhere in
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Eastern Europe? But I think he's supposed to be doing
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: like an Eastern European accent that David Bowie is not
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: doing I would say most of the time, and he.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: Just serbian serbian American.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay. So I watched a movie that no one
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: else saw, The Current Wars, which.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Yes, I was thinking of that. Who is in that
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: Tesla movie? I think there's a third one too? Oh?
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Really? So Nicholas Holt plays Tesla in that movie, and
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: then it's Michael Shannon and who's the other person. But
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: it's another like very like male rivalry men being bitches
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: to each other movie. But I feel like no one
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: saw it.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: There's also Ethan Hawk, Yes, Ethan Hawk as Tesla twenty twenty, right, right, right, right.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: I mean he's an important cultural figure. I'll be honest,
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: I don't know very much about this guy, and let's
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: just leave it at that, because that's the extent of
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: what I know. He exists, and I'm assuming that his
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: legacy is tarnished by his association with Elon Musk. Yeah,
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: but yeah, I forget where I was going with that. Oh,
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: there's so much to talk about. What I mostly loved
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: about this movie in retrospect is just like it is
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: so wild that Christopher Nolan was making two amazing movies
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: between Batman movies. It is just it's just so good.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: This was between Batman one and two, and then Inception
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: comes between two and three, which is ridiculous. Yea, and
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: good for him. I love this guy, and I feel
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: like people don't really talk about this movie very much anymore,
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: certainly not as much as Inception. It was a hit
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: at the time, like I guess, a more modest hit
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: by Christopher Nolan's standards. But I wish people talked about
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: this movie Moore.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it only like slightly overdoubled its budget rather than
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: like multiplied its budget by ten kind of thing.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: Kind of embarrassing for him, right, yeah, I guess because
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: how big a hit was Inception by Yoh yeah, Inception
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: made like almost a billion dollars? Got it? Okay, Well,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: this movie is really good and if you haven't seen it,
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: you know you should. I I pirated it, can I
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: be honest. I pirated it.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: That's okay. I watched it on my DVD that I
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: still have.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's great.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: Look at God.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, thank you. All Right, so let's take
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: a quick break and then we'll get into the recap.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: And we're back.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: This is maybe the longest recap I've ever written, and
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: I really tried to like simplify it and pare it down,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: but it's so complicated this.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: Movie, Kayla. If it's cool by you, could we like,
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: as the performances are happening, can we ask your perspective
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: on them?
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: Oh? For sure, I very much agree that this is
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: a very well done movie. But I have a lot
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: of opinions, So please ask at any point and I'm ready.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Okay, excellent, and feel free to just just jump in,
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: burst in brilliant.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so we'll place some content warning here at
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: the top for suicide. But we are in London in
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: the late eighteen hundreds. We open on voice over from
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Michael Kine talking about how every magic trick consists of
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: three parts. The first is the pledge, where a magician
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: shows you something ordinary. Next is the turn, where the
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: magician takes the ordinary thing and makes it do something extraordinary,
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: such as disappear the object. And the third part of
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: the magic trick is the prestige that's the name of
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: the movie, where the magician brings back the disappeared thing.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Okay, fact check number one, Kayla, is that true? Ah?
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: So awesome?
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: I think I think in part so I've never heard
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: this language before. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist in
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: a book that might have been written around that time period.
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: I've never heard, just like the language of pledged turn prestige.
• 17:53
  Speaker 5: That's a new one for me. I mean, they did
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: explain how a trick works, which is like, here's this thing.
• 18:00
  Speaker 5: Look it's normal, and now I do a cool thing
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: with it. So yeah, that is definitely true, especially the
• 18:06
  Speaker 5: part where they say if something disappears, you need to
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: bring it back. That's like a very steadfast rule in magic.
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: So if you do make something vanish, you got to
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: bring a backgirl to people can to ask a lot
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: of questions, and it feels like it's not fulfilled. It
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: feels like there's a cliffhanger, and we don't want that
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: in the middle of a trick. So yes, but I
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: think they added a lot of fun fluff to it,
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: which I'm not mad about. It's good, it's fine, cool.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: It's a movie that feels like a movie. You gotta
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: be doing movie things. Okay. So while we are learning this,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: we are also seeing bits from a magic show performed
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: by the Great Dantun aka Robert and Jeer played by
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Hugh Jackman.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: Hugh Jackman's having the time of his damn life, oh boy,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: and he never works with I was like, here's my
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: head cannon. Christopher Nolan's like, okay, it's a bit much,
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: you know, Like I feel like Christopher Nolan is not
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: an ally to theater kids at the end of the day.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: That's just my guess. That's just my guess because I
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: think Hugh Jackman turns in an excellent, if extremely weird
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: performance in this movie. And I also am like, yeah,
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: I guess it makes sense. I feel like Christopher Nolan
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: is like a serious actor kind of guy. Sure, maybe
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: I'm wrong, Maybe I'm wrong.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: There was a cause I was looking at One of
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: the things I often do is when there's a magic movie,
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: I want to know who was the consultant on it.
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: And one of the consultants was Derek DelGaudio, who is
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: quite well known for his show in and of itself,
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: which is it's on Hulu, but it had a pretty
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: successful run in New York. And one of the things
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: that Derek Dolgaudier, I guess mentioned was that he was
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: brought on to help the actors really embody, like the
• 19:49
  Speaker 5: feeling and personality and the oomph of a magician, which
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: I feel like Hugh Jackman was like, I got this.
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: I'm surprised he didn't have a song because that felt
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: like it should have fit right in, especially knowing that like.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: This was the greatest show he's and he's the greatest
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: show miss the greatest Show twenty seventeen. Yes, yep, it.
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: Felt because Dogattio is very artistic and it's it's a
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: very different way of performing magic than I would. He's
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: very much about emotion and story and all of this stuff.
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: So it doesn't make sense to me when you're like
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: Hugeman is a lot. It's like, yeah, no, I but
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: I see where kind of where that could have come
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: from easily.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: In Okay, so they found it. Sounds like they matched
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: their energies, well big time.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: That's cool.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Okay, Well did you find their respective performances convincing or
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: like passable as actual convincing magicians?
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: If there was an equivalent of a Bechtel test to
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: how magician y is this actor, it would have a
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: ten out of ten. Like everybody in this was like
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: down to the jealousy, the silliness the like often slightly
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: immature way of responding things feels very familiar.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: So yes, incredible, Okay, Yeah, So we're seeing this magic
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: show that Robert Angier is performing, and then another magician,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Alfred Borden played by Christian Bale, sneaks backstage during the
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: show and sees Angier fall into and be trapped inside
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: of a large glass tank of water, where he presumably
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: drowns because we cut to a courtroom where Borden is
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: on trial for murdering and Jeer, and then testifying in
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: court is Cutter, the Michael Kane character who is an Engeneus,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: the engineer, the designer of magic tricks and builder of
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: the apparatus that makes them possible, and he was doing
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: this for Robert Angier leading up to his death. Borden
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: is convicted of this murder and sent to prison, where
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: he is approached by a solicitor who represents someone named
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Lord called Old or something, and this man is looking
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: to buy the rights to Borden's most valuable trick, called
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: the Transported Man. There's also mention of Borden's young daughter
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: being taken care of.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: This movie is in some ways about fathers and daughters.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: Except you know, not.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Really except not really, not really, but Borden is hesitant
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: to play ball, to play with his rubber ball, that is.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: But anyway, we flash back a few years to Robert
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: and Jeer arriving in Colorado Springs. He is hoping to
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: be granted an audience with Nikola Tesla, who a Jeer
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: wants to commission to build him something. We're not totally
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: sure what, but Tesla's assistant Ali played by Andy Serkis,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: says no thanks, Tesla is not interested.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: Always a pleasure to see Andy's circus acting in human
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: Forum and.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Not in Gollum or whatever, Ape Star Wars Ape Man Ape. Yeah.
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: Yes, I randomly met Andy Serkis same a couple years ago.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Oh cool.
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: It was one of those times where you're like, oh,
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: I really respect this man and at the same time,
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: I made a fool of myself and it was great.
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: He's so nice, And it also is weird when he's
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: like you go, oh, yeah, he sounds like a normal person.
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: I'm so you see him sounding so different my bushes yep,
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: but he's super sweet. You also met him, Jamie, Yeah.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's still I think one of my favorite interviews
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: I've ever done. Just like the coolest, nicest guy ever.
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: That's awesome.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: I didn't meet him, but I saw him from Afar
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: on the Warner Brothers lot when I was an intern
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: at Conan like eleven years ago.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: Wow, we've all had close encounters of the circus kind.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Well yes, okay, So then we flash back even further
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: to when Angier and Borden were working together along with
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: a Jeer's his wife Julia played by Piper Parabo of
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Coyote Ugly Fame or she's also known Pati Popo, Yes,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: and they are doing a trick at a show that
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: involves tying Julia up and dropping her in that large
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: glass tank of water that we saw earlier, which she
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: has to escape from, and one night during a show,
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: the trick goes wrong. Julia is not able to escape
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: from the tank and she drowns, and so Angeer blames
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Borden for killing his wife because Borden maybe tied a
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: different not than usual that Julia wasn't able to escape from,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: but bordon can't remember which knot he tied. So this
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: is the end of the Borden and Jeer professional relationship
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: and the beginning of a huge rivalry between them and
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: them being huge bitches to each other.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: This is probably one of my favorite sequences in the movie,
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: and we have to say one of the worst sequences
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: for women because it is just a classic Nolan fridging
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: the wife to move the you know, and I know
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: this is based on a novel as well, so you
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: know who was the first to fridge. I'm actually not sure.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: I did not read the book, but it says something
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: that Nolan was drawn to this project.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: He loves a dead wife. I would just be so nervous.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: And if I were Emma Thomas, who is I mean,
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: they seem very happy whatever, Okay. I love the sequence
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: with Hugh Jackman just bawling his fist ups and being
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: like what not was it? It's like, I know, it's
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: really serious because a woman has died, but he's being
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: so funny. He's like yelling at his journal like what
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: was it? And then they do the thing where I
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: guess over the course of years. I'm also like not
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: sure the time the amount of time that passes in
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: the course of this movie.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: It's kind of confusing. Yeah.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: Occasionally one will just show up in a fake ass
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: beard and be like do you want to know my trick,
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: and then like shoot the other one and then you're like, wow,
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: that was that was intense. And then someone else shows
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: up in the They're just showing up in various facial
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: hair like, it's just it's so dramatic. I love it.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: It's awesome. Okay, So the rivalry is born, and sometime
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: after this, Borden is working on his own act with
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: this guy named Fallon who is Borden's and they're working
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: on a bullet catching trick, which Borden's wife, Sarah played
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: by Rebecca Hall, doesn't like because she thinks it's too
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: dangerous and she's like, what if you die? I can't
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: raise this baby on my own. That's right, I'm gregnant, and.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: He says, okay, I'll tell you my trick. That's what
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: that's the only way to learn his trick is to
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: get pregnant, just.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: To get pregnant with his baby.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, high stakes.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: He insists that it's mostly safe. But one night, as
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Borden is doing the bullet catch trick and giving the
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: gun to an audience volunteer, which why would you do that?
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: There are too many variables involved? But anyway, he gives
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: it to an audience volunteer who turns out to be
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: a jeer who wants to kill Bordon.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: So I pause, Kayla, authenticity check.
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: Great question. So thinking about the water tank, that is
• 27:47
  Speaker 5: very dangerous and could easily go wrong effect. I used
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: to be in a touring show called Champions of Magic
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: and the show has an escape artist and he did
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: the water tank and there was one night where it
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: did go wrong and drop the curtain and I'm like
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: the next performers who have to walk out and be
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: like hey, And so it is very dangerous, it can
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: go wrong quickly. So super authentic that that would be
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: somebody's demise. Also very authentic that because at the time
• 28:17
  Speaker 5: there was a woman who was very well known for
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: being an escape artist, which I'll get into more of
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: that shortly, but her name was Nerva and she was
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: a very famous escape artist. So it does make sense
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: that that would be something a woman would do because
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: that was very accurate to the time. And same with
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: the bullet catches. There are over ten I don't actually
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: know the number at this point. It's got to be
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: ten or twelve magicians who have died from the bullet catch.
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: So it is a very dangerous thing. It's not like
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: that anymore. Too many safety things have now gone into play.
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: But it would have been conceivable that they would have
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: given the gun to an audience volunteer to pull the trigger.
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: Now it is not done, but yeah, it is a
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: very authentic thing.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: Okay, that was something, yeah that I was excited to
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: hear what you thought about, because I was like, I
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: guess I do believe that in Victorian England they were
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: just doing whatever they're like, I certainly believe they were
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: killing birds, like you know, stuff like that.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and I can give you the thumbs up on
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: all of that is very accurate.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: Okay oof yeah, bleak.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: Okay. So it's Angier who is at the show holding
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: the gun for this bullet catch trick, and he sabotages
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: it doesn't manage to kill Bordon, but Angeer does shoot
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: off a couple of Bordon's fingers, which will make Borden
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: doing a lot of magic tricks very difficult.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: And again with the Christopher Nolan of it all, I
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: was like, it's so funny that this movie, with like
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: this intensity of like tethered rivalry is what comes out
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: immediately before the Dark Knight, which is the movie is
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: about the exact same thing, is about an intense, tethered
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: rivalry between men who like want them to die but
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: also need them to survive and Rare Rare like it's
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: just it's his favorite. True.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: So meanwhile, Angeer and Cutter are now working together and
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: they hire an assistant, Olivia played by Scarlett Johansson.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: She's like and she's like cheery out like I just.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: Not and it's not great. They're practicing a disappearing dove
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: trick that keeps the dove alive for once, because, as
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: we just alluded to, many previous bird disappearing tricks would
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: kill the bird.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: And Michael Kane is like, so, what do you want
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: to be good or not? To be a good magician,
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: you gotta kill a couple of birds. That's how he talks.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And a Jeer is about to perform this
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: updated version of the trick at this big show, but
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: uh oh, one of the audience volunteers turn out to
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: be Borden. They're always going to each other's shows, and Boren.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: Just like, it's just like please it. The staff must
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: not care for these guys at all, because I'm like
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: it's just a beard, Like, surely there's a do not
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: admit this guy and he's gonna be wearing a little outfit. Yeah,
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: it's so fun.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: They're not paying close enough attention or something. But Borden
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: goes on stage to be the audience volunteer. He deliberately
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: again sabotages the trick and kills the bird in front
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: of everyone, as well as like breaks the hand of
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: the other audience volunteer in so doing, and this gets
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Angier booted out of this venue that he was performing at.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: So now Angeer needs a way to redeem himself, and
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: he seems to be getting closer to meeting with Tesla,
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: although I think the gap of time between these two
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: events is like several years. Not sure, but I really don't.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: I have no I'm sure that it's like in the novel,
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: it's like clarified. It doesn't super matter, but everyone's just
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: so frequently disguised. And there's so many time jumps because
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: Christopher Nolan is also obsessed with a little time jump.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: He loves time.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: I don't even know. I mean, it takes place at
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: least over Okay, it takes a place at least over
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: the course of the daughter's life, so we're covering at
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: least she's what six five four or.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Five six, six six seven, maybe, yeah, so.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: At least half a decade. But it is it is
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: a little confusing for sure. Yeah.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: But the whole thing with Tesla is that he built
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: a machine for another magician, presumably Boreden, and this one
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: can do quote unquote real magic, not just illusions and misdirection,
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: but wizardry, and Angier wants a machine like it, and
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: he finally meets with Tesla and asks him to build
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: a specific machine, although we don't yet know exactly what
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: it's supposed to do.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: Pausing again, Kayla.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Are there machines that do real magic? Just kidding?
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: And I guess specifically, historically, I was not able to
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: like Tesla did not collude with magicians.
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: Is that correct as far as I know? Yeah, no
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: at all. I think there's a really easy thing that
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: happens a lot with movies that are about magic, where
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: they just are like, well magic, like real magic is
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: just science, and it's like, oh, yeah, I guess at
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: Tesla Coyle, if you don't understand how it works, it
• 33:35
  Speaker 5: does look very magical because it's unexplainable. So I think
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: it's an easy thing to be like, oh yeah, magic
• 33:41
  Speaker 5: magic make real equal science. Like that's that's it. So
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: as far as I know, Tesla's not also a magician
• 33:49
  Speaker 5: or isn't friends with or wasn't friends with anybody, So yeah,
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: I don't think so. I think it was just an
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: easy tie in.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: I thought it was like kind of I was curious
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: with you because I thought it was like, it's so
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: it's kind of ludicrous, but it's also clever where it's
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: like Tesla did famously always run out of money, and
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: so you're just like, oh, this is a world where
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: he would accept a magician's bribe to continue his experiments.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: It's just so silly, I guess. Also in the book,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: the rivalry between Tesla and Edison is played up a
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: little bit more to sort of mirror the rivalry between
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Angier and Borden, but that gets scaled back on. It's
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: still there in the movie, but it's lesser than its
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: presence in the novel. Okay, so Angier has finally got
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: his meeting with Tesla, then we flash back again. I
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: think again the chronology of events are confusing, but I
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: think we're further back in time, Angier goes to watch
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: another show and sees Borden's new trick, the Transported Man,
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: and it's the best magic trick that Angie has ever seen.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: I love, I love, and he's like, ah, that should
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: have been my trick.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: So how this trick works is, or how it appears
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: on stage at least, is that Borden goes into a
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: door on one side of the stage, then a second later,
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: Borden steps out of a different door on the other
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: side of the stage, as if he was magically transported
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: to the other little cabinet. And again this is like
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: the most amazing trick that Angier has ever seen. But
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: Borden is not a great showman, and certainly again not
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: the greatest showman, and not.
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: The greatest showman, which is by the way, I think.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: I know that that movie has a huge following and
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: is beloved by many people I love and respect. I'm
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: just like that movie has an evil aura to me.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: That movie is so diabolical.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: It's a turd. I thought it was nasty.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: It's just it's just a diabolical movie.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Okay, So Borden is bad at showmanship. So Angier thinks
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: that if he can figure out how to replicate aka
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: steal this trick, that he can use his showmanship to
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: really sell it and get the audience excited about the trick.
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: So accuracy check. This is so accurate. It's so deeply,
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: deeply accurate. So in magic, you have people who are
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: really good at inventing things, so they're coming up with
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: the methods and creating the trick, and then a lot
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: of times they will sell the trick and anybody can
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: buy it right Or for example, if you think about
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: David Copperfield did this illusion where he seemed to fly
• 36:39
  Speaker 5: on stage and it genuinely looks like flight. It's incredible,
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: and then somebody will be like, Okay, I want to
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: buy that, and he'll hold on to it for a
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: little bit, and then a couple of years ago he
• 36:49
  Speaker 5: was like, okay, it's for sale. And then it could
• 36:52
  Speaker 5: be for one person, it could be for multiple people.
• 36:55
  Speaker 5: So people might like how there was kind of the
• 36:57
  Speaker 5: discussion in this movie about oh, can I buy your tricks?
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: That's very common. I've been approached by multiple people being
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: like can I buy this? Can I buy this? So
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: that is a thing. So if you're a good inventor
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: of magic. You are often making a lot of money
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: selling things you come up with.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Got it?
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: I would say that, like, it's a fair assumption that
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: if somebody is mainly a product creator, they are not
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: also a good performer. So there is kind of like
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: a very distinct inventor or performer type of magician. But
• 37:29
  Speaker 5: doesn't mean that many people can't blend the two. But
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: you do tend to see like, oh, like, I'm not
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: a good inventor of magic. That's just not what I do.
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: But I'm I'm a good entertainer, so that's where my
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: focus is. So I'm the person buying the effects and
• 37:43
  Speaker 5: then making them my own, but doing them in a
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: fun and entertaining way. So it does make sense that
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: somebody will be like, I came up with this brilliant trick,
• 37:50
  Speaker 5: but man, I cannot sell it on stage as much
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: as I want to. It's this pretty pretty legit.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, follow up question the way that if you're writing
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: a novel or any book or screenplay or anything like that,
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: you copyright it to protect it, and then if you're
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: like perhaps trying to adapt a book to film, you
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: would like sell the rights to it. Is there a
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: similar kind of thing where like you copyright a magic trick,
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: or like, how do those things get protected?
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: They don't. You cannot copyright. Yeah it legally, you cannot
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: copyright magic. So how it works if you want to
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: do somebody else's material is a magician could create something.
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: So Teller is a good example of Penn and Teller,
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: who created this really amazing piece called Shadows, which is
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: worth a YouTube watch at some point it's it's very beautiful.
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: He does that some magician I don't remember where he's from,
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: but a different magician, not from the US, seals the
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: routine but hypothetically is doing it in a different way.
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: So you don't know how Teller's trick is done. He's
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: never sold it. There is mystery to the method. So
• 39:00
  Speaker 5: this other magician does it, but it looks the same,
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: it's just done in a different way. So Teller was
• 39:07
  Speaker 5: able to copyright the script and the choreography around the routine,
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: which meant what this other magician was doing. Teller was
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: able to sue and ultimately win that case because this
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: other magician was doing the thing that was copywritten. I see,
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: which is right. But if it's method, no, there's nothing
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: you can do the.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: Same way that you can't copyright an idea for a story.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: You can only copyright like written text yep, if you
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: have written the story down yep.
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: Exactly How do.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: You and how does the magic community feel about that?
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: Is that like a net positive or is it a
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: polarizing thing? That's so fascinating.
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: So it's a bit polarizing, but I think everybody does
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: kind of come to the same general ending place, which
• 39:52
  Speaker 5: is it would be great if we could do that.
• 39:54
  Speaker 5: There was a bill that went to Congress at one
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: point that was trying to make magic classified as an
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: art in terms of law, but ultimately it didn't go
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: anywhere unfortunately. I don't know why that happened, but it
• 40:06
  Speaker 5: just it went to a different committee and then ceased
• 40:09
  Speaker 5: to exist. And so the way the magic community kind
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: of goes about doing this is just it's a small community.
• 40:16
  Speaker 5: So if somebody steals your stuff, we're all going to
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: know about it, right, especially if you steal somebody's stuff
• 40:23
  Speaker 5: that we all know, Oh yeah, we watched this guy
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: all the time, and then all of a sudden somebody
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: else is doing it. We're like, wait a minute. And
• 40:30
  Speaker 5: it is very easy for somebody to sort of get
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: black bald for a bit.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: In the magic world, it's like jokes stealing basically.
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, and we're like if you do a new
• 40:42
  Speaker 5: stand up set but it's not filmed or recorded, and
• 40:44
  Speaker 5: then somebody else does those jokes, you have to kind
• 40:48
  Speaker 5: of be like, well, I know those are mine, but
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: how do I prove it? I don't know. So it's
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: exactly the same with magic, is like, unless you have proof,
• 40:55
  Speaker 5: unless you have video or anything that shows that you
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: did it, it's very difficult to be like, wait, that's mine.
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: So it is very much alike the community holds you
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: morally responsible for doing things, but that doesn't mean it's stoppable.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: Right, God, that's so frustrating. Yes, but it does, I
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: don't know, feeds into a problem that drives me personally
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: up a wall about live performance right now, which is
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: like that it's so because there is such a pressure
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: to be constantly filming and documenting and having proof that
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: it makes it really hard to like workshop something and
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: like refine material, which well whatever, I'm like changing this up,
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: but which in comedy is why I think crowd work
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: is so popular right now because you cannot possibly work
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: on it and the directive of the algorithm is to
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: just produce as much as possible and not actually like
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: refine material. God, well, that is very I feel like
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: I'm going to fall down a research rabbit hole about
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: copywriting magic tricks. That's really interesting.
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, unfortunately it will be the shallowest rabbit hole you've
• 42:03
  Speaker 5: ever been down, because there was just nothing. There's just
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: no things. I will say that, like, especially with the
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: Internet now, it's very helpful. So this just happened to
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: a friend of mine and without naming any names, like
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: it happened his stuff got stolen. He is very well
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: loved in the magic world, and he tried to handle
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: it internally and quietly, and it didn't happen, and so
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: he he just went on Facebook and went, this is
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: what happened. And now the people that stole his stuff
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: they've lost work, like they're gone. So it's like, yep,
• 42:34
  Speaker 5: that's the magic community will for sure hold you responsible.
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: That of course has plus and reminduses somebody could make
• 42:40
  Speaker 5: an accusation that's false.
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: So like but like these divas were constantly sabotaging each other.
• 42:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yep, yeah, that is It's very That's why I'm like, yeah,
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: this is a very similar and accurate thing when it
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: comes to the personality of magicians. Yeah it is, It
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: really is.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Wow, it's great, fascinating. Yeah.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: So Borden has just done his transported man on stage
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: for the first time, and Angier is like, how do
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: I steal this? And the only way that Cutter can
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: think that Borden must be doing this trick is by
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: using a double, a look alike that comes out of
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: the second door. So they get to work on finding
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: a double who looks like a jeer, and they hire
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: this guy named mister Root, who is also played by
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: Hugh Jackman.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: Who is just theater kidding out during these sequences. He's
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: having so much fun.
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: I feel like Hugh Jackman was like, hey, listen, I
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: need this guy to be drunk, to have a mix
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: of multiple accents, and I need you to let me
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: play him as if there were two thousand people watching
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: good and now here we are and it's it's just beautiful,
• 44:00
  Speaker 5: a theater kid having a great time.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: I do love I not every huge Ackman performance is
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: for me, but I do love how consistently he just like,
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: you know, he's versatile, he can do something serious but
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: it's not his preference. He would rather be doing something silly.
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: He would rather be wearing tap shoes. And I love
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: that quality in a person. I love that he and
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: Sutton Foster together too, like just link up of the century.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: I love them.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: So they find mister Root and they perform their version
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: of the Transported Man, and the audience loves it. The
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: only trouble is that it's Root who comes out of
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: the second door as Ajeer falls through a trapdoor on stage,
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: so it's Root who gets all of the applause and recognition.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: So Angeer is not satisfied with this. He tells Olivia,
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: his assistant, who he is now also smooching, to go
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: work for Borden so that she can discover Bordon's secret
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: and tell it to Ajeer so that he doesn't have
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: to keep relying on the drunken mister Root, who is
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: becoming more and more unreliable, which it turns out Borden
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: is behind because Borden has been going to mister Root
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: and encouraging him to make demands and blackmail and Jeer
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: because Borden is still hell bent on sabotaging and Jeer
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: and his career.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: It is so fun that Root's character has made to
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: seem so like thick that he needs to have the
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: idea to sabotage be given to him by another character.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: I thought that was very funny. Yes, like it's a
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: very broad performance, and like I think in a different
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: movie it would be like, well, how are we portraying addiction?
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: But that's just like so far from what the goal
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: of this movie is. That it's like we're looking at
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: a cartoon character and I'm smiling.
• 46:05
  Speaker 5: This same This is also one of those things that's like, wow,
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: this is oddly accurate in terms of like sabotage, especially
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: for the time period. So Minerva, who I mentioned earlier,
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: was an escape artist, and she was very famous for
• 46:18
  Speaker 5: this thing called a milk can escape where basically it's
• 46:21
  Speaker 5: like this, you know, kind of mini water torture tank,
• 46:24
  Speaker 5: but you can't see through it. So not the one
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: that I was seen this movie, but little and so
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: you have to get inside and then you got to
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: get out somehow and annoyingly at the same time, Harry
• 46:35
  Speaker 5: Houdini was very well known for that effect, but not
• 46:38
  Speaker 5: as well known as Minerva. And although the proof is
• 46:43
  Speaker 5: very much up to interpretation, it is understood that Houdini
• 46:47
  Speaker 5: had some guys go and rig her milk can escape,
• 46:50
  Speaker 5: so she could not get out of it, very similar
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: to how like the knot might have been tied incorrectly
• 46:57
  Speaker 5: like that, So she did almost die like a small
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: handful of times hypothetically due to Houdini paying some guys
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: to go do it. So it's for sure a big thing,
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: especially in the mid late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds.
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: For sure, this was like the idea of magicians sabotaging
• 47:16
  Speaker 5: each other was just like the game. It was just, Oh,
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: if you're gonna do this as a career, get ready,
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: someone's gonna try to mess me.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: The stakes are high. Yep, you might die.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: Was this period of time like it seems to me?
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: And this is also I'm pulling from like doing a
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: lot of researcher on spiritualism and like Huddi's weirdo relationship
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and like that whole thing.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: But like, is this this appears to me or is
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: this a media thing? Appears that Victorian England is a
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: specifically popular time for magic. Is that true or is
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: that just how we see it in media?
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: No, it's very true. So like kind of going, let's
• 47:56
  Speaker 5: just say between eighteen fifty to nineteen ten, it was
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: super popular. Magic was very much on the rise, and
• 48:06
  Speaker 5: it was very common for magicians, like a solo performer
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: to be touring the country or even the world. And
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: in some aspect, I think what is often kind of
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: missed here is you had a lot of performers like
• 48:18
  Speaker 5: so Dante was where I believe they got the name
• 48:21
  Speaker 5: that Hugh Jackman chooses the Great Danton. The Great Dante
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: was like a that was a guy that performed magic
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: at that time. You have Houdini, you have Keller and Thurston.
• 48:34
  Speaker 5: But the one thing that they're missing most media is
• 48:37
  Speaker 5: missing is the extent of women that were equally as
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: famous as all of the guys during the shows. And
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: so you've looked at like spiritualism. So the Fox sisters,
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: that's massive.
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: They were excellent magicians.
• 48:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah, excellent magicians and like incredible story.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: My spiritualists are going to kick me in the head.
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: But yes, excellent magicians.
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: Yep. And what's also which is kind of crazy, is
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: a lot of time I will get asked, oh, hey,
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: what uh like do you have some sort of psychic power?
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: Are you connected to another realm? Is that how you
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: can do what you do? It's like no, but if
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: you if you show me a psychic or if you
• 49:14
  Speaker 5: show me anybody that kind of pretends to do that,
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: I can replicate it equally as convincing. So the Fox
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: Sisters and I know that folks that are in this
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: spiritualism movement, Yeah, for sure they're gonna they would get
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: mad at me saying that. And that's okay because that
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: is just the thing I can do. And so the
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: Fox Sisters were of that same time, and they admitted
• 49:34
  Speaker 5: that everything was wrong, that they didn't do anything. Oh,
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: this was all magic. They're incredible conditions, which they did
• 49:41
  Speaker 5: open up a gigantic gap for other women to do
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: very similar things or just like adjacent things. So for sure,
• 49:50
  Speaker 5: the Fox Sisters have like contributed a lot to magic.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: There was another Oh my gosh, I think Mina Cranton
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: was another character that was really associated with the Spiritualist movement,
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: but was sort of revealed to be an excellent magician
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: who also was beefing with Harry Houdini. Harry Houdini just
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: was beefing with anyone and everyone, like inventing additional hours
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: in the day. But she was doing she was kind
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: of doing some like pussy magic. She was doing some
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: some weird stuff.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: She was like, oh, this is from your dead husband
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: and then pulls something out of her poot.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: You're like, yep, it was a lot oh literal pussy magic. Yes, yes,
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: pulling things out of her vagina.
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I'm not That's not a euphemism. It was
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: just like what she was up to.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: I was like, what do you mean by that?
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: And now I get it magic of the pussy. Yeah,
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: I guess. I'm like, I'm feeling for what is worth.
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: If anyone listening is interested in spiritualism, I'm not disowning it.
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: I do believe in elements of it, but just early
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: spiritualist there's there's a lot of you know, bells and
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: whistles and no need to deny it.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't hate us because it's impressive. It's impressive.
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: It's impressive, you know, like sometimes for women to get by,
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: they had to start a religion.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: Check out Ghost Church for more information.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, So, so Borden is now sabotaging and Jeer's transported
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: man trick because he's upset about Anger having stolen it,
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: and Borden hires Olivia kind of at Angeer's insistence, but
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: there's all this like she's kind of flip flopping all around.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: But she goes to work for Bordon and she steals
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: Bordon's diary and gives it to Angeer. But it's a
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: cipher written in code, so Angier's like, I don't know
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: how to read it. It's going to take months to decode,
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: and I don't even have the secret keyword. So he
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: kidnaps Fallen, the mysterious man who's the designer of Bordon's tricks,
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: but Fallon refuses to talk, and so to get Fallen back,
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: Borden gives Angier the keyword to decode his cipher diary.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: And the Kenny word is Tesla.
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: Okay, and that is very, that feels very. The Da
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: Vinci code is apple to be but much like Da
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: Vinci code, I'm nodding, I'm like, yes.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly yes. So this is what prompts a Jeer
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: to go to Colorado and commission Tesla to build him
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: a magic machine. And while he's waiting for it to
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: be completed, Angier finally finishes decoding Bordon's diary, only to
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: discover that Borden wanted Angier to have his diary to
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: taunt him and be like, my secret's not in this diary,
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: you bitch.
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: And oh, do you think that's the last time this
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: is going to happen in this movie? Because no, not
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: even close.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, Tesla meanwhile has been testing out the machine
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: that he has built, but it doesn't seem to work
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: because it zaps a top hat or a cat, but
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: whatever the result is supposed to be, it's not working
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: or doesn't seem to be working until Angeer goes outside
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: and sees a pile of top hats and a couple
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: spare cats.
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: The cat scene cracked me up that, like, in most
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: ways this movie ages very well looks wise, but the
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: Tesla coil fx are like, oh oh, two thousand and six.
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: It's like, clearly just a cat sitting in front of
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: like a green screen or something, and then seeing like
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: the look like you see a cat getting electricated. It's alarming,
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: but funny.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: It is goofy looking, it is fun So we see
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: all of these replicas of the hats and the cats,
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: and we realize that the machine duplicates whatever you put
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: in it, it's just that it shoots out the replica
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: at the wrong place. So now Tesla just needs to
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: make some adjustments to fix that, and he does, and
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: he gives the machine to Angeer, who starts testing it
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: out on himself for his transported man trick. We cut
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: back to Borden in prison where he is awaiting execution,
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: and he decides to give up his tricks, or at
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: least part of them, to that solicitor who represents Lord
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: cold Law, who we find out is like a collector
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: of magic secrets in paraphernalia. Then we flash back to
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: Borden and his wife Sarah, who is emotionally tormented that
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Borden seems to only love her half of the time,
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: and she I can't take it anymore, and she dies
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: by suicide.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: This is an evil choice, an evil choice. We've already
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: killed off one wife to further the plot, and now
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: we have done it a second time. We'll talk more
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: about Sarah because I feel like she She and Olivia
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: are both characters I thought had a lot of promise
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: and could have. I mean, first of all, I mean
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: I just love Rebeccahle also and I think like her
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: performance is one of my favorites in this movie. But
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: the fact that it's like it's kind of can't be
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: but also really deeply sad that it's established from the
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: first time this character appears. She's like, you know what's wild?
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: You don't love me sometimes, and that is just the
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: reality that she lives with. It's paid off. Keep listening,
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: but it's so depressing, and you're like, wow, that is
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: sometimes what it feels like to be in a bad
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: relationship as a woman. You're like, well, what do you do?
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: I'm Mark, It's like eighteen whatever. I have no option
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: in the world, So I guess I just have to
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: deal with this. I don't know if you've ever dated
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: a comic or someone else you know, of the of
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: the dork arts, you're like this more than me. Seriously,
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: you know I've been on both sides of that. Actually,
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: what do you do?
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: What can one do?
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: Just dump them?
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: Don't don't date a magician.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: Don't date magicians, don't date comedian d don't date actors.
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: We are toxic people. Stay away away from us, leave
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: us to fuck each other to death in peace.
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: Okay. So Meanwhile, and Jeer is staging one last show
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: where he will perform the quote unquote real transported Man
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: using the machine that Tesla built for him, which zaps
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: him with electricity, duplicates him, and then shoots the duplicate
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: out into another part of the theater, and he does
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: the trick for the first time in front of a
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: big audience, and the crowd is loving it, which infuriates
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: Borden because he and Fallen not only have had their
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: tricks stolen, but they can't figure out how Angier does
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: this version of the trick, so Borden starts investigating, and
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: then we see the scene that we saw at the
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: beginning of the movie where Borden sneaks backstage and sees
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: Anger fall into the water tank and drown, only this
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: time we see Borden try to save Angeer, so it
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: would seem as though Borden did not kill him. Then
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: we get a reveal that Angier did this to frame
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: Borden and ruin his life because Anger is alive because
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: he got duplicated by the machine and he's living in
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: secret as the mysterious lord called Law who pays a
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: visit to Borden in prison, and Borden is like wait
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: a minute. This is the man I was convicted of killing.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: So if he's alive, I'm not guilty, but no one
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: gives a shit whatever.
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: Too bad, bitch, which is true of the justice system
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: in general.
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. Then we get another reveal that Fallen and
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: Borden are identical twin brothers, where one would live as
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: Alfred Borden, the magician who was married to Sarah and
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: has a daughter, the other as Fallen, the engineer who
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: wore a disguise to obscure the fact that he looks
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: exactly like the other Bordon. And they would take turns
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: and switch places and kind of both live these double lives. Yeah,
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: and this is how they did such a convincing transported
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: man trick. And this is also why Borden only seemed
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: to lie his wife half of the time.
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: I know, And it's like he's like a magician, never
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: reveals his secrets.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: And I was like, but but you can do it,
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: reveal it to your wife just once.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: She's good for it. You know, she's never she's never leaked, Olivia,
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: she's leaky, She's she's leaky. But look, she's just trying
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: to get by another character who very much just jettisoned
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: from the movie kind of in the third actor, like
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: where did she go?
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: Where's Olivia?
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: But well, but the reveal, what do we think of
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: the reveal? I think by that point I've just been
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: so like run over by the truck of the plot
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: of this movie that I'm like, yeah, sure, so nice.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: The first time I saw the movie, I was like,
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: holy fucking shit. I didn't see that coming at all.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: But now looking back on it, I'm like, that is
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: the goofiest reveal of all time, Like, of course they're twins,
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: like de doy it seems so silly and obvious.
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: Now it's closest movie was not made for magicians to
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 5: like it because for so many reasons. But that was
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: the That was the first thing that I thought the
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: first time I watched it was like, twins.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: Oh, because that's a real.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 5: Thing the magicians do. So it's like, oh, yeah, that
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: makes sense. Is it not twins? Oh it's twins? Okay, cool,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: Like we met nothing.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: Twins are common in magic?
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean are a lot of magicians twins? Now?
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 5: Do magicians who have a twin make their twins magic?
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: Wow?
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: Yo? Whoa yep? I can think of three right now
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 5: that I've like personally watched use their twin.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: Do people know that they have a twin or is
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: that part of the secret.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: No, that's part of the They try to tea up
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 5: under wraps as best as possible.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: Whoa, Also, that's it's I'm just like, I'm so curious
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: of Like, man, you've really got to maintain the relationship
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: with your twin for that to work. Like, hope you
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: guys don't get in a fight or one of you
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: is unemployed.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean same with like, if you have an assistant, true,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 5: you better treat god assistant real well.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: True Arena, they're gonna do to you what Root does
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: to Anger and sabotage his little tricks. Okay, so we're
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: almost done. Well, you get the reveal that there are
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: two Burdens and they're both living dual lives as either
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: Borden or Fallon. One of the Bordens is executed while
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: the other one approaches Angeer and shoots him the angier
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: that did survive the transported man trick.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: But don't forget his dying word is abracadabra.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: Bordens is yes, yes, I hate it, so goofy. They're
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: like any last words and then a pregnant pause and
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: then ABC that.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: Is like executing a comic and then having that be
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: like is this thing and then getting.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 5: Dropped like yeah, I can't.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: I have to imagine as a magician, you gotta be like,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: come on, guys, come on. It was We're not like that.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there are a couple of other options that I
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 5: thought would have been nice.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: But yeah, al kazam for example, no, I'm kidding an option.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: I did laugh a lot at the part where there's
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: this guy who runs a venue that has given Angier
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: like a week long run to prove that he's got
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: what it takes. And during the first show, that's when
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: Borden comes on stage to sabotage him and kill the bird.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: So the venue runner has to like boot Angier from
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: the venue, and he says like, I've hired a comedian
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: to replace you. You know I hate comedians, and I
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: was like, ah, exactin yeah, okay, so we've gotten all
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: these big reveals the remaining Borden shoots and Jeer, and
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: in Angeer's dying monologue, he's like, oh my god, what
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: I can't believe it, and then he reveals that every
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: time he did his transported man trick, he would murder
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: the duplicate, the one that wasn't part of the prestige.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: So he has killed various clones of himself and then
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: Angier dies and Borden, the remaining Bourdon, returns home and
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: reunites with his young daughter Jess, who again Angier had
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: stolen when the other Bourdon was sent to prison.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: And so he had to do what he had to do.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so this burden coming back, reappearing again is
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: the prestige of the movie. Wow.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: Movie, And.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: So let's take another quick break and we'll come back
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: to discuss.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: And we're back.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: We're back, kileb.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: Where would you like to start this discussion because I'm
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: curious in hearing more the history. But I'm yeah, what
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: jumps out to you?
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: So there are two main elements of this movie that
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 5: from a magician's perspective, I'm like, no one is. I
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 5: forget Hugh Jackman's wife's name from the beginning, Julia, Julia.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 5: Immediately I didn't understand why she was the escape artist
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 5: doing this incredible thing, but she never spoke, and this
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 5: other magician took all the credit for just like walking
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 5: around the box, which is a very common theme in magic,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 5: Like a lot of times the assistant who needs to
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 5: be quite small, often flexible to do the secret of
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: the trick. He is the one doing all of the
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 5: work and the magician is just walking around making poses
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 5: like look at this moving boxes and then taking the
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 5: ninety percent of the applause. But I was just like, well,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 5: this is this isn't just an assistant thing. This is like,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 5: oh no, she's doing an incredible skill, right and getting
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 5: so little from it.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: The movie like it's one thing for yes, like that
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: happens in real life all the time, where an assistant
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: a woman does a bunch of labor and gets no
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: credit for it. But that's something you could comment on,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: which the movie does not do. The movie just acts
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: as though she's not a magician. Also, she hasn't really
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: done anything. She doesn't deserve any recognition, which was very disappointing.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I feel like and we get a
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: similar like I don't know, Yeah, I think that truly.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: That's one of the areas where you're like, all Christopher
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: Nolan knows how to do is kill a wife. Because
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: the story opportunity is literally right there and then instead
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: her death, this's the inciting incident for the story instead
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: of I mean and I so when the Scarlet Johansson
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: character came along, Scarlett had we talked, I forget what
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: movie we last saw her in, but Unrepented Zionist sucks.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: But when this Scarlett Johansson character comes along, it almost
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: felt like, oh, well, here, you know, and it's a
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: Christopher Nolan movie. I know he's not going to take
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: the opportunity, but here is an opportunity to maybe rectify
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: how Julia's character was treated, because she is also presented
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: in an assistant capacity to begin with, but she's got
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: opinions on things which Julia didn't really seem to have.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: She is sort of trying to play these divas against
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: each other and to benefit on her own. And it's like, now,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: knowing what you're saying, Kayla, is that like this was
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: a time where a woman could it would have been difficult,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: but could conceivably have been a very famous magician. That's like,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's a different movie, but that's like I
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: think that there is room to ingratiate Olivia into this
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: complex Bizarro plot, and like she would have been a
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: useful red Herring for a lot of stuff in this movie,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: but she kind of just slowly disappears. And then you
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: see what often happens in movies of this time, in
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: Christopher Nolan movies, where it's this like, she becomes a
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: plot device, she becomes a reflection of the dead wife.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: She become like the reveal involves her, but mostly as
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: it relates to sexual deception. She has been enduring for
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: years and doesn't know. But it's sucked because it felt
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: like Olivia was as like Olivia and Sarah both have
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: interior lives, but only to a point, and the point
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: is the men.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 5: It would have been I think a much more interesting story,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 5: even if they included just a small portion of this.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 5: So there was a magician of the time. Her name
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 5: was Adelie Hermann, and she was married to Alexander Hermann,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 5: who was the super famous magician. Adelaide was the assistant
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 5: but also a circus performer. She did a lot of stunts,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: but she really didn't too much magic. And then her
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 5: husband died very soddenly, and she went, Okay, I'll just
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 5: learn the whole show and did and became super duper famous,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 5: like super deeper famous, more famous than Eudini, more famous,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 5: like massively famous, touring the world. That could have been
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 5: an interesting story to like hear about, you know, a
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 5: little bit of a subplot of her learning more of
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: the show or like anything that would have just made
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 5: her more than what she was would have been great, right,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 5: And like I said, there are tons of magicians of
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 5: that era that it would have been great to just
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 5: add in a little bit of their true life to know, Oh, Okay,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 5: she's actually like a really good magician, right.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: Right, yeah, And it's like, I mean, from that perspective,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: it's like the fact that well, I do like in
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: some ways, I think it's like kind of funny and
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: clever that they're pulling in Tesla as it being involved
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: in this plot. It's like, well, why bend over backwards
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: to involve Tesla when there were so many, like you're saying,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: like so many real life figures that would have been
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: like more realistic and also actually plausible and authentic to
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: what was going on at this time. And that I mean,
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: at very very least, like Olivia should be perceived as
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: a threat to these guys, as a potential professional threat.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: And I feel like there's a version of this movie
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: where maybe she you know, because she knows both of
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: their acts, so does that stand to make her one
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: of the most like if whether it's dishonest or not, like,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: one of the most successful acts in the world. But
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: instead she's like, I love him, you're like.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: And him being both of them because basically her role
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: in the story eventually just gets relegated to being the
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: romantic interest of both and Jeer and then one of
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: the burdens, and she just kind of gets shuffled back
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: and forth between the two. It's hard for the audience
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: to know exactly where her loyalties lie or what that
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: even means for this story. I was kind of losing
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: track of, like who does she love? Who is she
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: loyal to? If anyone like what is going on there? Yeah,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: what did you think about the line that Cutter says, Kayla,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: where he's like, where they hire Olivia in part because
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: she's attractive, And then Cutter says, a pretty assistant is
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: the most effective form of misdirection thoughts.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 5: I mean it's accurate, like a hundred percent. I mean,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 5: a lot of magicians will there are multiple reasons why
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 5: you want to hire an assistant that is captivating regardless
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 5: of gender. Having an assistant that is truly captivating is key.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 5: So a lot of magicians hire dancers because they can
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 5: grab the attention and it doesn't necessarily need to be
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 5: while something secret or like the method to the trick
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 5: is going on. It can literally mean just the assistant
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 5: is really drawing the audience in too. You know stage right, well,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 5: one prop is being wheeled off and another on that
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 5: we just you know who wants to see that. So
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 5: sure the assistant does a small dance routine and then
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 5: we go on to the next illusion. So it could
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 5: be as simple as that. So it is definitely a
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 5: useful tool to have an assistant that really captivates attention.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 5: It is more than likely. So there's a historical inaccuracy
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 5: in this movie that I'll mention in a second, but
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 5: it is more than likely that now an assistant will
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 5: be a woman because you need somebody who is small
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 5: in stature and flexible to do a lot of the routines.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 5: So that tends to be the route. Even if it's
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 5: a woman who's the magician, they might often hire a
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 5: woman assistant just because of the stature necessities, right, So
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 5: that is possible An element that is historically inaccurate in
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 5: this movie is that there would not have been women
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 5: doing things like sawing a person and half illusions because
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 5: that only started really by pt. Celbet, who invented the
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 5: sawing a woman in half. That's the title of the
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 5: trick during the women's suffrage movement.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: Direct, yeah, very direct, but it is direct.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 5: Kidding, it directly correlates with women getting the right to vote.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: WHOA so kidding?
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 5: It's it's so interesting.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 5: There's a magic historian, Jim Steinmeier. He's massive in magic.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 5: He's he's created tons of illusions and he is the
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 5: backbone to things like making the Statue of Liberty disappear
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 5: and the flying carpet during the Aladdin Broadway musical. So
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 5: like the massive and so he wrote a book and
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 5: in that book it very specifically states that the reason
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 5: for the explosive popularity of sawing a woman in half
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 5: was due to its specific timing and culture. And he
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 5: doesn't really elaborate on that, but if you if you
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 5: start to look at it, you're like, oh, so you're
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 5: telling me that the time where we gave women more
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 5: rights in society was the time where a magician went
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 5: I'm going to take those away if only for this
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 5: ten minute routine, right.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: Like it's a fantasy act out ya. That is we
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: should be talking about that every single day. Yeah, that
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: is agreed, so fucked and so interesting.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 5: It's really interesting because that really opened up like all
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 5: these illusions that were done in the eighteen hundreds that
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 5: were often done. It could have been a woman, it
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 5: could have been a guy like I, could have been
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 5: a kid, you know, it was just a whoever could
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 5: fit in the box was the person that did it,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 5: Like Robert Houdan, who was a very famous illusionist, did
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 5: it with his son. You know, all this stuff, right,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 5: But really the opening up of like any woman getting
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 5: put in a box and mutilated and put back together,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 5: that only started in the twenties, nineteen twenties, So it's
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 5: a little it's a little bit inaccurate in this movie,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 5: but also just really interesting to know that, like, oh,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 5: magic is Magic's weird.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: I think that it's again like something that you are
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: more aware of than most people, Kila. But the fact
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: that like all popular media and all entertainment is a
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: mirror to the time is coming out and that is
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: a fascinating o cregious example that is nuts.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 5: Wow. Angela Sanchez, who is a brilliant magic historian. They
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 5: really dove deep into this in like a collegiate paper
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 5: that they wrote, and reading that paper, I was like,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 5: everything in magic makes sense now, But now I'm upset
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 5: and it's just a lot. And so kind of reading
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 5: their work and hearing them talk about these things is like, oh, shoot, yeah,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 5: I didn't even think about Oh let me look at
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 5: let me look at this illusion or this popularity of
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 5: this one magician or anything, and compare it more culturally.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 5: You really start to see a lot of that come about.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 5: There is another moment that I wanted to talk about,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 5: but I want to make sure that we are done
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 5: talking about this thing. My brain went transition and then
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 5: it I don't know if it happened.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: No, please, you're you're in the driver's seat, whatever whatever
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: you want to move along to.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 5: I'm honored. Thanks for letting me drive.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: This is great.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 5: So there's a moment where they are talking about it's
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 5: when they're all done with the first show and we
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 5: watched the water tank escape and they're all talking and
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 5: yelling at each other in the basement, right and there's
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 5: a moment where Michael Caine goes, you need to go
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 5: to this theater. There is uh and I'm not gonna
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 5: say the language because it's wrong, but there's men from China,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 5: a man from China who's performing, and Hu Jopman's like
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 5: Chuckling Sue. And then they go and they watch this
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 5: magician perform, and you see like, yes, this man is
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 5: likely of Asian descent, So okay, cool, wrong, So Chung
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 5: Ling Sue. His real name is William Ellsworth Robinson.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: Oh that's a real figure.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 5: Okay, but not Asian.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: Okay, good lord?
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 5: Right, So of course in this movie, you can't be like,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 5: should we discuss cultural appropriation because it's in the eighteen hundred.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 5: It's like, no, it's not. I understand that that would
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 5: be a weird subplot to just throw into the movie.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 5: But there's somebody else that we can mention. So Chumling
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 5: Siou William Robinson. He had a rivalry, and it was
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 5: very interesting that that was the magician we decided to
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 5: name in this movie because the rivalry is very similar
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 5: to the rivalry in this movie, where there was a
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 5: magician named Ching Ling Fu actually from China who was
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 5: brought to the US for the Omaha World's Fair, and
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 5: Fu was the first like celebrity in America because he
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 5: was so famous doing his act that he would be
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 5: performing at a theater that across the street was a
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 5: movie theater, one of the first movie theaters, and it
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 5: was playing a video of his act because it was
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 5: cheaper to go to the movie theater, so if you
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 5: didn't have a lot of money, you could go watch
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 5: his act at the movie theater while he was playing
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 5: across the street. That is the level of fame that
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 5: Fu had. And then he put out this challenge, being like,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 5: if you can figure out how I do any of
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 5: my material, then I'll give you money, and et cetera.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 5: And William Robinson he recreated Fu's act and Fu was like, okay,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 5: you did it, but you didn't do it correctly, like
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 5: you didn't use my method. One of those things was
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 5: producing a massive fish tank like in this movie. Okay,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 5: And William Robinson was like, yeah, but I did it.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 5: You didn't tell me how to do it exactly correct.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 5: I still replicated it, give me money, and Fu went no.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 5: And that was it. That was all that was needed
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 5: to become this massive rivalry that changed Magic Forever because
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 5: William Robinson started dressing up and calling himself Chungling Sue
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 5: and was doing Fu's act. But in America everyone went,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 5: you're not actual Chinese. Like we we know that you're not,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 5: like we know that Fu is actually Chinese.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: In a racist costume.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, uh huh, we we can smell that because we've
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 5: been adoring Fu for years, so we don't like you.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 5: And so William Robinson went, Okay, then I'm going to
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 5: go somewhere where Fo hasn't been yet. So he went
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 5: to England and by the time Fu got to England,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 5: everyone said, you're not the real Chinese magician. This guy
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 5: is talking about Robinson. So Fu did not have a
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 5: career in England and that became this massive rivalry. But
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 5: Chuckling Sue also never grew to be this seventy year
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 5: old man that they are showing in the movie. William
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 5: Robinson was one of the many magicians that died from
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 5: a bullet catch. So he died on stage during a
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 5: bullet catch in his fifties, and so it was just
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 5: a really interesting way of really interesting to put William
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 5: Robinson as Chuckling Sue in this movie. When you could
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 5: have easily made this into that character could have been
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 5: Chickling Foo easily.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: And why wouldn't it have been?
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, because up until recently, and by recently I mean
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 5: twenty twenty, people did not know magicians, magic historians, did
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 5: not know Chingling Foo existed.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: O wow, Okay.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 5: So it was only in I believe twenty nineteen, twenty
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 5: twenty that a book came out by a historian, not
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 5: a magic historian, who lives in China, who discovered the
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 5: life of Fu and end he wrote a book. The
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 5: book is amazing, and then magicians went, who's this? And
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 5: there was a there was supposed to be a debate
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 5: between a very well known magic historian and the writer
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 5: of this book. And the magic historian said, because there's
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 5: always a debate, unlike is what William Robinson did wrong
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 5: for that time period, not for now, but for the
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 5: time period. And many, like myself say yes, but many
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 5: say no, it was just how you had to have
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 5: a career. I hate the debate so much. Welcome to
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 5: my soapbox. But they we're gonna have a debate in
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 5: the magic story and said, I can't believe you wrote
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 5: a whole book on this guy. Because the most I've
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 5: ever been able to find is like four paragraphs.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: How did you.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 5: Find out more information? And the writer of the book said,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 5: I went to the library.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: Robert Edgars vibes.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 5: That was the end of the debate. It was incredible.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: Whoa, he's like, I tried reading a book, you dusty bitch.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 5: Wow? Yeah?
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: That okay. So theoretically, and this isn't too because if
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: the answer truly was as simple as I did some
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: research that is so addicative of so much lost history.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: But theoretically, like so this would have been not as
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: bizarre a choice as it would now seem in two
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: thousand and six. Or is it still a bizarre choy?
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 3: Because he was known to be a white man in
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: yellow face in two thousand and six, right, correct? I
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: didn't know that before this recording. Because Chuckling Sue is
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: played by a Chinese American actor in this movie. It's
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: his last film appearance, Strata Charlie Chi, who is also
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 3: in a bunch of other very popular American movies, including
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: The Joy Luck Club, including Batman the animated series like
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: all sorts of fun stuff. But why choose this magician
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: specifically if it is so well known that he was
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: fraudulent in all these ways.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 5: My guess is, and I don't know who would have
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 5: decided that this was the magician that they wanted to
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 5: talk about. I don't know if this was in the
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 5: book or if this was a decision made by the writers,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 5: Christopher Nolan, maybe the magic consultant. But the questioning of
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 5: cultural appropriation in magic, or even just the discussion of it,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 5: did not happen until about twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, and
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 5: there are still in twenty twenty five, there are still
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 5: magicians dressing up and pretending to be not light of
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 5: some Asian ethnicity to benefit the trick that they want
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 5: to do, or using props that have are an artistic
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 5: just rendering of Chinese characters. So it is. It is
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 5: a very common thing in magic, and the fact that
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 5: it's really only been questioned, and I can tell you
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 5: when it started questioning it because I'm the one that
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 5: did it, so I know what happened, because that didn't
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 5: happen until I went, what's up, why are we doing this?
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 5: And then started doing all this research. Of that time
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 5: as well, there were a lot of magicians pretending to
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 5: be Indian for their benefit so it just was a
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 5: very common thing of the eighteen hundreds. The first one,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 5: the first magician to ever do it was oddly a
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 5: woman in the early eighteen hundreds. But it is a
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 5: very common thing and it just really didn't start being
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 5: discussed until the last seven or eight years.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: And tell you, like started the conversation.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 5: Which is it shouldn't be me like, that's why is that?
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 5: Why did it take that long? Somebody before me should
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 5: have said something. But you know, I had a podcast
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 5: discussing mostly like the diversity and inclusion lack there of
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 5: in the magic community, and because of that, I think
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 5: a lot of people started looking into, oh this is weird.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 5: And I had on the author of the Jingling Fu book,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 5: Samuel Portias, and we discussed a lot of things about
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 5: on that topic. And it's a fascinating element of magic
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 5: history that really nobody has talked about. Even now. It's
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 5: more talked about now, but it is not widely enough
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 5: spoken about.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: Well. We even see a jeer in the movie when
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: he's first presenting the version of the Transported Man trick,
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: when he's using a double and he says, like, the
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: next thing you're going to see isn't even an illusion.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: This is real magic known only to select few. It
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: comes from East Asia, and it's like real witchcraft wizardry
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: kind of thing, the way that so often any non
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: white culture will.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: Be missed a size exactly.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: And I can't even imagine how much that was exploited
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: in magic for centuries.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and extensively, because when ching Ling Foo gets brought
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 5: over and becomes this massive celebrity touring the US and
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 5: multiple times magicians in the US or magicians in England
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 5: who can't a lot of people can't easily access going
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 5: to East Asia. So it's so easy to give yourself
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 5: some cred and say I just came back from China,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 5: from Japan, from wherever, and said I picked this up
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 5: when I was traveling. And now immediately the audience is like, oh,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 5: tell me more. You must be a big deal if
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 5: you've been able to go travel to these places, and
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 5: you must have money or somebody paid for you, like
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 5: you are now celebrity in my eyes. And it was
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 5: just an instant way to get people to love you
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 5: and to think you were amazing. And it Unfortunately, even
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 5: though all of the reasons why that happened are no
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 5: longer applicable. It's still very much a thing that happens
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 5: in magic. I mean when I was a kid, I
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 5: had I mean, this is kind of crazy, but I
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 5: had a long piece of paper that was deemed the
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 5: Chinese laundry ticket, and it was this idea that you
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 5: drop your laundry off it a dry cleaner, and you
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 5: received this ticket, but it's in it's not in English,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 5: and then you tear it up and you restore it.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 5: And like that was the trick I did for years
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 5: as a kid. Wait, why did I do that?
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: That makes no sense. It was normalized, just normalized. Yeah,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 5: Just it's a product you bought from the magic shop
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 5: right everywhere.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 3: And again, like it's just like a reflect in the
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: same you know, a very different example, but just as
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: the woman being sold in half as a reflection of
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: the politics and values of the time and just a
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: reflection of how history is preserved. I'm like, I'm right.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: What was the name of the author who wrote that
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 3: book again.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 5: About ching wing Fu? Yes, Samuel Portius. I think it's
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 5: po rt e o u s poords. That sounds I
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 5: can't spell, but it'll pop up.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: You're you're a performer, you don't have to know how
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: to spell thank you? And did they hear that every
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: all performers should be told that. But yeah, I mean
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: just speaking to how you know, as technology develops in it,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: as you know, there are far more ways to preserve
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: history does not mean it is being done better. It
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: just gives a larger platform for centuries old misinformation to
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: sort of persist, you know. That's that's I'm so glad
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: that book was written. Wow, I was not expecting that
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: side quest in this episode.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 5: Thank you for maddening to me. So as soon as
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 5: that came up, I was like, you've got to be
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 5: kidding me, and I like paused the movie. I had
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 5: to just wait a second because I was like, you
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 5: can't tell me this is Oh, it's happening, okay. It
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 5: just is one of those things that like if it
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 5: were done more historically accurate, totally different if they had
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 5: said like, oh, yeah, this this performer is not actually Chinese,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 5: but he's been living because they say like, oh, he's
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 5: been living like this, he walks like this old man
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 5: with a back problem, like all of these things, and
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 5: they also had just thrown in there like that man's
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 5: from New York. He's a white man, and he is
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 5: he's just been living this way to perpetuate this character.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 5: Then that's legit, Like okay, you'll did it. But I
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 5: just think nobody knew. I really think just nobody knew
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 5: to even think about it, to say it, to discuss it, to.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 3: Go out to the library.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 5: No, too hard.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: That's really yeah, because I mean I guess it's like
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: we can't know, but it seems like you know, again,
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 3: even the like horrific read of what really happened of
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: like this guy kind of like Rachel doleas all like
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: he like lived as another race in order to deceive
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: others for years. That's I feel like is also very
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: much in line with and is a far more racist
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: version of what the two protagonists are doing. So why
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: like in a world where we have to have the
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: historical figure of Chung ling Suit in this movie, it's
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: like almost foreshadowing to acknowledge that he is so committed
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: to the deeply troubling bit that like his life is
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: kind of fucked, the life of his and others are
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: fucked as a result, because that's what happens in the
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: third act of this movie. It's just yeah, well.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: In the movie starts to explore this theme of like, well,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: how much sacrifice are you willing to make for your
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: magic career? When the chung Ling Su character shows up
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: on screen again, the movie isn't acknowledging that he but.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: They sort of just make up another thing. They make
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 3: up a physical disability, right.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: And say, but that is the beginning of this thematic
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: under like under or overcurrent of the movie, as far
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: as like and to what lengths is anyone willing to
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: go to for the sake of their craft? And you know,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: as a performer, when are you on? And when are
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: you off? And what if you're always on? And what
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: if your whole life is basically a lie to maintain
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: a specific illusion. And that becomes like such a huge
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: part of the Borden character.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 3: At which point I'm like, he shouldn't get his kid
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 3: back at that. We shouldn't be clapping for that. So
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: he will do We have no reason to believe he
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 3: will not do this again.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: Well he doesn't have a twin to do it with anymore.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: But yeah, but he's gonna fuck this kid's life, like absolutely.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: But yeah, my whole deal with this is, you know,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: we learn that there are these two Burdens, these identical
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: twin brothers who share a life, and one of them
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: is Borden part of the time and one of them
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: is Fallen part of the time, and they switch back
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: and forth. But this is all happening at the expense
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: of one of the Borden's marriage with Sarah, who thinks
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: that her husband doesn't love her half of the time
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: and thinks that he's perhaps cheating on her with Olivia,
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: and this leads her to die by suicide, which so
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: I'm just like, And this is I think, actually a
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: reflection of like a lot of men's behavior in real life,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: their willingness to destroy their lives and other people's lives
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: under the guise of quote unquote sacrifice for their craft,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: but really they're just hurting all the people around them.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: And this is actually something we talked about on the
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: Men Being Bitches Matreon theme that we did recently, where
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: we covered the Banshees of Indus here and amadaeis. But
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: this is very much happening with Borden as well, And
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: the whole time, I'm just like, poor Sarah, like, and
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: there's a moment where Borden tells Fallen aka the other Bordon,
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: but we don't know that yet that Sarah knows something
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: is a miss. She can tell that her husband only
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: seems to love her half of the time, and so.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 3: That's like her how we're introduced to her, which is
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 3: like clever in the corniest way possible, but like it's
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 3: so it's so silly, it's right, like god, women, women
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: are women are just socially conditioned to settle for so little.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: It'd be like sad because she's she's like, well, at
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 3: least this makes me feel good the days that you
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: do love me. I was like, right, cope, it's cope.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: Sarah's coping so hard.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: But toward the end of the movie, when she's like
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: really had enough and she's like I can't take much
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: more of this, Borden asks Fallin. We're not sure which
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: one is married to Sarah at this point, but he's like, hey,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: Sarah realizes something is not right. I need you to
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: do whatever you need to do to reassure her that
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: Borden loves her. And so we think, okay, maybe we're
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: gonna see more intimacy between them, or more emotional nurturing
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: or something, but instead, the next time other Bordon is
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: with Sarah. They have a fight. He is verbally and
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: emotionally abusive toward her. She's saying like, all I want
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: from you is to be honest with me and to
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: give me the affection and love that I deserve. And
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: she's like, do you love me? And he says not today.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: And this seems to be the catalyst for her taking
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: her own life, which.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: I think, you know, not that this has never happened
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: in history anything like that. I like, I guess I'm
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 3: curious what you both. I just thought that was an
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: incredible selling out of this character. Like I while I
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: absolutely like while people have taken their own lives over
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: issues like this, I just it doesn't quite square with
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: the character we know. To me, it's like this is
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: someone who, while she is clearly heartbroken and is like
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 3: I think we see that she's drinking a lot to
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 3: cope with the gaslighting and the stress, this is just
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 3: not someone who I think would abandon their child like that.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 3: I just I feel like she's got a lot. I
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: mean again, it's like I don't want to get into
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: like a toxic pattern of like she has so much
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: to live for, But it just felt like she's killed
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: in this really tragic way to raise the stakes more
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 3: than to remain faithful to the character that we've met.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: I agree. Yeah, I think that Christopher Nolan just did
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: what he does best, which is kill off a woman.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: I mean or the novelist, you know, because this is
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: based on a book by Christopher Priest, a different Christopher
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 3: could be responsible for this crime. But yeah, I just
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 3: found it very frustrating and like typical of how you know,
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 3: men are quick to Yeah, I think that this is
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: essentially like a glorified Fridging moment where we haven't killed
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 3: a woman since the beginning, so let's get a second
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: dead wife in the mix. And the scene is just
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: I thought, so like overwrought with like corny symbolism and
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 3: the caged birds and the blah blah blah and that
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 3: like it just I don't know, it was not a
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 3: worthy departure to this character who are sympathies are with
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 3: And again it's in the same way. I mean again,
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 3: she and Olivia are very different characters, but like I
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 3: think there's one scene where they might be in the
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 3: same room, but.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: The other at dinner together the two women, but.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 3: They do not speak to each other, and you're just like,
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know. I just it was
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 3: as with every Christopher Nolan movie in history, basically, the
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 3: treatment of the only women in the movie was dismissive
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 3: and frustrating.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: Which we talk at length about on the I think
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: both the Inception episode and the Dark Night episode as
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: far as like Nolan's.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: Safe to assume every Nolan movie we've ever covered, we've
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 3: had a version of this conversation, for sure, but this
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 3: one too. Sorry, Kayla, what were you gonna say? I
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: was gonna say.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 5: In Magic, we kind of created the magician form of
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 5: the Bechdel test, which is we call it the table test,
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 5: which is if your woman assistant can be replaced by
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 5: a table that.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: Oh I remember you talking about this on the Now
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: You See Me episode.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think in many ways the women in
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 5: this movie could easily be replaced by a table, like damn,
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 5: you know, there's there's a lot of sad death. But
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 5: besides that, they're at table, right, and that's it. Like,
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 5: so it is very indicative of how many magicians treat assistants,
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 5: where they're merely a prop to be manipulated and used
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 5: for your own gain. So it does feel a lot like,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 5: oh yeah, this is like legit, this is how a
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 5: lot of magicians are. So the movie and the treatment
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 5: of the women characters are very much similar to how
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 5: magicians would treat assistance.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 3: With that in mind, I'm curious your thoughts about Olivia
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: and how she's characterized throughout the film.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 5: Is Olivia Scarlet Johansson?
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, sorry, I like, honestly it just locked in
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 3: for me. But yes, the Scarlet I had the character. Yeah,
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 3: how did you feel about how she was characterized? H yeah.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 5: I really should have written down their names, but they
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 5: were said so minimally that I didn't remember what really
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 5: anybody what their names were, right, And.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: When the whole cast is movie stars, You're like, yeah, we.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 5: Know, yeah, I think in many capacities, like I just
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 5: going back to sort of any hoodainty based rifle, like
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 5: thinking about Whodini and the spirituals and movement at the
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 5: time in his weird relationship with it kind of you
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 5: brought that up earlier. Jamie is like, there was a
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 5: lot that was done with rivals in the late late
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 5: eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds that would be sending an
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 5: assistant to get some information or find out more information,
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 5: Like any sort of manipulative tactics to mess with your
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 5: rival was for sure done, even if it was like
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 5: close to murder. So it does feel like a thing
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 5: that would have been done. But there's another element of
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 5: just like magic in adult as its whole. And I'm
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 5: going to say this, this is my theory. There are
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 5: absolutely exceptions, but I really believe that all magicians are
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 5: one of two diagnoses, and they're either narrative rgent. So
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 5: I have ADHD. It helps, it's by super on stage.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 5: It's great. A lot of magicians are autistic nor aamergent
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 5: in any capacity. It makes sense because we're super nerdy
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 5: and there's a lot of hyper focus on things. But
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 5: also like for me, my brain is so all over
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 5: the place that performing it really lends a lot to
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 5: my way of performing in the comedic sensibilities I have,
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 5: et cetera. But then there is a small subset of
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 5: magic that is more manipulative and potentially narcissistic that that
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 5: tends to be what comes out for a lot of
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 5: magicians and to me in that moment, Hugh Jackman was like, no, no, no,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 5: this is all about me. Y'all don't actually care about
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 5: you at all. This is about me go get the secrets,
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 5: and so it just it really just tracks for a
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 5: lot of behavior that you see, especially at that time
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 5: period in the magic world. So it wasn't so surprising
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 5: that she would have been manipulated in that way and
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 5: then also gone and like fall in love with two
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 5: different magicians. Like there was just a lot there that
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 5: was like, oh, yeah, I've seen this from people in
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 5: the magic world. I've seen this from women in the
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 5: Magic world. Former, yeah, it feels it feels accurate. It
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 5: didn't need to happen in a movie, but it does feel.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I guess, yeah, I guess I would just
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: go back to, like, again, this is changing the movie
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: we have, But it just felt like, because of there's
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 3: like historical precedent for women to become more powerful in
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 3: this world, I wish that she had developed into like
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 3: I don't even care that you know, she's like hooking
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 3: up with the various magicians. You're like, yeah, that's you know,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 3: based in any horny arts community, like that's gonna happen.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 3: But it just felt like that was where a lot
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 3: of her plot relevance stopped. As time went on, which
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: is frustrating because I didn't feel like she was introduced
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 3: that way. I'm not sure if maybe there's more of
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 3: a story for her in the novel or less, but yeah,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 3: it just felt like by the edge she was a table,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 3: you know, she was a warm body to move the platforward,
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 3: and that's a shame. It is.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 5: I'd like to pay which if they ever decide to
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 5: rebake this movie, which I guess it could happen. They're
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 5: remaking Harry Potter and everything, so it's possible there could
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 5: be a reboot. I would like to pitch the idea
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 5: that actually, at the end, when everything is like all
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 5: the people have been murdered and all of the you know,
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 5: every all of the deception has been completed, and obviously
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 5: these two male magicians are not going to be doing
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 5: magic anytimes too, and that actually we get to see
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 5: this great spotlight on Scarlett Johansson as super famous magician
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 5: doing doing magic that doesn't involve twins and deception like
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 5: any you know, outside of the norm sort of magic deception,
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 5: any sort of personal deception, and she's just some super
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 5: famous magician touring the world and everybody loves her.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 3: Like that would be great, She'd be thriving. That would
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 3: be a fun like even just like a fucking post
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 3: credits scene or something like that would be cool. And
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 3: again like fits with the themes of the movie, where
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 3: it's like, well, did she get all this success by
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 3: and you know, doing it the most ethical way possible. No,
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 3: but that's not what show business is about, baby, blah
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 3: blah blah, get.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: Your hands dirty.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: I feel like there could have easily been a subplot
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 2: where Olivia while Borden and Angie or are so focused
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: on trying to prove who's the better magician, and they're
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 2: sabotaging each other and they're going to each other's shows
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: and they're shooting each other and stealing from each other
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: and taking their diaries and blah blah blah this stuff.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: While they're distracted with that, while they're misdirected, perhaps Olivia
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: is over here like learning all of their tricks, yeah,
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 2: developing all the skills, and then yeah, rising to prominence
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: without either of them. That would have been cool. I
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: wanted to go back to Sarah Borden's his wife, because okay,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: so after she dies, you would think there would be
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: a scene where Borden discovers her body or like some
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: aftermath of learning that she has and it's presumably his
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: fault or he was the catalyst for it. But we
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: do not see this on screen at all, Like, why
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 2: isn't there a scene where he's like, oh my god,
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: my beloved wife is dead, like.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 3: Right, which is because we get plenty of that from
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 3: Hugh Jackman at the beginning. We get multiple long shots
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 3: of him like punching the wall, being like a what not?
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 5: Was it?
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: He's trying to drown himself it seems at one point.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, Yeah, he's so dramatic, right.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: Instead, what we see bordon do is tell Olivia that
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: he never loved Sarah, he never loved his wife. He
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: loves Olivia, blah blah blah. And I would say, at
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 2: least to the story's credit, Olivia says like, how are
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 2: you so cold? Sarah was your wife, She was an
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: important part of your life. Now she's gone, and you
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: don't seem to give a shit at all. And it's
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: at that point of the movie where I think Olivia
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 2: kind of disappears from this story, but at least she
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: calls him out for this. But also, yes, the Borden,
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: we're seeing, right there is not the one who's married
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: to Sarah, but that Borden still had a relationship with Sarah.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: She was his sister in law. He pretended to be
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: her husband half of the time. Surely he had some
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: connection with her and some affection for her, and surely
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: he would be upset that she died even if she
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: wasn't his wife, But like, he is so callous about
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: her death, and so what the fuck is that? And
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: then also if the movie wants to hit this theme harder,
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: of like the sacrifices you have to make to be
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: a great artist or a great performer or whatever in
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: the movies trying to examine like, sure, these types of
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: things usually means some sort of sacrifice, but at what cost.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: The movie doesn't care about the cost it takes on
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: their relationships. It really only cares about the cost of
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: like their own lives, because most of the men end
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: up dead by the end of the story. And it's like, well,
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: those are the stakes. But it's also like, well, the
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: stakes are also your meaningful relationships in your life, and
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: several of those happen to be with your romantic partners,
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: your daughter, and like the movie just it doesn't seem
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: like it cares about that that much.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like I I mean, I'm not gonna
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 3: like cut it any side, but it feels like for
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 3: the end to pay off, you have to like ignore
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 3: certain character dynamics for it to be authentic. And like
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 3: Sarah is the first person on the chopping block in
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 3: terms of like her death making any coherent sense. And
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 3: again it's like they should have just made a different
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 3: for a different decision with that character. Like there are
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 3: equally upsetting like you know, in a world where Sarah
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 3: and I know this would have been less common at
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 3: the time, but like a world where Sarah left him
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 3: and took the daughter instead of killing her off in
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 3: this really gruesome, I think underthought way. And then like
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 3: you're saying, Kitlin, like not show the characters react. And
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 3: it also that chafes a little bit with like who
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 3: I understood Bordon to be. I think that like what
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 3: we're supposed to think in the moment and what I
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 3: assumed because I forgot the twist at the end. I
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: was like, oh, he's so, you know, like poisoned by
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 3: fame and he has this like bad goateea now and
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 3: he's blah blah bl like he's he's he does he
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 3: doesn't care what happens. But it's like, yeah, again, theoretically,
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 3: if we're like Cinema sendsing the plot a little bit,
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 3: like this would be a big problem between Borden and
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 3: his brother. This would be a huge problem.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 2: Right, Like you got to convince my wife that I
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: love her, and now she's dead and now I hate you. Bro.
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah the jig and we already know how like whatever,
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 3: Borden has ended a long standing relationship over a very
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 3: similar issue before a dead wife problem. But but that
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 3: spoils the reveal and all this other stuff where it's like, yeah,
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 3: for the for the plot of the movie to work,
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 3: you just sort of have to, Like it's interesting who
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 3: the movie assumes that you will ignore and forget about,
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 3: And it's the women characters who they've founder written the.
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: Entire time, right, Yeah, not to mention, the movie doesn't
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 2: even acknowledge the abuse inherent in not telling your wife
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: that sometimes you're a different guy. Like, yeah, that's the
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 2: manipulation that is full of sault and abuse, and like
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: why wouldn't they tell them?
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 5: Why if I were a twin? It would be weird
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 5: to be like, Hey, could you actually go to my
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 5: home today? I don't feel like it. Why don't you
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 5: do it? That's weird? Yeah that makes no sense.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, can you kiss my wife today?
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 3: I'm right, I'm busy, I'm busy. Yeah, you're like, what
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 3: is the reason?
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah?
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 3: What is the reason? That's like. But you're like, but
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 3: that seems more complicated than just going home?
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 5: And whose daughter?
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 2: Is it?
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 5: Like? There's just it's it's I just have so many questions, right, So.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 3: The twins, I think that it's it. I guess we're
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 3: to believe that she is reunited with her biology.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: That is confirmed. Yeah, the biological father of the little
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: girl whose name is Jess.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 3: But you're just I'm sort of like, what Michael Caine
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 3: raise her? Like? I you know, it seems like her
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 3: the odds would be better for her.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 3: Not that Michael Caine seems like an ideal caretaker.
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 5: But he's better.
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 3: He hasn't he's to As far as I know, he's
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 3: only killed birds. I don't think he's killed people.
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so no, twin, No twin, doesn't twin.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: That he's switching off his life with Yeah, yeah, there.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 5: Is a narrative that happens. And this is not only
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 5: to the magic worlds, but it's a narrative that exists everywhere.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 5: But I just know I've heard it a lot. Like
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 5: if you go to a magic convention, the chances of
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 5: like a sixty ish year old white guy just complaining
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 5: a lot about how his wife doesn't understand him as
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 5: a magician and therefore she won't come to conventions anymore
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 5: because she hates magic and she doesn't like that I
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 5: do it, and I've taken over our guest room with
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 5: all of my magic stuff and my wife hates it.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 5: And my wife, my wife, my wife. It's so and
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 5: I know that's everywhere, but it is like a really
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 5: interesting thing to be like, oh, there's your wife. Are
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 5: we exploring the fact that your wife just doesn't understand
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 5: that this is your who you are and what you
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 5: do or what is what is this? And I think
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 5: ultimately it's just nothing. It's just let's move the plot.
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 5: It's a plot point, but it is just sort of
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 5: thing to be like, oh, yeah, that's right. A lot
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 5: of people complain that their wives don't understand them and
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 5: their magic tricks and she won't pick a card for
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 5: me anymore because she's sick of it. I get it.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 5: I'm sick of it. I get it.
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 3: I think I think that there is especially in and
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 3: this is like a lesson that i've again like I've
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 3: been on both sides of I'm assuming we kind of
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 3: all have is like it's especially it's like creative, like
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 3: if someone if you're creative in someone's day to you,
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 3: like I almost am like, it's weird if they're coming
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 3: to every show, like there should be boundaries in place,
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 3: and it's like there's there's a line between like I
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 3: feel supported. It would be, it would be it would
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 3: make me feel sad if my partner came to no
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 3: shows ever. Sure, but I would also be kind of
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 3: like it's not I don't know. When someone's like, my
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 3: my wife comes to every show, You're like, that's beautiful.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 3: I am sort of like.
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 2: What does she need to and are you going to
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: every single one of her things? Whatever she's got going on?
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 5: What?
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, how are you? How are you reciprocating? I mean again,
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 3: two each their own, But I think like, yeah, it's
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 3: I mean speaking to that dynamic, Kayla, It's like I
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 3: want you know, Sarah, I would imagine Sarah is not
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 3: as interested in It might not even be that she's
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 3: not interested. She's probably just raising their child, which he
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 3: is not doing. In spite of the fact that there's
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 3: two of him and one kid. He actually should be
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 3: present more, you would think, right.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: And if they're in a committed relationship where they love
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 2: and trust each other, why wouldn't you tell your wife
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: that you have a twin brother and say, hey, make
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: sure don't tell anyone else like this. Maintaining this secret
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: is crucial to the integrity of my career. But I
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: guess integrity is a funny word there. But like to
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: maintain my illusions, my magic, you have to keep this
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 2: under wraps because, like being in an intimate relationship with
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 2: someone does, there is a level of trust that you
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 2: have to agree to do with each other. And it
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 2: seems like they probably had that, or at least that
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: Sarah was willing and able to be a trustworthy partner
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 2: for him. But as it's so often the case, men
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: have trouble reciprocating the honesty and vulnerability and emotional labor
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: that is necessary to maintain a relationship.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which just means more of like the table of
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 3: it all the like, Yeah, the women of this movie
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 3: are more like stakes machines than someone whose like interior
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 3: life is really being thought about, which again is just like,
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 3: as much as I love a lot of his work,
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 3: the least surprising thing to hear about a Christopher Nolan
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 3: movie that you could possibly hear, like, I guess he
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 3: sort of tried to write a woman in Oppenheimer, but like,
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 3: it's just not gonna happen at this point, and I
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 3: don't At this point, I'm like, I don't even want
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 3: him to. I don't even want him to. I don't
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 3: want to. I don't want to know after like five
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 3: hundred years what he's like. Wait a second, Like, I
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 3: don't want to know what he thinks we're thinking, right,
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 3: that's none of my business.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: Speaking of Christopher Nolan, so he directed the movie. Of course,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: he co wrote the screenplay with his brother, Yeah, which
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: Jonathan Nolan he works with all the time. He works
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 2: with all the time. They co write a lot of
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: scripts together. But the joke I was trying to like
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: craft in my head was like, what if there's a
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: reverse prestige thing happening with these two brothers where we
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: think they're brothers but it's really just one man, because
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 2: has anyone even seen Jonathan Nolan in public?
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 3: Wow?
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: Okay, have we seen them together? Are there even two men?
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 2: I think it's just Christopher Nolan.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 3: Poor Jonathan catching astray?
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 5: So does that mean that, like they both have partners
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 5: that only want them, is actually married to both of them?
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 2: One man is married to both of them.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 3: They're both married to Emma Thompson. No, that's I don't know.
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 5: It's I don't know what's messy or the movie or
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 5: that plot, like it's it's great.
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: That's just my little head cannon, but it's probably not true.
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 2: Does anyone have anything else they'd like to talk about?
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: We've been talking for the run time of the movie.
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think let's let's call it. Let's go unless
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 3: unless kill it, unless you have more to get into.
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 3: That was everything I had.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 5: There's always so much of a rabbit hole I could
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 5: go down with weird magic history, But today is we've
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 5: talked enough, we get it. Magic's weird, it's great, this
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 5: is awesome.
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: Rabbit hole pulling a rabbit out of a hat?
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 3: Is that a fishing fish bowl, fish pole?
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: Rabbit hole?
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 3: Yes, so sit with that. Listeners think about that.
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 5: That's really why we're all here today.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 2: The movie does not pass the Bechdel test. As we said,
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 2: there is a scene where Olivia is telling one of
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: the Burdens. She's like, the day before Sarah died, she
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: told me that she wanted to meet with me, but
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: I chickened out and I didn't end up meeting with her,
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 2: And then Olivia wonders what Sarah might have said. So
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 2: there's sort of like a speculation of a conversation that
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 2: could have happened between two women.
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 3: Does it pass the Bechdel test if a woman thought
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 3: about talking to another woman and that ultimately didn't a conversation,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 3: by the way, that would have been about men, Yes.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. Yeah no, so no. But rating the
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: movie on the Bechdel cast nipple scale, where we rate
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 2: from a scale of zero to five nipples based on
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, you know
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 2: this gets a half nipple because I would say we
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 2: see Julia, the first fridged wife who gets killed during
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 2: the magic trick. We see her do magic, we see her,
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: we see an escape artist act from her. Uh, she's
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: barely acknowledged as doing such by the movie, but you
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: know we're seeing we see her, there's visibility, So because
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 2: of that, a half nipple, and I give it to
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: the duplicated cats who are just kind of running around
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: in the snow. I got Tesla's headquarters.
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 3: I loved it. I loved it. I've gotta I've gotta
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 3: say it's a little it's a little harsh for a
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 3: movie I enjoy so much, but I gotta go zero.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 3: I gotta go zero. I what I really appreciate is
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 3: I was really looking forward to this conversation because I
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 3: knew Kayla was going to have some incredible background, and
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 3: sure enough, you did not disappoint. Yeah, yes, you once
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 3: again delivered you always do, and thank you for giving.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 3: I'm like more excited about what you told us about historically,
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 3: and I'm going to think about a woman being sowd
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 3: in half because of suffrage for so long. So it's
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 3: worth the ride. It's a fun it's a fun movie.
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 3: I enjoy it. I like, I still really enjoy it.
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 3: But no nipples. No nipples. Women appear but mostly to
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 3: be fridged or caught up in a twisted assault based
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 3: sexual relationship.
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: So yeah, Cayla, how about.
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 5: You I would have. I think, like inherently I also
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 5: would have get it half a nipple because of Julia,
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 5: who did, in fact do like a very difficult escape.
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 5: But then there was an immediate minus of half nipple
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 5: with the Chungling Shue situation, and so I think ultimately
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 5: it's zero. But if I were to give it to anybody,
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 5: I would want to give it to Andy Serkis, who
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 5: really had to act his way into convincing everybody how
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 5: great Tesla.
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: Was in an American accent no less.
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love to see him walking up. I just
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 3: was so I forgot that. Caitlin. You you reminded me.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 3: Andy Serkus was in this and I like had a
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 3: little squeal. I love him. He should get to be
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 3: people more. Well, I don't know. He should do whatever
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 3: he wants.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, his his body of work, his choice.
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 3: Yes, sometimes so if there's one thing he's gonna do,
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 3: he's gonna put the dots on. He loves to put
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 3: the dots on, and I and no one puts the
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 3: dots on like him. Benedict Cumberbatch tried true.
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 2: Benedict Cumberbatch is the other actor who plays the main
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: character in the current War twenty seventeen.
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 3: Wow, never forget it.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: All comes full circle, Kayla, thank you so much for
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 2: joining us a what a magical conversation. Where can people
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 2: follow you? Tell us more about your venue and your shows?
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so you can follow me my Instagram and everything
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 5: is magic and heels heels like your shoes, not like
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 5: a doctor. I do have to say that now for
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 5: reasons double e to be clear.
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 5: And the venue that I now co own with my
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 5: partner Harrison is called Cosmic Underground Theater, which is also
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 5: our social media handles. You can see us perform every weekend,
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 5: Fridays and Saturdays in Chicago. So if you're in Chicago,
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 5: we want to come to a cool show. Come, we'd
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 5: love to have you.
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 3: Please, great, kay.
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 5: Thank you both so much for having me. This is great.
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 5: I was love being here, so thank you for having
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 5: me again.
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 3: Thank you for coming back. This is I just always
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 3: learn a million new things that I'm fascinated by every
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 3: time we talk. So you can find us in all
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 3: the regular places AKA our Patriot akar Matreon. We're for
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 3: five dollars a month. You can get to bonus episodes
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 3: with just Caitlin and myself on a theme. Usually of
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 3: your choosing. Sometimes we disrespect democracy and as well as
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 3: access to our black catalog of nearly two hundred episodes.
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 2: Which includes more men being bitches to each other.
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 3: It's true. This is an important entry to the canon,
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 3: and I'm glad that we got around to it as
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 3: we work our way through the men being bitches subgenre. Yes,
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 3: absolutely yes.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 2: And with that we're going to disappear abracadabra fie.
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 3: Then we die fye. The Bechdel Cast is a production
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 3: of iHeartMedia, hosted and produced by Me, Jamie Loftus.
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 2: And Me Caitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 2: Sophie Lichtermann and.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 3: Edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever heard of Them?
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 2: That's me and our logo and merch and all of
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 2: our artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus, Ever
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 2: heard of her?
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 3: Oh my God? And our theme song, by the way,
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 3: was composed by Mike Kaplan.
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 2: With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 3: Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 3: Aristotle Acevedo.
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 2: Spectelcast