FLASHBACK FRIDAY
Is The Prestige the Greatest Movie About Magic and Magicians?
I recently stumbled across a list of the Top Ten Movies about Magic and Magicians. At the top of the list were these two: The Illusionist and The Prestige. Interestingly, both films came out in theaters at roughly the same time, emulating to some extent the rivalry between the two magicians (Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) in The Prestige.
Teller, in his intro to Harry Houdini’s The Right Way to Do Wrong, notes that magicians in the old vaudeville era were not protected from having the tricks stolen and there were intense rivalries between them. Our modern world has copyright protections for writers and ASCAP for musicians. If someone else performs their songs, today’s songwriters get royalties.
In the book itself Houdini devotes one chapter to his encounter with an escape artist named Kleppini who claimed to have bested the great Houdini. Houdini goes into detail telling how he outwitted the fraud Kleppini and defended his reputation as the greatest. Essentially he allowed Kleppini to believe he knew the secret to a pair of French Letter Cuffs which are opened by dialing in the correct word. Kleppini was in ecstasy at the idea of proving his prowess because he knew the secret word. But as…
