50 Fun Facts About The Prestige

In The Prestige, what secret lets Alfred Borden vanish and reappear across the stage almost instantly?

An identical twin shares the single identity of Alfred Borden, each man living half a life so that nobody suspects there are two. One loves Sarah and the other loves Olivia.

Which rock star plays the inventor Nikola Tesla in The Prestige after first turning the part down?

David Bowie agreed within minutes once Christopher Nolan, a lifelong fan, flew out to pitch the part in person. Nolan said he was the only person he had in mind for Tesla.

What does Nikola Tesla's machine really do to anything placed inside it in The Prestige?

The machine creates a duplicate a short distance away and leaves the original where it stood. Tesla sends it with a letter urging Angier to destroy it rather than use it.

What does Alfred Borden lose when Robert Angier fires a loaded pistol at him on stage in The Prestige?

Two fingers are blown off during the pistol trick, Angier's revenge for the death of his wife. From then on the two men sabotage each other's shows whenever they can.

Which US city doubled for Victorian London during most of the filming of The Prestige?

Los Angeles supplied almost 70 locations that could pass for London at the end of the 19th century, including four old theatres in its downtown Broadway district.

How does Robert Angier's wife Julia die during a stage escape gone wrong in The Prestige?

She drowns in a tank of water when she cannot slip the knot Borden tied around her wrists. Angier blames him, and that grief starts the feud that runs through the whole film.

Which real inventor's rivalry with Nikola Tesla runs in parallel to the magicians' feud in The Prestige?

Thomas Edison is the unseen enemy whose agents hound Tesla in the film, a mirror of the magicians' feud. The script leans on the popular idea that the two inventors fought the war of the currents head to head.

Which actor plays Robert Angier, the magician with a gift for showmanship, in The Prestige?

Hugh Jackman was cast because Christopher Nolan felt he shared Angier's feel for a live audience. He also plays the alcoholic lookalike Angier hires for his act.

In The Prestige, what name does Cutter give the first of the three parts of every magic trick?

The pledge comes first, followed by two more steps that end with the prestige itself. The Nolans deliberately built the screenplay's own three acts around those three parts.

Which 2006 Edward Norton film shared its stage-magician theme with The Prestige and Scoop?

The Illusionist, set in Vienna, opened in US cinemas in August 2006, two months ahead of its rival. That year produced three films about stage magicians.

Which actor plays Alfred Borden in The Prestige, having ignored advice not to read the novel first?

Christian Bale won the part by contacting Christopher Nolan about the script himself. Nolan had not considered him until then, and afterwards called anyone else unthinkable.

Which actor plays Cutter, the stage engineer who mentors both young magicians in The Prestige?

Michael Caine changed his voice and posture to play Cutter, a part Christopher Nolan had written before the two men ever met.

Which actress plays the assistant Robert Angier sends to spy on Alfred Borden in The Prestige?

Scarlett Johansson plays Olivia Wenscombe, who falls in love with the man she is sent to spy on and changes sides. Christopher Nolan said he was very keen to cast her.

Which 2005 superhero film had Christopher Nolan directed just before he made The Prestige?

Batman Begins pushed the magician film back: Nolan had planned to direct it in 2003, then returned to the project once his superhero film was out.

Which British author wrote the 1995 novel that the film The Prestige is based on?

Christopher Priest approved of the film, calling the script an extraordinary and brilliant adaptation, and he had seen it three times within months of its release.

What name does Alfred Borden give the teleportation illusion that obsesses his rival in The Prestige?

The Transported Man seems to carry Borden from one side of the stage to the other almost instantly. Angier's first attempt to match it relies on a lookalike.

To which US town does Robert Angier travel to find the inventor Nikola Tesla in The Prestige?

Colorado Springs is where the real Tesla built an experimental station in 1899 to study wireless power. He used it for only one year.

In The Prestige, how is Alfred Borden executed after being convicted of murdering Robert Angier?

Hanging frames the whole film: the screenplay swapped the novel's modern-day frame story for Borden's wait for the gallows.

Under which aristocratic name does Robert Angier visit Alfred Borden in prison in The Prestige?

Lord Caldlow is who Angier really is: a wealthy English nobleman, with the showman on the posters as his invented public persona.

What is the name of the enigmatic assistant Alfred Borden hires to help with his act in The Prestige?

Fallon matters so much that Angier later seizes him and holds him to ransom in a cemetery, hoping to trade him for the secret of his rival's best trick.

What is the name of the failed actor hired as Robert Angier's lookalike in The Prestige?

Root is an alcoholic, and the film's leading man plays him as well as Angier, which gives the star a second role.

Under which stage name does the working-class magician Alfred Borden perform in The Prestige?

The Professor gets his hands dirty building tricks, and critics read his feud with a polished, elitist showman as a kind of class war.

Which stage name does Robert Angier use for his polished magic act in The Prestige?

The Great Danton is all showmanship: Angier's strength lies in selling a trick to the crowd, and he relies on Cutter as his stage engineer.

What is the name of Alfred Borden's daughter, whom a wealthy stranger offers to raise in The Prestige?

Jess is the bargaining chip: the offer to care for her comes at a price, the secret behind her father's most famous trick.

Which English actress landed her breakthrough film role as Alfred Borden's wife Sarah in The Prestige?

Rebecca Hall had made her film debut that same year in Starter for 10, and she went on to The Town and Iron Man 3.

Which actor appears as Nikola Tesla's assistant Mr. Alley in The Prestige?

Andy Serkis imagined Alley as a former corporation man who jumped ship to follow a maverick, and described him as a gatekeeper and a conman.

Which Coyote Ugly star plays Julia, the wife Robert Angier loses early in The Prestige?

Piper Perabo's Julia starts out as an assistant to Milton the Magician, the older performer who employs both rivals at the beginning of their careers.

Which relative of director Christopher Nolan co-wrote the screenplay of The Prestige with him?

His brother Jonathan worked on the script on and off for five years from late 2001, and the pair finished the shooting draft just three days before filming began.

What does Olivia pass to Robert Angier that sends him across the Atlantic in The Prestige?

A coded diary belonging to Borden reaches Angier even though Olivia has changed sides. Its key word turns out to be TESLA, which points him towards the inventor.

Which act of Robert Angier's does Alfred Borden wreck before a live audience in The Prestige?

A bird trick goes violently wrong once Borden interferes, and a member of the audience is hurt. It is his payback for the shot Angier fired at him during an earlier show.

Which nationality does the English aristocrat Robert Angier pretend to be on stage in The Prestige?

American is the persona on his posters, kept up by an accent that hides the classy showman's real background from his audiences.

The real Chung Ling Soo, a character in The Prestige, was fatally injured in 1918 while performing which trick?

The bullet catch went wrong on a London stage when a rigged gun fired for real, and he died the next morning. The supposedly Chinese conjurer was in fact William Robinson, born in New York.

In The Prestige, what does the magician Chung Ling Soo pretend to be in all his public appearances?

Old and frail is the act he never drops offstage, hiding the strength his fishbowl trick demands. One critic reads him as a metaphor for how far a person will go for an art.

Which real sleight-of-hand expert plays Milton the Magician and helped coach the stars of The Prestige?

Ricky Jay and fellow magician Michael Weber taught the two leads only as much as each scene needed, and kept the rest of their methods to themselves.

Which 1950s magician, famed for producing doves, was the model for Robert Angier's manner in The Prestige?

Channing Pollock was billed as the most beautiful man in the world, and his elegant dove act carried him from nightclubs into a film career.

Which Best Novel honour did the book The Prestige win in 1996, to go with its James Tait Black prize?

The World Fantasy Award for Best Novel arrived in the same year the book was shortlisted for a leading British science fiction prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

In the novel The Prestige, the feud begins when Borden disrupts which event staged by Angier?

A fake séance held by Angier and his pregnant wife angers Borden because it is passed off as real. In the scuffle she is thrown to the ground and loses the baby.

What is the magician Angier's first name in the novel The Prestige, changed to Robert for the film?

Rupert Angier ends the novel as the 14th Earl of Colderdale, living quietly on his family estate after faking his own death as a performer.

Which film label released The Prestige in the United States while Warner Bros. handled other countries?

Touchstone Pictures brought the US release forward by a week, to October 20, 2006, and the film opened at number one at the box office.

The scene of Nikola Tesla's invention in The Prestige was filmed in an observatory car park on which mountain?

Mount Wilson Observatory sits on a 5,710-foot peak in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena. Production designer Nathan Crowley helped design the scene shot in its parking lot.

Christopher Nolan filmed one effects shot of The Prestige in which film format, as a test for The Dark Knight?

IMAX cameras filmed a single visual effects shot, so Nolan could check that the giant format would work in effects scenes and still reduce to 35 mm for ordinary cinemas.

Whose solo song Analyse plays over the closing credits of the film The Prestige?

Thom Yorke released Analyse on The Eraser, his first solo album, three months before the film opened. A power cut in his home town of Oxford inspired the song.

Which cinematographer earned an Oscar nomination for The Prestige and later won for Inception?

Wally Pfister shot every Christopher Nolan film from 2000 to 2012, and here he used soft earth tones to bring the actors' faces to the foreground.

The Prestige earned two Oscar nominations: one for cinematography and one for which other craft?

Art direction was recognised for a design process that began with scale models in Christopher Nolan's garage while the script was still being written.

Christopher Nolan first read the novel The Prestige in 2000 while in Britain publicising which of his films?

Memento was struggling to find a US distributor at the time. Newmarket Films, the company behind it, later bought the option on the magicians' story.

What did the only set that Christopher Nolan built for The Prestige depict?

The space under a stage, filled with the machinery that works the larger illusions, was the one set built. Everything else was a dressed location or sound stage.

Which choice, unusual for a period film, helped Christopher Nolan shoot The Prestige at a quick pace?

Handheld cameras kept the production moving, and in some scenes Nolan also did without artificial lighting and relied on natural light on location.

Why does Robert Angier resent his own first version of the teleport trick in The Prestige?

His double takes the bows while Angier drops out of sight and can only listen to applause he believes belongs to him, even though the act is a success.

Which English composer, who scored three earlier Christopher Nolan films, wrote the music for The Prestige?

David Julyan divided his soundtrack into three sections that follow the film's narrative, each named after one part of a magic trick.

What is the magician Angier's Tesla-powered illusion called in the novel The Prestige?

In a Flash relies on a machine built by Tesla, as in the film, but on the page the device works differently and Angier must hide what each performance leaves behind.