The Prestige (2006)

Matt (00:00:48):

It’s the summer of Nolan, baby, on 1-Week Rental: A Movie Podcast. My name’s Matt Stokes.

Laci (00:00:55):

And I’m Laci Roth.

Matt (00:00:56):

Every week we dive deep into a movie after spending seven long luxurious days with it.

Laci (00:01:01):

Licking it, smelling it, scratching and sniffing it.

Matt (00:01:03):

Absorbing it. It becomes part of us, part of our lives. I

Laci (00:01:05):

Took a bath with it and I’m sorry.

Matt (00:01:08):

You made a broth of Laci and the prestige. Laci- It got so

Laci (00:01:12):

Warped.

Matt (00:01:13):

Hugh Christian Scarlet.

Laci (00:01:15):

Jack Human.

Matt (00:01:16):

Yeah. Went to the video store, picked up the prestige, kept it for seven days and now we’re going to tell you all about it. On the summer of Nolan, we’re recovering nine movies of Christopher Nolan’s. The way it works is we do three episodes in a row and then take a week off. Next week we’re taking the week off. If you’re listening on the podcast feed, we’ll hold you over with something. Laci and I will answer some sex advice questions or something. Hard on the piano. I don’t know. But we want to give you something every

Laci (00:01:39):

Week. Clint Eastwood.

Matt (00:01:41):

If you don’t know.

Laci (00:01:43):

If you see Scored by Clint Eastwood …

Matt (00:01:49):

I feel bad for making that joke because I’ve watched videos of him playing piano and he’s really loved Clint playing the piano. Is he a

Laci (00:01:55):

Nice man?

Matt (00:01:57):

I don’t know about that, but he’s a nice piano player. If Clint East would play in the piano, what’s the … No, he’s lovely, classically trained musician. I’m sorry. But the prestige, the prestige.

Laci (00:02:10):

Can I say, I dare say Christopher’s all in one. This movie rocks.

Matt (00:02:18):

We finally got to a fun

Laci (00:02:19):

Movie, people. Yes. I remember it being dark and serious and there’s serious shit, but it’s so fucking … Okay. I’m saying it’s stupid, but there’s things in there that are very stupid, but I love it. I don’t know how to explain it.

Matt (00:02:35):

Laci’s take keeps being, Christopher Nolan makes smart movies for stupid people or whatever, or for people who think they’re smart.

Laci (00:02:41):

And this is a stupid movie for smart people.

Matt (00:02:43):

There is a lot of stupid stuff about the movie.

Laci (00:02:45):

There’s some dumb shit in there.

Matt (00:02:46):

I don’t know. That makes it

Laci (00:02:47):

Great. Yes.

Matt (00:02:49):

I love this movie. I love it. Now, the past two episodes, Memento and Batman begins. We liked both of those movies with reservations and kind of noticed we’re not having much fun with those movies. Right.

Laci (00:03:00):

I was ready for a romp and did not … I was Sand’s romp, but this time

Matt (00:03:06):

Well, let me tell you just one thing on that. I’ve talked to a few people. They will remain anonymous. They don’t have the courage of you and I to say. Yeah. They

Laci (00:03:12):

Don’t want to get in

Matt (00:03:13):

On this. To say Batman begins as boring.

Laci (00:03:15):

They can’t handle.

Matt (00:03:16):

Somebody said, “I think Batman begins this kind of boring too.” Who said that Matt? I’m not telling you that.

Laci (00:03:21):

You could tell me.

Matt (00:03:22):

But here we are at the prestige movie. I like Sarah. Always loved.

Laci (00:03:26):

Oh my God. Sarah knew.

Matt (00:03:28):

No, not Sarah.

Laci (00:03:29):

Sarah knew.

Matt (00:03:30):

Wait. We know a person named Sarah, so that’s not who you’re talking about. I

Laci (00:03:34):

Just realized that Sarah knew his secret

Matt (00:03:37):

In the prestige. We’re going to get to that. That’s one of the most fascinating scenes in the movie.

Laci (00:03:40):

I was putting the prestige first.

Matt (00:03:41):

Let’s apply some structure. We don’t want to be Nolan jumping all around in time.

Laci (00:03:45):

We don’t want that.

Matt (00:03:46):

And in this movie, I mean, he is just- Jumping in a

Laci (00:03:49):

Jacket.

Matt (00:03:50):

No reservations. We’re going to go everywhere, fly all throughout the time. I think more successfully than he does in any other movie. Yes.

Laci (00:03:57):

I followed it. I only had one moment where I’m like, wait, Matt, what the fuck? Where? But then I noticed Hugh Jackman not limping and I went, smart fella. I got it.

Matt (00:04:05):

Okay.

Laci (00:04:06):

They do need to make … He could have made a little bit of effort to make Christian Bale look different ever, but that’s okay.

Matt (00:04:13):

I watched it two days in a row the second time and I’ve seen this movie 10 times or so, but I watch it twice in two days. The second time is the most I’ve ever been like. I understand every single scene in the movie, where it is in the timeline, I know which version of the twins Christian Bale is playing.

Matt (00:04:30):

And I even pick up brand new things like, “Oh, I never realized Hugh Jackman’s British the whole time and he’s putting on a fake American accent.” No idea. I never noticed that. And that the last 20 minutes of the movie, he’s talking breash because that’s what he really talks like. But what’s great about the movie is it tells you all of that ahead of time. He even sounds like, “Well, of course I have to disguise my voice.” No, he doesn’t say that, but I don’t want to embarrass my family by being a magic guy. Well,

Laci (00:04:55):

Because the movie’s doing the thing, right? It’s doing the thing in the middle where it’s distracting you from whatever you’re not supposed to. And then at the end, it prestiges you at the end.

Matt (00:05:05):

I know. You’re not really the boy. You’re

Laci (00:05:07):

There for the ride, aren’t

Matt (00:05:08):

You? It won’t obey food. So the prestige, a great movie, very excited to talk about it. I was excited to watch it with Laci who had … The thing about Laci is like Dory the Fish, she forgets things. Or let’s say like Lenny, the guy from Memento, she forgets this. I

Laci (00:05:24):

Can’t make new memories. I have a lot of bad old ones. Hey, but I feel like I really proved my brain during this movie.

Matt (00:05:32):

What do you mean?

Laci (00:05:33):

By literally asking you, who is that playing Fallon? Because I can’t place them and you just think it would be somebody and you’re like, and to your credit, you’re like, “No, it’s no one.” But you almost were like, “Should I place you? It’s no one. Go for it. “

Matt (00:05:48):

Well, I didn’t want to lie to my beloved wife. No,

Laci (00:05:50):

You lie. We must lie for these things and you lie all the time out while I start here.

Matt (00:05:54):

Never.

Laci (00:05:55):

Okay.

Matt (00:05:56):

Only about stuff that doesn’t matter. Oh, no. Or if I really need to. Check out 1-Week Rental on Patreon. We have an episode coming out about insomnia. Laci hasn’t watched insomnia for this. I did it with a guest.

Laci (00:06:08):

He did it.

Matt (00:06:09):

We did Memento and Batman Begins, two movies we felt mixed about, but I watched insomnia and I was like, “Hell yeah, we’re cooking with gas now. That’s a great movie.” And now here we are with The Prestige. So we’re going to get now to the history of the Prestige. But first, I implore you, ladies and gentlemen. If you’re listening to this on the podcast feed, you got to subscribe on YouTube because you’ll see our faces. Lexi looks very cute today.

Laci (00:06:33):

I need to wear suspenders more often, not suspenders, whatever the fuck this is.

Matt (00:06:36):

And you will get to watch my 20 minute video about Disclosure Day where I complain about it and explain why I think critics like it. But audiences don’t. Do you think

Laci (00:06:44):

Spielberg send them all like a box of candy?

Matt (00:06:47):

Yes, I think it was a payola situation. It’ll

Laci (00:06:50):

Pop up and it’s his head and it’s like, you guys.

Matt (00:06:53):

In short it’s- Do you like my

Laci (00:06:54):

Movie?

Matt (00:06:55):

It’s a movie about movies. It’s a movie about storytelling and I think critics find that way more interesting than audiences.

Laci (00:07:00):

He’s talking about us.

Matt (00:07:01):

He’s talking about the thing we write about for a living.

Laci (00:07:04):

We feel validated.

Matt (00:07:05):

But to Johnny Q audience goer, they’ll say, “Well, I don’t care about that.

Laci (00:07:09):

” I feel masturbated and not in a fun way. I had a movie about that. I had a movie about that. I had a dream about that last night and it was bad being mad. Tell us about it. Tell us about your dream. It was so fucked. I don’t want to. Telling about dreams is boring. This one, I will tell you later.

Matt (00:07:28):

Hold it for the inception episode. This is episode 199 of our podcast. And two weeks from now, we’ll get to episode 200, The Dark Night. But that means we have an extensive back catalog. We’ve covered movies like Jurassic Park, ET The Extra Terrestrial, Minority Art War. AI, the

Laci (00:07:47):

Artificial intelligence.

Matt (00:07:48):

Yeah. Movies not by Steven Spielberg. Like The Shining, Stephen King’s It.

Laci (00:07:53):

Dirty Dancing.

Matt (00:07:54):

Star Wars. Brobie and Michelle

Laci (00:07:56):

Toscal Reunion.

Matt (00:07:57):

Baby Bog. This is a fun podcast. People like it. They like the way we talk about movies. A lot of other people don’t like the way we talk about movies, but if you’ve made it this far, you might like who we are. So go check out that back catalog. I think I got the business out of the way. You

Laci (00:08:10):

Business. You took care of it. This motherfucker gets to uses Michael Kane impression three episodes in a row. Is it three or is it more?

Matt (00:08:20):

It’s, let’s see. If

Laci (00:08:21):

It’s five. I’m going to kill you.

Matt (00:08:23):

Yeah, so he is in the darknight. He’s in inception. He’s in dark night rises. He inception. He’s in interstellar.

Laci (00:08:27):

Mother hell. Good thing it’s one of your best.

Matt (00:08:30):

And then he gets too old. Nolan does drag him out of hospice for one scene in- You’re not being serious. No, not hospice, but he’s briefly in tenant and you’re like, oh, okay. Put him back.

Laci (00:08:42):

Put

Matt (00:08:42):

Him back in the crygenic chamber all. Michael Kane, wonderful in the prestige. I love him.

Laci (00:08:48):

He’s fantastic.

Matt (00:08:49):

It’s the opposite of Alfred. He’s a bag of piss and vinegar in this movie. No, Raba. Hey. Ching Ling Fu was a famous Chinese stage magician in the late 1800s, early 1900s, appeared on stage as a frail, weak, old man, but a wise leaning into the … Oh, I’m from the Orient. I’m a smart, wise old man. And

Laci (00:09:37):

You colonialists are fucking dumb.

Matt (00:09:40):

Among his most celebrated tricks was he conjured an enormous glass goldfish bowl full of water out of a cloth. That was one of his best known tricks. He took the trick on tour to America in the late 1890s, offered audiences a $1,000 award. If you can tell me or if you can reproduce my Goldfish Bowl trick, you will win $1,000.

Laci (00:10:02):

That’s a lot of money. And

Matt (00:10:03):

Then there was this American magician who said, “I know how you do it. I’m going to try to do it. ” And Ching Ling Fu denied him. I don’t know exactly what happened, but this guy took it very personally and then went to Europe and then pretended to be Chinese and started his rival magic show naming himself Chung Ling Su, thus beginning a fierce magician rivalry.

Laci (00:10:24):

Are you being serious? Yes. And I like that the movie does not tell you one way or the other, but you could just, yes, of course that is the way he’s doing the trick. He’s being arty about it.

Matt (00:10:36):

Yeah. So this actual historical figure is in the movie. I love

Laci (00:10:40):

That.

Matt (00:10:40):

I’m good. And

Laci (00:10:42):

That’s very respectful of you.

Matt (00:10:47):

Nicely done. Nolan,

Laci (00:10:48):

Thank you.

Matt (00:10:49):

I’m going to read now from Dan Jolen’s 2006 article about the Prestige in Empire Magazine. “The fact was that he wasn’t as frail as he appeared. His creaking shuffling gate was an affection maintained obsessively throughout his offstage life. So as to disguise the reality that during the show he’s carrying this large, heavy, water filled receptacle clenched between his legs, concealed masterfully beneath his flowing robe. His deception, his maintenance of misdirection, his commitment to this one trick was so fundamental it affected every waking second of his life. And it was Ching’s story that inspired British novelist Christopher Priest to pen The Prestige.

Laci (00:11:27):

I love it. I love it because … What can I even compare this to? But it’s even more rare than writing a bestseller or writing a movie that gets an Oscar. There’s only so many illusions, especially so many show ending ones, something you can base your whole career on that one brain could think of that just a crazy life to lead where you have to protect that. I mean, you truly are only as good as this secret.

Matt (00:11:59):

And that you’re doing it for yourself. This is not-

Laci (00:12:02):

Well, to make money. You’re doing it for what people … I mean, I’m sure there’s pride in it too and it’s an insular small community, but at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to fucking make a buck, right?

Matt (00:12:11):

Right. I remember this quote Pingillette gave, I wrote it down here- It’s quote,” The only secret of magic is that I’m willing to work harder on it than you think it’s worth, “which is the whole thing with magic is you watch it and you just think there’s probably an explanation that I’m not going to put in the effort to figure out and they’re putting in so much more work than you could ever comprehend being worth it for a trick.

Laci (00:12:40):

And this sparked the thing I said yesterday, which is, is there a more annoying profession to tell someone you have, and that’s for two reasons than to say I am a magician, because all the little snotty things they’re going to say, all the quips, all the bullshit remarks when they’re mad at you or when you do something wrong or just be fucking in idle chit chat when you just met someone, that’s already going to drive you crazy. And the lack of respect and lack of knowledge for how intensely hard it is to actually be a successful one of these and I can liken it only to maybe like a professional wrestler. I couldn’t think of another profession that had both of those inconveniences.

Matt (00:13:30):

I think it would be so much more annoying to be a magician. I think you’re dead on. Yeah. Everyone’s like, everyone’s constantly saying- Get out of this one,

Laci (00:13:37):

Houdini.

Matt (00:13:37):

Yes, exactly. “Ooh, hope you don’t make the menu at the restaurant disappear.” I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding.

Laci (00:13:43):

And like, “Oh, here’s your fork. It was behind your ear. It’s give me the fucking fork.”

Matt (00:13:49):

I think it would also-

Laci (00:13:49):

Shows the trick funny, man.

Matt (00:13:51):

It would be annoying to be a comedian and everyone saying, “Make me laugh.”

Laci (00:13:55):

Say something fun. I feel like enough people respect comedy, understand how hard it is to get up on stage and do it. They know that actors do it. There’s already that. And I think it’s like a well known thing that there’s darkness in comedy. I don’t think they’re walking around being like … Most comics are probably kind of to themselves.

Matt (00:14:17):

And magic … Well, what do you think?

Laci (00:14:18):

And they’re celebrities. I mean, you can be a celebrity comic. You know how hard it is to be a celebrity fucking magician?

Matt (00:14:26):

And if you’re a celebrity magician, what I know is that all the other magicians hate you. Look at what magicians think of Chris Angel.

Laci (00:14:33):

And he broke out. Mind freak. And we’re all making fun of him. I’d say the least, and you named him, the person that’s probably got the most respect as a magician for just any man on the street is Pingillette, because there’s something about him, not all that magiciany. Him and the amazing Jonathan. Oh, I love him.

Matt (00:14:51):

I think Ricky J in this movie also- Ricky J. He plays the magician. He was also an actor. He was in Deadwood. He plays the first magician that they work for in

Laci (00:15:00):

The movie. Oh, okay. You’re wrong.

Matt (00:15:02):

But

Laci (00:15:03):

I mean, just like your day-to-day knowledge of, you’d have to first know about him and then not have the second thought be fancy pants idiot walking around in a tuxedo. It’s just like even just even fucking Houdini, even name one and don’t immediately think of how that person accidentally killed themselves, accidentally killed someone else or had their face bitten off. I mean, no respect for the craft. The years that they put into it that you’re remembered for lying, got you in the end, didn’t he?

Matt (00:15:38):

Yeah. Even someone like David Copperfield, weird island full of tied to Epstein. I don’t know.

Laci (00:15:43):

But just that he’s a fucking professional male grownup magician. Also, where are the female magicians? How sexist is this fucking area of the world that there are zero?

Matt (00:15:55):

This magician, it’s like when we talked about British comedy where I said, “Hey, I’m intimidated because I don’t know this world.” I know the world of magicians better than I know British comedy, but still it’s like, this is not my lane. This is not my area of expertise.

Laci (00:16:08):

Absolutely. Absolutely. Just the fact that I can’t off the top of my head, I mean, I can do five. I’m not a listing gal, but I can list five magicians, including comedian magicians. So I can think of no women at all.

Matt (00:16:22):

It’s like how you can trace it to why are there fewer female comedians? Why are there fewer female guitar players? It’s like partially a pipeline thing. Little girls, you’re playing with magic? No, that’s for boys.

Laci (00:16:34):

Well, so you’re the assistant. I mean, that’s the thing. There are very sex gender driven roles in magic and I’ve never seen a male assistant except for if there’s like several or if they’re like a plant.

Matt (00:16:47):

But again, because we don’t know so much about this world, I don’t want to be flippant and say there are not really successful female magicians.

Laci (00:16:52):

And we are saying at the top that we 100% know that there’s so much … This has got to be a passion burning hotter than most people could ever understand to actually pour your life into being this, even if it’s just a side gig. There’s no respect and there should be some. And so we’re saying that at the top, the respect.

Matt (00:17:15):

Magic as a symbol, a metaphor for filmmaking I find moving because the thing I find moving in art is the amount of work somebody put into something not expecting a payoff. I will always find that moving and it’s why magic also ties in so well to comedy. The amount of work that will go into a bit that might not even get that big of a laugh. I so appreciate that. Very much. The Doughboys on their podcast have a recurring bit where they do a parody songs and turn the songs into songs about hot dogs, but the songs, they do it in a very lazy way. They will just change any word that sounds like it could be about a hotdog to make it about a hot dog. And eventually they performed on stage with an entire choir and a beautiful piano rendition of radio heads creep, but I’m a friend.

Matt (00:18:04):

I wish I were hot dog. I wish I was

Laci (00:18:06):

Sandwiched. Get that.

Matt (00:18:08):

I’m a Frank. I’m a wiener. What the hell am I grilling here? I’m a foot long here. And at the end of this five minute thing, they are crying. Everyone in the comment says like, why do I have tears in my eyes watching this? It is the amount of work to make something so beautiful that is so stupid is my favorite thing in the world.

Laci (00:18:27):

And honestly, it’s oftentimes the things that seem really simple and you don’t feel all the sweat that it’s because of the working craft that went in on the back end so that you don’t see the strings. Yeah. The simplicity of a magic show is what’s hard.

Matt (00:18:45):

Nolan had the concern that a movie about magicians is going to be hard because- You

Laci (00:18:51):

Don’t want

Matt (00:18:51):

To give much. Magic is something you have to see live. If you can edit, if you can shoot an edit, it’s not impressive. Okay, so then I need to emphasize the work. I need to emphasize the personalities of the people. That’s how I’ll get you to care about

Laci (00:19:01):

It. You also have to tread lightly and you can’t go in. And in fact, you could count on probably two hands how many tricks you see at all and on two fingers, how many you know how they’re doing it because anyway, it’s very brave to walk into this world and not fuck up and not give away something you’re not supposed to or imply that something is what it isn’t and just go against all … It’s just a lot of rules. So the tricks that they do show and how much mileage he gets out of just like little rinky ding stuff on the stage, it’s smart because he doesn’t have to dig in too much. He can just focus on the thing that he made up.

Matt (00:19:44):

Yeah. Christopher Priest is the author of the novel The Prestige, Christopher Priest just died in 2024 at the age of 80, wrote his novel in 1995 inspired by the story of Ching Ling Fu, wrote more than 20 novels to popular success but not necessarily critical acclaim. In his obituary, The Guardian says, “He clearly felt that it was not so much the quality of his work that delayed his promotion to the literary establishment, but his reluctance to deny when asked that he wrote science fiction.” I think that’s interesting because science fiction and literature has always been incredibly popular and incredibly looked down upon and Nolan’s movie, one of the great tricks it pulls off is that it only gradually reveals it’s a science fiction movie. Maybe my favorite thing about it though is it’s a science fiction story that is the kind of science fiction story that might’ve been written in 1900.

Matt (00:20:40):

It’s like that’s the kind of technology they’re imagining.

Laci (00:20:43):

Because the idea of cloning is something so, I don’t want to say baby brained, but like it’s something we’ve always wondered if you could do it. And now that there’s a version of that that exists, it’s like the more you know, the more you know it can’t happen the way with the

Matt (00:20:56):

Show. Sure. Yes. A clone who has your exact consciousness and your clothes and everything just duplicated all the matter.

Laci (00:21:06):

Right. Well, and it’s very smart because electricity has a long history in magic and all of it’s fake. So to make it real is

Matt (00:21:16):

Smart

Laci (00:21:16):

Because when it starts with like the huge machine and the huge production, it’s like, what the fuck is this guy doing? This is just a whole lot of misdirection and then it’s like, no, no, it was real. It’s a murder.

Matt (00:21:29):

But it wasn’t real for Christian Bale’s character, which it was just a decoration and I love that too. When Christian Bale uses it in his act, it’s just- What

Laci (00:21:39):

Does

Matt (00:21:39):

He use? He just has an electrical thing to generate a bunch of sparks that are between the two doors that he goes through. No, he

Laci (00:21:45):

Doesn’t.

Matt (00:21:45):

It’s pretty late in the movie. Yeah.

Laci (00:21:48):

So just to misdirect Hugh Jackman into going to-

Matt (00:21:53):

No, no, no. I think to Tesla. No, this is after he hires Scarlett Johansen who tells him, “I’m going to tell you how to dress up your show.” Got you. And you notice he does become a better performer as the movie that goes

Laci (00:22:03):

On. But the whole reason New Jackman is in Colorado Springs is because he thinks that Christian Bales’ character received a machine from Tesla and he didn’t.

Matt (00:22:13):

Received a machine that is what performs the trick, but it wasn’t. It was just a prop.

Laci (00:22:18):

But he did get it from Tesla. Yeah. Just fucking crazy. But just a fuck with Hugh Jackman’s

Matt (00:22:24):

Character. Yes, not realizing.

Laci (00:22:26):

Just to write a misdirection diary.

Matt (00:22:31):

So I have read the novel this week. Folks, it’s great. I love it. Read The Prestige. Now there are some huge differences that I don’t want to spoil because it’s a great book.

Laci (00:22:42):

So don’t.

Matt (00:22:42):

Basically the novel has a framing device that is said in the present in England in the 1990s where one person’s reading the diary of Borden from a hundred years ago, one person’s reading the Diary of Angier and then they kind of intersect with the President. I don’t want to explain too much. Great. So

Laci (00:22:59):

Stop.

Matt (00:22:59):

Read this book. It’s very complex. Nolan was very enamored with the book. While he was on the publicity tour of Memento, he gets sent the novel. He’s like, “Oh, I would love to make a movie about it. ” And he intensely feels the connection between filmmakers and magicians. Quoting now from Christopher Nolan, iconic director by Don Jolin, Dan Jolin, “The filmmaker almost more so than the novelist,” this is Nolan saying this, “has a very close relationship with the magician in terms of what we tell the audience with the point of view we’re drawing them into. We use those techniques to fool an audience, to engage an audience in all kinds of blind alleys and red herrings and so forth and then hopefully a successful narrative payoff.” Making a feature on the DVD, he says, “The prestige is very much about filmmaking. It’s very much about what I do.

Matt (00:23:49):

” So many of his movies are- And to that,

Laci (00:23:53):

I would say duh.

Matt (00:23:56):

No

Laci (00:23:56):

Fucking

Matt (00:23:57):

Shit. Yeah. So many of his movies are about filmmaking, Inception, Oppenheimer.

Laci (00:24:01):

He stays in his lane.

Matt (00:24:03):

So he was in pre-production on insomnia when he gets this book. So he enlists his brother, Jonah, to try to figure out how to turn this into a movie. The novel is even more complex than the movie narratively, like so many intersecting timelines, so many shifting points of view. I think the movie has a very impressive script, but it does seem like I can’t believe they managed to pull it off and it took them way longer than they thought it would. It took them years before they were able to get the movie going. Another person trying to make the movie was Sam Mendes, the director of American Beauty, but Christopher Priest liked Nolan because he saw following in Memento and he thought this would be the guy for the job. So the prestige gets announced as Nolan’s follow-up to insomnia.

Matt (00:24:51):

In other words, he’ll make it before he makes Batman begins, but now I’m reading from Christopher Nolan, the iconic filmmaker and his work. “The book didn’t band easily into a screenplay. It would take Jonah five years to find the film in the prestige. Part of the problem was that on page, the story took off in so many different directions, including a contemporary framing device that were then 10 different films you could make from it. However, the bigger challenge was how to convey a sense of magic on film without dwelling on the magic itself. “Yes. Nolan was conscious that the thrill of trick would be rendered futile because filmmaking was already a process of illusion with its own special effects. It would be an illusion of an illusion.”

Laci (00:25:31):

Yes. And you can’t spend too much time in that part because you are giving away things that are not yours.

Matt (00:25:36):

That’s true. Yeah.

Laci (00:25:37):

Things that those individual people deserve to show until they don’t want to show it anymore and then hand it off. I like the understanding of that these illusions can live on, but you wait for the person to retire and you buy them from him.

Matt (00:25:52):

Which is why that damn masked magician in the 90s was such a scab when he betrayed everybody by going on Fox and revealing all their tricks. Geez, of

Laci (00:26:00):

Shit. Anyone can fucking squawk. You fucking rat.

Matt (00:26:05):

And then when they revealed who he finally was, it was Valentino and everybody was like, “Who?” Who? The other connection between filmmaking and magic or film and magic is that in the early days of film, movies were just magic tricks. It’s like you’d go see the show, you might see a magic trick and then, ooh, moving pictures. It was like as amusing as seeing an optical illusion. It was a while before they realized these could just tell stories themselves.

Laci (00:26:30):

Well, I mean, and you think about when you’re trying to keep something short form like TikTok or Vine, it’s all about the editing. You are making a magic trick.You are pretending to have a transition in your clothes and where you are. It’s all about how can I make this seamless and transport you. I love a good transition.

Matt (00:26:48):

There’s a great scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula movie, which takes place in like 1900 or sometime around there that shows how this worked. You’d go to an exhibition hall and one of the attractions was a moving picture. Wow. And they do receive it like they’re looking at a magic trick. Oh, how amusing? Because what is it? You’re just looking at a bunch of images flipped really, really fast. Michael Kane in a 2006 appearance on- What’s that? Access, a TV special about the prestige said, “What is unique about it as you have no idea there is another magician called Christopher Nolan who is the writer/director who’s working behind you. The whole movie you’re seeing is a two hour trick and I’ve never seen that done before.” One of the tricks of the movie is it is a period piece, but Nolan didn’t want to treat it like a period piece.

Matt (00:27:37):

He avoids lots of the tropes of period pieces. Wants it to be a science fiction movie, but you did not necessarily notice it’s a science fiction movie. The world that they’re depicting, the world of the early 20th or the turn of the century, it was this sort of wondrous but terrifying time. I love the scene where Hugh Jackman is so grave and serious when he gets on stage. In my travels, I’ve seen the future and it is terrifying.

Laci (00:28:02):

Yeah. It remind me of Elon Musk when he announced that the end of all civilization was going to be AI and that was like 12, 15 years ago. And it’s like, “What do you know, Elon?”

Matt (00:28:13):

Yeah, back when we listened to him. Like him,

Laci (00:28:15):

Right? I collect him. Ew.

Matt (00:28:17):

So all of these things, movies, electricity, it’s all linked together and the world is getting smaller. Someone, “Oh, okay. Yeah, you can travel to China and now come back.” And maybe they do know in China some weird things about the metaphysical world that we don’t know here yet. Right,

Laci (00:28:35):

Right. Because we can’t necessarily call China, but someone can come from China and they look like they’ve been there. Also, it’s that whole, I know enough to be dangerous thing. Everything’s in its baby time. It just occurred to me the other day that people had to fly on the first commercial flight. The Wright Brothers got it up in the air and they farted around up there and then someone … How many years would need to go by of flying before I would ever … That’s what I was thinking.

Matt (00:29:07):

Yeah. I keep asking Lisa, can I go skydiving? And she alway says, “Now.”

Laci (00:29:10):

Nope. Needs some more years.

Matt (00:29:12):

And I keep showing her statistics, but she doesn’t care. Who would play these two magicians though? We’re going to start with Hugh Jackman. Then we’re going to dive a little bit deeper into Christian Bale because we’re going to be spending a few more movies with Christian Bale after this, so we’ll get to know him a little better. But Hugh Jackman, six foot two. Born in Australia to British parents. I just want to note that it’s kind of interesting that in this movie he’s playing a British character who’s pretending to be American, who the whole movie you think is American transported into this English world.

Laci (00:29:46):

But really he’s an actor who’s Australian.

Matt (00:29:49):

Yeah, my God. So his parents got divorced when he was a kid. His mom moved back to England with some of his siblings. His dad stayed in Australia with Hugh and the rest of his siblings.

Laci (00:29:59):

How many We were there.

Matt (00:30:01):

I think there were five total, but it’s interesting that like Nolan, this is a guy who’s kind of divided, divided between worlds. But he throws himself into the theater, trained at the actors center in Sydney full-time, attends Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts Live Theater. It was his whole life. He played Gaston on the stage version of Beauty and the Beast in Australia, moved over to London to critical acclaim in Oklahoma. And then he went to Hollywood and in only his third movie role ever played Bulverine in X-Men. So his entire career is this push pull between the showman, just Broadway showbiz razzle dazzle consummate.

Laci (00:30:39):

You mean the showman, one of his biggest movies?

Matt (00:30:40):

The greatest showman, but I just more mean, he just embodies the idea of showman.

Laci (00:30:45):

Performance, right.

Matt (00:30:46):

And he says in this movie, showman in the prestige, but then his best known role, Wolverine. And people love him as Wolverine, and I love him as Wolverine.

Laci (00:30:54):

I don’t know. I think the greatest showman gave it a run for its money because people got just over and over. It caught on like a kids movie. Oh

Matt (00:31:02):

Yeah. I mean,

Laci (00:31:02):

It was themed birthday parties for

Matt (00:31:04):

The driver. And he personally willed that movie to be a hit because it was a flop when it came out and they left it in theaters for a long time and he just kept pushing it and eventually it became a huge hit. He championed the 2012 screen version of Lay Miz. He hosted the Oscars in 2009. He’s hosted the Tony Awards four times. In 2019, he went on a world tour. Hugh Jackman, The Man, the music, the show. Performing numbers. Not

Laci (00:31:29):

The man.

Matt (00:31:30):

From the greatest showman and other classic show tunes, 90 shows worldwide.

Laci (00:31:34):

That’s sweet.

Matt (00:31:36):

So I mean-

Laci (00:31:37):

And a little sad.

Matt (00:31:40):

Sad.

Laci (00:31:41):

I don’t know. If he were fucking Anne Hathaway, I’d be punching him in the face, but he gets to do it because he’s 6’2″. He’s Mail Hathaway. You’re right. And he looks like fucking John Hamm and you just can’t help but want to give him a smooch on the cheek.

Matt (00:31:56):

Now, of course, look at the two characters they’re playing and they’re just playing versions of themselves. And it’s not like Hugh Jackson seen to come from a ton of money, but at least came from a family of such comfort that he can go train as an actor and not get a job.

Laci (00:32:12):

And that they can move across seas once they get a divorce.

Matt (00:32:16):

Right.

Laci (00:32:19):

Yeah. Oh yeah. The whole time I’m just thinking, okay, so Christian Bales just playing Christian Bale. I mean, okay, got it. He’s a method actor.

Matt (00:32:27):

On top of everything, I’ve always been aware when watching the movie. Oh yeah, Christian Bale’s the one who throws himself into the role. Hugh Jackman’s the showman. Hugh Jackman’s the theatrical one, knows how to move an audience, maybe not as talented as an actor, but maybe a better movie star, that sort of thing. This time I was trying to pick up on the class differences between both their characters and these two people. Christian Bale, who we covered his bio when we did the American Psycho episode last year. So let’s talk more about the method, method acting, which if you don’t know, it’s just a style of acting that basically-

Laci (00:33:03):

Or you

Matt (00:33:04):

Live it. Basically you live the character, that you throw yourself so wholeheartedly into a role that it’s like you’re not even acting. In contrast to the kind of acting that Hugh Jackman would’ve learned where it’s like- When you’re

Laci (00:33:16):

On stage, you turn it on, baby.

Matt (00:33:18):

You’re like

Laci (00:33:18):

Root. I’m drunk and now you can’t tell I’m drunk.

Matt (00:33:22):

The famous story of Lawrence Olivier acting with Dustin Hoffman, this young method actor and watching him act, he’s like, “You know it’s called acting, right?”

Laci (00:33:32):

Those who can’t act do.

Matt (00:33:33):

And

Laci (00:33:34):

Those are method

Matt (00:33:34):

Actors. Right.

Laci (00:33:35):

I just got to do it for a few months.

Matt (00:33:37):

Which Christian Bale, he will have something to say about that.

Laci (00:33:40):

Well-

Matt (00:33:40):

Unexpectedly Christian Bale gets cast as the lead in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Son in 1987 when he is only 10 years old. And for

Laci (00:33:48):

That, Matt, he lived as a 10-year-old for a full year.

Matt (00:33:52):

Back

Laci (00:33:52):

To you, Matt.

Matt (00:33:53):

Had no acting training at all, but after the success of that movie, he felt a lot of pressure to act. This is from-

Laci (00:34:00):

What?

Matt (00:34:00):

The Guardian in 2013. Wait, wait,

Laci (00:34:02):

Wait. What was he going to be instead?

Matt (00:34:05):

A 13-year-old boy.

Laci (00:34:07):

But how did he get the role? Not because he wanted to be

Matt (00:34:09):

An actor. He had been in commercials.

Laci (00:34:11):

I got you. Just happened

Matt (00:34:12):

To be in a blocker. There’s a 4,000 person casting call and Steven Spielberg picks him.

Laci (00:34:17):

Ouch.

Matt (00:34:18):

He makes money and his family needs money as we shall see.

Laci (00:34:21):

Reminds me of Elliot from ET or something. You just wanted a million kid.

Matt (00:34:25):

Yeah.

Laci (00:34:25):

McCulloch Hulkin.That’s the better because the McCulkins did need McCullough to keep on going.

Matt (00:34:32):

Keep that going, yes. 2013 profile of Christian Bale. “Christian Bale has revealed he developed a love-hate relationship with acting after the success of early roles in films such as Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun left him feeling pressure to provide for his family. “And then that same year he told the Hollywood reporter about his early career,” It was money. Christ, my family can do with that. So sure, all right, I did it. There was no reason not to do it. And everybody kept asking me to do it. And then it became sort of a thing of, oh, I could actually really provide with this. And there’s a pride in being able to do that, but there’s also a prison at such a young age. I certainly wouldn’t have my daughter do anything like that because it becomes a necessity and in that case it killed it.

Matt (00:35:15):

It actually kind of killed my drive of acting because it became something I felt like I had to do. You can’t enjoy something when you’re actually not being forced to do it, but you feel that duty and obligation that if you don’t do it, a lot of people are going to suffer. And so it became that and it’s always been a love-hate thing for me because of that. When I love it, I love it. When I hate it, I just can’t. It’s just disgusting. This vanity fueled profession. I mean, I just can’t stand it.

Laci (00:35:40):

Shut up. Fucking God. It’s

Matt (00:35:42):

Famously an intense man.

Laci (00:35:44):

But a very verbal one.

Matt (00:35:47):

Jesus,

Laci (00:35:47):

Please say it five times and then really get to it.

Matt (00:35:50):

Now this is from a British GQ interview from 2013 that Baal did. Laci, I think you will see a picture here painted of a man that you very much understand. This is a lot of reading. I’m sorry. “My family moved around a lot, yes, through necessity rather than choice perhaps, but I loved it. That life is not for everybody, granted, but having that as a child certainly set me up for the rest of the life I lead now. You could say I’m indebted to my father’s roguish behavior. We jumped about all over England. We had a brief stint in Portugal, but it wasn’t like being on holiday. It was my father’s doing really. He steered the family through some tough times. The interviewer asks,” What sort of man was your father? “Christian Bale says,” He was a man who was wonderful in a crisis, just the best kind of person you need when the chips are down.

Matt (00:36:35):

As a family, there were times when we found ourselves having to move out of our house and quickly. Within the space of two hours, my father had found us a warm, safe, dry place to stay. I never really asked questions. “The interviewer says,” What was your father running away from?

Laci (00:36:49):

“Water?

Matt (00:36:50):

I mean, to me, it’s like he was getting evicted. Of

Laci (00:36:52):

Course

Matt (00:36:52):

Love. Yeah, just jumping. Okay. Christian Bale says,” There were various reasons he was restless. Like every great character you play, like every interesting person, I guess, they’re complex. There was a great complexity to my father. He was a devoted family man, but in the same breath, he simply was not suited to an anchored life. He should have been somebody who had a backpack, an old map, a bit of change in his pocket and that was it roaming the world. But through consequence, he found himself a family and he was honorable with that despite perhaps it going against his wilder instincts. There was definitely a restlessness to him, which I share. Not that it’s anything I see as a negative, just a desire to search himself and the earth for something

Laci (00:37:30):

Else. “Yes, I definitely relate to that. And just to be clear, we were never jumping rent. My mom was always just trying to find where the good life was, meaning the one where her stress didn’t follow her. It just kept coming with us.

Matt (00:37:46):

Yeah. It’s the apartment that’s the problem. We moved to this apartment. Yes.

Laci (00:37:48):

Yes, we’ve ruined this one and we need a different one. We need a creek. We need a pool. We need it to be closer to this or closer to that.

Matt (00:37:53):

We need to be farther away from this place. We need to be closer away. Yes, closer to. Yeah. And Laci still gets the itch to move, but since we can’t- I just move rooms around the house. Furniture.

Laci (00:38:04):

Yeah. Our kitchen’s in our bathroom right now and it’s a mess.

Matt (00:38:07):

You see the father he just described and himself too is so evident in the Borden character/characters. Even

Laci (00:38:14):

Down to the daughter.

Matt (00:38:15):

It being … Oh, it’s literally two men. One who’s into the family, one who’s not. It’s two men sharing one.

Laci (00:38:22):

I mean, even Christian Bale, having a daughter.

Matt (00:38:26):

So the method, the transformations. I mean, that’s the thing that really stands out about him.

Laci (00:38:32):

That should be illegal.

Matt (00:38:33):

Famously lost 62 pounds for the machinist in 2004. His diet was a can of tuna, an apple a day, and lots of whiskey and cigarettes. And in 2018, when he played Dick Cheney, he gained a lot of weight. To play Dick Cheney, he said,” I ate a lot of pies. “In 2018 he told the guardian,” You want to immerse yourself. I mean, for me, the thing about life is, what are you searching for? I can’t speak for anybody else, but for me personally, you cannot allow yourself to think about anything else but that one thing that you’re doing. You’re so immersed in that one thing. You can’t allow yourself any distractions. And when you can hit that point, whatever it be in, I had a bad fucking motorcycle accident and I kind of stopped doing that because I was all fucking touch and go. That’s why that enthralls me so much, that edge, it’s that thing.

Matt (00:39:19):

If you stop concentrating for one second, oh my God, the consequences are going to be disastrous. Now with film, not the same consequences, but the disappointment. I always question, what the fuck are we making films for? What’s the point? Aren’t they useless who gives a shit? People ask me, “Why should I watch this film?” I say, “I got no fucking clue. I don’t know. ” Answer that for yourself. I can’t tell you why I should watch a fucking film, but you occasionally get these moments where you go, “I love this. This is good.” End quote.

Laci (00:39:45):

Yeah. I really did so hard.

Matt (00:39:47):

Why?

Laci (00:39:48):

If I’m going to do it, I’m going to fucking do it. And distractions made me less good at it and they made me feel guilty and it’s like if I fuck up, it’s because I wasn’t all in.

Matt (00:39:56):

This is true. This is a big difference between you and I. Yes.

Laci (00:40:00):

And then I will get disillusioned with the thing and be like, “What am I doing? What am I doing? What have I been doing? This is stupid.”

Matt (00:40:06):

You never casually do a hobby. It’s not, “Oh, if I feel like it every couple of days, I’ll do this thing.” Max

Laci (00:40:12):

Keeps inviting me to a new Minecraft craft realm and I’m like, “Go-

Matt (00:40:16):

Minecraft, ew.

Laci (00:40:18):

Go fuck yourself.” No, no. If I start Minecraft right now, we will get a divorce. I’m stretched too thin with all the things that I’m … Minecraft is very everything and nothing.

Matt (00:40:32):

Okay. If he has to become so singularly focused on the role, such that even his family members say he’s too intense. There’s a thing where his mom called the police on him in 2008, say he needs to approve his behavior. Of course, the famous incident with the director of photography of Terminator Salvation. Why the transformations though? Why are you doing this to your body?

Laci (00:40:53):

What do you mean? That puts him in it the most.That’s how you really buy in. Like, fuck, I already look like this. Also, if you are method, are you good at acting?

Matt (00:41:03):

Oh, well, a thing he says in multiple interviews is he doesn’t think he’s a good actor and he’s surprised he has a career. He’s always surprised when he gets cast in things.

Laci (00:41:11):

I’ll bet that’s a big thing that happens with child actors.

Matt (00:41:15):

Yeah.

Laci (00:41:16):

The pressure to get the next role. It’s like you just hear mighty that shit. You’re just like, “I’m just going to study board anybody and I’m going to be so fucking intense and then I’m just going to will it to happen so that my family doesn’t die or

Matt (00:41:28):

Whatever.” And then maybe the roles never come again. What if the roles never come? And if you look at his filmography, you will notice, oh, there’s stretches where he doesn’t work. That’s interesting. The actors don’t do that.

Laci (00:41:37):

Like Val Kilmer, just kind of hermits.

Matt (00:41:40):

With Val Kilmer, it’s because everyone hated him, but-

Laci (00:41:42):

Oh,

Matt (00:41:43):

Was he an

Laci (00:41:43):

Ass?

Matt (00:41:44):

He was a very difficult man.

Laci (00:41:46):

So luckily he got cancer and then people liked him

Matt (00:41:48):

Again? Yes. Very lucky.

Laci (00:41:49):

No, I just mean it.

Matt (00:41:51):

I think that did endear him to people,

Laci (00:41:54):

Yes. That’s what

Matt (00:41:54):

I meant. So he told the guardian in 2018. The reason he goes through these transformations is, quote, “There is a much easier way, but I can’t do it. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have any training. I see actors who can just be themselves and then switch and give these really incredible performances and then switch back to being themselves. I find I start laughing because I’m too aware that it’s still me. So I try to get as distant as possible, otherwise I can’t do it. It’s helpful not to look like yourself. If I look in the mirror and go, “Ah, that doesn’t look like me. That’s helpful.”

Laci (00:42:22):

I relate to that. I mean, I wouldn’t do it, but that makes so much sense to me.

Matt (00:42:28):

So you have the question you just asked like, “Well, so are you acting?”

Laci (00:42:32):

You’re just doing it a different way. I

Matt (00:42:33):

Mean,

Laci (00:42:33):

If you’re putting in that kind of effort and you get a good product at the other side, you’ve fucking done it.

Matt (00:42:39):

Yeah. It’s not less valid. No. I’m not one of these people who thinks it’s less valid. What kind of actor would be? I’d be way closer to the … Well …

Laci (00:42:49):

Here’s something I can never relate to. A person that can cry on demand. A person that can conjure up a thing, get to that place. That’s what trained actors can do, right? Is they have this repository of joy and sadness and anxiety and all the things and it helps them go there. I cannot. I’m too empathetic. I’ll just live there for the rest of the day or that thing will not be that thing really to me and it won’t give me that effect. His method of acting makes complete sense to me. When I hear other people talk about how to act, it’s so alien. So at least this makes sense.

Matt (00:43:22):

The person who seems the least like this in the world is Timothy Oliphant, who we’ve talked about before how Walton Goggins unjustified had sort of a problem with him and it’s because Walton Goggins is a much more serious actor and Oliphant has always been like, “Acton’s bullshit, whatever.”

Laci (00:43:38):

It’s because he’s always himself.

Matt (00:43:39):

And he says, he also thinks he’s a bad actor, but it’s just like the roll camera, he’s like, “Ah, the director tells me to make my face, I make my face the same my thing, whatever.”

Laci (00:43:45):

Because he’s charismatic as hell and he’s good looking and he plays that same guy.

Matt (00:43:52):

Seth Bullock and Ralan Givens are different. Are they different? They’re just a different time period.

Laci (00:43:58):

Yeah. All

Matt (00:43:59):

Right.

Laci (00:43:59):

But it’s good.

Matt (00:44:00):

But one of the fascinating things about the prestige is, especially me watching it twice in a row, realized how much Hugh Jackman is also dedicating himself, not just in killing himself every time he does the trick, but he also has devoted his entire life to living a fake identity. He’s British and he’s talking American the whole time.

Laci (00:44:22):

That and devoted his whole life to chasing this thing rather than just enjoying his life.

Matt (00:44:26):

He’s

Laci (00:44:26):

Doing just as much hard work even if it’s like aimed in a … You know what? You got to be trying to do something. This goal might as well be any other goal. I mean, you lose the love of your life, you think you might want love again, but no, that wasn’t what was driving him then and it wouldn’t drive him now. His wife just happened to be part of the package. It worked out. So workplace romance.

Matt (00:44:50):

What’s a shame though? And I love the one scene where they’re getting along at least a little bit.

Laci (00:44:55):

Who?

Matt (00:44:56):

Jackman and Bail when they go see the Chinese magician. It’s not like they’re being best friends. He’s just like, “Oh, they gave each other a little look.”

Laci (00:45:01):

And also they were being total shits to each other in the scene before and they get this homework assignment to go see this guy and as soon as it shows it, I turned to Matt and I was like, “Why are they sitting next to each other? They don’t fucking have to. ” They are supposed to be in their own heads figuring out the thing that’s in front of them. I wouldn’t want the one next to me seeing my mom. Not because Mike Kate

Matt (00:45:20):

Says he gets them those seats because he knows the guy at the

Laci (00:45:23):

Door. Okay, that makes sense. So it’s like, are you friends or not? You don’t have to just be next to each other. You do. You do.

Matt (00:45:30):

If they just told each other their secret, they would like and respect each other so much more, but you can’t tell the secret.

Laci (00:45:36):

You got to trust somebody. It’s your whole thing. You’ve got this one thing. The two-sided corn he gives that boy when he meets Sarah and he’s like, “Look, pay attention.” And he’s like, “Now you know and I know that this coin has two heads on it and it doesn’t matter that it has two heads. What matters is that only you and I know. It completely loses its value. If someone you don’t trust or any … Yeah. That is such a precarious way to live.

Matt (00:46:08):

As we see and Jackman’s so much more obsessed with Bale than Bale’s obsessed with Jackman, but

Laci (00:46:16):

Showmanship only gets you so far, you

Matt (00:46:18):

Got to have

Laci (00:46:19):

Good ideas.

Matt (00:46:20):

If Bale knew what Jackman was actually devoting, “Hey, I’m not American. I’m British. I’m living a lie.” Okay. Okay. I underestimated you, man. Even so.

Laci (00:46:31):

You’re putting on your poor pants.

Matt (00:46:33):

Even so. You see the scene where Andy Circus asks Hugh Jackman about, “What are you reading in that diary?” And he’s like, “I’m not telling you. ” And he’s like, “Didn’t you steal that from your greatest rival who killed your wife?” And he’s like, “I’m in a fraternity and you’re not. ” There’s still … I don’t know. We’re kind of the loves of each other’s life in a way.

Laci (00:46:51):

We’re kind of Batman and Robin. I mean, shit, Batman the Joker.

Matt (00:46:54):

Kind of, yes. So the prestigious sandwich between Nolan’s two Batman movies, I mean his first and second Batman movies. It’s one of his lowest budgeted movies.

Laci (00:47:03):

Michael Kane’s in it. I still have to method act from here to here. So can you name me Arthur and then can you …

Matt (00:47:11):

Alfred.

Laci (00:47:12):

Alfred, right. Can you name me Alfred? And can Alfred also be in this movie?

Matt (00:47:16):

So

Laci (00:47:17):

I can just keep being Batman who’s pretending to be a magician.

Matt (00:47:21):

How confusing. The Christian Bale is now Alfred. Michael Kane is Kura.

Laci (00:47:26):

And it’s just for Christian Bale.

Matt (00:47:28):

He needed it. I kept calling him Alfred in my notes and then the scene where Alfred tells them and I’m talking about Michael Kane, but one of his lowest budgeted movies and it made a hundred million dollars worldwide.

Laci (00:47:40):

So people loved it?

Matt (00:47:42):

People liked it.

Laci (00:47:43):

Okay.

Matt (00:47:43):

It’s kind of grown

Laci (00:47:44):

Up.

Matt (00:47:45):

In retrospect, people are like, “Hey, the prestige fucking rules. It’s maybe his best movie.”

Laci (00:47:49):

But here’s something that always matters. What else came out around this movie?

Matt (00:47:53):

Well, two months earlier, The Illusionist starring. Edward Norton and Paul Giomani, also a movie about feuding magicians in the 1890s. Is it any

Laci (00:48:01):

Good?

Matt (00:48:02):

I’ve never seen it. I think people like it.

Laci (00:48:04):

I love Paul. I love both those guys.

Matt (00:48:06):

So this is a twin film. And I think it probably did. Nolan, who was not so much a name brand at the time, this movie comes out two months later and you thought, real original.

Laci (00:48:17):

This is prime Scarlett Johansson time though. What

Matt (00:48:19):

Do you think of Scarlett Johansson in this movie?

Laci (00:48:21):

I think I’ve heard the same way. I think of her in every movie. She’s no Kate Winslow. But I don’t know. Those two are those like Botticelli, they take up the same space. Only one gets real acting roles and the other one gets this impossible creature role. Scarlet Johansson is always the impossible creature. I think she does a good job. I just can’t off the top of my head think of a movie where like now there’s where she’s showing her acting chops. Do I love looking at her and do I find her compelling when she’s on screen? Yep, I do. But I don’t think of her as like she’ll be on Meryl Streep one day where someone with the same kind of boom. I don’t know why Kate Winslet and her are packaged to me. Because

Matt (00:49:06):

They’re both hot with big boobs.

Laci (00:49:08):

And big butts. You’re allowed to have a full body and be sexy as shit. Your Pixar mom body.

Matt (00:49:18):

Kate Winslow has a big butt?

Laci (00:49:20):

Yeah, she has a nice butt. Nice.

Matt (00:49:21):

She’s

Laci (00:49:22):

An hourglass kind of lady.

Matt (00:49:24):

I’ve always thought of Scarlett Johansson as the weak link of the movie. I think I liked her performance this time more, especially when she’s doing the devious searching sides. Whose

Laci (00:49:33):

Side is she on thing? Yeah.

Matt (00:49:35):

But I think she’s overshadowed by Rebecca Hall as Borden’s wife who’s really, really great in the movie. Still don’t know if Nolan knows how to write female characters, but a woman defined by my husband’s a fucking freak. And I’m so confused. Is he an alien? Is he two people? Is he a split personality? I

Laci (00:49:54):

Thought the secret that she said that he had was just that he’s uncaring and he’s got borderline personalities. He switches, literally switches his personality. So I was like, okay, so he’s like a multiple or like he’s a schizophrenic before they had an idea for that. Well,

Matt (00:50:10):

I love that she says I know what you are and we never hear her say what she thinks he is. What would she say? I

Laci (00:50:16):

Think she knows the secret. I think she knows it’s two men. And I think because they made a fucking commitment before they got together that she would know all of his secrets and he agreed and he’s not somebody that’s flipping about not

Matt (00:50:32):

Being- You’re saying he told her?

Laci (00:50:34):

Yep. And I think it was an understanding. I think he probably was like, “Look, we’re going to be interchangeable. I’ll never tell you which one I am. You can give me your little test if you want, but both of us will always be pretending to be the same person even with you.

Matt (00:50:52):

Dude, dude. I need to

Laci (00:50:54):

Watch it again just to prove

Matt (00:50:55):

This theory. That’s fucked up. There’s another fan theory. I don’t love the fan theories. I want

Laci (00:51:03):

To know where he lives when he’s not … Well, he’s Fallon, but he wasn’t always Fallon. Where was Fallon before he had a role in this man’s life? All right.

Matt (00:51:13):

And I don’t like the, ooh, let’s solve Nolan’s movies like a puzzle. This is the one, it’s the magic trick that you’re supposed to solve. There are fan theories that Tesla and his assistant, the assistant is actually Tesla. The David Bowie character is not actually Tesla. Andy Circus is Tesla. I find that less interesting, but I think it’s- Here,

Laci (00:51:29):

Wait, what would that mean?

Matt (00:51:31):

Oh, he’s sort of doing the same thing that Nathan is doing in Batman Begins is I was actually Rata Kul and this is just some guy.

Laci (00:51:39):

Who cares?

Matt (00:51:40):

I don’t know. Just because these guys are magicians in their own way of committing to this insane bit.

Laci (00:51:46):

And the whole time it really could be a scam. You live on top of a mountain and you play with lightning and sometimes you show me cool tricks on the ground. I am the exact kind of person to come up here, spend so much money on a hotel hoping you’ll see me and then you’ll take my money. Please take my money. And then knowing damn well if you produce nothing, you can just tell me the science isn’t sciencing right now. You hold the key and the only understanding of this thing like Zeus. What am I going to do? Tell you you’re lying? You’ve already got my fucking money. And to add a layer of protection between him and the … Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of a Willy Wonka kind of thing, right?

Matt (00:52:26):

Yeah. It’s one of those things where I don’t want an answer to that. But I like the idea that this is a movie where that could be true.

Laci (00:52:33):

Absolutely.

Matt (00:52:33):

And the whole- And not because it’s like, oh dude, that’s fucking cool, but there’s actually thematic and story

Laci (00:52:39):

Reasons for it. It makes sense, right? And the whole time they’re telling you it takes a showman to be the distraction and what is David Bovie, but the perfect showman. In fact, the whole time he’s acting as Tesla, I think his accent sounds wrong and it almost sounds wrong intentionally and that he has such a face, such a peculiar kind of other worldliness that I’m like, you almost seem too right for the … You know what I mean?

Matt (00:53:04):

Yeah. The

Laci (00:53:04):

Casting’s on the nose in a wrong way and the other guy’s charming as hell and maybe this is the only way he can be kind of free. Okay. Damn it, don’t get stuck on this.

Matt (00:53:14):

But that other guy just seems so much the Lafu to his guest on.

Laci (00:53:17):

Yeah, but he’s charming.

Matt (00:53:19):

But the thing about Tesla, who I don’t know very much about, but I think the Tesla the Edison feud was very much a the better marketer and packager versus the actual scientist who didn’t know. As you even see in this movie, he makes a matter duplication device and the way to use it is this magician can use it. As Laci said, just duplicate money. All your problems are solved.

Laci (00:53:39):

But he knew. He knew he had made something that would destroy lives.

Matt (00:53:44):

Oppenheimer, I can’t believe it’s in this movie and I forgot about that.

Laci (00:53:47):

But no one needs to have that power. It’s the power of God. Also, I love that they tell you in the very beginning scene of the movie that they’re going to kill magicians over and over and over again. All those hats laying on the ground and you’re just like, “Oh, that’s great.t fucking Lord far quads or whatever the hell his name is.

Matt (00:54:05):

” It’s all the magician from Frosty the Snowman. What? The magician. He comes to town with the hat.

Laci (00:54:11):

Anyway, no.

Matt (00:54:11):

Got that bunny with my hat.

Laci (00:54:14):

And it’s a black cat and that’s bad

Matt (00:54:16):

Luck and it’s

Laci (00:54:16):

Probably

Matt (00:54:17):

That. I never thought of that. That’s great. That’s great. Yes. The movie tells you everything. Well,

Laci (00:54:21):

And they land head up, right? They’re all buried like they end up buried in their water

Matt (00:54:25):

Coffees. Fuck,

Laci (00:54:26):

Dude. I mean, what the fuck are you doing preserving them? How much is plexiglas at a time like this? Why do you need all these watercoffin chambers? Just let them fall in a box and then have a scorpion in there or something or just have a blind man shoot them. What are you doing?

Matt (00:54:44):

Also, can’t the blind men hear the drowning man struggle?

Laci (00:54:48):

It’s part of the legion.

Matt (00:54:51):

Great movie. Let’s talk about the prestige now starting with those hats. So we open with hats. I really love the thing that Laci said in the history segment about how this is just all the dead magicians. If the hat is just the magician’s wardrobe …

Laci (00:55:22):

Well,

Matt (00:55:22):

I

Laci (00:55:22):

Mean, because they’re upright, the majority of them, and they go through a chamber and wake up in the ground.

Matt (00:55:30):

Right. And for all you pinheads out there and not the fun pleasure seeking kind. She’s not literally saying this is where all the Hugh Jackmans died. It’s a metaphor.

Laci (00:55:43):

Thank you, Matt.

Matt (00:55:44):

It’s fun. We’re having fun. Well, look

Laci (00:55:46):

At us. We’re a couple of jokesters. Look how young Michael Kane looks.

Matt (00:55:50):

I know. He really does look younger. He’s like the guy from Saw. Seven decades into his mighty career, two Oscars under his belt. To

Laci (00:55:57):

Be a man.

Matt (00:55:58):

Gives his big speech as he handles a bird to a little girl. Who’s this little girl? I don’t know, but you find out. I

Laci (00:56:05):

Was

Matt (00:56:05):

Under

Laci (00:56:06):

The impression that maybe all little girls in this world just look like that because she reappears pretty quick.

Matt (00:56:11):

Just a uniform girl look. Yeah. Just

Laci (00:56:13):

A blonde with bangs.

Matt (00:56:15):

Every magic pot. Now I could not confirm this, but I believe this is entirely an invention of Christopher Priest. That the prestige totally made up. Not a thing that magicians actually have.

Laci (00:56:26):

Well, shit.

Matt (00:56:27):

I mean, that three act structure seems like it makes sense, but I think he might have invented the.

Laci (00:56:36):

Okay. That’s some thick Michael Kane you’re giving me.

Matt (00:56:41):

And you’re going to accept it.

Laci (00:56:43):

Happily.

Matt (00:56:44):

Now the jumping around in time. We’ve seen some of it so far in Christopher Nolan’s career, but here’s just like, “Fuck you, man. We’re just going. No foreplay. Get ready for it.

Laci (00:56:57):

” The chicken or the egg situation, did this book require time jumping? So Nolan was like, “I can do that. ” Or did he see a book with time jumping and went, “Fuck yes.”

Matt (00:57:12):

I think it’s

Laci (00:57:13):

That. That shall be mine.

Matt (00:57:13):

That’s the one.

Laci (00:57:14):

Jumping, jumping, jumping and jumping

Matt (00:57:15):

To jump. What do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? I’m not supposed to jump your time all the time. Let’s just tell a linear story A to B to C to my fucking

Laci (00:57:23):

Turn. You don’t know.

Matt (00:57:25):

So we’re jumping. We’re jumping. Hugh Jackman is doing the transporting Man. Christian Bale goes on stage as a volunteer.

Laci (00:57:34):

For people whose only job it is is to look out at the crowd to find someone to come on stage.

Matt (00:57:40):

Shoddy, shoddy work.

Laci (00:57:41):

He looks just like Christian bale. I know the lights, they shine brightly, but you use plants for everything else. Why not for this thing? This thing that could kill a guy.

Matt (00:57:53):

And so many of their revenge schemes for each other hinge on them getting selected as a volunteer. It’s like if your scheme for revenge hinged on you getting picked for who wants to be a millionaire. It’s still kind of unlikely you’re going to- I know.

Laci (00:58:08):

I know right the spot. It’s to the left center. This is where the lights are the easiest to see through to the crowd. I’m sure it’s some bullshit like that. I will say Hugh Jackman’s disguises are much more convincing than Christian bales.

Matt (00:58:24):

Yeah, he’s just better. He puts more care into that sort of thing. One of my favorite things is Christian bale, before he hires Scarlett Johansen is how uninspired his speeches are to the audience. He’s like, “This looks like a normal bull.” But it’s not. It’s magic. It’s magic. And I love the idea that it’s one of the best parts of the movie is you don’t even see it. Huge Jackman’s just like the greatest trick I’ve ever seen. Holy shit.

Laci (00:58:52):

Right.

Matt (00:58:53):

But no one would ever, ever appreciate it because only other magicians could appreciate how good it is. He makes it easy.

Laci (00:58:58):

Yeah, right. He doesn’t have any buildup. But I mean, this movie is so good as a metaphor to show you the two kinds of things you need to make a great movie. You can have a completely method person who’s about the realistic, the straightforward, I am this guy, that’s the Christian Bale. And then you can have the guy that saw the pizazz and that’s your huge Jackman. And apart they do great movies, but if they can get together and find some fucking whatever this is, look at what I’m doing. What am I doing? No, it’s not symmetry. What am I doing?

Matt (00:59:31):

You’re swimming?

Laci (00:59:32):

No, what’s it called? Schenectaki? Symmetry. Synergy. If they can find something- Synergy. There you go. You are so bad at guessing what I need. Okay. And then if you could just practice. Then you got yourself the movie The Prestige here with Michael King is what you got.

Matt (00:59:49):

And like how his triumphant ending to Batman begins with, “I never said thank you. This is a guy fair for the flare for the theatrical. It’s the joker. Got everybody so pumped and that might have been the Oppenheimer moment for this is how all movies have to end now. The prestige succeeding so wildly just as a movie, not like it was that successful, but he did all the stuff he wants to do and he did it so well that for the rest of his career I think he is chasing it and he succeeds a bunch of times. Oh, you’re

Laci (01:00:20):

Saying Nolan,

Matt (01:00:21):

Sorry. Yes.

Laci (01:00:21):

Okay.

Matt (01:00:22):

But sometimes maybe I’d appreciate a more straightforward narrative than this one, which I think requires that kind of narrative.

Laci (01:00:30):

Are you saying that doesn’t have the big reveal at the end? What are you saying? What formula did Batman begin start?

Matt (01:00:39):

With Batman Begins, I meant that pulling off the tease for the next movie at the end, doing it so well and so cool meant that a million copycats formed. And here, Christopher Nolan himself I think is so pleased with what he did with this movie that now he is trying to recreate it again and again and again in terms of interweaving all these different timelines.

Laci (01:01:03):

Okay. You’re not saying the prestige itself is him trying to pull off something he’d done previously. You’re saying he impressed himself with the prestige and then tried to follow himself. Okay. I mean, I had gotten confused with what you were

Matt (01:01:17):

Saying. Right. Take a movie like Dunkirk, which seems like this is a very straightforward war movie, but he’s like, no.

Laci (01:01:24):

No.

Matt (01:01:25):

Three different temporalities. What the fuck is the temporality? It’s like, okay, one of the stories you’re seeing takes place over the course of a week. One of the stories you’re seeing takes place over the course of a day. One of the stories you’re seeing takes place over the course of 10 minutes and you’re cutting between them all. And it makes sense as you’re watching it, but then you think, why did he do it that way?

Laci (01:01:42):

Why do that? Just tell me the story.

Matt (01:01:44):

Because editing, it’s the magic of the movies. Movies is a magic trick.

Laci (01:01:47):

Dude, fucking editing is a magic trick.

Matt (01:01:50):

Yes.

Laci (01:01:51):

The hours and hours and hours of shit you film only to be like, I know what I’m going to make out of this fucking box of shit from Goodwill. It’s a masterpiece. I’m sorry, this is saying something very obvious, but I was on a movie set yesterday.

Matt (01:02:07):

Where, ironically, the one thing you didn’t get to see was editing.

Laci (01:02:10):

Yeah, but you see the amount of takes that it takes to get the one you want and all of it’s going to the editor. Here you go.

Matt (01:02:17):

I’ve been trying to read Walter Merch’s book about editing because I’ve always heard the expression editing. Editing is directing.

Laci (01:02:24):

It’s moving. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (01:02:25):

Editing is directing. So I’m trying to understand. Yeah, I get it on one hand. On the other hand, but how?

Laci (01:02:30):

Because if you put it in a certain order, you’re telling a different story and the audience doesn’t know you’re going backwards or forwards. You do it in such small chunks. It’s like when we’re in the studio and recording a song. Those of us that are a little weaker in the vocals, me. I can literally take it line by line and that’s what they do. I mean, for instance, we had a two and a half minute scene to record at the end of the day yesterday and I heard people going, “Oh man, two and a half minutes. That’s going to be a long one.” And it’s like, well, yeah, it is because then you multiply that by all six, eight takes you’re going to take, right? So two and a half minutes is big chunk in movies that leads me to believe a minute or less is what they’re used to dealing with and live parts that you’re going to use for an actual movie.

Matt (01:03:17):

You’re recording it from multiple angles. You’re getting coverage, you’re getting your master shot. That means do it again and again and again and assume you get a good take each time.

Laci (01:03:24):

With such small chunks, you can tell a few stories because you can just make it seem as though they’re talking about something they’re not. That’s all I mean.

Matt (01:03:35):

Laci is an extra in a independent movie in New Orleans and got to spend a lot of time on a movie set yesterday and it was very exciting and I had a lot of questions for her. Now, when we were briefly trying to be more professional and explain what our podcast is at the beginning of every episode, we said, “We have no ambitions to ever make movies.” And that’s true. That’s

Laci (01:03:53):

Still true.

Matt (01:03:54):

Yeah. But the reason I wanted to say that is we talk shit. We talk a lot of shit about movie people and we make fun of movies. We could never make movies.

Laci (01:04:04):

I’d say we talk shit about movie roles and in production roles we think we understand and that mainly just falls on the director and the writer and sometimes the score, right? Maybe costumes sometimes. We don’t really understand. Oh, thank you, Matt. Yes, actors. I know that. I’m saying we’re not … I don’t know. I guess lighting and sound sometimes we’re like, “What are we saying? I can’t see shit.” All right, fine. Fuck. We’ll never do it again. I can’t promise that. But seeing it in real time and really watching the blood, sweat, tears and intensity that goes into it, it’s a Marvel. But we had the right idea. Every movie is a miracle.

Matt (01:04:44):

Laci now has the firsthand experience and I’m jealous and I’m like, “What does the script supervisor do? Because I’ve only read about this in books and watched documentaries and stuff.” But I say all of that to say movies are miracles, they’re magic tricks, but just because Laci got to work on a movie doesn’t mean we’re not going to still make fun of movies.

Laci (01:05:02):

Okay. But you’re going to say just because Laci got to work on one and I didn’t doesn’t make her the host of the show and now I’m a piece of shit. I didn’t want you to think that or say that, Matt.

Matt (01:05:09):

No, but I want you to host an episode one day.

Laci (01:05:12):

Oh

Matt (01:05:12):

Yes. So

Laci (01:05:12):

I can just know.

Matt (01:05:13):

Yes. So then you don’t know. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Laci (01:05:16):

And you can just riff.

Matt (01:05:18):

A movie is a magic trick because you’re just showing the stuff that they decided they want you to see.

Laci (01:05:22):

Yes.

Matt (01:05:23):

Because you don’t really … It’s fun to learn about how movies are made, but what I like way better than that is just watching a movie and enjoying it and never thinking about the fact that any of this. Never feeling it,

Laci (01:05:32):

Right?

Matt (01:05:33):

It’s made you … You’re not really looking. You don’t want to know. You want a food.

Laci (01:05:37):

Just get me to the end of the ride and make me feel like I didn’t do fucking homework, which Nolan has been struggling with in the movies we’ve covered so far. This is the first one where I’m like, woo. And I get to the end and I’m like, that was a kind of silly ending and I loved it.

Matt (01:05:53):

Oh yes. And Laci and I usually don’t watch the movies together, but I watched it one day, had so much fun watching it. I thought, I want to watch the movie with Laci the next day because I want to be with her for the end of the movie. I want to see how she reacts to this.

Laci (01:06:05):

It was the whole ride though, but yeah, the end is like, okay, come on. Because

Matt (01:06:10):

A lot of people call this like a twist ending and then they’ll say, it’s not a twist ending. It misdirects you with what you think the twist is going to be because a lot of people say, “Oh, I predicted that Christian Bale’s two characters, but then I wasn’t expecting the last thing where, oh, Hugh Jackman’s killed himself a billion times.” See,

Laci (01:06:24):

And as soon as they showed the big tall thing being carded out after every show, it’s like, oh, he kills him every time. I got that, but I didn’t expect that there was a twin.

Matt (01:06:33):

I never thought that was a twist reveal because he tells you that that’s what’s happening. But because he never shows it to you, you just make the connections in your head. That’s one of the things that’s fascinating about this movie.

Laci (01:06:44):

And in my memory, they confirm that the person they go see with the Goldfish Bull trick, that is what he’s doing. He is methodic. He’s living his act, but you do it through inference. You’re like, okay, I guess that performer was holding with his legs. But this is ladies and gentlemen and others, if you’re watching a Nolan movie, it is literal. The end of this movie is a prestige. It’s not a twist because you expect a magic trick to have something interesting at the end. That’s what this movie did. A reveal. I

Matt (01:07:21):

Don’t know what it would be, but a more conventional twist would make this so much of a lesser movie.

Laci (01:07:26):

I think so.

Matt (01:07:27):

Just like how I’ve seen it so many times, it never occurred to me when Hugh Jackman goes to Colorado and says, “Price is not an issue.” Why is he saying that? Where did he get all his money from?

Laci (01:07:36):

Yeah, you fill in with like, I guess he really took off. Look at Nice’s hair.

Matt (01:07:40):

Yes. I filled it in my head. Oh, his magic show must have been going so well by this point, but that’s not what happened. And you have no reason to think that’s what happened. You just make these associations in your head when you’re watching a movie.

Laci (01:07:51):

You know why it’s not a twist? Because all of a sudden it’s a science fiction movie and that feels like it’s cheating, but because you thought you were watching a magic movie where the fun in a magic show or movie or anything that’s kind of behind the scenes is you expect to learn something, a little something about the industry. So when it’s like, no, Tesla just made me a thing and it just makes you go from here to here and it’s like, oh, that’s a fucking cop. The reason why the end is not a twist. It’s like, oh good. I learned about magic. I was expecting a payoff and I got one.

Matt (01:08:26):

But I mean, you learn things about magic, but they’re like- Mundane. Exactly. They’re the things that Christopher Nolan, the filmmaker, the technician would appreciate is him twisting the screwdriver to tighten that contraption on Hugh Jackman’s back for the bird’s killing trick.

Laci (01:08:42):

What I like is how often those stupid fucking rings come out. And even back then in the 1700s, wherever the fuck that time it is, I’m sorry, it’s early 1900s, right? People already know the, “Oh, he’s clanking the fucking

Matt (01:08:56):

Rings

Laci (01:08:57):

Again.”

Matt (01:08:58):

And you got to do that so that you build them up. Yes.

Laci (01:09:02):

You want them to think they’re at some bullshit rinky ding magic show and then in boujee, you catch a bullet in your fucking mouth.

Matt (01:09:09):

Michael Kane is giving testimony in court at the murder trial of Christian Baltatched a man right there. Alfred Borden killed Robert Angela. Now, of course, there is no Robert Angier, but I guess back then you could just like, “This person’s on trial who doesn’t exist. Robert Angier. We are Britain so we don’t have social security numbers. This is 1900.This is old in time. So whatever.” Here’s a body.

Laci (01:09:32):

They

Matt (01:09:32):

Just

Laci (01:09:32):

Need the body and that man went by this name.

Matt (01:09:34):

Yeah, there you go. The prosecutor asks Michael Kane, “Explain how the disappearing man trick works.” And he’s like, “That’s a trade secret and I’m not going to fucking bloody tell you all in open court.” And the judge is like, “I understand. You can come

Laci (01:09:47):

Meet with me in private.” I appreciate that. We’re all just a squirrel trying to get a nut and the judge is also trying to get his nut and he won’t crack a man’s nut. Not another white man’s nut anyway. Am I doing that?

Matt (01:10:02):

So then this stuffy British guy visits Christian bale in prison. For the second movie in a row, Christian bales in a prison has to be separated from the other inmates. It’s really like- I don’t need protection. The

Laci (01:10:13):

Other actors just really don’t like him.

Matt (01:10:16):

Can

Laci (01:10:16):

We do the thing where he needs to be separate? That’s just really good for the plot.

Matt (01:10:20):

It’s just really good for, I think it’d be good for the movie, the man. For

Laci (01:10:24):

Morale. This

Matt (01:10:25):

Guy is named Owen or Owens. He represents Lord Kaldlow and he wants to buy Borden’s tricks including the transported man, which is the greatest of all his tricks. In

Laci (01:10:37):

Fact, we don’t ever see another one of his tricks. What other tricks did he have?

Matt (01:10:41):

I’m seeing here that I’m seeing here you have written down. Okay, you crashed the rings into each other. Great. Okay. You’re good at bouncing a ball.

Laci (01:10:48):

Correct. You did a bullet catch until your arch nemesis shot off your fingers with it. That’s

Matt (01:10:54):

Going to happen. That does happen. We know that happens. And

Laci (01:10:56):

Since then.

Matt (01:10:58):

And you’re going to want to sell the transported man so it will provide for your daughter’s future. And here is a show of good faith. I present to you courtesy Lord Caldwell, the diary of Robert Angier, your greatest rival.

Laci (01:11:11):

And I want you to pretend for one moment that your biggest fucking own of anyone you’ve ever hated the most was not you giving and planting a false diary to them just at the moment where they were the most desperate. I want you to forget that that happened and that you’ve been one-upping each other in the exact same way your entire lives. This is not that. Yes, it

Matt (01:11:32):

Is. It’s

Laci (01:11:34):

Another implant fucking diary.

Matt (01:11:35):

The thing that you in fact already did to him.

Laci (01:11:38):

Which is he’s always a step behind, but he’s going to get you, boy. That’s

Matt (01:11:42):

Him underestimating Hugh Jackman. Yeah. Which he does the whole movie. Does it the

Laci (01:11:46):

Whole movie?

Matt (01:11:47):

It’s so sad that these guys can’t just get along. Just be friends. So Christian Bale goes to his cell, starts reading the diary, the diary of Robert Angier played by Hugh Jackman. And so now we follow Hugh Jackman on his journey to Colorado. And when we’re in this timeline, we are in the diary timeline. Although there’s nothing to suggest that anything that happens there isn’t real. He’s not lying about anything that happened to him. It’s not that kind of thing. It’s not, I’m intentionally misdirecting you. Right.

Laci (01:12:16):

We don’t have a gone girl. We have a … I don’t remember the point of getting all the way to the end of the diary. Is it to reveal that he is-

Matt (01:12:25):

That he’s alive.

Laci (01:12:26):

Right. But how do you know that he wouldn’t speed read this

Matt (01:12:29):

Shit and

Laci (01:12:30):

Get to it before all the interaction?

Matt (01:12:32):

He’ll read it at the exact right time. I mean, I guess it’s a Nolan temporality. This whole thing, he’s reading it within about 15 minutes, I guess. Or maybe it required a cipher. It took him a long time to

Laci (01:12:45):

Do it. We saw the back and forth go through the bars that all happened because there’s a couple few times that he interacts with someone through the bars. And it all hinges on him not knowing that that’s actually Hugh Jackman.

Matt (01:12:58):

Right. Yeah. So you’re taking some chances. He’s not

Laci (01:13:02):

A lettered man. He can barely read that one. So he knew he had some time.

Matt (01:13:08):

Yes. And again, probably coded it in some way so you got to spend some time decoding. So in the Jackman timeline, he is trying to decode Christian Bales diary and you see how this movie might be as difficult to talk about as memento.

Laci (01:13:25):

Or inception. In fact, this is exactly the kind of thing. If he wasn’t the one who created inception, I’d be like, oh, it’s like diary inception. Diaryception.

Matt (01:13:36):

It is, but inception moves linearly. Inception moves beginning to end. It’s just a lot of dream within a dream. What’s in limbo? Unconstructed dream space.

Laci (01:13:45):

Okay, but a diary within a diary.

Matt (01:13:47):

I know.

Laci (01:13:47):

Those by law, physics have to happen in different timelines because how would you have written the diary that’s in the diary?

Matt (01:13:54):

Jesus. Fuck. All right. Somebody make a diagram. This is the- Avin

Laci (01:13:57):

Diary

Matt (01:13:58):

Agreement. Yeah, this is kind of a cloud atlas where you … It’s a Russian nesting doll. The story I was reading was a novel written by this person who was on a cruise ship journey in this newspaper article written by this person. Okay. Reaches Colorado Springs to make contact with Nicola Tesla who provided the whole town with electricity and he goes up to Tesla’s compound and he meets Andy Circus just playing a role, not in mocap as Tesla’s assistant or as per the fan theory Tesla himself. So he’s here to meet Mr. Tesla because Mr. Tesla built a machine for a colleague of his and he wants him to do it for him. Andy Circus is like, “Well, no guarantee he can meet with Mr. Tesla.”

Laci (01:14:47):

Nobody ever sees it and nobody not know how. Oh, well you can. That’s all this is.

Matt (01:14:52):

Well, he’s kind of like Batman begins of like, “Well, you need to prove your worth. Come up the mountain, bring this flower.” But his come up the mountain is go be at the hotel for a few weeks. We’ll see.

Laci (01:15:01):

Right. And then come up this mound of dirt, mine the hats and give us a big old pile of money.

Matt (01:15:09):

Which probably if you’re a filmmaker who develops projects probably does feel like, “Oh, I spent a year working on maybe trying to get this thing made only to realize it’s not going to go anywhere.” So like, “Oh, I’ll go wait for several weeks and maybe Mr. Tesla will meet with me and maybe I’ll never know if he’ll meet with me.

Laci (01:15:25):

” Oh, I actually flipped it. I was like, “Yeah, Nicola Tess has been working on this whatever project forever and ever and ever and it costs money to continue the project. And if at some point you run out of funds, well, you just spend a whole lot of time developing something that’s incomplete.” Yeah, exactly. It’ll never be seen.

Matt (01:15:38):

It’s that too. Yeah. And he’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. He’s running out of all these finances and then he sees this rich magician is like, “You can pay for my next movie.”

Laci (01:15:47):

But literally that’s why just go wait down there. And if you’re still there, then that probably means you give us a lot of money. But it also is like, “Oh, we got some money right now. So go on, you’re bothering me.

Matt (01:15:56):

” You’re bothering me.

Laci (01:15:58):

And if I end up finishing this before I need your money, then I’m going to give this to Peter because I promised it to Peter. But then if I finish it with yours, I give it to you.

Matt (01:16:08):

And you got to love if you have a job where people can order something from you and you’ll be like, “Well, it’s never going to guarantee…” No guarantee it’s going to work like you want it to work, but these things happen.

Laci (01:16:18):

I’m literally discovering these technologies as I’m making them. This is fucking Elon Musk because he still held bet on sending us someone to Mars, but it costs like $500,000 for him to send you to Mars. But then once you get there, you’re just in Mars. There’s nothing there waiting for you. There’s no you coming back. He’s shooting you into the sky to die.

Matt (01:16:41):

It’s like that South Park episode where they send free Willie to the moon because they think whales come from the moon and then the last shot of the episode is just a dead whale on the moon. It’s like that.

Laci (01:16:50):

It’s like that.

Matt (01:16:51):

So in Borden’s Journal, we now go back to the earliest part of their timeline where they are working as hired help for the magician played by Ricky J. Milton the magician and Hugh Jackerman’s character is married to a woman played by Piper Parabo who’s the magician’s assistant and she goes into the water tank, but she’s good at getting out of knots and Christian Bale’s the one who ties the knots, but he’s getting a little fancy with his knots or maybe he’s like, “We could do this even better.”

Laci (01:17:21):

He thinks he knows better. He’s just a scrappy startup kid that’s got a natural gift and he knows what it takes to commit, but he thinks he knows knots better than this guy. When this guy literally uses the term wet knot, I’m like, oh damn, their sister think is a wet and a dry knot and he had a reason for it that’s going to swell. She’ll get stuck and that is what happened.

Matt (01:17:41):

But Piper Parrabo, there’s a little look between her and Christian Baylor. I know. He was like, she’s kind of on his side. I’d like to try your knot method.

Laci (01:17:48):

And you get the sense that they’ve been working on it on the side. They have been trying it.

Matt (01:17:52):

Yeah.

Laci (01:17:52):

That’s why I do not understand the through line of … Oh, fuck, that’s why. God, that just came to me. I guess. Does this make sense? So I never bought it for a second Christian bale saying he doesn’t know which naughty tide. Is it just that every time he’s being asked he’s the other brother?

Matt (01:18:08):

Yeah. Why

Laci (01:18:10):

Don’t you just ask the other brother?

Matt (01:18:11):

I know. Hey, let’s get our story straight. Remember

Laci (01:18:12):

How we killed a girl?

Matt (01:18:14):

Maybe you’re just memories. You just can’t make new memories. I don’t know.

Laci (01:18:17):

No, no, no. Maybe part of their agreement is you cannot tell me what goes on when you’re living my life. And I cannot tell you what go … You will just find out when you pop up there because otherwise we are going to get our shit crossed. I have no idea what I’m talking

Matt (01:18:32):

About. I mean, that might be a cleaner solution than let’s try and be on the same page. There’s a lot of … I don’t know. I mean, what do lawyers tell you to say? To the best of my recollection, I

Laci (01:18:42):

Don’t recall. That’s what it was. It just sounded like smart, but he doesn’t seem like the smartest guy. He just seems like a really hardworking, focused, smart guy. Okay, smart.

Matt (01:18:52):

So Michael Kane has this ax, just a nice little note like, “Yeah, this is all dangerous.”

Laci (01:19:00):

Right. He’s timing it nervously on the side.

Matt (01:19:02):

But it goes off without a hitch this first time. She’s great at getting out of a knot and getting out of a freaking tank of water.

Laci (01:19:10):

Wet is all get out.

Matt (01:19:12):

And then in the backstage, Christian Bale is just yelling about how this Ricky J, he’s washed up, he’s out of ideas, he’s stodgy and tired and old. We need some new blood in this industry, man. The

Laci (01:19:25):

Blood of your wife.

Matt (01:19:26):

Michael Kane actually agrees with him, but is at first like, “Oh, and I should pause your man who’s going to do it. You’re going to shake up the magic game, are you? “

Laci (01:19:34):

I mean, he’s got coattails right because he’s wearing a tux. If you’re literally riding that man’s coattails, you got to wait for new ones before you jump off. Yeah, you know that his day’s running up, but nothing’s here to replace them yet, my man.

Matt (01:19:46):

Right. Now Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman don’t seem like they … They’ve only met each other a few days ago at this point, it seems like, because they- Are you sure? Yeah. Hugh Jackman says to Michael Kane, “Where’d you meet this guy anyway?” Oh, he works for Virgil, the magician or whatever. And I don’t know. So he’s like the new guy on the thing.

Laci (01:20:04):

Well, know your place, Christian Bale. That is pretty presumptuous. You’re coming in here, this guy’s fucking shit. You were working for Virgil down at the post office before you came over here. You’re on a stage now.

Matt (01:20:16):

Right.

Laci (01:20:17):

Calm down.

Matt (01:20:18):

I’ll tell you what though, you two go on a mengician date, go see Ching Ling Fu. Tell me if you can tell me how he makes his goldfish bowl appear out of nothing. Then you’ll get 10 minutes on stage in front of the hottest theatrical agent in London or whatever.

Laci (01:20:34):

He can do that. He can just do that again.

Matt (01:20:37):

Look at

Laci (01:20:37):

These guys. It’s fucking you, Jackman and Christian Bale. Put these guys on the stage.

Matt (01:20:41):

Yeah. And Michael Kane’s job, he’s cutter. He’s the engineer. He makes the magic gadgets. Jackman and Bale go on their date. It’s the only part of the movie where they seem to like each other even a little bit.

Laci (01:20:54):

Look at that sweet face.

Matt (01:20:55):

You see Christian Bale just being very amused by the magician and Hugh Jackman looking over at him for affirmation. You like this too, right? But you can already kind of see their differences.

Laci (01:21:06):

It just occurred to me because you laid it out perfectly there. When he’s trying to describe what his job is in court, it’s like the guy that’s the anchor or the tracer for the fucking comic book process. Wait a second. So somebody thinks of the ideas, somebody draws it and then you just draw the lines of it. It’s an important part of the process, but it’s a weird job. And the think geneer or whatever the fuck he is a weird distinction. Okay. So you come up with illusions and then you make them and it’s like, no, no. Someone has an illusion, a magician, tells me what they’re trying to achieve. I think of how … I was like, because how does the ownership work? Is it truly just that these two men are better showman so they get up there and they present this? Why does the magician have any overship on it all?

Laci (01:21:50):

This is why. They’re not engineers. They are thinkingers. I can’t think of another … What do they call them at Imagineers? I thought of this, but I can’t do this. So he do this and then they show it. And then together they are partnership because I was wondering why Cutter doesn’t just get up there and do his own tricks. That’s all. That was my point.

Matt (01:22:12):

Or he’s on a movie, he’s the tech guy, the special effects

Laci (01:22:16):

Coordinator.

Matt (01:22:17):

Or you could even say he’s the producer and the magician’s the director. I don’t have a brain for logistics making things work together, but I’m the creative guy.

Laci (01:22:26):

I get that. But if the whole industry thrives on thinking of something no one else has thought to do, whether or not you can figure out how to do it, I’ll get a guy that can do that. Then the currency is the guy that thought of it. The brain that conceived of a new illusion. You want to foster that brain because they could maybe have another one and apparently you can do a whole career on one. Imagine what you do too. So that’s why I was saying if Cutter … Because Cutter’s basically just Christian Bale. He’s maybe got less pizazz than Hugh Jackman, but if he can think it, make it, why don’t he do it? He’d be

Matt (01:23:02):

Rich. Yeah, I don’t know.

Laci (01:23:02):

So that’s what I’m saying. He is just the engineer and that’s why there’s this like a gentleman’s agreement. We need each other. We are the three things. Are they the three things? Are one of them the fucking pledge turn and prestige? Yes. Yes. Ah, cutter is the pledge. Bail is the turn and or whatever. You switched me.

Matt (01:23:25):

Because Bale comes back at the end. He’s the prestige. Yes. We watched him die, but there he is. There you go. Yes.

Laci (01:23:31):

Okay. So that puts …

Matt (01:23:34):

Jackman is the turn. Jackman is

Laci (01:23:36):

The turn. We nailed

Matt (01:23:37):

It. Because

Laci (01:23:37):

We think he’s going to end up on top at the end and he doesn’t. I figured it out, Nolan.

Matt (01:23:44):

So they’re watching this guy after the show and they watch him get escorted into his horse carriage as a very feeble old man. And Christian Bill’s just like this right here. This is the trick. Total devotion to his art. Lot of self-sacrifice. He’s

Laci (01:23:58):

Two feet from the theater. He just did this trick in. Total sacrifice.

Matt (01:24:02):

It’s the only way to escape all this, you know? And Jackman’s like, “No, I don’t.” I don’t

Laci (01:24:07):

Know. Literally what? I just want to know what the other twin is doing all day. I just want to know so bad. Wait, I keep answering my question and forgetting. It’s just another guy. He’s foul and he has older life. I forgot.

Matt (01:24:24):

Or maybe not. Maybe he’s disguised as other people. He’s always there too. He’s always also in the crowd. He has lots of different disguises.

Laci (01:24:31):

You get bored down there.

Matt (01:24:32):

Jackman is talking to his wife later and he’s like, “It’s unthinkable. Borden saw it right away, but I couldn’t fathom it, basically the total devotion to living that Cafe performance all of the time. Even though he himself is living the Cafe performance, he’s speaking in an American accent to his wife.

Laci (01:24:48):

His makes more sense though. He’s trying to fit in in a whole industry that already exists where Bal is proposing that someone is trying to be such an exception to something that already exists that they can’t even live a life with other people around.

Matt (01:25:04):

Yeah. Bale’s thing is a way bigger deal.

Laci (01:25:08):

It secludes you where Hugh Jackman’s character finds a life that includes him and gives him glory. Bale secludes him entirely even from his wife maybe. We’re not totally sure. All he has is his brother.

Matt (01:25:23):

And the thing that makes him want to push himself further is that he’s not satisfied with being below the stag as the crowd applauds. He needs to literally be there and soak it up, whereas Christian Bale wouldn’t care about that.

Laci (01:25:36):

Right. For him, it’s the craft. It’s making something that did not exist before and leaving people with that feeling of like, whoa. Yeah, that’s worth ruining lives. They both are willing to ruin lives.

Matt (01:25:49):

I mean, right here, his wife says, “You’re pretending to be somebody else.” And he’s like, “Yeah, I agree to change my name to not embarrass my family.” And again, I’ve seen this movie so many times, never noticed that line until right here and suddenly everything about his character makes sense that he is actually this uppercross British Lord, fancy lad, who’s pretending to be an American magic guy. And she gives him his performing name right here, The Great Danton, which is like kind of lame, but once she dies, he likes it. And Bale- That’s

Laci (01:26:20):

All you got to do to be a woman, get some respect, die.

Matt (01:26:22):

Works at the Virgil Magic Show with the bird trick where they make a bird disappear and we now meet Rebecca Hall as Sarah in the audience with her little nephew. And when we see the bird trick, I don’t remember if we’ve been shown yet that the bird trick involves killing a bird each time.

Laci (01:26:38):

It’s implied because there’s so many birds in the cages. Why would you need that many birds? I remember hearing somewhere, and I wish I could remember where, that it’s actually much harder to perform magic in front of kids because to kids, magic still exists. So they see the logic rather than the magic because what you just did is obvious to them where performing magic for adults, magic’s really for them because they’ve lost that imaginative part of their brain. So they just want to see somebody do something to trick them. I don’t remember. Kids are still in a state where they’re figuring the world out and adults are jaded of having to live in the world. So one of them is seeking to be fooled and the other one is thinking, “Oh, I need to figure this out. “

Matt (01:27:21):

So

Laci (01:27:22):

He does.

Matt (01:27:22):

Whatever sort of kid intuition he has makes him see immediately, “You killed the bird and he’s very upset.” And then they’re like, “No, no, no, no. Look, we brought it back. It’s all good.” And he says, “Where’s this

Laci (01:27:33):

Brother?”

Matt (01:27:35):

Which … And Christian Bale looks at him, he’s like, “This one, this kid, this kid’s pretty clever.” This

Laci (01:27:41):

Kid knows about brothers.

Matt (01:27:43):

And then Christian Bale goes to the bird room, puts the alive bird into a cage, says, “You’re the lucky one today,” and then disposes of the bird carcass, which is also a thing that they’re doing later in the movie. So the point of all this is Nolan tells you everything, everything in the movie, everything you’re going to see, all the tricks revealed in the first 12 minutes.

Laci (01:28:04):

Yeah. And you choose to keep watching the illusion.

Matt (01:28:07):

But later he takes Rebecca Hall on a lunch date and he’s like, “Oh, I’d like to come in for a cup of turkey.”

Laci (01:28:12):

This is the most bizarre moment in the whole fucking movie. Well, number one, following her up to her apartment. I feel like are we not old fashioned here? You guys are old. What the hell? You follow a lady up to her apartment and then imply, “I guess I could use some today.” She didn’t fucking ask you in, buddy. Aren’t you basically saying you’d like sex now?

Matt (01:28:32):

Well, she says she’d like to, but her landlord won’t allow it. But he can tell. She’s putting out vibes into the universe.

Laci (01:28:38):

And then he just fucking gets into her house before she does?

Matt (01:28:42):

Yeah. Although the brother’s already in there.

Laci (01:28:46):

Oh my God. Okay. That’s why he’s so different and weird. I guess I’ll have some change. He says it’s not gentle at all like the guy outside. He’s like, “Well, I guess I’m training cocaine.” And then she’s like, “Ah.” And

Matt (01:29:00):

Then she’s laughing.He’s such a great magician. Oh my God. Doors and locks won’t keep this guy out. Nothing will keep this guy from me.

Laci (01:29:06):

Fucking Edward Cullen. I didn’t

Matt (01:29:07):

Sign

Laci (01:29:07):

Up for a vampire.

Matt (01:29:09):

Yeah. And I didn’t sign up for two of you.

Laci (01:29:10):

You go to the bathroom and he’s shitting while you look under you and he’s shitting while you’re shit. I don’t know the links he’s going to go to. Well,

Matt (01:29:18):

This is also some of David Kronenberg’s dead ringers where Jeremy Irons is playing twin brothers and there’s the brother who’s more confident who will have sex with ladies and then when he gets bored with him, he lets his brother switch in and pretend to be him and continue having sex with them. So it’s two brothers sharing, in a way, sharing one life, not literally sharing one life, but you can take some of my stuff and pretend to be me. Sharing

Laci (01:29:41):

One half of my life. Right. Yeah. And the women are juxtaposed too, right? Because Sarah, the one that he marries is more like him where she doesn’t want to be fooled. She sees. That’s how she can say sometimes you’re telling me the truth and sometimes you’re telling me a lie. Miscarlet Johannes never once thinks there’s two of them. She wants Be illusioned. She’s in the game. She wants illusions to be something that happened to adults. So she’s just like, “Oh, he’s just on his period

Matt (01:30:07):

Today.” And I think that the idea is that Sarah falls in love with Alfred and Olivia falls in love with Freddy and Freddy’s the one who’s way more into magic. Alfred’s the one who’s more normal. Yeah.

Laci (01:30:21):

Right. Wants to go home after or meet Sarah alone or Freddy, “That’s come with me. Fucking who cares about Sarah? Let’s all go eat a nice dinner.”

Matt (01:30:29):

Right. And Olivia being in the industry relates more to that. We’re colleagues. Yeah.

Laci (01:30:33):

Well, and he’s not in a rush to leave. He wants to hang out with me. So it’s like, okay, I guess this guy is flirting with … On then Fred goes home, she’s like, “Well.”

Matt (01:30:44):

Now my question is, were they born Alfred and Frederick? And parents, come on. Come on, man.

Laci (01:30:50):

We’ll never know.

Matt (01:30:51):

So this water tank, which is of particular significance.

Laci (01:30:55):

What is it in the credits? What is that character in the credits?

Matt (01:30:59):

Alfred Borden.

Laci (01:31:00):

No split?

Matt (01:31:01):

No Fallon? No, it just goes Robert Angier, Hugh Jackman. Alfred Borden, Christian Bale. Yeah. It doesn’t do Robert Angier/Lord called low slash, what’s his name? The actor, the British actor. No, the drunkard that they hire. Oh,

Laci (01:31:18):

Right. Root.

Matt (01:31:20):

Yeah, Gerald Root. Yeah, it doesn’t do that. Another interesting thing with Nolan and credits is when he does the Batman credits, usually in superhero movies, Toby McGuire has Peter Parker/Spiderman. In the Nolan movies, Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne because he’s saying it’s Bruce Wayne. That man’s not a real person.

Laci (01:31:41):

Right. Huh. Nolan, I’m starting to warm up to you.

Matt (01:31:48):

In the modern timeline, Michael Kane is showing the transporting machine to a judge and he’s like, “What’s going to happen to this machine?” And the guy’s like, “It’s going to Lord Caldlow.” And then the judge is like, “So what’s up with this machine? Who built it? ” And he’s like, “Well, a magician didn’t build it. A wizard did. And the thing is it doesn’t have a trick. It’s real. Now this water tank over here, the thing about this water tank has an awful significance. So we flash back to see that significance.

Laci (01:32:16):

Okay. May I just please point out that you’re so worried you have a stopwatch. You’re so worried you have a hammer designed to free the person, but you’re not so worried that you’ve ever tested the fucking tank to how long it takes you to hammer it with the hammer you’ve chosen. It takes you just long enough to let her die. You’ve never timed that? You didn’t add that to the time. You thought this hammer would be instant open and she’d get instant breath and be fine. Why else time it otherwise?

Matt (01:32:45):

You ever heard of a plug? How about that? A plug she can just kick out if things get spotty.

Laci (01:32:52):

But you see what I’m saying? He’s so prepared, but he’s not at all. The timer

Matt (01:32:56):

Is just for

Laci (01:32:57):

How long she can hold her breath, not for how long it takes him to hammer it.

Matt (01:33:00):

Because he

Laci (01:33:00):

Doesn’t-

Matt (01:33:01):

Well, it’s the illusion of control that we can do this safely. And no, you can’t. No, you can’t. There’s nothing you can do. No, you

Laci (01:33:06):

Can’t up and hammer. No, you can’t.

Matt (01:33:09):

Flashback to the day that she drowned in the tank because Borden ties the knot with her approval, but apparently it’s too complex and she can’t get out and so she dies on there in front of everybody. It is horrifying. And then there’s the funeral and Michael Kane is like, here we all got at the funeral. One time I knew a sailor.

Laci (01:33:28):

Not now. Not now, cutter.

Matt (01:33:30):

Now it’s really good. He drowned and then five minutes later he came back to life. But he said drowning was the most pleasant thing in the

Laci (01:33:36):

Woe. Hs like going home.

Matt (01:33:37):

Lot going home. And then Borden shows up and they’re like, “What are you doing here?”

Laci (01:33:42):

It’s a fucking funeral. I know five people.

Matt (01:33:44):

And he says, “I’m sorry for your loss, Angia.” Can’t even say Robert. “I’m sorry for your loss, Robert. “And Robert is like, ” Hey, motherfucker, what not did you tie? “And he says,” I keep asking myself that. I just don’t know. “He

Laci (01:33:59):

Just keeps asking his brother who is himself. “Just tell me. ” No, just tell me.

Matt (01:34:05):

No.

Laci (01:34:05):

No. I keep asking myself and he won’t fucking tell me.

Matt (01:34:09):

And then Hugh Jackman, how could you not know? And this drives him crazy for the rest of the movie. How could he not know that?

Laci (01:34:14):

It’s like, have you heard of lying to you Jackman? He’s lying. That’s the most obvious thing here. He doesn’t not know. He just not tell you.

Matt (01:34:23):

Yes, but he could … This is a thing that happens to people all the time. The most important thing that happens to somebody else is absolutely minor to the other person. I

Laci (01:34:30):

Know, but why let it drive you crazy when the obvious answer is that guy’s a fucking liar. You guys are both liars. You’re illusionists. Sorry, don’t mean to-

Matt (01:34:38):

We get our first good look at Fallon or not a good look. Okay. Fallon-

Laci (01:34:45):

An

Matt (01:34:45):

Ugly

Laci (01:34:45):

Man.

Matt (01:34:47):

I think the biggest leap you have to make with this movie because it is very weird that a movie just will not show you a character full on.

Laci (01:34:55):

Right. Or let them talk.

Matt (01:34:57):

Right. For someone who is so prominent and in a movie where every role is played by an actor that you know. And I usually know every actor in every movie. It’s weird when I don’t. So I don’t know what the solution … I think this is the thing Nolan would say, this is the thing you just have to accept, that there’s going to be this guy in this movie and you might notice we’re never seeing him full on or that he’s not played by Anthony Hopkins.

Laci (01:35:23):

Right. And because you’re watching a movie about magic, you accept it because you know intuitively there will be a payoff. We don’t know if Found’s going to pay off, but I’ll let this go.

Matt (01:35:37):

There’s

Laci (01:35:37):

Several things you have to just let go because you’re like, “I just want to get to the fucking Inn where they tell me about the tricks.”

Matt (01:35:41):

Because the more you see Fallon, it’s great makeup. It doesn’t look to me. It wouldn’t occur to me that’s Christian Bale.

Laci (01:35:49):

It’s just like Gone Girl. All you have to do is change the shape of the face and to do that it takes great commitment, but it makes to where you can’t talk right. So he’s got cotton balls here and here, which you can perfectly see these circular cotton balls right here by his lips and then he’s got them through here. So it makes all this very round where Christian Bale just is very cut. He’s not round like this and the rest is obvious shit, but it might be a fake nose too. I think they show him put him on a fake nose. Yeah.

Matt (01:36:15):

So Sarah is hanging out with her husband, they’re having fun, having a few laughs and he’s like, “Who tell you do the catching a bullet trick?” Or no, first he doesn’t want to tell her how he catches a bullet. And then she’s like, “Well, then you can never do it. ” And Mr. And he’s like, “Fine, I’ll tell you. I’ll never lie to you. ” Explains how to do the trick and it’s something that I still can’t quite understand when I watch the movie of how you- He’s

Laci (01:36:38):

Packing a shot but not putting anything to propel in it.

Matt (01:36:42):

But what is the thing about some Weiseger could put a penny in it?

Laci (01:36:45):

Because he took the bullet out so there’s nothing to shoot with a bullet. So if you put a penny in it, you’re shooting a penny.

Matt (01:36:51):

Who’s putting the penny in? Some guy picks up a gun. Someone who

Laci (01:36:54):

Thinks that the trick is that you packed a shot and took the bullet out

Matt (01:36:57):

Wants

Laci (01:36:57):

To then hurt you and prove, say, hi, I know your trick.

Matt (01:37:00):

Okay. Someone knows the trick. That’s why they’re doing it.

Laci (01:37:03):

Knows the concept of shooting a blank. Because if a bullet falls out the gun that easy, I can guarantee you plenty of drunk men have lost their bullet that way, fired a shot and nothing happens. Oh, I guess if you pack gunpowder in and then pull the fucking power thing, then you get the pow and you get the explosion, but nothing is projected. You don’t want to be right by it. It’s still loud. It’ll still blow your hair back, but it’s not blowing anything away

Matt (01:37:31):

And

Laci (01:37:31):

Into something

Matt (01:37:32):

Else. And he has the thing that you pack the thing with. I’m a gun guy. The pack and stick, it’s hollow so he can make the bullet go through and just end up in his hand so that he has it so that he can pretend to catch it. Now Sarah then says like, “Oh, it’s actually really obvious once you know it. ” And I love how immediately he’s like, “Oh no, it’s actually really dangerous still.” It’s like really hard and dangerous, honestly. And then she’s like, “Oh, okay. I love you. ” And he’s like, “Yeah, I love you too.” And she does the first of her … No, you don’t. Not today. Not today. Not today. Some days.

Laci (01:38:03):

Today you’re really into magic and you’re being kind of a dick. Some days you’re more in love with magic. Yeah,

Matt (01:38:09):

That’s

Laci (01:38:09):

The other brother. And with that magic comes Scarlet Johansen.

Matt (01:38:14):

And what she says is, “I like to know because it makes the days when you’re more in love with me all the more special.” And he’s like, “Well, okay then.” And you’re like, “Boy, this couple, healthy, normal, good.” Later, that exact line will be the one that sends her over the edge, makes it so much more painful on the days when you don’t mean it. Right. So he starts performing Christian Bale does Borden in small venues as the professor and even the professor’s just a less inspired moniker than the great Danton and he’s just not a good showman and the crowd isn’t into it and he’s like, “You don’t lock my rings banging into each other.” No. Okay. I

Laci (01:38:53):

Guess I’ll get shot then.

Matt (01:38:55):

Who

Laci (01:38:55):

Wants to fight? No.

Matt (01:38:58):

And it’s Hugh Jackman in disguise and he takes the gun and he puts his own bullet in. He says, “Which not did you tie Borden?” And Borden says, “I don’t know. ” And he shoots, but right as he shoots, Fallon notices it’s Hugh Jackman and tackles him so the gun fires in a different way, shoots off two of Christian Bale’s fingers. And then in the Colorado timeline, Hugh Jackman is now reading the point in Christian Bale’s diary where he says he can’t remember which knot he tied and Hugh Jackman’s like, “God damn

Laci (01:39:25):

It. ” This is the whole point in the diary.

Matt (01:39:28):

So after the gun shenan against Hugh Jackman’s like, “Well, I got my revenge. I shot off two of his fingers. Now I’m going to team up with Michael Kane. Michael Kane needs the work because no one will hire him. They think he’s the guy who killed that lady, but Hugh Jackman, you’re the one guy who knows it wasn’t my fault. So let’s team up. We need an assistant, Scarlet Johansen as Olivia and he’s come up with some cool new tricks and this team, they’re working really well as a team. They’ve got this brand new bird thing trick that doesn’t involve killing birds and that’s nice. Well,

Laci (01:39:59):

It’s a really good move by the movie because again, there’s only so many tricks in the world and only so many you can give anything away about. Almost every performance, if not all of them, have one trick that we see as the audience. We don’t see anything else. We see the water tank thing, we see the bird thing and we see the transported man. The only other thing we hear is clanking on the chain. There’s only so much. What an interesting industry to be in when there’s so little to go around.

Matt (01:40:30):

This is why David Copperfield’s show at the MGM Grand has half of it taken up with a UFO coming into the auditorium and then his little animatronic Blue 32 and they do an Amblin short film. Check out Blue 32 on YouTube, everybody.

Laci (01:40:45):

Oh, hashtag not sponsored?

Matt (01:40:48):

No, it’s just a fascinating … I’ve made you listen to a podcast about it, but this insane thing that happens every night at the MGM Grand.

Laci (01:40:55):

And people still go to see.

Matt (01:40:56):

Yeah.

Laci (01:40:57):

It’s the same idea of waiting two hours in line for a rollercoaster that goes for 30 seconds. Same reason we have sex. It is a whole lot of buildup and you’re just waiting for that moment where you’re like, “This time I’m going to figure out how it works.” The orgasm or this time I’m going to, I don’t know, I’m going to make the 30 seconds less longer when I’m in there flipping around, not sex, roller coaster. It’s just worth sitting. The buildup makes it worth it. If you just could go over and over and over on that rollercoaster or orgasm, organism, organism, none of it would be special anymore.

Matt (01:41:35):

Which is why I say to people, people are always coming up to me, “Matt, what’s the secret to great sex?” And I’m like, “I’m glad you asked. The secret to great sex is not about coming. It’s about fucking. You want to be a guy who fucks, not a guy who comes.”

Laci (01:41:45):

Correct.

Matt (01:41:46):

But that’s not what’s not about the come. It’s about the fuck.

Laci (01:41:49):

We do a good fuck.

Matt (01:41:50):

Yeah.

Laci (01:41:51):

You me. Yep.

Matt (01:41:52):

Similarly, our son keeps playing the Minions rush game. Wait,

Laci (01:41:55):

Why say those two things right next to each other? Fuck.

Matt (01:41:58):

And if I could buy an ad-free version of the game, it wouldn’t be as fun for him. He has to sit through the 30-second ad every time he-

Laci (01:42:04):

We are teaching him an important part of fucking being on a computer on a tablet. There are ads and you need to know how to get out of them, otherwise you end up buying shit.

Matt (01:42:14):

And if the ads weren’t there, you’d realize, oh, this is a very limited game.

Laci (01:42:18):

Oh, correct. Specifically about this, but yes, correct.

Matt (01:42:21):

The great Danton does his show. He needs two volunteers and one of them, god damn it, is Christian Mail who messes up the bird trick and kills the bird in front of everyone and maims a lady. Do

Laci (01:42:31):

You think Fallon’s just in another seat just to double their eyes?

Matt (01:42:33):

Got to double the odds.

Laci (01:42:35):

Yeah. Who’s what’s there? Doesn’t matter. Got to get

Matt (01:42:36):

Picked. And so they get evicted from this theater, but Michael Kane’s like, “It’s just a minor setback. Here’s what I want you to do, Robert. Go check out the big technical exposition in town. See if he gets some ideas.”

Laci (01:42:49):

He’s always got some busy work for these fuckers.

Matt (01:42:51):

I know, but he never gets discouraged. Always like, “Hey, like Don Draper go into the movies, shake the cobwebs loose. You’ll get some ideas.”

Laci (01:42:58):

You literally broke a lady’s hand in front of everyone.

Matt (01:43:03):

You’re going to break a few bones when you do this business.

Laci (01:43:05):

You’re already the guy that drowned a lady.

Matt (01:43:07):

You’re going to drown a lady too. At least

Laci (01:43:08):

You could have broken a man’s hand.

Matt (01:43:10):

In Colorado, Angier meets with Andy Circus at the hotel bar and he’s like, “I want your boss, Mr. Tesla, to build me a goddamn machine.” And he’s like, “I don’t know, but come see this thing.” And he takes him out to this field where they’re conducting electrical experiments.

Laci (01:43:25):

He’s like, “I don’t talk to many people. You want to come see my light bulb field?” Yeah,

Matt (01:43:28):

It’s just a field of light bulbs. What’s conducting the electricity? Where’s the wires? It’s like snow electricity. And he’s like, “My God, it’s real magic.” But it’s just the thing in this movie where electricity, this new thing that does feel like magic. Man has always lived in the dark. Now we don’t.

Laci (01:43:46):

Right. But imagine someone who’s never had electricity all of a sudden realizing they invented it and now they have changed the world. And who knows for the better or worse? Probably for the worse. I mean, I don’t know. Now there’s medical devices. I guess that’s good. It’s so hard to know, but so much power in one person’s hand. Nolan, only person who gets to play with these big tricks on a big budget. He feels like Tesla and Edison. I’ll give you what you think you want, but what if you don’t want it?

Matt (01:44:16):

The internet, the phone.

Laci (01:44:18):

Yeah, all of it.

Matt (01:44:19):

Imagine how, I mean, electricity, going from not having electricity to having electricity, there must have been no better jump up. There’s nothing like that.

Laci (01:44:31):

I’m sure life was really peaceful with all those lights. I’m sure you had clear delineation between night and day. Now I get

Matt (01:44:38):

To swing- No, you’re right. That was the stupidest thing I ever said because I can flick a thing and my lights turned on, you didn’t know that that was something you needed. So you lit the lights other ways.

Laci (01:44:49):

And your eyes were adjusted to what you were used to. And

Matt (01:44:53):

On

Laci (01:44:53):

Rainy days you slept probably. Oh,

Matt (01:44:57):

It’s so nice.

Laci (01:44:58):

Yeah. Electricity ruined everything.

Matt (01:45:00):

He goes to the go down to the expedition, free, clean energy for the future. But who else is in the audience? It’s Christian Bale and he’s looking up fascinated and Angie notices him. And something’s going wrong, this machine’s malfunctioning or something. I like the idea. Tesla’s kind of a fuck up.

Laci (01:45:16):

Nothing’s going wrong. People are just scared of it. They think electricity is lightning from the sky and that kills people. He’s showing you that you can take a current and you can make it safe to be around people to pass it around to make it easier to spread

Matt (01:45:32):

Without being electrical. The venue is doing something that Tesla requested a certain thing, the venue isn’t supplying it and therefore he refuses to appear.

Laci (01:45:44):

I don’t know. Maybe, but that scene read to me like a misunderstanding of what was going on. People saw something they thought they knew and went, “That’s dangerous. It’s going everywhere.” But the point of the demonstration was like, yeah, it can touch you and you’ll be fine.

Matt (01:45:56):

Okay. And Christian Bale gets it and no one else does. He’s like, “Oh, okay. This could be, I can work this into my show. I’m not good at the theatrics of the thing, but this can help me. “

Laci (01:46:06):

And because this is science and people just aren’t willing to accept something new. And fucking pussy ass Angier just ran away. So this is definitely the thing I’m going to use.

Matt (01:46:17):

After this show, Angier stalks Borden and finds him going home to his lovely wife and his beautiful baby daughter and he’s like, “I saw happiness, happiness that should have been mine.” But he’s reading Bale’s diary and he’s like, “But the happiness, it didn’t seem to fulfill him. Sometimes he loved his family. Sometimes he craved the freedom from his family. His mind is divided.” But that’s why I was so happy to learn about Christian Bale and his dad because it seems like everything that he said … Sorry, real Christian Bale, not the character. Yeah. Everything Christian Bales said in those interviews about the kind of person his dad was seemed like it could fit the description of this character right here.

Laci (01:46:57):

It also felt a borderline personality disorder or just anyone that got tied down when they had big dreams, but ended up caring that they did well by their family as well. You’re always going to be two people. You had that other life planned out, you saw it, you just didn’t need to do it.

Matt (01:47:13):

And a motif that occurs throughout Nolan’s filmography is the obsessive man who loves his family so much and can’t get back to his family usually because of his own obsessions have created some sort of barrier, whether legal inception or space and interstellar … Yeah. I don’t know what to do with my life other than make movies, but making movies takes me away from my kids. I do love my kids with all my heart. I love movies with all my heart.

Laci (01:47:42):

My kids love that I’m a millionaire. My whole estate loves that I’m a million. It’s like once you start making money, it’s never so much money you can quit. You just spend it.

Matt (01:47:51):

And my wife is my business partner.

Laci (01:47:54):

We’ll never se each other again if we don’t work together.

Matt (01:47:56):

So we finally meet Tesla and he’s played by David Bowie. He appears out of the electricity like it’s magic and even David Bowie’s casting is its own magic trick. It’s stunt casting. David Bowie hadn’t been in a movie in a long time, I don’t think.

Laci (01:48:11):

And I feel like everyone associates him with the labyrinth, which is a movie of magic.

Matt (01:48:14):

And he just as a figure, as a cultural figure, is this constantly evolving and devotion to his craft. And when one thing stops working, I become something else entirely.

Laci (01:48:27):

He lives a different life. He method sings or whatever. Method entertains.

Matt (01:48:35):

So they’re having a little lunch and Tesla says to Angier, he’s like, “You’ve heard the phrase man’s reach exceeds his grasp.” Well, no, it’s a lie. Man’s grasp exceeds his nerve. Yeah. The thing is I had some professional shame. I meant to look into Tesla’s biography, but yeah, listen, the thing that you want, it’s not impossible. It’s just expensive. It’s just one of those things that we could do. We just need the resources to do it. But have you considered the cost of this machine? And he says, “Price is not an object.” And he says, “Perhaps not, but if you considered the cost, go home, forget this thing. I can recognize an obsession. No good will come of it. “

Laci (01:49:16):

Unless you ask me again. Oh, you really, really want it.

Matt (01:49:19):

Well, no, what he says is like, “If you understand obsession, you know I’m not going to go home.” And he’s like, “Yeah, that’s why I’ve already started building it. ” All of these things. There’s no point in us saying any of these things. Yeah,

Laci (01:49:29):

But you built it wrong. You left the other thing there and then made a new thing. You made a copier and all we wanted was a transporter. I’m not going to go to Detroit if I’m going to leave me here and then a new one go over there. Now I’ve just got two of me. Tesla.

Matt (01:49:46):

So Tesla built a prop electricity thing for Borden.

Laci (01:49:51):

Right.

Matt (01:49:51):

And that’s what he assumes he’s going to be doing again for-

Laci (01:49:54):

I don’t think so. …

Matt (01:49:55):

For Angier.

Laci (01:49:57):

Because the agreement when he makes this thing for Borden, he doesn’t say it’s a prop. He says, “I’ve made you something magic.” And then Borden goes and uses it as though it’s in a magic machine from Tesla. That’s his trick. So Tesla in terms of the agreement of selling it to him for whatever price he did has to say, “No, it worked. It was a trick. I sold him a trick.” I can’t tell you what it did and that it did nothing. I can’t tell you that either. I think part of it is the secrecy. If all he can do right now with his cool shit is help people make a spectacle, then he has to be careful about the propriety of the spectacle he’s helping create. He’s just like an engineer at this point. He’s just like cutter.

Matt (01:50:43):

So he’s doing it differently so that it can be-

Laci (01:50:46):

I think he’s really just trying to do it this time. I think he’s just taking money and making whatever the fuck comes out and when the guy’s aggravated enough or the money runs out, he’s like, “Dad, take it.

Matt (01:50:55):

“That makes the most sense, I guess. Go away for a while, come back, go away for a while, okay? Leave me be.

Laci (01:51:04):

I was just waiting to see what you would do when you saw this electricity go on this hat and you were pissed, so come back. Come back when you’re in about our mood. Yeah,

Matt (01:51:11):

Because he doesn’t even say anything. Andy Circus is like, “Yeah, these things take time. Why don’t you come back in a few weeks?”

Laci (01:51:17):

Okay, but if they’re saying that about this machine, how do we know there’s only 5,000 Christian bales somewhere when he was using the other mean machine and actually it was working? Just no one ever knew where it was popping out. That’s true. Somewhere in fucking Antarctica, just a ton of Christian bales and rub our balls.

Matt (01:51:32):

Bale is doing the transported ma to create acclaim so Jackman has to go see it for himself. I think this is my favorite scene in the movie is Bale just being just so lame on stage.

Laci (01:51:44):

He set up the stage. He thought of the stage. He set it up, but it looks like his house. He set up a

Matt (01:51:48):

House.

Laci (01:51:49):

He set up next door neighbors.

Matt (01:51:50):

Yeah. And his costume looks shitty.

Laci (01:51:53):

He just got home.

Matt (01:51:55):

He’s just got these gloves on and he’s holding a rubber ball.

Laci (01:51:58):

He’s Mr. Rogers. He might as well just be sitting in the middle changing his shoes, going out the door. I mean, look at this set. It’s just two colors, brown and red. It’s so bad and he blends into it.

Matt (01:52:11):

And his speech to the audience is like, “See this rubber ball.” It’s not just a rubber ball, row.

Laci (01:52:17):

It’s red like this popcorn sheem behind me here.

Matt (01:52:20):

It’s magic.

Laci (01:52:22):

You ever seen this thing, pop little corns? Magic as well. I don’t know what accent I’m doing. I don’t know why I keep trying.

Matt (01:52:28):

And so we don’t actually see it. We just hear in the voiceover Michael Kane’s like, “Well, he’s a wonderful musician. He’s just a terrible showman.” We

Laci (01:52:36):

Watch him do the trick. It’s just so boring that-

Matt (01:52:39):

No, we don’t. We see him go into one closet, but we don’t watch him come out of the other. We see Hugh Jackman’s reaction to it. We don’t see the actual trick till later. It’s so good because he doesn’t show it to you. It is all in Hugh Jackman’s reaction to it because he goes home to Scarlett Johansson and she’s like, “So how was it? Did you guys get in a fight?” And he’s like, “It was the greatest magic trick I’ve ever seen.” Holy shit. And he’s just fucking blown away. And then Michael Kane is like, “Yeah, but he doesn’t know how to sell the trick to an audience.” The audience doesn’t even understand that he’s doing a trick.

Laci (01:53:12):

That they don’t even know it’s over. It’s like, okay.

Matt (01:53:15):

What would we compare this to? I mean, there’s all kinds of fields where musicians listen to a song and be like, “You don’t understand how technically difficult this is what they’re doing.” If

Laci (01:53:24):

You make it too easy, it doesn’t feel like anything. So it’s like wrestling with wrestling in the Olympic sense, just grappling on the floor, just doing your tricks with all the story and the costuming and the showmanship, wrestling is just two guys rolling around on the floor and kicking each other. They’re making it look like … I see what you’re doing. I guess I could do that. Could I be the rock? Could I rip off my shirt? Could I fucking wear that and talk like that and jump really from a high height? There’s no reason for them to jump from so high or any … If you’re just wrestling, well, here’s wrestling.

Matt (01:54:03):

Or if you’re watching figure skating, you can tell stuff’s impressive, but you do need the judges there to tell you how impressive it is because I don’t know what the fuck I’m watching, but then they’re like, “Oh,” and they’re astonished like, “Oh, that was good. That was good right there.” But he can tell those … I’m watching this. I have no fucking idea how he just did that, how he went from one closet to the other. That doesn’t make any sense. And Kane is immediately like, “I know how he does it. He uses a bloody double.” He’s like, “No, he does not use a double.” And Scarlet Johansen’s on Jackman’s side. No, there’s no double. But the whole movie, Michael Kane’s insisting, “Hey, Jack double.” And he’s right.

Laci (01:54:36):

There is no magic. We work in magic. We are the ones who are supposed to know there’s no magic, guys.

Matt (01:54:44):

Right. We’re not

Laci (01:54:45):

In another universe.

Matt (01:54:46):

He’s not hopping on a really fast treadmill.

Laci (01:54:50):

Those don’t exist.

Matt (01:54:51):

So we’re going to do that. We’re going to find a double for you. And what do you know they do? They find another Hugh Jackman. Another guy Hugh Jackman is laying.

Laci (01:55:00):

Just as crazy as Michael Kane knowing someone that looks the fuck like Scarlett Johansen without a job or a husband is just as crazy that Scarlett Johansson knows that Kyle looks just exactly like what they need. What a town they live in.

Matt (01:55:15):

And he is a drunken actor and this movie’s having a lot of fun with actors. They’re fucking crazy. They’re drunk. They’re unreliable. They want to get paid.

Laci (01:55:26):

When did Pirates of the Caribbean come out, the first one?

Matt (01:55:29):

3. And then

Laci (01:55:30):

This was when-

Matt (01:55:32):

06.

Laci (01:55:33):

It feels a little bit like a Jack Sparrow impression.

Matt (01:55:36):

You’re right. I mean, he does feel like a little Johnny …

Laci (01:55:40):

Yeah, because you’re playing someone else, you’re not supposed to be another you. There’s only so many things you can do to transform yourself without transforming yourself. So he’s got cotton balls in his cheeks right here and he’s doing a crazy ass fucking voice that can only be a person who … He’s already an Australian playing an Englishman who’s got a fake American accent and now he’s a fake drunk on top of that who’s from London. That’s crazy.

Matt (01:56:14):

It’s crazy. Yes. This is Hugh Jackman’s best move or best performance. It has to be. As Ru? Yeah. It’s two different roles. But for sheer difficulty alone, maybe I would like a little more of a … When he’s doing the American accent as Angio, I want a little more like Christopher Eccleston, like, “My name is Robert Angie.” Give

Laci (01:56:38):

It away. Give it away.

Matt (01:56:42):

So here’s how the trick’s going to work. We have this little platform you drop down out of the stage onto these giant sacks of cushion and then he goes up the other side. Oh, it’s all great fun. Okay. And Michael Kane has so much confidence that he can get this drunk in order. He can clean them up and stuff and make him behave and he does and the show goes off without a hitch.

Laci (01:57:04):

Because you got to think magicians are just a different kind of … Lots

Matt (01:57:08):

Of

Laci (01:57:08):

Magicians are also actors and then vice versa because it’s all just showmanship. So what are the odds? He’s worked with a lot of sober magicians.

Matt (01:57:18):

Yeah. He’s very … Get me a month. I’ll get him in line. I

Laci (01:57:21):

Get it.

Matt (01:57:22):

So he really is kind of the producer. I was telling you before we started recording, I’ve read a few memoirs by producers and producers have this attitude about directors that directors don’t understand. Producers, we’re the ones who actually make the movies. Like, oh, going and shooting the thing and telling the actor, this is where you see … Yeah, yeah. Try getting money from Columbia Tri Star and scouting locations. And that’s kind of Michael Kane. It’s like, oh yeah, go up there on stage and do your little twirly dos and stuff. Try getting an actor in line, a drunk for a month.

Laci (01:57:51):

Fine. But just like with the movie, the whole fucking point is you need all of them doing their roles correctly to make a show people want to go see.

Matt (01:57:58):

Yeah. Well, I don’t agree with Michael Kane’s character, John Cutter or those producers. John Cutter’s

Laci (01:58:03):

Never said it and the producers are wrong too.

Matt (01:58:06):

We get to see how much better Hugh Jackman is on stage and the way he presents it. I’ve traveled around the world and my travel’s in the orient.

Laci (01:58:16):

Because he makes it look so effortless that you can forget he’s doing a good job until you see someone doing a bad job.

Matt (01:58:23):

The movie’s so layered. Yes. I’ve traveled in the orient and there are people there who know how to do what I’m about to do.

Laci (01:58:30):

But do they do it? No, they’re scared.

Matt (01:58:32):

And he disappears and then comes out the other side across the stage and the audience goes fucking nuts. And I love Gerald Root taking in the applause and then laying a big fat one on Scarlett Johansen and the moment where Hugh Jackman takes his bow under the stage.

Laci (01:58:50):

And it is at that point that Scarlett Johansson’s character has been passed between four people and just two of them have a look.

Matt (01:58:57):

Right. I never thought of that. You’re right. So after the show, Hugh Jackman’s kind of glum. He’s like, “Well, on, I don’t like that I have to finish. Can we maybe switch it out so that I get to be on stage last?” And they’re like, “Idiot, the whole thing is that, no, no, we can’t do that. ” And Scarlett Johansson’s trying, “Let’s have sex.” And he’s like, “No, I’m glum.” And she’s like, “What? Is it your dead wife?” And he’s like, “Huh? Oh, right, my dead one.” No, it’s not that. It’s our

Laci (01:59:29):

Anniversary.

Matt (01:59:31):

No, it’s Borden. My trick isn’t as good as his. I need you to go spy on him for me, okay? Could you do that? Could you go spy on Borden for me? Spy on Borden for Angier, but she’s being a double now. She’s being a femme fatale with shifting allegiances. The idea is you go tell him that Angier sent me to Spy on you to gain his trial, et cetera, et cetera. But actually at this point, she has realized I’m done with Angier. He won’t even have sex with me after our greatest Joe.

Laci (02:00:01):

Right. And there is no … He just moved the goalposts. He found something else to be aggravated about.

Matt (02:00:06):

He

Laci (02:00:06):

Says he wants a show that does this to people’s faces in the awe and the ah, and then he does it and then now he’s got a new problem. I’m never going to be enough. We’re never going to get to the part where we can have fun and enjoy our career.

Matt (02:00:19):

Yeah. In Colorado Angier goes to check out the machine. It zaps his hat, but it doesn’t seem to do anything and Tesla just stares at it and doesn’t say anything in Andy Circus and his book.

Laci (02:00:31):

He’s waiting for Angier to be like, cool.

Matt (02:00:37):

I love it. Oh, exactly. Yes. If

Laci (02:00:42):

I don’t react and then you do react.

Matt (02:00:45):

Come back in a few weeks. Okay? Give us a few more weeks. They’re doing the magic show and now the double root realizes he has some power now because no one can know that he exists.

Laci (02:00:57):

But he didn’t know he had that power until the dirty double crosser came and talked

Matt (02:01:02):

To him.

Laci (02:01:05):

So Christian Bale’s character is aggravated that now there’s a cheaper version but also better version of his fucking trick on stage by his archenemesis. So let me go fuck that up. Let me do what you can’t do. I can completely trust my double. It’s like I don’t even have one. I literally am two people. You can’t trust your double and you never will be able to.

Matt (02:01:29):

You won’t

Laci (02:01:29):

Have the connection with them that I have with my brother because you don’t have the dedication. Let me show you how flimsy your stupid trick is.

Matt (02:01:36):

And the whole movie Christian Bale’s been alluding to I have the greatest magic trick in the world. The world’s not ready for it. And you assume he’s talking about the transported ma, but no, he’s talking about what he and his brother are doing, which is I’m going to die and come back to life. That’s the dedication we have.

Laci (02:01:54):

And I was born a twin.

Matt (02:01:55):

And

Laci (02:01:55):

That is a kind of magic if you use it right.

Matt (02:01:58):

That’s true. And twins in the novel, there’s a thing where there’s like a modern framing device and this character is like, I was always convinced I had a twin brother, but there’s no records of it, but I still feel this twin telepathy. And twins are weird man.

Laci (02:02:15):

I think they’re cool.

Matt (02:02:16):

I mean, they’re cool, but you know what happens if there’s a pair of identical twins. Okay. Okay. I have an identical twin, Laci, and me and my … I marry you and my identical twin marries your twin sister because this is a Christian scenario.

Laci (02:02:34):

Then we each make a child that is biologically the same.

Matt (02:02:39):

No. And we have a child and they have a child. Those children’s relationships to each other genetically is brother or sister.

Laci (02:02:47):

Oh, right.

Matt (02:02:47):

And isn’t that creepy? They’re not cousins, they’re brother or sister. I mean, legally they’re cousins. But if you tested their DNA, it’d be like, yeah, these are brothers. That’s crazy.

Laci (02:02:57):

All sisters. Okay. Matthew went through a whole phase where he did a lot of thinking and researching on twins.

Matt (02:03:04):

I read Wikipedia.

Laci (02:03:06):

He really got into it.

Matt (02:03:07):

Christian Bale is very, it’s very fun where he meets up with Rude in the bar and he’s like, “Are you the great Danton?” And he’s like, “Don’t tell anybody. I’m not a great dead. I’m not supposed to know. “

Laci (02:03:16):

I’m not supposed to know.

Matt (02:03:19):

And he’s like, “I used to use a double in my act, but that was a mistake because the double eventually realized he had so much leverage and power over me. Who, you better hope your double never realizes that.

Laci (02:03:27):

” That’s so smart.

Matt (02:03:29):

Pretend.

Laci (02:03:30):

Not approaching him as though he is the double,

Matt (02:03:32):

Approaching

Laci (02:03:33):

Them as though he’s telling an inside traitor secret to a real magician. Something you would only talk shot between us two magicians.

Matt (02:03:41):

But still it is a confession. I do that trick. I use a double. He is telling the truth.

Laci (02:03:47):

Okay.

Matt (02:03:48):

And so it’s another night, but this time they fuck with Hugh Jackman. They move his cushion. And so when Hugh Jackman falls through the trap door- Fuck

Laci (02:03:55):

His leg forever.

Matt (02:03:56):

Just smashes his leg into a million pieces and then- There

Laci (02:04:00):

Had to be another way.

Matt (02:04:02):

Instead of Gerald Root going up the other side, it’s Christian Bale. Christian Bale, who now suddenly is being a lot more theatrical and he steps out and he’s like, “Huh?” And the audience, he’s got the audience in the palm of his hands and it’s like a casino, check out my act over at the Pantage Theater. Could

Laci (02:04:20):

You just build an ad in the middle of this trick and now there’s no fucking payoff? But your trick is that you got a broken leg? Not impressed. The only reason they’re applauding is because they think something even cooler is coming and then it never happens. It’s a crygasm.

Matt (02:04:35):

Or they’re so invested in the feud between these magicians.

Laci (02:04:39):

They don’t

Matt (02:04:39):

Know.

Laci (02:04:42):

We just saw the clap back of the century. No, because if that actually brought audiences in, they’d be playing on that. These two guys just want to make an amazing show and if it were in the papers that anyone who these fucking jokers are then cared that they were feuding, they’d just get together.

Matt (02:05:03):

He does lower Gerald Root from the ropes and has like tit duct tape over his mouth. So it’s like, I’m making a big old fool of the great Danton and so that’s why the audience isn’t. That’s

Laci (02:05:14):

True.

Matt (02:05:15):

I don’t know. How thrilled are you? It’s like, well, we paid 50 bucks for these tickets and it turns out this is a shoddy magician.

Laci (02:05:20):

No, if I’m going to learn the trick and the guy didn’t want me to, that’s just good.

Matt (02:05:25):

Okay.

Laci (02:05:25):

I just want to see a trick or learn it.

Matt (02:05:27):

So Angia is furious and he waits, he confronts Olivia. “You’ve been spying for me. How does he do it? ” And she says he uses a double. He’s like, “No, he fucking does it. ” She says, “No, I know because there’s wigs and makeup and stuff all over the place. He definitely uses a double.” And Jacqueline’s like, “No, no, you don’t know him. That’s all misdirection he’s playing you. He commits to the bit all the time. He lives his act.” And she’s like, “No, but I’ve fallen in love with him. But you did pay me so I stole his diary for you. So here’s the diary.” And he’s like, “All right, fine.” And he starts reading the diary and she says, “It won’t bring your wife back and he immediately without hesitation. I don’t care about my wife.”

Laci (02:06:03):

No, this was never that about that.

Matt (02:06:05):

Care about a secret. Finally, see Borden Dewish transported man trick with the Tesla machine with Scarlett Johansen and it is very cool and impressive and now he knows. Now he knows about marketing and presentation. The

Laci (02:06:17):

Original transported advantage.

Matt (02:06:20):

Oh, that’s the other thing is Jackman’s like, “Yeah, we’re just going to call our trick the new transported man.”

Laci (02:06:26):

Right. So now I’ve got a backdate mind and get anywhere the Reginald.

Matt (02:06:30):

It’s like famous Ray’s, original rays. After the show, the great Danton follows Borden, but ends up … Anyway, he ends up capturing Fallon. It’s a scheme to capture Fallon, hammers him into a casket.

Laci (02:06:49):

You got Borton.

Matt (02:06:50):

Yeah. And basically tortures him. Tell me how he does a transported man. God damn it, and he won’t talk. So the next day, Angier and boarded meat in a cemetery and Borden’s like, “I’m impressed you finally learn how to get your hands dirty by kidnapping my best friend and imprisoning and torturing him.” Kudos to you, Angier. And he’s like, “Yeah, well he still wouldn’t. That canary wouldn’t sing. So come on, write down your secrets for me. I’ve got your diary. I just need … It’s like written in a code. I need you to give me the keyword and the method for the transported man.” And so Bale writes down a word. The tone

Laci (02:07:26):

Is the method.

Matt (02:07:28):

And then he’s like, “Anjia, where’s Fallon?” And he just points at the ground and he says, “Alive?” And I love Hugh Jackman going-

Laci (02:07:38):

For now.

Matt (02:07:39):

“How fast can you dick?”

Laci (02:07:40):

Oh yeah.

Matt (02:07:41):

So he goes to show Michael Kane, he’s like, “Oh, good news. I got the keyword.” Get this, “I got the keyword to borden cipher.”

Laci (02:07:48):

I didn’t open it yet.

Matt (02:07:50):

I wanted you to be there for the moment. And Michael Kane’s like, “Robert, my God, did you fucking … Okay, this is a professional divorce. Fallon just bloody shot me. Okay. And the keyword is Tesla.” And he’s like, “Well, first Michael Kane says, I already know how he does it. He uses a double. You want something more.” It’s just like the end of Memento. We have the answer. It just didn’t satisfy you.

Laci (02:08:16):

Correct.

Matt (02:08:17):

So the word Tesla, what does it mean? It means we got to go to America. We got quite a journey ahead of us. So there’s a really fun family dinner with the Bordens. We got everybody. We got Sarah, we got Fallon, we got Olivia.

Laci (02:08:32):

That’s interesting because Fallon’s there too. So the one that loves Sarah is watching the one that doesn’t love her, treat her like shit. That’s got to suck. Watching him undo his marriage.

Matt (02:08:42):

Yeah, because I think the one here who has the beard on is the one who was buried alive the whole day and that’s why he’s being very manic.

Laci (02:08:51):

Sure. But whoever it is, it’s not the one for Sarah.

Matt (02:08:54):

Right.

Laci (02:08:54):

Right. But yeah, that makes sense.

Matt (02:08:56):

Yeah. And he’s like, “Guys, I have the best fucker. I feel so fucking good right now. I should buy a fucking boat.” But anyway, I have a great idea for a fucking magic trick. I get buried alive every single night and then someone comes and unburies me. Someone

Laci (02:09:07):

From the audience.

Matt (02:09:08):

Yeah.

Laci (02:09:08):

They’ll love that.

Matt (02:09:09):

What do you think? What do you think? And Sarah’s like, “I thought we weren’t inviting Fallon, the disgusting bearded man to banner.” No,

Laci (02:09:16):

She doesn’t want Scarlet.

Matt (02:09:18):

I know.

Laci (02:09:18):

Scarlet.

Matt (02:09:19):

And she sends them away and he’s like, “Babe, I’ve had a bad day at work today, okay? I thought I lost the most precious thing in the world to me. ” And she’s like, “What is the most precious thing in the world to me? ” He’s like, “This is secret.” Over in Colorado

Laci (02:09:37):

Angie- The Edisons move

Matt (02:09:38):

In. Yeah. What? Is it the feds? Is it the IRS? Worse. Thomas Edison’s men. What

Laci (02:09:44):

Are they going to do? I don’t

Matt (02:09:45):

Know. What do they

Laci (02:09:46):

Think they’re going to do?

Matt (02:09:46):

Thomas Edison’s whole thing was like he didn’t invent anything. He bought patents, he stole patents. He stole stuff from people.

Laci (02:09:52):

It’s like you still did the fucking light bulb. He’s still just going to light them up.

Matt (02:09:56):

I think he was kind of a Stan Lee figure is like he was management. Other people worked for him and he had them sign a document like actually Stan Lee invented Spider-Man. So he waits. He reads more about the diary, reads about the day that Scar Joe started working for Borden and realizes that she was in love with Robert Angier, but she felt betrayed by him. And so she’s going to teach Borden how to be a better showman. And then in the diary, Borden writes, “I love her, Scarjo. I need her. But to open myself up to such a relationship, it’s dangerous. I need reassurances of her devotion and love, but how to be sure. Oh, I know a way. It’s the only way to know her mind.” And it’s that she proved her truthfulness by giving you Angie the diary. Yes, you Angio. And so now you realize, oh fuck, he’s reading a diary that was written to him.

Laci (02:10:55):

But I’m all the way in America. I’m already doing the thing.

Matt (02:10:59):

Sent on an insane wild goose chase. Well,

Laci (02:11:01):

I’m going to just buy the machine though. He made the machine.

Matt (02:11:06):

Tesla didn’t actually … Tesla is not the method. I just paid him a lot of money for a prop basically. Yeah,

Laci (02:11:10):

But you sent a crazed man with a ton of fucking money and time to Tesla. So I just gave him what he needed, the money. And now he made me the fucking machine idiot.

Matt (02:11:20):

Yeah.

Laci (02:11:21):

You outdid yourself.

Matt (02:11:23):

Didn’t expect that part. So Angio runs to Tesla’s house. He’s like, Tesla, God damn it. Give me my money back or give me the machine or something. They’re like, “Oh, let’s test the machine.” They test it on a cat. Nothing happens to the cat. And Hugh Jackman’s like, “God damn it. I hate everyone.” And he leaves and he walks through the snow and the cat from the machine follows him and then an identical cat also. Tessano on your

Laci (02:11:43):

House to sonor on your dragon.

Matt (02:11:46):

And he’s like, “Wait a minute, one cat, two cats, 45 hats.” No

Laci (02:11:50):

Such thing as two cats plus hats.

Matt (02:11:54):

Suddenly, oh my God, this machine, as Tesla says, these things never work the way you think you do. Sometimes you think that they’re going to transport matters. Sometimes they perfectly duplicate it and drop it off in a field.

Laci (02:12:05):

You make a nightmare machine unless you put in the money. This is so stupid. Get a big pile of money.

Matt (02:12:12):

This is what Laci scrapes at the machine. $1 bill, a $2 bills. A $3 bills.

Laci (02:12:19):

That’s why I said a pile.

Matt (02:12:21):

Well, he’s not very bright. Just one at a time.

Laci (02:12:23):

Or just put the hotel in there. Now you got two hotels.

Matt (02:12:26):

So he’s like, wow, okay. We’ve really done something, but- Sick

Laci (02:12:31):

Of competing with Edison. Why don’t you compete with Ford? Park a Ford in this fucking thing and make another one and make another one and make it. Now I’m a car manufacturer.

Matt (02:12:41):

So sends Angie. Go back to the hotel, do some more drinking, do some more angry reading the diary and come back and we’ll have this thing in tip top shape. Tippy top shape.

Laci (02:12:52):

Got to pack it up real neat for you in the coolest box. With instructions, I can barely put together a nightstand. I would have so many Howard ppitations putting this together.

Matt (02:13:06):

My God. And he gets back to the … It gets sent to him at the hotel and Tesla has a note for him. Tesla had to do one of his periodic vanishings.

Laci (02:13:15):

Vanishing.

Matt (02:13:16):

Yeah. Nicola Tesla, my name is Guy Incognito to run from his creditors. Now there’s

Laci (02:13:21):

David Bowie and Madonna and Madonna’s now Tesla.

Matt (02:13:26):

But he writes, “You will find what you are looking for in this box, but I suggest to you destroy this machine, drop it to the bottom of the deepest ocean. Such a thing will only bring you to the deepest misoury.” It’s Oppenheimer. It’s already there.

Laci (02:13:41):

Yeah. I know, Matt.

Matt (02:13:43):

Oh, you know that? We

Laci (02:13:44):

All know using the royal we.

Matt (02:13:47):

So he is describing, Jackman is describing testing out the machine. Now presumably he sent this thing all the way across the Atlantic Ocean before testing it. That must have been really hard to- Black

Laci (02:13:57):

Around. Right. Oh

Matt (02:13:58):

Yeah.

Laci (02:13:59):

Oh, I got to open.

Matt (02:14:00):

Come on.

Laci (02:14:00):

Put like an iPad in the backseat and I can’t reach it until I get home.

Matt (02:14:04):

But then you get there and you test it out and I love a fucking love that he sets a gun down, steps into the machine and you don’t see what happens next. And I’ve seen this movie so many times. Yeah. I fill it in in my head that we see what actually happens next here, but we don’t. We only see that at the very end of the movie, which is I think another one of those things that makes this movie like a magic trick. It’s like an optical illusion. You’re seeing it all in your head simultaneously.

Laci (02:14:30):

You’re filling in with the wrong thing and then at the end you fill it in with all the right things. And I’d like to just point out that your dad brought over a TV VCR combo in his truck and that thing broke on the way here.

Matt (02:14:42):

That’s true.

Laci (02:14:43):

So this fucking thing would be broken.

Matt (02:14:45):

Why was he bringing a TV VCR combo? Because

Laci (02:14:48):

I wanted a VCR.

Matt (02:14:51):

God, that thing looked so … I

Laci (02:14:53):

Still use it.

Matt (02:14:54):

That thing would have been in my bedroom in 2001. Ugh.

Laci (02:14:57):

I can still smell your crusty cum on it. And so I’ve just put a VCR that works under it. So I’m using it.

Matt (02:15:04):

If your VCR sits on

Laci (02:15:06):

Top of VCR. I know. I

Matt (02:15:09):

Know. As far as we know, Robert Angier is dead. Borden is convicted, will be hanged by his neck till he is dead for the murder of Robert Angier. And he is reading Robert Angier’s diary in prison and now he reads in the diary. “And this is where I leave you, Borden. Yes, that’s right. Borden sitting in your cell reading my diary awaiting your death for my murder, but I’m not dead motherfucker. Oh fuck. You did the thing in your diary to me. I do it to you.

Laci (02:15:39):

You sold me your kid.

Matt (02:15:41):

So Christian Bale sells his tricks to the British lawyer, demands bringing my daughter so I can see her one more time and then I’ll give you the final piece of the tricks puzzle. We jumped back to the past where Sarah is yelling at her husband. “I know what you really are, Alfred, and I can’t keep it in. ” We talked about this already. What does she think she knows?

Laci (02:16:00):

A mean person, a person that is different every single day, but I don’t know. There’s a part of me that thinks that she does know the full thing.

Matt (02:16:07):

Which is insane to think about, but it’s a possibility in this movie and she says, “I can’t live like this. ” And he screams, “You think I can live like this. ” And his Christian bale, he really seems to know how to yell at people.

Laci (02:16:20):

Okay. But that’s not the Christian bale that loves her. Right. That’s him admitting they both know they’re in this fucked up situation. He misses Scar Joe. I think these saying in that moment like, “I also don’t fucking love this. ” Arrangement.

Matt (02:16:38):

I want you to be honest with me. No tricks, no lies, no secrets. Do you love me? He says, “Not today. No.” And so she hangs herself in the bird room.

Laci (02:16:48):

Because she’s just a replaceable bird.

Matt (02:16:50):

Yeah.

Laci (02:16:50):

Another person that dies because they’re fucking illusions.

Matt (02:16:53):

A play thing for these maniacs, these ego maniacs. Imagine

Laci (02:16:58):

Eating a whole room for birds.

Matt (02:17:01):

Back in London, Angio recruits cut her. He’s like, “Hey, I know you said you don’t want to work with me anymore, but how about work with me again?”

Laci (02:17:09):

Whatever

Matt (02:17:09):

You do. Limited engagement, 100 final shows and then I’m done. That sounds

Laci (02:17:13):

Like a lot of fucking shows. Okay.

Matt (02:17:15):

That’s more shows than Hugh Jackman did on his world tour.

Laci (02:17:19):

And Jack, look how are

Matt (02:17:19):

You? I’m here, Jack Mann. How are you doing? But I want you cutter, not behind the scenes. I want you working the front of the house. Right.

Laci (02:17:28):

I don’t want you back there. I just need a lot of blind men. Not

Matt (02:17:31):

Because

Laci (02:17:31):

I don’t trust you.

Matt (02:17:33):

So what does he want him to do then?

Laci (02:17:36):

Just

Matt (02:17:36):

Have his back. Just

Laci (02:17:37):

Do the promotion.

Matt (02:17:38):

Do the booking and stuff. He’s hired all blind- He

Laci (02:17:41):

Doesn’t trust anyone, Matt. The only one he can kind of trust is cutter and he doesn’t even trust him enough to have him in the back of the house. Really, it’s all about trust. He’s so paranoid at this point.

Matt (02:17:52):

That he’s hired all blind crewmen to work behind the scenes with him so that they won’t see. Oh, you got a dead body in that tank. That’s weird. On my new show, it’s going to all culminate in the greatest trick of all time. Something Borden can’t ignore. So now Borden’s wife is dead and he’s having a fancy love with lunch with Scarlett Johansen and she’s like, “Hey, you can talk to me about your dead wife if you want. ” And he’s like, “Huh? Dead wife? No, that’s okay. No, no, no.

Laci (02:18:20):

Let’s focus on you, baby.”

Matt (02:18:21):

She’s like, “Didn’t you love her?” And he’s like, “Well, part of me did. Part of me didn’t. It’s like I’m divided in half. It’s like I have two different experiences. Anyway, I love you now.” And she says, “It’s inhuman to be so cold.” And then she gets up to leave and she says, “Hey, did you know Robert Angier is back in town and he’s launched a new show. It’s supposed to be the best ever. You should go check it out and should go kiss him or something. You guys deserve each other.”

Laci (02:18:46):

That would be hot.

Matt (02:18:47):

We see the great Danton’s new show.

Laci (02:18:49):

Oh, like in his final form. Look at him. Slicked back hair like a bad guy.

Matt (02:18:54):

In my travels, I have seen the future and it is a strange future indeed. The world is on the brink of new and terrifying possibilities. I think this is also in line with Oppenheimer, this thing Nolan’s obsessed with is these technologies didn’t exist and then they did and then we had to live with it. What you’re about to witness is not magic. It is purely science and then we see him do it and the audience loses its fucking mind and this time he emerges on the balcony at the complete other end of the theater and he screams, “Man’s reach succeeds his imagination.” And soaks in the applause. He finally gets to soak it in and Bal is like losing his mind at home like, “No, how’s he doing? 50 yards in a second. No, no, no. All we know is he uses a trap door.

Matt (02:19:36):

That’s all we know and he screams at Fallon. Why can’t you outthink

Laci (02:19:41):

Him?” Right. We have been led by your obsession. I like the idea that maybe just one of the twins is really pushing it, the one that doesn’t love Sarah.

Matt (02:19:50):

Yeah.

Laci (02:19:50):

We’re living your dream.

Matt (02:19:52):

Yeah. Freddy’s the one who’s more obsessed with magic and with Scar Joe, but Freddy can’t outthink him right now and Alfred’s mad. All this

Laci (02:19:58):

For nothing.

Matt (02:20:00):

So they follow the blind man who every night at the end of the performance cover up up one of the water tanks and transport it to a different place in town. And even Michael Kane isn’t being let in on what’s happening. And so Christian Bale’s just like, “Fuck it. Leave him alone.”

Laci (02:20:17):

I answered my own question. I’m fucking dumb. I know why it’s a water tank because it has to drown him. It was going to be spikes. You’re going to hear him be like, “Ah. Ah, just depends on how he lands.”

Matt (02:20:27):

My ass.

Laci (02:20:28):

I mean, it’s a bit elaborate, but I get it. It’s already a coffin. You’re just asking a guy to move. You’re using this water tank in the beginning of the show so it’s not weird that you’re asking a blind man to please take the water tank to the storage area. He just doesn’t know he’s taking a new one every single time. He thinks he’s taking the one.

Matt (02:20:43):

Where’d you get all those water tanks?

Laci (02:20:45):

It’s just one to the blind guy.

Matt (02:20:48):

No, I know, but he still needed to procure all these water tanks.

Laci (02:20:51):

Right. That’s someone else’s business. It’s got nothing to do with … I’m a magician. I need shit.

Matt (02:20:56):

Oh, like Bruce Wayne and Alfred. They’re like, “Well, we’ll order 10,000 through a dumb corporation.” Yeah.

Laci (02:21:00):

They’re not making them. They just take them to a warehouse and they can’t smell anything because these guys are in water.

Matt (02:21:06):

But they would hear the guy who look …

Laci (02:21:10):

No, to them, that’s what the magic trick sounds like.

Matt (02:21:13):

It would.

Laci (02:21:13):

Sure. Can’t you just lie to him?

Matt (02:21:16):

Yeah. Okay. You’re going to hear a guy struggling for his life. Don’t worry about it. That’s part of the show.

Laci (02:21:21):

Yes. I’m making I’m a spectacle of myself for the audience who they think I’m having a real hard time getting out of this knot.

Matt (02:21:26):

Borden sneaks backstage at the next show. This is where we came into the movie and he sneaks backstage, goes down, sees the water tank, sees Hugh Jackman drop into it and he’s like, “What the fuck is happening?” And Hugh Jackman makes eye contact with him and starts banging on the thing. I’m dying, I’m dying. And Christian Bale, despite this being his mortal enemy, he’s like, “I got to help this guy and gets the ax, but it’s not enough. He’s not able to break it before Jackman drowns. And then Michael Kane runs backstage because he saw that Christian Bale snuck backstage. So he ran and he’s like, What have you done? What have you done?

Laci (02:22:01):

I’m trying to save him. What do you mean what have I done?

Matt (02:22:04):

It really looks like you drowned him in that fucking thing.

Laci (02:22:06):

And then you got upset about it.

Matt (02:22:08):

Yeah, because the other Hugh Jackman did not reappear. This is all his design. Setting him up the perfect crime. He’s dead and Borden sent it to death. Still looks handsome. So Michael Kane is meeting with the British attorney about delivering all this magic inventory to Lord Caldlow and Michael Kane’s like, “I’d really like to meet that Lord Caldlow.” And he’s like, “Well, you can’t, but maybe if you show up at this time you can meet him.” I don’t know why the attorney does this.

Laci (02:22:39):

Well, because I guess the attorney realizes it’s two people. Maybe the attorney realizes this is fucking weird.

Matt (02:22:46):

I think the attorney thinks he’s just doing something innocent, has no idea that Lord Caldlow is Robert Angier. And he’s

Laci (02:22:52):

In Heidi now.

Matt (02:22:53):

Yeah.

Laci (02:22:54):

Okay.

Matt (02:22:54):

And it’s just like, “But if you want to meet him, you can come over to the house at this time.”

Laci (02:22:58):

He acts like he’s grumpy. He’s not that

Matt (02:23:00):

Grumpy. Yeah.

Laci (02:23:01):

Right.

Matt (02:23:02):

So then Borden is in prison and a guy comes to bring his daughter to see him. It’s a Lord called Lowe and looks and, “Oh my God, it’s Hugh Jackman.”

Laci (02:23:12):

And that’s how you know no one knows who these fucking guys are because he’s just

Matt (02:23:15):

Walking

Laci (02:23:15):

Around looking like that.

Matt (02:23:16):

He just has a mustache now and he’s speaking in a British accent and he says, “Lord, called low. I wish I’ve been.” I don’t

Laci (02:23:23):

…

Matt (02:23:24):

Lord called low. I always have been. The whole movie you’ve been watching me, I’m Lord Caldlow. And by the way, through weird rich person machinations, I have custody of your daughter. And Christian Bale’s like, “Oh my God, everything is terrible. This is the worst.”

Laci (02:23:41):

I traded you one little girl for another.

Matt (02:23:43):

And he says, “Listen, I’ll give you my transported man secret. Just please give my little daughter to Fallon, please.” And he hands him over a piece of paper with the transported man’s secret and Hugh Jackman just tears it up. I’m like, “I don’t care.”

Laci (02:23:57):

I just wanted this girl.

Matt (02:23:59):

But Borden says to the daughter, he’s like, “I’m going to take you home soon. I promise. I’m going to take you home.” And then Lord Caldlow goes home with Jess with the daughter to his enormous estate, walks in and he tells Jess like, “All right, go off somewhere else.” And then Michael Kane is there and Michael Kane turns around and sees him and he’s like, “I wish truly not expecting to say you. I don’t know what I was expecting, but oh my God.” And then realizes like, wait a minute, that little girl you just brought in, holy fuck. This is fucked. Why do you

Laci (02:24:28):

Need his child?

Matt (02:24:29):

You’re the most evil man who’s ever lived and I helped you.

Laci (02:24:31):

Right. I mean, he could just be in prison. Why do you need the child? This is weird.

Matt (02:24:37):

Yeah. So he’s like, “I came over here to fucking beg for you to destroy the machine.” And Jackman’s like, “No, don’t worry. I’m going to destroy it, but I need your help to destroy it. So please do deliver it to my theater. It belongs with all the other prestige materials.” And so we’re cutting now, I think really, really well done sequence of Bail getting hung and the music getting more and more intense and him having his final goodbye with Fallon. And then Fallon says his only word as Fallon in the whole movie where he says, “Goodbye.” And his brother tells him, “You go live your life in full now, right? For both of us.” And then he tosses him the rubber ball and we’re cutting between Bale, getting the news put around him and then Michael Kane delivering the machine into the theater and then cut over to Christian Bale and like, “Do you have anything final to say?” And he says … And then drops to his death.

Matt (02:25:33):

So Kane is delivering the prestige materials. He’s like, “All right, I know this is the final time I’m going to see this motherfucker Lord called low, but take a minute to contemplate what you’ve done. You remember the thing I said about the sailor.” It’s like, yes, you said that a drowning death is the most pleasant, actually preferable to life. And he’s like, no, I lied. He said it was agony.

Laci (02:25:54):

Oh, I was thinking he was just trying to kick him in the balls. Your wife died painfully, but no, he’s like, “Yo, I’ve not given these guys a peaceful day,

Matt (02:26:04):

Right?” And I mean, this is also perfect. It’s so creepy, so eerie all working together, Bale goes abra cadabra and then Jackman is alone in the crypt of this theater and a rubber ball bounces toward him and he’s like, “What? A rubber ball.” And then he gets shot and then into the frame steps, not Fallon, but Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman’s like, “Ugh, a brother, a twin.”

Laci (02:26:30):

Good of him to shoot him with enough time to reveal the prostate.

Matt (02:26:33):

Yeah, you’re going to get about 10 more minutes. You’re going to get a good monologue out of this. And it’s going to be

Laci (02:26:37):

Agonizing.

Matt (02:26:39):

A brother, a twin, he’s like, we were both Fallon and we were both bored. And so we’re getting all the Christopher Nolan flashbacks he loves where he explains everything you just watched, see them putting on the makeup, et cetera. The commitment that when one got his fingers shot off the other then had to cut off his own fingers, but it was enough for them and they were both dedicated enough to magic that this was the trick they were going to dedicate their lives to and you wouldn’t know anything about that Angier because you’re a shitty magician and you don’t know anything about sacrifice. And he’s like, “Oh my God, let me tell you about sacrifice.” And now we see truly how disturbing it is this clone thing. We see the scene where the clone emerges out of the other one and Hugh Jackman has to just shoot him dead.

Laci (02:27:23):

So the original trick or that was just him getting to know the trick?

Matt (02:27:27):

Yeah.

Laci (02:27:28):

Okay. I was like, “That’s a weird … You just kill yourself on stage with the fuck.” Fucking heavy metal, man.

Matt (02:27:34):

Realized how it worked and then realized, okay, so what I’m going to have to do is literally kill myself every night and then a new version of me will be born, but I’m not going to be that guy. It’s not like my consciousness transports over to him.

Laci (02:27:48):

Doesn’t it?

Matt (02:27:48):

No.

Laci (02:27:49):

I don’t understand. So a brand new person with no memory of what

Matt (02:27:51):

The fuck- No, it has all of your memories. It’s like it duplicates everything and that includes your memories.

Laci (02:27:57):

So it just means he has to die a lot, but he has no memory of dying because he’s the new one.

Matt (02:28:01):

Right. He’s fine. No, because you still know I have to go die. I’m going to experience dying and that will be the end of it.

Laci (02:28:08):

It’s severance, baby.

Matt (02:28:09):

I won’t then move … Yeah, it is severance. My life terminates at that point. He says it took courage climbing in the machine every night not knowing if I’d be the man in the box or in the prestige. And then he’s like, “Look around you. Look where you’re standing.” You’re

Laci (02:28:22):

Both.

Matt (02:28:23):

And Bale’s like, “I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck.” He said, “You went half away around the world. You spent a fortune, you did terrible things and all for nothing.” And Hugh Jackman’s like, “Not for nothing. I did it for the smiles on their faces.” Oh, fuck off. The audience knows the truth. The world is simple. It’s miserable, solid all the way through, but if you could fool them even for a second, then you could make them wonder. Then you got to see something very special. It was the look on their faces and he drops dead.

Laci (02:28:52):

Corny ass fucking last line.

Matt (02:28:54):

That’s what Christopher Nolan thinks though. That’s why he does it. That’s the push and pull. He wants to make really, really popular movies. He wants everyone to love him and say, “You’re the best. I had so much fun seeing your picture.”

Laci (02:29:08):

This is a fleeting feeling you’ll have. Pat on the back, you feel really good. Go home and feel empty.

Matt (02:29:14):

Yell at my wife, start all over again. Right.

Laci (02:29:16):

Other Christian Bale.

Matt (02:29:17):

So this place is now going up in flames. We return to Michael Kane’s opening monologue. Every magic has component tow to magic, rig. Because making someone disappear isn’t enough. You have to bring it back. And he’s telling this to Borden’s daughter, he shows her the bird and then, oh, look over there and her dad is now back to life and she runs and jumps into his arms.

Laci (02:29:40):

What timing? That man’s got timing.

Matt (02:29:42):

Now, if you’re looking for the secret, but you won’t find it because of course you’re not really looking. You want a bay foad.

Laci (02:29:48):

Right.

Matt (02:29:48):

That

Laci (02:29:49):

Little girl’s never going to want to know that there was a twin and sometimes he … But they both loved her. That’s nice.

Matt (02:29:54):

It is nice. But it

Laci (02:29:55):

Did drive your mother to commit suicide. Do you tell? And does she believe

Matt (02:30:00):

Please never tell. I don’t

Laci (02:30:01):