Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Now You See Me with Kayla Drescher

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Now You See Me with Kayla Drescher · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On the Bell Cast, the questions asked if movies have
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: women and um are all their discussions just boyfriends and
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: husbands or do they happen individualism, the patriarchy? Zef In
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: best start changing it with the beck Del Cast. Hey, Jamie,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Hey Caitlin, pick a card, any card, and look closely
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: at it. No, wait, you're looking too closely because you
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: thought the magic was happening right here, but it's actually
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: happening over there. I was mis directing you. Oh my god,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: should we kiss? Yeah? You're so horny right now for me?
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, I know for some reason, I am Okay,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: quick anecdote at the very top of the episode, This
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: happened to me in college where I was at a bar.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: There's a magician doing like close up card tricks, and
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: there was a mentalist and they were there together doing illusions.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I love this story. I haven't heard this one in
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: a while. Oh I've told it to you. Okay, Well,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know if i've ever have. I said it
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: on the podcast, so I don't think. So here's a
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: please make a cannon. Okay. So they're like doing tricks.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: I go over to them and I'm like, wow, this
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: is cool. I love magic, and they're like, wow, a
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: woman is talking to us. So they did a bunch
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: of tricks and I was awestruck. And then I said,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: to neither of them in particular, but also kind of
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: both of them, do you want to go on a
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: date with me sometime? And they were like, uh huh.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: So we arranged a date. Although I was mostly talking
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: to the magician over the mentalist guy. So I was
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: talking to the magician. We're corresponding, texting setting up the date.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I show up to the date they are both there,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: because again I did not ask. I directed my question
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: into the ether, not at a specific person. I think
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: you're being too hard on yourself in this situation. Well,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I should not both show up, but I also I'm
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: fine that they both did. And actually, in an ideal world,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I would have just a harem of multiple partners following
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: me around. Sure, I'm not saying that it's a bad
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: thing to happen, but it is something that you would
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: want to check in advance before. Yes, but I don't
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: I don't fault myself nor the other people involved that
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: they both showed up and it was actually awesome and fine.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: And then the whole date. They just did more tricks,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: which again was fine. That's kind of why I wanted
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to hang out with them more. And then the Magician
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: was like, Hey, we should hang out again some time,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and then I kind of bailed and then we remained
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: like friendly. And I think he lives in l A now.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: But if today he was like, hey, do you want
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: to catch up sometime, I'd be like sure. So that's
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: my awesome story. And today's movie is about now you
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: see me. What if you're like, in today we're doing
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: The god Father and it had nothing to do with anything.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: You're like, I just have been wanting to get this
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: off my chest for five years. That's and that's what
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: you call it, Mr Dirict, and that's a Mr Direct.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Jesse Eisenberg geez, oh my god. The star of this
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: movie is Jesse Eisenberg's haircut. Like the most thing I've
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: ever seen in my life where I felt it in
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: my entire body when they revealed the haircut, where we're like, wow,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: that's a haircut that didn't exist out of outside of
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: that year, and people didn't even like it when it
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: was there. It wasn't good at the time. Okay, So yes,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: that's all the context you need to know going into
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: this episode. I think that was a perfect introduction. Welcome
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: to the Bechtel Cast. I was gonna say, poof so wow.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: I was gonna mine was gonna be much quicker, But
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I don't think as rich of a text. I mean Africa,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Debra letter Rip exactly quote that song from Aladdin. I
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: was WoT to say that. They didn't say that. Jesse
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Eisenberg didn't say that. No, no, that's not magician Cannon
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: because Jessie Asberg didn't say it in this movie. Okay,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: it's the now you See Me episode of the Vitel Cast.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: This is our show where we take a look at
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens. My name's
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Jamie Lofton. I feel bad because we have like a
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: legitimately extremely talented magician as our guest today and we
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: visibly know nothing. We don't know what we're talking about.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: We're absolutely blowing it, and so we've brought in an
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: expert who we've seen performed before. She's fucking amazing, and
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: please tearris to shreds at any time. We welcome it. Psychologically,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: it doesn't need to be via magic just psychologically destroy us.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: It's not hard. Um, so this is the Vectel cast. Uh, Kaitlin,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: what is the Vectel test? Though I'd don't remember, well,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: let me jog your memory. I did hypnotize you and
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: made you forget what the Bechtel test was. So my bad.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I know, I think I'm playing Beethoven. I'm like, I'm
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: like Common, who's in this movie for like two minutes,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: and then he keeps disip bearing for an hour and
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: then he comes back and you're like, office are Common?
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Poor Common? He is too good for this. I mean, yeah,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: with I mean, you know, okay. The Bechtel test is
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel, sometimes
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: known as the Bechtel Wallace test. There are many versions
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: of the test. The one that we use requires that
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: two people of a marginalized gender have names, they talk
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: to each other about something other than a man for
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: two lines of dialogue, and ideally it's a narratively meaningful conversation.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: There's a lot. I mean, look, we'll get into it. Uh. Tricky, tricky, tricky. Um,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: so yeah, we were covering you see me. We have
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: a wonderful guest with us. I'm so excited to have her.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: So let's let's get her on so she can destroy
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: us like we deserve. She's a magician host of She's
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Am podcast. It's Kala Dresser. Hey everyone, Uh, I will
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: not destroy you because all of my energy will go
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: into destroying this movie. So just know you're safe for today.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: But I also really appreciate that you hit every magician
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: trope in the first thirty seconds of this episode, so
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I applaud you. Honestly, it was like a feat. I
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: really impressed. We are problematic when it comes to the
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: representation of magicians in media. That's fine, honestly. So what's
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: the movie? Uh, you're fine. I'm so excited to talk
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: about it. I oh my gosh, there are so many
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: I will say. When the twist of the movie was
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: revealed at the very end, the twist that makes no
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: sense and only introduces more questions, I gasped. I didn't
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: see it coming. I was shocked, bowled over. Well, you
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: don't see it coming because it doesn't make least logical
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: thing to happen in the movie. It's first shadowed by nothing,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and it's first shadowed by a bunch of shots that
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: are like Mark Ruffalo posing like he's Mr Robot, He's
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: like Rammy Malick and Mr Robot in all of the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: foreshadowing shots where it's just like lone guy in a hoodie.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: I was like, that's sir, that role is taken. I
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: love that. You were like, that's the least logical thing
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: in the entire movie. When literally someone floated above an
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: audience in a bubble like that says a lot. It
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: does call into question like is there actual like wizard
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: style supernatural magic happening sometimes or is it are they
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: just using illusion? It's there's a lot of questions I have.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: There has the right. So there's it's a really interesting
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: conversation because a lot of magicians also and to also
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: be in the skepticism world. And so you have people
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: like Amazing Randy, who spent a large portion of his
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: career trying to take down Uri Geller, who's a magician
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: who claims he has actual superpowers and because he has
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: actual superpowers, he can bend spoons, and so, uh, he
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: would that that's his entire life. Is he's just claiming
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: he has some sort of unnatural power being thing and
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of magicians, there's a really fine line, especially
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: when you get into the mentalism realm and kind of
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: the like influencing and all of that. It starts to
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: get into a little bit of a fine line of
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: that you have to be careful of to make sure
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: the audience knows that you're not a psychic. And there
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: are many mentalists that after shows get approached and get
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: asked like, hey, can you contact my dead sister? Like
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: you know. So it does tell a really really careful,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: very thin line between doing magic for entertainment and being
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: what I would consider more of a swindler, because a
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: lot of those people will use this what what I know, Like,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I know how it's being done. If I go see
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: a psychic, I know how it's being done. Am I
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: going to say that that doesn't exist in the world.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to discount it. I don't think it's
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: unrealistic possibility, but I know a lot of how that
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: is done. And because of that, there's that line where
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: you can really easy step over it when you start
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: taking people's money because you're going to do something that
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: they're hoping for. And so it is really really it's
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: a really big topic of conversation and magic on a
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: regular basis. Kayla, I need to interview you for the
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: other podcast I'm working on. It's all about spiritualism. Okay,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: oh cool, Oh that's so cool. Wow. Let's we'll put
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: a pin in that on Mike. But I have so
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: many questions for you. Okay, okay, great? Um? So, Kayla,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: what is your history your relationship with the movie or
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: maybe the franchise, even because there's a stew Well and
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: then there's I think a third movie in development or
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: in production. They're going to do another one, I believe.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: So wow, I saw it on IMDb. Now you see three? What? Okay,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: so we're focusing on the first now you see me?
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: What is your relationship to that film? So obviously, as
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: you mentioned, I'm a magician. That's my career, and so
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: whatever movie gets made about your career, you want to
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: know how your career is being portrayed in a movie
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: that's going to be seen by a lot of people, right,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: And so it's really interesting this movie is from and
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I'm still today getting asked about that movie. And even
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: just like two weeks ago someone mentioned like, oh have
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: you seen that movie? Like what do you think of
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: it because I thought it was really cool. And when
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: the movie came out, and this was not due to
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the movie, but it just is like how people think.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Before the movie came out, I got a call once
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: they wanted me to in a show play the piano
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: and then float the piano while I was playing it,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: and I was like, cool, So that's gonna like we're
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: talking a starting price here of twenty grand because not
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: only is it my fee, but you're going to have
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: to have that built by an illusion designer from scratch
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: because that does not yet as of today exist And
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: they were like, we were hoping you could do it
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: for two hundred dollars and it was like, you're cute.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not, that's not possible. Do you think I'm a
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: cartoon character? Like but her Her actual reaction to that
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: was I thought you could just do magic. It's like, oh, okay.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: So there's always this line that that when people call
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: it you asking to hire you for something, there's a
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: concern that there's actual superpower things going on here. And
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: then after the movie came out, I can't tell you
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: how many calls I got asking if I could float
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: into bubble what For like a year, really yeah, just constantly.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: It was Yeah, you were wondering, like we're not a
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: big budget but wondering if you could do that thing
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: in the movie. And it's like, so, I would like
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: to now explain to you what c G I is
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: and not particularly good c G I either. That's very accurate.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: There was a tour called then now you see Me
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: tour that a friend of mine did work on, and
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: they did I believe a floating bubble allusion, but you
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: better believe that took a long long time and lots
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: of money to put together. So that stuff's not like
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: if you're doing it in front of an audience. Even
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: like Copperfield's flying illusion from the nineties, like that that
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: was amazing, but if you saw it live, there were
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: things that you're like, oh, that's maybe a bit wonky,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Like I wasn't I was. I was expecting that to
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: look like he was flying. And so there are people
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: really think like with magic, it's really easy, and it's
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: not at all, And when a movie like this comes out,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: it just sort of pushes the narrative that magic super easy,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: you could just do it, and it's like, no, I've
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: practiced my whole life to be able to do this
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: one card trick. Come on. So that is it's still
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: something that all these years later, nearly ten years later,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: is something that magicians will still be having to answer
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: that question of can we do the stuff in the movie.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Caitlin and I can relate with that because people ask
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: us about the movie Joker all the time. They're like,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: is Joker reflective of the stand up comedians experience? And
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: the answer is yes. Our life is a billion dollar
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: movie and where the scariest people to ever live. Um.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I also I'm very curious um for listeners and just
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: for us to know a little bit more about how
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: you built a career in magic as well. Yeah, that's
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a good question. I don't really know, to be completely honest,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: to start to happen. Uh So I started doing magic
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: when I was seven years old, and magic is a
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: really cool way of satisfying a lot of my brain.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Half of my brain really like science and math and
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: logic and dogs. I also really love dogs, and you're
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: fine minds literally next to me, So the more dogs,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the better. I But it also I really love making
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: people laugh and entertaining people, and magic was it was
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: my ability to be able to do both of those things,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: and so I did it for my whole life. I
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: went off to college, had no intention of doing magic
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: as a career, graduated college, got a job, hated it,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: dove into magic, and I started out as a bar magician,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: which I would bartend and then when everybody had a drink,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: I would then do like a ten minute show. Right,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: It's a really good way to get a thick skin
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: because everyone is drinking and they're loud, and they're blunts
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: and you have to deal with that, usually without a microphone,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: and so you're just like, okay, this is this is
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: a good way to work out being a better performer.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: And then I moved I'm from Connecticut and I was
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: living in Boston when I went full time, and then
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: moved out to Vegas and then eventually Los Angeles. And
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: magic and is that there's two parts to magic. One
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: is that you have to run a bit business, and
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: the other is that you have to be the product.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: And so you have you are the product. You're selling
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: yourself and your show, which means you have to also
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: be constantly working on bettering the product, but then also
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: figure out how to get work and run a business.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: So it's a there's a lot of trial and error.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Magic is very much a mentorship community, so a lot
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: of people have been in this for a while will
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: help you out, uh, and you can ask questions. People
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: write books and do lectures. So it's cool because magicians
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: often help other magicians, which is really nice. And I
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: definitely would have no idea what I was doing if
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: other people didn't help me many steps along the way.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Even now with me, like I'll call my friend and
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: be like I don't I don't know how to fix this,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: and we'll talk about it for a while and then
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: it'll be fixed. That's a really nice part of it.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: And living in Los Angeles, the magic community is really
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: big and strong, so it's really cool to be able
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: to like absorb into that and learn from other magicians.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: That's also cool. And we were we were lucky enough
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: to see you perform at the Magic Castle a couple
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: of years ago. Yeah that was fun, that was a blast,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: And yeah, we highly recommend your podcast because I mean,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I truly everything I know about magic I know from
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: your show and from like watching you perform. So thank
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: you for being here, thank you for sharing that. I'm
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: so excited and thanks for coming to that. That was
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: really it was really cool that we got to connect
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: because obviously I listened to your podcast all the time,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: so I was like, Oh, this is so cool, let's
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: have dinner. And so it was really fun and I'm
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: so glad it was. We still talk about it truly
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: all the time. It was very good. That's awesome. This
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: is a special night, U Caitlyn. What's your history with
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: this movie? I saw this movie not in theaters, but
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: I saw it probably a year or two after it
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: came out. I also, I am pretty sure I saw
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: the sequel, but I have absolutely no memory of it,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and I don't know what happens in it, So maybe
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: I didn't see it. I don't know, but I definitely
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: I saw the first one, and I remember there being
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: a big twist ending, but I didn't remember what it was.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: So when I was because it doesn't make sense, I
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, why is that the twist? But um
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: it was. It was just such a joy. I definitely
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: haven't seen the second movie, but I do remember there
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: being like a not insignificant conversation because it did reach
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: me someone who didn't see any of the movies. But
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: there was not an insignificant conversation about why they named
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the second movie, Now You See Me Too. I think
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of upset that of why it
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: wasn't called now You Don't, which is the intuitive name
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: for the second movie, but they instead they didn't even
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: call it now to See Me. They called it now
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: you See Me Too, or and extremely and now you
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: See Me movie. This is this, I mean, I would
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: say even more so than the original. Now You See
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Me one is an extremely goofy movie. It is I
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: never know what's happening. I don't like will just keep
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: stating each other's feelings about each other, but you never
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: actually see the fact that it's true. It's officer common.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: You're like, what is going on here? And then it
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: is very I'm so excited to hear your insight, Kleb,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: because for me, for a movie that like really harps
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: on like explaining how the illusion is accomplished, every explanation
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: left me more confused than when I just watched it. Um,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh no, there's a I still don't understand
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: how their air duct works. Anyways, I'd never seen this
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: movie before, and I was waiting to watch this movie
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: because I knew this is this episode has been a
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: long time coming, and so I've been waiting to watch it,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: and it didn't disappoint in terms of I heard it
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: was really confusing and that the haircuts were very weird,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: and in that way, I felt like I fully got
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: what I showed up for because the haircut were just
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: next level and the logic, the internal logic of the movie,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: the emotional logic of the movie, the characters. I had
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: no idea what was going on for ninety percent of
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the time, but I was I was invested. I was
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: shocked that the Dave Franco magic battle. I was like,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: what is this? This is wild? Um, So I'm very
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: excited to talk about out attend no notes that that scene.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I did not see that scene coming. And then that
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: was the point where I was like, is this is that?
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: How do you do that? But that's why I mean,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: but I can't tell, Like, I'm very excited to hear
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: professional magicians insight because of like, is any of this possible?
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I have some insight on that fight
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: scene oddly enough, and I just in general in the
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: entire movie. But this is also very important for anyone
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: who this might appeal to. But I cannot stress enough
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: that if you're going to have some sort of skill
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: in a movie that you're making, you need to pay
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: for a consultant or like I would say, cast people
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: who can do magic and acting. I've been able. I've
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: been very lucky enough to consult on a couple of
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: different projects, and one of which was a movie that
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: started Riha Pearlman, and so I got to work with
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Ria for for like two months teaching her magic. And
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, she's a gem, but also
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: her dedication to making sure she could do magic enough,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: like when you see her do magic in the movie,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: she's doing it. There's only like one time that there's
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a edit, but it's barely she's
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: actually doing the magic. And that's because she was dedicated
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: as an actor to being able to do it. Now,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: James James Frinko, he does do the backbond, the card manipulation,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: and he I believe he does actually produce those card fans,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: which was like, oh, that actually takes a lot of practice.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: That's a few months of practice. Oddly enough, just that
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: one producing two card fans in each hand. Maybe it
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: was edited. I don't know, but he did the move
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: exactly like how he held his hands up and I
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: went your back coming cards and boom he had cards.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, okay, I believe, I believe you
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: had cards and that's awesome. And so I appreciate that
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: that was probably the reality. But the amount of times
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: people don't hire a magic consultant. When you watch it
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: it ends up like this, You're like, there's so much
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: more you could have known about if you just asked
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the right person. Were there particular things I mean, and
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: we'll get into the recap in a second, but were
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: there particular things that really stood out to you? Because
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: I know that, like there are certain things that happened
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: in this movie where you're like, well that just you
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: can't just be in a bubble Illa Fisher. But were
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: there certain things that really stuck out to you of like, oh,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: that was a severe like the actor clearly didn't know
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: how that is supposed to look or be executed. Pretty
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: much anything. Jesse Eisenberg touches fire. I'm not afraid to
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: say it. Well, so I saw him before the movie
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: came out. He was on Letterman and he did it's
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: a move that's called the snap Change. It's a really
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: popular social media video for magicians to make. It's basically
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: holding a card up and then you in a sense,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: snapped the card and the card changes. But because he's
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: not a magician, he didn't know how to talk to
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: the camera people, and they filmed it from the back,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: and so only Letterman saw magic. No one else saw magic.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Everyone else saw how it was done, and he does it,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: and he does it in the trailer, and it's also
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: something that takes practice. But if you actually watch closely,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: you can see how it's done, and it's it's things
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: like that that's like, oh man, I just wish which
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: was a little bit more attention to detail. Obviously there's
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: lots of c G I and all of that, but
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I think it's the close up magic. For me, that
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: is what could have been because all the mentalism is
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: fairly doable. All the pickpocketing is very doable. The escape
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: that Island Fisher does in the very beginning has been done.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, no piranhas, but like that idea of going
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: in a water tank and then showing up in the
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: back of the audience, that's done all the time. It's
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the close up magic to me that was like, oh man,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: you had to work hard and post to make that
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: look good. By the way, almost direly drowned doing that. Yeah,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: her chain got stuck when they were filming. So again
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: it's like, I'm sure if they had a proper consultant,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: that probably would not have happened. Were there Do we
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: know if there were magic consultants on this movie? There was.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Blake Voy was the magic consultant on the movie. I
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: don't know his extended involvement. I know that he taught
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of the back palming or the card the
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: card moves to the magicians. He's also the magician who
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: taught um oh names aunt man how to backpalm the
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: card thank you. He taught Paul Rudd how to backpalm
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: the business card that shows up in Marvel movies. So
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Blake voit was the magic consultant. But I don't believe
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: like you need a magic consultant on the script. Also,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: like a consultant should be going through the script, combing
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: through and going this is a bad idea. Let me
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: give you eighteen other ideas you can pull from, and
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: then going from there. My guests would be that person
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: did not exist. I know Copperfield had a big hand
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: in it, but I think only in certain elements. So
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: I don't believe there was a good enough involvement from
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: any consultant. You can kind of just tell got it. Okay,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: that's good to know. I mean with certain things. I
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: worked as a comedy consultant before, and sometimes it's just
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: like if you're not there all the time, then it's
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: like certain things can just slip through. And then because
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: of how production works, you're like, oh, I guess that
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: that's just there. Now, Okay, we'll see what happens all
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: the time. It happens all the time, brutal. Let's take
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: a quick break and then we will come back for
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: the recap, and we're back. We're back today, shall we
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: shall we get into the meet and potatoes of the wait.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I should have said, right when you said we're back,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: you're really digging a hole. I couldn't. I should have said,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: and now you see me again? Where can this is
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: a podcast? No one ever sees us. And that's in
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: a way the illusion. And now you hear me, Now
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: you hear me. Now you don't because you turned out
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: the podcast. Okay, I'm in a weird mood. Okay, this
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: is great. Okay, so what happened? Good luck? This. I
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: do not envy you having to recap this. This is
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: I did my best. I trust you. So we meet
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: several people at the very beginning, one by one. First
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: is Daniel that's Jesse Eisenberg. He's doing a card trick
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: for a big group of people. It's a big spectacle.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: We meet Merritt Woody Harrelston's character. He's doing hypnosis and
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: mentalism for this couple who's on vacation or something. We
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: meet Jack that's Dave Franco. He does a neo from
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the matrix, bending a spoon with his mind trick, which
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: no one calls attention to. Then pickpockets a guy with
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: his sleight of hand skills. We finally meet Henley that's
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Isla Fisher's character. She does a get out of handcuffs
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: while in a tank of water trick. It seems to
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: go horribly wrong with flesh eating piranhas, but it turns
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: out it was all part of the illusion and she's
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: actually fine. In all of these scenes, there is some
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: mysterious hooded figure lurking around, who presumably leaves behind an
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: invitation for these four people, Daniel, Merritt, Henley, and Jack
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: all show up to the address on the invitation. They
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: go into the apartment where there are some tricks and puzzles,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: and then they uncover these digital blueprints for what turns
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: out to be an elaborate magic show. It's funny because
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: you can tell it is. It is like fully CG
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: and so it's just like Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: looking at nothing and being like, well, this trick is
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: gonna be wid and like it's like hackers style shot. Also,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: there's one shot in this movie where you're like, wait,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Isola Fishers a hacker? And then it never comes back.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: She's in front of like forty computers and she's like
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know, and I was like you can do that,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Like there didn't realize, but don't worry, Like anything's in
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: this movie. It's not really relevant and it won't come back, right.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: So then we cut to one year later, these four
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: people have a show together in Vegas called The Four Horsemen.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: In the audience of this show is Morgan Freeman, who
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: is trying to film the show. Also, Morgan Freeman almost
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: in every scene of this movie is like with some woman,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: we never learn who she is. I think she does
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: have a name at one point, but I didn't feel
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: like to find out. Yeah, it's he says something like
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: thank you and says her name, but she never speaks
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: correct the whole movie. I felt bad. I was like, stop,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, I hope that you know she was like
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: paid well, but I was like, you're wasting this woman's
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: time if you give her a line or don't. My god, anyway,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: we're also about to meet Michael Caine's character. He also
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: has a young woman as his assistant question Mark. Her
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: name is Jasmine. I think what you learn in exactly
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: one scene. She similarly has no narrative significance, no lines
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: of dialogue, oh nothing. Incredibly bizarre, to the point where
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: I'm like, we're large chunks of this movie cut because
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: I genuinely don't understand why those characters are there if
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: you're going to give them nothing to do right real fast.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I want to just mention one scene and how accurate
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: it is, because in in the scene where Jesse Eisenberg
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: is going to hook up with the fan girl and
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: he then sees a card and it's like, I am
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: now more interested in this magic thing. I cannot tell
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: you the accuracy. No, there is a picture. I'll have
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: to find it for you and send it to you
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: so you can see it. It's a picture of four
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: magicians sitting around a table we call jamming, so working out,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: like playing with magic and showing each other moves and
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: stuff at a strip club. And it's there is a
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: naked woman and they are back to her playing with
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: a deck of cards. It is so you, I had
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: to say in that moment, I went, Okay, whoever, someone
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: someone nailed that. That was like probably the most accurate
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: thing of the entire movie about magic is it's like, yeah,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: magicians are way more into props and magic things than
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: they are, but this like sexual Yeah, yeah it was.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: It was brilliant. Loved it the way Jesse Eisenberg treats
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: that poor woman made my nose bleed. I was my god. Yeah. Yeah,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: So at least there's some accuracy in this movie. That's nice. Yeah, Okay,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: So they have the show together in Vegas. We meet
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Morgan Freeman briefly. We also meet they call him like
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: their benefactor. I think it's like the show's financier Arthur
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Tressler played by Michael Caine, who's like an insurance executive
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: the Jillionaire, Like, okay, is it explained? Did I miss something?
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Why is he interested in magic? And how did he he?
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's revealed very very late that he
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: is like a nine figure insurance scammer scion. I just
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: assumed he was like a generic rich guy, which Michael
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Caine plays all the time very well in spite of
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: his horrific politics, but like it's something that he does
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: pretty often. But when they made it really specific very
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: late in the game, like wait, how did this insurance
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: guy get interested? Like how did he get connected to
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: these magicians? And they don't really tell you anyways, I
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: have no idea. Okay, well, as long as as long
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: as I didn't miss anything. There's so many things where
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: I'm like, did I lose a scene? Like did they
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: drop a scene on the floor? Or because I don't
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: know what's happening, I feel like I've thought about it,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: like oh yeah, logically, you know Vegas show to rent
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: a theater like that, it's probably like six eight grand
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: to night because you have to rent it, like you
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: what we call four walling, right, So You've have a
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: four wall of space in Vegas. But in order to
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: do that, you have to have money, so you might
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: have a benefactor. Obviously they hooked up with this benefactor
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: because the blueprints told them too. And I've put way
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: more thought into the script than what they did than
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: the person who wrote it did. That's helpful to hear that,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: because I was just like, how is any of this
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: very expensive stuff happening and how is it worth it
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: for anyone involved? And I just never really figured it out. Yeah,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Mark Ruffalo, spoiler alert something something, Mark Ruffalo. Yes, Okay.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: So for the final trick of the show, they announced
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: that they're going to rob a bank. They pick someone
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: seemingly at random from the audience. It's a Frenchman named Etienne.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: They seemingly teleport him into the vault of his bank
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: in Paris, France ever heard of it via this teleportation
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: machine slash helmet, and then they teleport the stacks of
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: cash in Paris back to Vegas and all of the
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: cash comes raining down onto the audience. So it seems
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: that they have successfully robbed this Parisian bank. The next day,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Daniel Merritt, Jack and Henley are arrested and agent Dylan
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Rhodes Mark Ruffalo. Oh my god, I couldn't have told
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: you that character's name. With a gun to my head.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: I was like, Mark Ruffalo, that's all I had. Like there,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: I did, not Dylan Rhodes. Why bother. So Dylan Rhodes
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: from the FBI is on the case, assigned to him
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: by his like superior played by Common who well, as
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: you mentioned, Jamie is in three scenes coming and going.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: So Dylan Rhodes is on the case to figure out
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: how they stole the money from the bank. Also assigned
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: to the case is someone an agent sent from Interpool
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: from France named Alma played by Melanie laurent Is. I'm
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: guessing how maybe you say your name? It was pretty
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: It was really pretty good who. Rhodes is reluctant to
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: work with. The two of them interrogate Daniel and Merritt,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: who don't give up any information, and Daniel is all like,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: we're going to be so many steps ahead of you
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: and you're not even gonna know it, and then he
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: throws his handcuffs onto Rhodes and we're like woo. And
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: then Rhodes has to let them go because there's no
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: real evidence against the magicians, but he's like, they're going
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: to do this again, and it seems like this was
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: the first of three big shows that the Four Horsemen
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: will perform. It is it's so funny, Like it's so
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: they're so rude in the interrogation and this is like,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: obviously this is an anti podcast, but I'm just like,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: what do they think is going to happen to them?
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: They're so confident that they're not gonna get arrested. And
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: also it's so like early on you're like, oh, this
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: movie only cares about Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg. Correct
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: the two actors who are I mean, I love Woody Harrelson.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: I don't love this character at all. This character fucking sucks,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: especially because he leads by saying extremely transphobic, fucked up stuff,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: and basically his first scene, well, no, it's the misogynist scene,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: and then the transphobic scene, and then he sexually harasses
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Isisla Fisher for the rest of the movie. And then
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: you don't get any scene of isle of Fisher's police interrogation,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: but you do get five hundred scenes of her getting
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: harassed sexually harassed by Woody Harrelson. That's spil hated it anyways. Okay,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: so then we meet Thaddius Bradley. That's Morgan Freeman's character's name,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: good Lord. He is a former magician who now debunks
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: magicians and exposes how their tricks are done. Rhodes meets
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: with him. Thaddius explains misdirection. He explains how they didn't
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: actually rob the bank, at least not the way it
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: seems they did it. During the show, Rhodes learns that
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: the teleportation machine just drops you into a room below
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: the stage that looks like a bank vault, and Thaddius
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: explains how the Four Horsemen specifically targeted this French guy
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: at the enne, how they mind tricked him into going
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: to their show, and how the way they mind tried
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: him into going to their show is so expensive. I
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: know that this is like it's a movie. I get it,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: but there had to have been a smarter screenwriting way
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: to explain how they got him there, other than they
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: all went to Paris and we're like jogging around being
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: like snap, crackle pop, and now he's in Vegas and
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: you're just like, as someone who knows basically nothing, about magic.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Never in a million years when I believe that, unless
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: you're telling me they're fucking wizards, which I don't think
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: we're supposed to think they are. There is an element
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: of magic that is all about influencing your audience, and
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: so their elements were like in theory, I could get
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: you with some practice. I'm not that good at it,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: but I could get you to choose something very specifically
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: that I wanted you to choose like that, that's an
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: element of it. However, would that then last months later
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: to the show and vacation you planned? No? Right now,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: we're getting him too, like weird hypnosis mind control territory,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: which is not a thing magicians have the ability to do.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: And so it's a very strange, like I get them
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: when Woody Harrison like kind of palms his chest and
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: that hypnotizes him. That's and I don't know much about hypnosis,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: but from what I know, that's an element of kind
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: of using that. But that means that, like how long
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: were they Woody Harrison would have had to like sit
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: down with this guy and do what he did to
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: the people that the couple on vacation at the beginning.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: This is not a realistic. And I also they don't
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: explain misdirection correctly, which was just a massive pet peef
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: of mine. Misdirection is not covering up. So that allusion
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: where the guy gets smushed and in theory he's in
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Paris is actually a playoff of a real illusion. It's
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Michael Carbonaro did it on the Carbonaro effect, but it
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: was originally done by a magician named Doug Henning. I
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: can go on. But it's really cool where it looks
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: like you're smushing a person or an object down and
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: then you have this clear disk where you see like
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: these they were wearing, or Michael Carbonard did it with
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: dogs and puppies, so you see like the dog fur
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: and then you put the disk back in and it
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: opens back up and the dog or the person is
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: back inside of the machine. So it's really cool, but
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: that is not misdirection. So wait, Morgan Freeman a famous
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: truth teller, why to us God? Also like, it's just
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: this movie is so messy. Yeah, there's a lot of
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: problematic people. See. Okay, that's very good to know because
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: I was because of the amount of time this movie takes.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: I would say like a good third of the movie
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: is just explaining what happens in other parts of the movie.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: And I was very curious as to like how much
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: of this was rooted in any reality in the magic world.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Some of it I felt like obviously wasn't. But the
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: more specifics, it's like, I don't know, Like, so that's
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: not it. So they got the first thing wrong. It's
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: what you're saying. They also get in the interrogations scene
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: where Jesse Eisenberg says, first rule of magic always be
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: the smartest person in the room, which is not the
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: first rule. It's not even on the rules of magic.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: That's not a thing like, no one, you don't have
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: to We're just like we're playing with cards and coins.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: It's great. No, that's never the thing. The first rule
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: magic is don't tell anybody how the trick is done,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: which obviously Morgan Freeman doesn't know. It seems like what
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: happened was that the writers, when this is my guests,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: the writers went, you guys know that magician, the masked
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: magician who revealed a bunch of magic in the nineties, Well,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: have Morgan Freeman play him and like explained how magic
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: is done. Do you know anything about magic? No? But
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: I know some words, and they just put it into
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: a movie, and that's where we get, oh, yeah, here's
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: some misdirection. No no, no, that's a trapdoor. But it's not.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: There's no misdirection used in that moment at all. Like
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: just the explanations of stuff were like you had a
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: magician and you could have been like, hey, re this,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: how accurate is it? And I imagine that magician would
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: have gone, not, nope, let me fix it, and then
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: it would have been better. But I don't know. Here
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: we are, we're only still in the first Also, um, okay,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: we'll yeah. So Saddius is explaining to Rhodes how the
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: trick was probably done, how the magicians had already stolen
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: the cash from the bank prior to the show, and
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: they just made it seem like the money was being
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: stolen from Paris and teleported back to Vegas. Saddius also
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: tells Rhodes about someone named Lionel Shrike, which I keep
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: hearing a Shrek Yes, of course, Wow, great, someone killed
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Shrek and I'm supposed to want to watch this movie
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: fucking unbelievable, And then that means canonically that Mark Ruffalo
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: spoiler alert is Shrek son well, if he's the Hulk Green,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Now I like this movie. Now I'm a fan, and
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: I'm back, and I actually make the great perfect story
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: ever told. It's the story about how the Hulk is
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Shrek son. Wow, that all gets answered in Now you
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: see Me too, so right, and then furthermore, now you
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: three me yeah, oh my gosh. Okay, So we learned
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: about Lionel Shrike, a magician who Thaddius had exposed in
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the seventies. Shrike, then I'm sorry. Shrek tried to then
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: stage a comeback, but it didn't work. He is thought
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: to have drowned in the East River while performing a trick,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: although his body was never found. But then it turns
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: out he actually did die during that trick, so why
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: were they like and then we didn't find his body anyway.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Then it's time for the Four Horsemen's next show in
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: New Orleans, Rhodes, and all follow the magicians there. They
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: speculate that there's possibly an unknown fifth horseman who is
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: orchestrating things behind the scenes. Also, Alma has been reading
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: about magic and she's reading about this guy named Shrike.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: I wrote in my notes at this point it's all
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: very shriky in similar to Shreky in Okay, so I'm
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: I am. We were on the same page where you're like,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: that sounds a little bit too much like Shrek in
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, where Shrek was had been one of
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: our most popular celebrities for over a decade. Correct. Yeah,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: the screenwriter one of many fumbles, and Alma is all like,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know, magic is pretty cool. I like, I
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: like believing in it. And then Rhodes this whole thing
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: is magic is silly and it's all fake. I am skeptical.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: I am Mark Ruffle. Uh. Then at the second show
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: in New Orleans, Daniel Merritt, Henley and Jack do a
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: bunch of tricks, and then the big finale at the
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: end is them redistributing Arthur Trestler. That's Michael Caine, Arthur
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Trustler's on forty million dollars to the people of the audience.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: This is one of the more fun elements of the
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: movie where it's like the parts where they're redistributing like nasty,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: disgusting wealth. You're like, that's I wish I didn't hate
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: these characters so much because they're doing something that I
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: fully support, but they're so unlikable, I know. So the
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: whole thing there is that the members of the audience
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: were all insured by Arthur Trestler's insurance company, which screwed
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: the people in the audience, completely screwed them over after
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Hurricane Katrina. So they get the money that was owed
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: to them right out of Arthur Trustler's like personal bank account.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: The show ends, Rhodes and Alma chase after the magicians
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: because they've just committed this big theft. They managed to
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: get away. Arthur Tressler is all piste that his money
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: was stolen, and he goes to Thaddius to be like, hey,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: help me expose these four horsemen and bring them down.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: But Rhodes thinks that Thaddius might be in on the
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: whole thing. He thinks that maybe he's the fifth horseman.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: So we're like Red Herring much, which didn't make sense. Um.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Then Rhodes and Alma are able to track and locate
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: the magicians in New York. There we are there for
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: their last big show. So Rhodes and Almah go to
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: New York. They find the apartment where the magicians are staying.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: There's a big chase. Three of the horsemen get away,
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: but then there's this magic fight between Roads and jack
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: a k Dave Franco, who's really I'm so excited to
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: hear your your insight on that, Kail, because I did
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: not see that scene coming, and I was like, like
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: it was he was so ready for that in a
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: way I wasn't prepared for as an audience. Ever, is
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: now a good time for me to go into that
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: because I would be happy too. It's very brief, to
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: be completely honest, Go ahead, if you if I were
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: to say, give me the three things you know about
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: how magic is done, you would probably say mirrors, magnets,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: and hiding things behind your hand. And that's all they had.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: That was it. That was the entire fight. It was
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: like this is so this This scene right here showed
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: no magician was asked about anything because clearly it was
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: just the three things everyone understands magic is. There were
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: so many mirrors? Why were there so many? Why no magicians?
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: I barely have mirrors in my home. I have enough
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: that I can go do, I look fine, and then
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: I can leave. It's not a thing we just have
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: lying around that are these massive Like no, doesn't come
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: stop it and then it's like oh yeah, whoom boom cards. Now,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: I will say the accuracy of cards being thrown and
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: it hurting is very accurate. Very So when I was
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: a kid, I went to my very first magic convention
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: and we all threw cards. We tried to get it
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: into the chandelier in the lobby. Um, we got in
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: trouble but whatever. And when we were throwing cards, Uh,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: they accidentally hit this person and she had to go
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: to the hospital because it hit her eye, like it
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: was bad. So this does happen. There was another person
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: she also got hit, but I think it just caught
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: her face. But there was someone who had to go
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: to the hospital. Um, so this is actually it hurts.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: I've been hit too, but not tear like I'm not injured,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: but that is painful. If someone can throw cards really well,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: it can actually hurt. You probably have heard of Ricky
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: j who can throw who could throw cards into the
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: outside skin of a watermelon like fool pierce it like amazing,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: So that's probably the most like yeah, okay see, but
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: also even that, that's like a typical magician thing, being
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: able to throw cards and it like hit things with accuracy.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: So it's just a lot of really typical. The only
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: thing that was missing is him going abracadabra bitch as
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: he jumped out the window. Like that's the only thing
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: they could have added that. I would have been like, yeah, there,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: that's the fourth thing you missed is some weird magic phrase.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Otherwise it's just everything everybody thinks about magic, and so
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: it's there was just no creativity put into that at all.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: There should have been an illusion there should like there
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: could have been a suitcase he goes in and comes
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: out of another one, Like there's tons of stuff you
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: could have done it with that right nothing, which I
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: feel like it must be even more frustrating because it
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: seems like is what is supposed to be cool about
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: the movie, but then the one time they do it,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: they do the most boring thing and then it just
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: goes back to not making sense. Uh yeah, yeah. It
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: just I feel like what they were a lot of
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: people will be like, oh, we just didn't want to
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: make it too out there, like we wanted it for
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: people to We wanted people to know what was going on,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: and it's like it's a fight scene you watched John Wick,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: Like that doesn't make any sense, but it's happening. Most
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: fight scenes defy the laws of physics. So if you
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: also have magic in your movie, like yeah, play with that.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Take advantage of that. Right. There was so much they
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: could have done, and like I think I had like
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: twenty ideas just watching it and was like, Okay, I
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: mean you should write a movie. Now you three Me
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: hired Kayla, save the franchise done? Now You three Me
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: is iconic, very weird title for a movie, but I'm
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: a big fan. I'm a big fan. It's great. Okay.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: So there's this fight between Roads and Jack. Jack seems
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: to be safeguarding this stack of papers. There is then
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: a high speed car chase in which Jack crashes the
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: car he's in explodes, and he seems to be very dead.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: The papers get rescued, though, and they turn out to
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: be information about a company called Elk Corn or something.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: I lost the thread for a few minutes both times
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: I watched the movie. At this point. I don't know
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: what these papers were. I don't know what Elk Horn is.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know anything about that. That was so confusing
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: to me. Okay, good much less why Dave Franco would
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: die trying to keep that secret, not sure what he
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: would stand to gain unclear, But the FBI thinks that
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: the Horseman's next target is a safe full of half
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: a billion dollars, which gets loaded into a truck, so
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Rhads and his people chase after it, but the safe
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: turns out to be full of balloon animals. Meanwhile, the
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Four Horsemen's third and final show is happening in Queens,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: which is just to show where the horsemen jump off
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: a roof and then explode into money, which is kind
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: of fun, but I'm like, yeah, it was weird that
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: they really risked it all to just be like by
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: If I had been an audience member in that show,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: I would be so disappointed because it lasted all of
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: five minutes and was not satisfying. So they explode into money.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: It turns out to be fake money, though, because the
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Horseman used the real money to frame Saddi Us and
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: make it seem like he stole the money. So then
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Rhodes pays a visit to Thaddius in a jail cell.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Thaddius explains how they must have stolen the real safe,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: how Jack didn't actually die in the crash, how they
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: did a bunch of illusions and switch ruse, I'm sure
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: that's perfect terminology. Can any nuts any nuts for us? No? Yep,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: a nail in it. Meanwhile, in Central Park, Daniel Henley
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: and Merritt reunite with Jack, who is in fact still alive,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: and they await the Fifth Horsemen to reveal themselves, and
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: it turns out to be Dot Dot Dot Dylan Rhodes
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: a k a. Mark Ruffalo Baffle playing the longest con
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: I've ever heard of. Okay, you do a con so
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: long you've become a police detective for like twenty years.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: I'm like, what are you talking about? And also we're
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: led to believe that he would have been the one
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: bank rolling this three part show, like this whole thing.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: He would have had to pay for the magicians to
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: fly to Paris to mind trick Et t Enn, like
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: he can afford that and like a massive fortune. But
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, I mean, first of all, whatever, I
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: mean the there's multiple government agency there's like multi level
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: copaganda going on in this movie. But like on your
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: average police detective salary, how is any of this possible?
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know? And yet cops are still paid too much.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: But there's all played far too much for a job
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: that shouldn't exist, but like, but they're not paid like
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: MGM Vegas five nights a week money, Like it's just well,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: it's so baffling. What about the Eye, Like you know that,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: you know that club that completely makes sense? What about
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: their budget? Because maybe they have a big budget that
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: we just don't know about. So I couldn't even figure
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: out how to work this into the recap. But there's
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: also this like secret society of magicians called the IE.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: They're vaguely using tarot cards for reasons. You're like, so
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: apparently Mark Ruffalo's character is like one of the members
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: of the I and he is trying to induct the
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: four Horsemen. I don't know. I couldn't make sense of it, really,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: so I left it out of the recap. But maybe, yeah,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: maybe the I was bankrolling this whole thing. Point is
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: Mark Ruffalo, in a big twist, turns out to be
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: the mastermind of the whole thing because Lionel Shrek was
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: his father and he is avenging his father's death because
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: all movies are about fathers and sons. Of course, yeah,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: famously they are, but also I would love a movie
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: about Shrek's son avenging Shrek's death. That is the one
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: time I will majorly make an exception for my annoyance
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: at the fathers and sons troupe Hey struck five at
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the beginning, and Shrek Jr. Has to avenge Shrek Sr's death. Yeah,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: I would love that fingers crossed. Um. Okay, So the
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: reason that Mark Ruffalo was like targeting these people specifically.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: It turns out that the ensurer who denied Shrek's family's
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: claim was Tesla a k a. Michael Caine. The bank
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: is related in a way that I didn't understand even
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: a little bit. And then the company Elkhorn started as
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: a safe manufacturer and they made the shoddy safe that
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Shrike wasn't able to escape from, and that's why he
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: died doing that trick. So that's why Mark Ruffalo is
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: targeting these people specifically to avenge his father's death and
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: get back at these people. So that's the story. Let's
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: take another break and we will come back to discuss
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: and we're back. Okay, Kayla, is there anything that jumps
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: out to you right away of like, well this is
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: weird or wrong, or like, is there anything that you
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: wanted to kick off with? Oh? Boy, if not, that's fine,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: We've got plenty to go through my notes. Obviously, Like,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: obviously the representation of magic is not great in the movie,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: and we've discussed that, but also the representation of women
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: is pretty horrible. It's also very bad. So I know
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: you talk a lot about this on your podcast, Kayla.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: How as far as the representation of women as magicians
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: just as a career, it's not the most common thing.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: When magicians are represented in media, women are often excluded
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: women who are magicians. You've told us stories about how
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: there's just so much sexism in the industry. This movie
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: does include a woman as a magician, but no, also no,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: because you don't see her doing magic ever. Really she's
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: I felt like she was, and I that my feeling
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: on I just felt like it's so I feel like
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: this also like specifically happens to Isola Fish or a lot,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: and she's very talented and she's always like I like
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Cassidy's roles where she's just underutilized in a way that
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: is very unfair to her talent. But even like, it
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: just felt like they fucking arranged this group like it
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: was the fucking Chucky Cheese band. They're like, okay, three guys.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Well there's this guy, and then there's this guy, and
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: then there's the goofy guy, and then there's girl. No
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: further personality traits. She's just sexually harassed, and we're told
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: that she's interested in the main guy for reasons that
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: are unclear and honestly baffling given the way he talks
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: to her. That's very true. So funny enough. I actually
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: used to be in a tour. I was in a
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: tour for four years exactly like this, where there were
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: five magicians. I was the woman. But I will say
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: this tour, the producer and the magicians would go out
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: of their way on a regular basis to make sure
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: I could never be portrayed as an assistant. And the
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: best example I can give, besides the fact that like
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: I had my own stage time for twenty five minutes
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: by myself and not like doing magic without anybody else
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: being a part of it. That's great, But I remember specifically,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: we were taking promo pictures and we were standing on
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: this illusion and I just like put my my arm
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: on one of the magicians, just like because the show
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: is very about our camaraderie, so I would put my
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: arm on that magician, and he goes, I really like
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: that idea. However, I'm very concerned by the fact that
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: you're doing that that some people will think you're my assistant.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: And I was like, whoa, I didn't even think about
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: that great idea. And because just the idea that I
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: would like put my arm on his shoulder, someone could
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: see that and go, she's clearly the assistant because she's
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: attached to the male magician. So that is the level
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: at which we have to think in order for people
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: to not automatically think the woman's the assistant, because that's
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: the knowledge people have right now. They all they also
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: don't always think like, oh wow, I'm seeing a woman
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: perform magic. That's cool. That must be rare. Not all
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: audiences go to that length, but they definitely will assume
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: that if there are two magicians performing together, one presents
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: is a male, one presents is a female, that the
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: woman and must be the assistant. And there's a lot
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: of work you have to do a lot of the
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: duos in magic. They have to do a lot of
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: work to make sure that she is seen as a
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: magician and in this partnership. So when you look at
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: this movie. I make the argument that the only time
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: she actually does magic is in her solo show. She
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: even references how she was Jesse Eisenberg's assistant, and a
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: lot of women who are solo performers now start off
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: as assist and so that's actually really common. But then
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: going into the show, we see her carry the bunny,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: she puts the bunny in the box, right, who does
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: the magic? Jesse Eisenberg waves the wand who blows up
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: the bubble that she then levitates in It's the same
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: as who shows off the table and moves their hands
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: as the woman gets levitated the magician. She's not seen
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: as the magician. She's the prop that's being levitated. It's
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: the same exact thing we have on Shasanne. We created
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: our own little test, which is called the table test,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: which is can a woman be replaced by a table
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: with wheels? And if the answer is yes, she's not
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: a magician. She's an assistant. The script doesn't matter because
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: you could put the script with anybody. But if all
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: she does is the same that a table does, she's
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: the assistant. There is no point in which she actually
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: could not be replaced by a table and narratively who
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: like not just her role as a magician who is
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: not doing magic in the movie. I believe that Whatdy
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: Harrelson's character with sexually harass a table where like so
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: as we pointed out, like in that interrogation scene towards
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: the beginning, there's a lot of focus in the movie
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: placed on the two horsemen, Daniel and Merit, where Henley
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: and Jack often fall into the background, which makes some
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: sense from a screenwriting point of view. You can't have
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: like tons of focus on like a bazillion different characters.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: There's often not enough real estate for that. But the
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: fact that like Henley is one of the ones who
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: falls by the wayside and doesn't get to do much
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: again narratively speaking, and then even Jack, who is kind
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: of right along is with her in that sense of
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: like he's not given much focus. But then he is
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: sort of towards the end where he's the one in
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: that fight scene, he's the one in that car chase
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: to think that he dies. He definitely ends up having
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: more narrative impact then, I mean, it's like totally definitely
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: by the end, like he's I mean, it's it's still dissonant,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: but like you're like, oh, Jack took on I mean
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: it's like not like I preferred that you would think
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: that Isla Fisher died like that's not but but it's
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: like he definitely took on more narrative meaning as it
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: went down, because went on right, because then he's the
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: one in the flashback who had broken into the safe
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: and he steals that half a billion dollars and yeah,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: so he's doing way more than Henley, and certainly Daniel
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: and Merritt are doing way more. So she just ends
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: up being the one character in these four horsemen who
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: basically doesn't get to do anything and kind of you
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: could write her out of the script and it would
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: not change the story and it really at all it
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: felt to me like of the many dissonant but as
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: it like pertends to her character, it felt like there
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: was kind of this like empty movie feminism gesture made
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of the movie, because she says in
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: her first scene with Jesse Eisenberg, like, I'm not your
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: assistant anymore. You can't boss me around, like and it's
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: kind of this like girl but like and it's like,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't become an empty girl power moment.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: If the story then follows through on that. But that
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: gesture at the beginning was completely hollow because, like you
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: were saying, Kalis, she's completely treated like an assistant for
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: basically the remainder of the movie, and so it's like, well,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: why did they even bother to have her say like
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: leave me alone, I'm not your assistant anymore when that
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: is very much how the movie views and treats her
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: so and also she has no problem with it ever
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: again and in the same way where it's like this
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: is movie ship that is really like, I find it
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: so frustrating, especially because it's like, oh, that has to
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: suck for the actor who has to do that too.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: For like Aila fisher Um when she's being sexually harassed
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: by the Woody Harrelson character, which is all the time,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: she'll like, there should be like a term for what
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: this is in movies, where it's like she pushes back once,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: but by the end of the conversation she's like, ha, ha,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: you're you're wild you that's our Woody, you know, Like
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: at the beginning she's like, oh, I guess i'll when
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: he basically says like, well, I know you're in love
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: with Jesse Eisenberg, which is the only way that we're
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: told that she's in love with Jesse Eisenberg is by
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: Woody Harrelson claiming it's true. I don't see it in
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: the story or the characters at all, because is it
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: even trapped shaming her in spite of the fact that
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: she's very thin, like does all of this wild fucked
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: up stuff. He treats her like shit. But Woody Harrelson's like,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: y'all love each other, and they're like, well, I guess
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: we do, and like, which is weird in itself. But
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: then he's like, oh, well, you're a tight like you're
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: you're a tightly corked, like you think funked up, like
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: you need to fuck me. Like he's saying, I'll fuck you,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: don't worry, And she's like, oh well, I like she
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: she deflects, which kind of like, I mean, she could
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: have thrown something at his head, but in that situation,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, she's trying to brush him off, like
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: leave me alone, fuck you. But then by the end
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: of the conversation, the script, which is written by three men,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: has her be like ha ha, that's how it ends.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: She goes t he she goes he over and over,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: and it's and and then we're led to believe it's
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: not like a subtext moment of like she's doing that
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: because she doesn't know what else to do. I think
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: we're when we see that, we're supposed to think it's
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: funny and the character is fine with it, right, because
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're all familiar with the horror of being
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: harassed by someone, but you work with that person or
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: you know there's some circumstance that it makes it really
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: difficult to push back on it because you know your
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: job is at steak, or you know something's at steak,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: but the movie doesn't acknowledge that in any way. And yeah,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: like you said, Jimmy just like presents her being harassed
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: as something that actually she might kind of secretly like
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: a little bit. And at the very least it's a
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: silly joke. It's I think you're both nailing it, and
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: with this particular issue because women are so few and
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: far between in magic. It's probably about seven percent of
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: anybody that's a magician, from like a hobbyist to a
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: full time professional or magicians, but only two of professionals
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: are women, So the number is really low already, and
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: you don't see that that number is not reflected when
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: people are first starting out in magic. When people are
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: first starting out of magic, the maturity of the classes
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: are often women, are often people of color, and you
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: watch those people quit slowly as they go through magic,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: and it's because of it. They either don't see themselves
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: reflected in magic. They come up against too many barriers, like, oh,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: my skin is not white, so I guess I can't
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: use these props and there's nobody that makes them in
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: my skin in tone, I don't know what to do
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: moving on, Or oh, I don't have pockets and I
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: need like some massive pockets in order to do this trick.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: I guess I can't do that trick, and eventually I
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: guess I can't do magic. This happens all of the time.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: But then when you start to add in more of
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: the horror and harassment and bullying that exists because magicians
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: are have a mentality that's still in the fifties, you
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: end up having and you have a movie like this
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: of a young girl sees this movie and it's like cool,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: a woman like she's doing magic. This is awesome, whether
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: or not they see her do magic. But they see
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: this scene, that young girl is one hundred percent going
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: to be spoken to like that by an older magician
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: at some point in her life. It just it's going
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: to happen at a magic club meeting, at a convention.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: It's gonna happen. And now she has watched this movie
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: and it's in her head going, oh, I should just
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: laugh it off, and like that sucks. That's such trauma
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: that she's later going to need to work out in therapy.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: I know, so right, Like that is it's so impactful,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: and already in a world where the lack of diversity
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: is astounding and the lack of inclusivity is even more astounding,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: You're like, this movie doesn't help, doesn't help us. Go hey, actually,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: like that's not okay, And actually here's a woman doing
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: her own magic, and you know, of course we can
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: get into it. But I also have in my notes
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: like Morgan Freeman, the black magician quit magic to sell
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: out for money and then got framed and arrested. What
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: you know, the one the one magician of color in
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: the movie. What are we doing? So this movie just
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: it just doesn't help issues that we're constantly seeing optics
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: are so bad. The optics are terrible to me. What
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: you think about this, Kayla? So this is such a
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: brief moment in the movie where if you blinked, you'd
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: miss it. But I feel like there's something significant here
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: where when the four characters are being introduced at the
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: very beginning of the movie, and we see Henley's solo act,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: you know, she's and I'm about to jump in this
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: tank of water and if I don't escape in sixty seconds,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: I'll be eaten by piranhas and then her two assistant
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: So I think our men rip off her clothes and
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: then she's wearing this like sparkly bathing suit in a
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: way that makes it seem like her act is sexualized
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: to some degree? Is there, Like, do you find that
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: there is like pressure among the women who are operating
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: on a professional level as magicians to do stuff like that,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: to like have to kind of sexualize their act or
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: like present as more quote unquote sexy, to have audiences
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: engage with them more or like take them more seriously,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: Like is ah is that a thing? The first time
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: I was told I needed to be more sexy on stage,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: I was thirteen. That doesn't surprise me, but I am
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: still horrified and there. I mean, it's like that ship
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: existing comedy as well, but it seems like this is
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: it's like even more intense in magic, good lord. Magic
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: is a couple of decades behind comedy. If that kind
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: of helps give you an idea, is like, it's everything
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: that stand ups and comedians have experienced. Magicians also experience,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: but we're a little behind the progress, and so it
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: is a thing. A lot of women have just either
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: chosen for themselves to be more sexual on stage or
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: they feel like that's the only way they can get
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: work because that's who they see getting work. And what
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: ends up happening, unfortunately, is that there's more effort put
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: into appearance than there is the skill, and then a
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: lot of people start to create the buzz of like, well,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: she's she's beautiful, she's hot, she's sexy, but she's real
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: bad at magic, and then that becomes well, all women
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: are bad at magic, and that's sort of how the
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: narrative kind of continues. I remember when I wanted to
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: become a professional, I sat down with my friend who
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: for her entire life, she's been the sexy one, like
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: she's always been stunning. That's what she's worked on. And
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: I said to her, I don't want to do that,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: but I feel like I have to in order to
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: get work, because that seems to be who gets work.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: And she was like, don't do it. She just like
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: she was like, don't do it. I'm aging people won't
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: book me anymore because I'm forty and not pretty anymore.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: And you know quote, I'm not pretty anymore. Right, of
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: course she's beautiful, she's freaking stunning, but because she's getting
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: older and you can tell, people didn't want to book
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: her anymore. And so she's like, if you can avoid
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: having work because of how you look, then that's brilliant.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: And that's where I went, I think I should be
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: funny because I like being funny. But comedy doesn't rely
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: on how I look. It doesn't have to write. And
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: so that that was a really big turning point for me,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: where I was like, oh, thank god, I don't have
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: to do that. But it's really really big in magic
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: and it's like the fact that that even needs to
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: be a discussion is like a you know, testament to
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: where that particular industry is at. And it's like that
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: that happens in many industries, but it seems particularly agreeous
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: in magic, like the fact that that's something that either
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: of you even need to consider, where it's like, that's
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: not a conversation that men in that industry are having.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: They can just do magic right. And to be clear,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: if someone wants to in any kind of performance like
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: lean into sexiness or sexuality, that's totally fine. If that's
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: what then it's more about like the pressure on specifically
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: women to hyper sexualize themselves in an effort to get
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: booked on shows and get work and all that stuff. Yeah,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: and I love like. There was an act that floated around.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: It was a viral video many many years ago, and
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: at the time I really didn't like it, but I
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: was quite young and didn't have a good headspace for
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: this yet. But she's a burlesque dancer and stripper who
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: would do a magic trick where she would make us
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: red silk vanish, and then she would pull it out
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: of an item of clothing and then take it, take
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: that item of clothing off, and then make the make
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: it vanish again and pull it out of a By
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: the time she's completely naked and she's pulling it out
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: of her vagina and it was it was It's a
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: brilliant act. It was so clever and smart and had
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with sexuality and everything to do with
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: just be wit. It was like wit and even though
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: it's still very sexual And it's like, that's to me
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: the pitome of an act that can combine good magic
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: with good sexuality city and what ends up. And it's
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: unfortunate that there are so many women in the industry
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: that just care about the sexuality and really don't try
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: to do good magic because the sexuality is a crutch
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: so they're happy to use it. That's where I start.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, man, I wish that that wasn't the reality.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: But there are tons of women in magic that do both,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: and they're so good and it's such a great show
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: that I super support being as sexual as you want to,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: as long as the magic is also something you care about. Sure,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: And it's like even I'm sure they could be people
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: who are perceived to be like leaning too much on
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: any given thing, Like there's a greater context for that
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: as well of like, well, you don't get there in
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: a vacuum and how you're you know, conditioned to value
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: yourself and an like there's just it just seems like
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: there's an incredible amount of layers in a way that again,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: this movie does nothing to move the needle on and
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: just present the trope without any commentary or any indication
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: on how it makes the person being asked to execute
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: the trope, like, no indication on how it makes her
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: feel other than that one line of dialogue that has
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: not followed through on in any way. Yeah. Um. The
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: last thing I'll say about Henley's character, which is like
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: the other big yikes thing, is several comments made about
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: her weight where it's suggested it suggested that Daniel stopped
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: working with her because she was too heavy or too
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: big and couldn't fit through a hole for a trick.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: It's kind of you have to speculate here, but it's
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: also like did he fire her because she was too fat?
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: Quote unquote, And then later in the movie when he
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: catches her on stage after the bubble pops and she
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: falls into the bubble, uh, he says, Oh, I guess
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: you have lost some weight. Mind you, we're talking about
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: Isla Fisher. Just the suggestion that like Daniel was like, yeah,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: I had to fire Isla Fisher because she was too fat.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: It's just completely absurd and just like insulting top to
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: bottom and baseline makes no sense. And also and it
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: was like, on top of being extremely fat phobic in
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: a way that in regards to this actor doesn't even
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: make sense, it also just like makes you hate Jesse
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: Eisenberg's character, which I don't think we're supposed to. So
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: it's like, right, just like how we're supposed to be
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: endeared by Woody Harrelson's character even though he's making transphobic
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: jokes and slurs and homophobic joke like that whole disaster.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: The other major thing I wanted to touch on was
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: what I felt to be an extremely wedged in romance
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: between Rhodes and Alma. So again, Alma is the agent
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: from Interpool, she's brought in. She's also made to seem
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: kind of like a red herring for a while, like, oh,
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: what are her motives? Why is she some ways, I
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: genuinely felt was an excuse to let Mark Ruffalo continue
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: yelling at this woman, because it was like any time
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: you were meant to be suspicious of her, he would
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: have a rude confrontation of her with like belittle her skill,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: which you're like, Okay, they're all fucking cops, so who cares.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: But it's like the movie took on a lot of
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: opportunities to be like, let's yell at her again. It
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: was like what I mean, how many how many times
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: did they mentioned like, oh, this is her first time
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: off the desk, she doesn't know what she's doing. I
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: sit in the car, sit in the car. It was constant.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: It's like part misogyny, part bad writing, part both. You're
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: just like, this is just a mess, even though she
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: has the best instincts and is the best at her
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: like detective job. But which I mean is is realistic
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: where you know, oftentimes the person who is overlooked and
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: mistreated on the job is the best at it, but
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: because of their gender or race or any other number
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: of factors, they are disregarded and not taken seriously. So
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: that was at least realistic, I guess. But then it
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: just means you have to see this woman mistreated by
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: this character who turns out to be someone who were
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: also meant to be endeared too, because it's like, oh
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: my god, Mark Ruffalo was behind the whole thing. He's
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: the genius who wrote the blueprints or whatever. So that's
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: and then the romance between them. I've never seen a
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: more wedged in romance. Suddenly they're kissing in the third
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: act and it's like they even seem confused as to
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: why they're kissing, and they're like gay. And then at
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: the end he's like, I have to come back for you.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: I'm like, no, you don't. She's an Interpol officer that
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: you kissed one time. What's wrong with you? So that
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: was very bizarre, and I like that only happened because
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: she's a woman. There wouldn't be some random wedged in
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: romance otherwise. But it's just like, oh, well, we have
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: a woman and a man next to each other in
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: a story, and heteronormativity dictates that they have to kiss. Yeah,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: that was egregious. It's also slightly similar with the Jesse
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: Eisenberg and Isla Fisher situation, which obviously, what when was
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: that a romance? They hold hands at the end. Oh,
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: I didn't even notice that. I believe it is one
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: of Isla Fisher's last lines in the movie. It was
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: so bad that I was like laughing where she's giving
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: her like corny end of movie line where she's like
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: even if we go to jail and even if everything
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah, and then Jesse Eisenberg interrupts her.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: He's like, I know what you're thinking. And then and
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: then it was like, oh, okay, well clearly they belonged together.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: He's being fucking horrible to her again, cool magic, so obnoxious.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: The Jesse Eisenberg character, I have no I have nothing
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: good to say, what a nightmare. Hated him, hated the
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: Woody Herold. I like when movies make me dislike Woody Harrelson.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: I resented He's so likable and his character is awful, awful. Honestly,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: the character who like the least sleazy, most likable character
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: is probably Isla Fisher's character, which is wild because you
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: don't know anything about her like they like. She's also
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: the least characterized person in the whole movie. I think,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: if we if we ever were wondering, like, what's a
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: quick example of how the writers feel about women. The
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: line of when Morgan Freeman says to Mark Ruffalo, what's
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: the role of a magician's assistant? And Mark Ruffalo goes
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: she distracts the audience while he sets up the trick
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: and it's like, well, that's all you need, that's all
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: we needed to know how you feel. Thank you very
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: much done. The thesis statement of the movie. Does anyone
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: have any final thoughts? Got it all out? The last
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: thing I'll I will say is that a better movie
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: about the descendant of a magician seeking revenge by stealing
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: things of great value? Is Paddington too? Abracadabra. Yeah, good twists.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: That's the real twist. Mark Ruffalo, God, the Mark Ruffalo twist.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: I was dying. It's really funny because even like Mark
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: Rufflo doesn't look totally sold in his performance that what
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: is happening makes sense. He's like, yeah, it was me,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: it was it was me. Things a carous all. You're like,
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: I gotta get me out of here. Altogether, it doesn't
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: even pass the factual test. No, I don't think so.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: I don't think women interact. What I thought was interesting
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: was and this is not a compliment, but there's a
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: number of we've referenced some of them. There's a number
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: of female characters who the movie does go out of
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: the way to give names to audience members. Are given
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: names almost every time. Other officers that only appear in
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: one scene get names. The woman that um Interpol lady
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: rents an apartment from in New Orleans gets a name,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: Like there's all of these women that get names, but
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: then they never speak to other women, and sometimes, like
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: in the case of the woman who rents the apartment,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: never speak at all, which is especially egregious because I
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: don't think that there's like any there's there's no women
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: of color that have a significant roles in this movie,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: even though they're cast in like one offlines or like
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: in a single scene. And then I and then it's like,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: I Love Fisher's kind of like being Princess Lead in
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: this movie, where she's like she's not given anyone to
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: talk to, or it's like Isla Fisher and the Interpol
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: agent are like Princess Lead in different storylines. Could have
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: so easily passed if Isla Fisher was to ask one
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: of the women in the audience what their bank account
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: number was, but that did not happen, or if we
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: see like Alma interrogating Isisle Fisher's character, but that also
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: doesn't happen. Also real quick the second show where they're
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: stealing from Michael Caine and redistributing it to the audience
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: who had been affected by Hurricane Katrina. There is a
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: black woman who has a bank account balance that increases
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: by seventy thousand dollars, and we're like, oh wow, this
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: is great, everyone's going to get seventy thollars, but then
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: everyone else. The next thing that happens is a white
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: woman gets two hundred and eighty thousand dollars, and it's like,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: you can't just if you're going to redistribute the wealth,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: you can't what I think that's like, it's the subjects
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: of that was. I think that they were trying to
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: give each person what they were owed from Hurricane Katrina insurance,
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: but it's like it doesn't scan at all, and it
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: seems and it comes off very aggressive for no reason,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: like yeah, and then like the optics of like giving
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: one of the few you woman of color in the
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: movie at all with line like way less like a
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: quarter of money that than a white woman gets, Like
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: what also she had seven hundred dollars? Like why did
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: we need to make the black woman living in poverty? Yeah,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: that too, That's how she came in, That's how she started,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: Like we did not help. What is happening this movie sucks.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: It's so fucking lazy to the pot where I'm like,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: did the screenwriters even like register the optics of what
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: they're doing? It just seems like it was written in
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: this bizarro white guy vacuum. I don't know. This movie
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: sucks so bad as most movies are so our scale
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: of zero to five nipples, based on examining the movie
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: through an intersectional feminist lens, I would give this movie
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: zero nipples. Now you see no nipples, I'll meet you there.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: No no nipples for the movie. I can't imagine how
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: frustrating it is to be constantly asked questions about this movie.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: It's it's just constant. Listen, I'm gonna I'm gonna be
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: a little controversial here, and i'm gonna give it half
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: a nipple. And the only reason why is that there
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: was a woman in the magic show who spoke like that.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: That's already a leg up then most magic things that exist.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: So the fact that she had a microphone during the show,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna give it a half. That's fair. Yeah, but
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: what what a low bar to set. I know, what
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: a stinky ass movie. I'm now you three me canceled, ruined.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: I hope that this episode this destroyed and then there
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: should be a movie about women doing magic. For crying
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: out loud, are there are last question for you? Are
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: there movies about magic that you would recommend to our audience.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: I like The Prestige. I like The Prestige too. I'm
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: glad I have to watch it again. But I wouldn't
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say you should watch The Prestige for like
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: any sort of intersectional feminist fund. I think it's just
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: I love Hugh Jackmant. But other than that, no, not
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: that I can think of. I'd imagine if we covered
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: that movie on the podcast it would similarly get I
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: don't think it would do very well. I just it's
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: just at least a competently made movie. It's a competently
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: made movie. I So I'll tell you the most accurate
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: magic movie to ever exist is The amazing Bert Wonderstone.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: It's a not a good movie, but it's the most
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: accurate to the magic worlds. Like the opening scene where
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: Steve Carrell has the biggest bed in the world. That's
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: like a straight ripped off of Chris Angel's life. So
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of that is very, very accurate.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: So if you want to know, like what magic actually
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: looks like. Not a bad one to watch, all right,
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: Thanks for that wreck, and thanks for coming on the show.
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: It was such a treat to have you come back
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: any time and tell us where people can follow you,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: plug your podcast, etcetera, so you can find out more
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: about what I'm doing. My website is magic in Heels
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: dot com and that's also all the social media's Magic
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: and Heels. And then my podcast if you're interested in
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: finding out about more about diversity and inclusion in magic
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: and Allied variety arts or lack thereof of diversity and
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: inclusion in Allied variety arts. Uh, it's she's am pod
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: dot com or she's am on all your favorite podcast places.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: Thank you both so much for having me. I'm so
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: glad we finally did this. This is awesome. Appreciate you.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: We're very very happy. Thank you again, and you can
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter and Instagram at pecktel Cast. You
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: can subscribe to our Matreon at Patreon dot com slash
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: pecktel Cast. You get to bonus episodes every month, plus
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: access to the entire back cattle, all for five dollars
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: a month. Get merch at tea, public dot com, slash
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: the back tel cast if you are so inclined, everyone,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: I have a confession to make. Yes, this may not
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: make any sense, but um um it was me. Oh
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: my gosh, Jamie, is your dad Shrek? My dad is Shrek?
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: And he died. Oh no, And so I became a
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: cop and then I waited twenty years and now I'm
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: avenging Shrek. Wow. What a compelling story, What a perfect
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: setup for a sequel that actually happened wild well, goodbye,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: bye bye,