SFL: You’ve been working on this film for about seven years, even before Insomnia. What was your initial attraction to Christopher Priest’s book? Was it the fascination with magic, or the idea that magicians are like filmmakers?
CN: For me it was really about the world that the novel dealt with. Christopher Priest’s novel, which is a wonderful, complex and huge book, really deals with this world of stage magicians working in time when they were very important figures in entertainment and culture. I found that the world of mystery and suspense of that world to be very cinematic. My brother, Jon, and I worked on the script, it was a four or five year process of adapting the book. For me it was really about the world and the peculiar obsession of these characters.
SFL: All your films seem to deal with the issues of identity and obsession, all the characters are obsessed in some way. Is this a theme that attracts you?
CN: It’s not something I think about too consciously, in terms of connections between films I have worked on. I guess I am just drawn to stories about extreme points of view, and storytelling that tries to put the audience in somebody else’s point of view, in the case of this film, multiple points of view.
SFL: There’s a line in the movie that says, “Obsession is a young man’s game”, do you believe that, working in films?
CN: Ask me when I’m older, I guess. I’m a little bit obsessive about what I do. The line about it being a young man’s game, that’s sort of my assumption, but I’m not really old enough to know yet. I’m only 36, so ask me again in a few years.
SFL: Since moviemaking is all about illusion and make believe and you don’t want us to see the tricks, what is the difference between an actor or movie director and a magician.
CN: I think for me, in making the film and now it’s finished and I look at it, it is quite clear there are a lot of parallels between what filmmakers do and what magicians do in terms of how information is presented or withheld in a particular sequence. This particular script is crafted specifically along the lines of how a magic trick is constructed, using concepts like misdirection and so forth. The big thing I found is that my understanding of what magicians do is somewhat imperfect, as a lot of our understandings about magicians is imperfect, because we feel they are trying to present something as reality but as Hugh’s character says in the film, “If we thought it was real, we’d scream.” That is a very strong parallel with filmmaking, which is about wilful suspension of disbelief. However much, as a magician or a director, you are trying to convince people about the reality of something it’s all under the umbrella of this artifice. We know what we are seeing isn’t real, and that’s where the entertainment factor comes from, it’s a very similar thing.
SFL: Was part of the fun of the movie finding out how some of these great illusions were done? And were you concerned about how far you went in showing how they were done?
CN: To be honest, I’m not a great one for research. There was a great deal of information in the novel, and my brother, in writing the script, did a certain amount. I enjoy not knowing. For me, the fun of seeing a magic trick is knowing there is a trick there and not being able to penetrate the secret. As far as what the film reveals, a lot of it is stuff that we made up. As we came to make the film we realised we had come across certain key principles and so forth through our own process of figuring out how you would do a particular trick. I’m sure it would be very difficult for any magicians to complain we were revealing too much unless they were prepared to admit to all sorts of improper things to do with birds and cages and so forth. I think we’re pretty safe in that regard.
SFL: Were the tricks in the film actually done or were they helped with CGI?
CN: I wanted Hugh and Christian to be able to do the odd trick, the odd production, the odd vanish, as a throw-away thing so we could shoot it in camera. Not make a big deal of it, just show that these guys could do these kinds of things. All those kinds of things you see in the film are real.
SFL: But you try to avoid CGI as much as possible, is that a principle of yours?
CN: The principle for me is that if something can be done for real, it will be more impressive. We all try and start from a position of doing things for real. Certainly, when we looked at the reality of Tesla Coils, all those times that Andy [Serkis’s character] looks at the coils and says it’s perfectly safe, is complete nonsense. They are incredibly dangerous. That was all done with computer graphics because it would be pretty irresponsible to try and do that for real. My feeling is, if you can do something for real it’s going to be more impressive. You’re going to feel the difference. The we use computers and those kind of effects for enhancing whatever we can do.
SFL: Are there any modern day magicians that impress you, and are they still needed?
CN: I think that a lot of what magic did in the time of the film has been taken over by television and movies. But, at the same time, I went to see David Copperfield’s show in Las Vegas, and he made a car appear on stage three feet in front of me. It was a pretty stunning thing to see in real life, in the flesh. I think there is that enduring appeal and it will have that. Not many magicians have found a way to sell magical concepts on television. Derren Brown does a very interesting job of finding a new context for presenting traditional magic tricks as something fresh, that works very well on television. There are a few examples like that. I think the appeal of live magic will never go away. It’s always been with us and always will be.
SFL: Are any of the magicians you met while doing your research as dark as the ones in the film?
CN: I met enough magicians to know there is a certain amount of truth to the way they’re portrayed, the way the characters are in the film. Obviously they are exaggerated massively for dramatic effect, but at the core of the magician lies this massive, obsessive secrecy, this massive insecurity. These are people who entire lives and their fame and fortunes are all based on, by definition, it’s all based on trivial and unimportant methods behind these tricks – things that, if you knew them, would be very disappointing. These are people who build their entire lives around these frankly very trivial methods, and they dress it up and dress it up so that feeling that most of us have at some level, professionally or otherwise, that we are not as great as we think we are and we’ll be found out and this kind of thing. Their entire acts are based on truths and lies and so on and that creates a very extreme approach to their work.
SFL: There have been rumours of a Tesla biopic lingering in development hell for years, with names like David Lynch and Terry Gilliam attached, but this is the first time that Tesla has actually appeared in a major feature film. Getting David Bowie to play Tesla was a sublime piece of casting, and to actually get him in a movie is a bit of a coup. What made you choose him in the first place?
CN: I was looking for someone to play that role who, as soon as you see them on screen, you have to believe they are capable of extraordinary things. I felt that any movie star in that role would be distracting or wouldn’t have the right kind of presence. David Bowie has this extraordinary charisma, this extraordinary presence that as an audience member you can invest in as a figure right away. I sent him the script and he immediately said no. I did something I’ve never really done before and called him right back and said, “Can I come and convince you?”, because I had absolutely no one else in mind who could have done what I wanted him to do with the part. Fortunately, that was a compelling argument for him. He signed on, and I very glad he did. He was a real pleasure to work with.
SFL: Have you thought about doing your own Tesla biopic?
CN: Tesla is one of the great unmade movies in Hollywood. I’ve actually read a couple of the scripts have been banging around for years. I think, for me, he’s almost too big a character to take on. I don’t know how you would take on a film of his life. I found him to be more approachable in this tangential way where he is a minor character that is more talked about than seen. He is indeed a really fascinating character.
SFL: The film is less formal, with its handheld camerawork, can you tell us about your approach to this time period?
CN: I was really worried about doing a period film, I didn’t really want to make a film that adhered to the formality that is often found in these sorts of films. So we shot the film entirely on location. We only built one set, everything else were real places. Quiet often we didn’t light the scene, or just lit through the windows, so we didn’t have to give the actors marks, to let people move freely around the set. We shot the vast majority of the film with a handheld camera for that reason, to keep that looseness. I really wanted to try and make a film where the fact that it is set in a particular period wouldn’t be alienating to the audience, they’d still be thrown into the story.
SFL: What was your favourite part of the film to make? Was it the reveal or the prestige?
CN: For me I like all the different parts of the process, and it’s always a real pleasure when you get in the editing suite and start putting the performances and seeing the way in which the actors have broken down their performances, because film actors have to act in little pieces, or shooting in a crazy order because of locations and availabilities and everything. It’s not really until I get into the editing suite and start putting it all in order that you see how these guys have laid out their characters. There’s a lot of trust for me, no matter how much you try and be aware of the character arcs and so forth it’s really down to the actor to have plotted it out exactly and it was a real pleasure on this film to see all that work come together.