The Bechdel Cast - Now You See Me with Kayla Drescher

Episode Date: March 17, 2022

Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Kayla Drescher perform the amazing trick of analyzing Now You See Me! Ta-da!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @MagicinHeelsKD on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, try to assassinate the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nickname Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer,

this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeartTrue Crime Plus, only on Apple Podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that?

That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism?

The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hey, Jamie. Hey, Caitlin. Pick a card, any card, and look closely at it. No, wait, you're looking too closely because you thought the magic was happening right here, but it's actually happening over there. I was misdirecting you. Oh my God. Should we kiss? Yeah. You're so horny right now for me oh my god i know for some reason i am okay quick anecdote at the very top of the episode this happened to me in college where i was at a bar there was a magician doing like close-up card tricks and there was a mentalist and they were there together doing illusions. I love this story.

I haven't heard this one in a while. Oh, I've told it to you. Okay. But I don't know if I've ever, have I said it on the podcast? If so. I don't think so. Here's a. Please make it canon.

Okay. So they're like doing tricks. I go over to them and I'm like, wow, this is cool. I love magic. And they're like, wow wow a woman is talking to us so they did a bunch of tricks and i was awestruck love it and then i said to neither of them in particular but also kind of both of them do you want to go on a date with me sometime and they were like uh-huh so we arranged a date although i was mostly talking to

the magician over the the mentalist guy so i was talking to the magician we were corresponding texting setting up the date i show up to the date they are both there because again i did not ask i i directed my question into the ether not at a specific person i think you're being too hard on yourself in this situation well i should have known to not both show up but also i'm fine that they both did and actually in an ideal world i would have just a harem of multiple partners following me around sure i'm not saying that it's a bad thing to happen but it is something that you would want to check in advance before yes but i don't i don't fault myself nor the other people involved that they both showed up and it was actually awesome and fine and then the whole date

they just did more tricks which again was fine that's kind of why I wanted to hang out with them more. And then the magician was like, hey, we should hang out again sometime. And then I kind of bailed. And then we remained like friendly. And I think he lives in LA now. But if today he was like, hey, do you want to catch up sometime? I'd be like, sure.

So that's my awesome story story and today's movie is about now you see me what if you're like and today we're doing the godfather and it had nothing to do with anything you're like I just have been wanting to get this off my chest for five years that's and that's what you call a misdirect and that's a misdirect jesse eisenberg geez oh my god the star of this movie is jesse eisenberg's haircut like the most 2013 thing i've ever seen in my life where i felt it in my entire body when they revealed the haircut we were like wow that's a haircut that didn't exist out of outside of that year and people didn't even like it when it was there. It wasn't good at the time.

Okay, so yes, that's all the context you need to know going into this episode. I think that was a perfect introduction. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. I was going to say poof. Oh, wow. Mine was going to be much quicker, but I don't think as rich of a text. I mean, abracadabra let her rip exactly to quote that song from aladdin i was i was supposed to say that they didn't say that jesse

eisenberg didn't say that no no that's not magician canon because jesse eisenberg didn't say it in this movie okay it's the now you see me episode of the bechdel cast this is our show where we take a look at your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens my name is jamie loftus i feel bad because we have like a legitimately extremely talented magician as our guest today and we visibly know nothing we don't know what we're talking about we're absolutely blowing it and so we've brought in an expert who we've seen perform before she's fucking amazing and please tear us to shreds at any time we welcome it yeah psychologically it doesn't need to be via magic just psychologically destroy us it's not hard true um so this is the Bechdel cast uh

uh Caitlin what is the Bechdel test though I don't remember well let me jog your memory I did hypnotize you and made you forget what the Bechdel test was oh my god so my bad I know I think I'm playing Beethoven I'm like I'm like Common who's in this movie for like two minutes, and then he keeps disappearing for an hour, and then he comes back, and you're like, Officer Common. Poor Common. You're back. He is too good for this.

I mean, yeah. Who is? I mean, you know. Okay, the Bechdel test is a mediometric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes known as the Bechdel-Wallace test. There are many versions of the test. The one that we use requires that two people of a marginalized gender have names, they talk to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue, and ideally,

it's a narratively meaningful conversation. There's a lot. I mean, look, we'll get into it. Tricky, tricky, tricky. So yeah, we were covering Now You See Me and we have a wonderful guest with us. I'm so excited to have her. So let's let's get her on so she can destroy us like we deserve. She's a magician, host of She's Am podcast. It's Kayla Drescher. Hey, everyone. I will not destroy you because all of my energy will go into destroying this movie. So just know you're safe for today. But I also really appreciate that you hit every magician trope in the first 30 seconds of this episode. So I applaud you. Honestly, it was like a feat. I'm really impressed. We are problematic when it comes to the representation of magicians in media. That's fine.

Honestly, so was the movie. So we're fine. I'm so excited to talk about it. I, oh my gosh, there are so many. I will say when the twist of the movie was revealed at the very end, the twist that makes no sense and only introduces more questions. Yeah. I gasped.

I didn't see it coming. I was shocked. I was bowled over. Well, you don't see it coming because it's the least logical thing to happen in the movie. It's foreshadowed by nothing. And it's foreshadowed by a bunch of shots that are like mark ruffalo posing like he's mr robot he's like rami malek and mr robot in all of the foreshadowing shots where it's just like lone guy in a hoodie i was like that's sir that role is taken okay also i love you want emmys for

that i love that you were like that's the least logical thing in the entire movie when literally someone floated above an audience in a bubble like that says a lot it does call into question like is there actual like wizard style supernatural magic happening sometimes or is it are they just using illusion it's there's a lot of questions I have. There has to. Right. So there's it's a really interesting conversation because a lot of magicians also tend to also be in the skepticism worlds. And so you have people like Amazing Randy who spent a large portion of his career trying to take down Uri Geller, who's a magician who claims he has actual superpowers. And because he has actual superpowers, he can bend spoons. And so he would that that's his entire life as he's just claiming

he has some sort of unnatural power being thing. And a lot of magicians, there's a really fine line, especially when you get into the mentalism realm and kind of the like influencing and all of that it starts to get into a little bit of a fine line of that you have to be careful of to make sure the audience knows that you're not a psychic and there are many mentalists that after shows get approached and get asked like hey can you contact my dead sister like you know so it does tell a really, really careful, very thin line between doing magic for entertainment and being what I would consider more of a swindler because a lot of those people will use this. What I know, like I know how it's being done.

If I go see a psychic, I know how it's being done. Am I going to say that that doesn't exist in the world? I'm not going to discount it I don't think it's an unrealistic possibility but I know a lot of how that is done and because of that there's that line where you can really step over it when you start taking people's money because you're going to do something that they're hoping for and so it is really really it's a really big topic of conversation and magic on a regular basis kayla i need to interview you for the other podcast i'm working on it's all about spiritualism okay oh cool oh that's so cool wow let's we'll put a pin in that on mike but i have so many questions

for you okay okay great um so kayla what is your history your relationship with the movie or maybe the franchise even because there's a sequel and then there's i think a third movie in development or in production they're gonna do another one i believe so wow i saw it on imdb now you see three what okay so we're focusing on the first now you see me what is your relationship to that film so obviously as you mentioned i'm a magician that's my career and so whenever a movie gets made about your career you want to know how your career is being portrayed in a movie that's going to be seen by a lot of people right and? And so it's really interesting. This movie is from 2013. And I'm still today getting asked about that movie. And even just like two weeks ago, someone mentioned like, Oh, have you seen

that movie? Like, what do you think of it? Because I thought it was really cool. And when the movie came out, and this was not due to the movie, but it just is like how people think. Before the movie came out, I got a call once. They wanted me to, in a show, play the piano and then float the piano while I was playing it. And I was like, cool. So that's going to, like we're talking a starting price here of 20 grand because not only is it my fee, but you're going to have to have that built by an illusion designer from scratch because that does not yet as of today

exist right and they were like we were hoping you could do it for 200 and i was like you're cute i'm not that's not possible uh do you think i'm a cartoon character like that's but her her actual reaction to that was i thought you could just do magic. And it's like, oh, okay. So there's always this line that when people call you asking to hire you for something, there is a concern that there's actual superpower things going on here. And then after the movie came out, I can't tell you how many calls I got asking if I could float in a bubble. What? For like a year. yeah just constantly it was yeah you were wondering like we're not a big budget but wondering if you could do that thing in the movie and it's like I so I would

like to now explain to you what CGI is and not particularly good CGI either that's very accurate there was a tour called the now you see me tour that a friend of mine did work on and they did i believe a floating bubble illusion but you better believe that took a long long time and lots of money to put together so sure that stuff's not like if you're doing it in front of an audience even like copperfield's flying illusion from the 90s like that that was amazing but if you saw it live there were things that you're like oh that's maybe a bit wonky like i wasn't i was expecting that to look like he was flying and so there are people really think like with magic it's really easy and it's not at all and when a movie like this comes out it just sort of pushes the narrative that magic's really easy and it's not at all. And when a movie like this comes out, it just sort of pushes the narrative that magic's super easy. You could just do it. And it's like, no, I've practiced my

whole life to be able to do this one card trick. Come on. So that is, it's still something that all these years later, nearly 10 years later, is something that magicians will still be having to answer that question of can we do the stuff in the movie caitlin and i can relate with that because people ask us about the movie joker all the time they're like is joker reflective of the stand-up comedian's experience and the answer is yes 100 yeah uh our life is a billion dollar movie yeah and we're the scariest people to ever live um i also kayla i'm very curious um for our listeners and just for us to know a little bit more about how you built a career in magic as well. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't really know, to be completely honest.

So I started doing magic when I was seven years old. And magic is a really cool way of satisfying a lot of my brain half of my brain really like science and math and logic and dogs I also really love dogs and uh you're fine mine's literally next to me so the more dogs the better I but it also I really love making people laugh and entertaining people and magic was a was my ability to be able to do both of those things and so I did it for my whole life. I went off to college, had no intention of doing magic as a career, graduated college, got a job, hated it, dove into magic.

And I started out as a bar magician, which I would bartend and then when everybody had a drink, I would then do like a 10-minute show. Whoa. Right? It's a really good way to get a thick skin because everyone is drinking and they're loud and they're blunt and you have to deal with that usually without a microphone and so you're just like oh okay this is this is a good way to work out being a better performer and then I moved I'm

from Connecticut and I was living in Boston when I went full time and then moved out to Vegas and then eventually Los Angeles. And magic, there's two parts to magic. One is that you have to run a business and the other is that you have to be the product. And so you are the product, you're selling yourself and your show, which means you have to also be constantly working on bettering the product, but then also figure out how to get work and run a business. So there's a lot of trial and error. Magic is very much a mentorship community. So a lot of people who've been in this for a while will help you out. And you can ask questions, people write books and do lectures. So it's cool because magicians often help other magicians, which is

really nice. And I definitely would have no idea what I was doing if other people didn't help me many steps along the way even now me go like I'll call my friend and be like I don't I don't know how to fix this and we'll talk about it for a while and then it'll be fixed that's a really nice part of it and living in Los Angeles the magic community is really big and strong yeah so it's really cool to be able to absorb into that and learn from other magicians. That's awesome. That's so cool.

And we were lucky enough to see you perform at the Magic Castle a couple years ago. Yes. Yeah, that was fun. That was a blast. And yeah, we highly recommend your podcast because truly everything I know about magic I know from your show and from like watching you perform.

So thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing that. I'm so excited. And thanks for coming to that. That was really, it was really cool that we got to connect because obviously I listen to your podcast all the time. So I was like, oh, this is so cool. Let's have dinner.

And so it was really fun. And I'm so glad. It was, we still talk about it truly all the time. It was very exciting that's awesome it's a special night uh Caitlin what's your history with this movie I saw this movie not in theaters but I saw it probably a year or two after it came out I also am pretty sure I saw the sequel but I have absolutely no memory of it. And I don't know what happens in it. So maybe I didn't see it. I don't know. But I definitely saw the first one.

And I remember there being a big twist ending, but I didn't remember what it was. So when I was watching it, because it doesn't make sense. I was like, Oh, why is that the twist? But it was it was just a such a joy. I was was loving it i definitely haven't seen the second movie but i do remember there being like a not insignificant conversation because it did reach me someone who didn't see any of the movies but there was not an insignificant conversation about why they named the second movie now you see me. I think there was a lot of upset of why it wasn't called Now You Don't, which is the intuitive name for the second movie. But they instead,

they didn't even call it Now To See Me. They called it Now You See Me 2. Or an extremely Now You See Me movie. This is, this, I mean, I would say even more so than the original. Now You See Me 1 is an extremely goofy movie. It is. I never know what's happening. I don't like people just keep stating each other's feelings about each other, but you never actually see the fact that it's true.

It's Officer Common. You're like, what is going on here then it is i'm very i'm so excited to hear your insight kayla because for me for a movie that like really harps on like explaining how the illusion is accomplished every explanation left me more confused than when i just watched it um they're like oh no there's a i still don't understand how their air duct works anyways i'd never seen this movie before and i was waiting to watch this movie because i knew this is this episode's been a long time coming and so i i've been waiting to watch it and it didn't disappoint in terms of i heard it was really confusing and that the haircuts were very weird and in that way I felt like I fully got what I showed up for because the haircuts were just next level and

the logic the internal logic of the movie the emotional logic of the movie the characters I had no idea what was going on for 90% of the time, but I was invested. I was shocked that the Dave Franco magic battle, I was like, what is this? This is wild. So I'm very excited to talk about it. 10 out of 10, no notes. That scene, I did not see that scene coming. And then that was the point where I was like,

is this, is that, is it? How do you do that? But that's, I mean, but I can't tell, like, I'm very excited to hear a professional magician's insight because of like, is any of this possible? I don't know. I have some insight on that fight scene, oddly enough, and just in general in the entire movie. But this is also very important for anyone who this might appeal to. But I cannot stress enough that if you're going to have some sort of skill in a movie that you're making, you need to pay for a consultant. Yeah, or like, I would say cast people who can do magic and act.

Or at least willing to like learn. I've been able, I've been very lucky enough to consult on a couple of different projects and one of which was a movie that starred Rhea Perlman. And so I got to work with Rhea for like two months teaching her magic. And I mean, first of all, she's a gem, but also her dedication

to making sure she could do magic enough. Like when you see her do magic in the movie, she's doing it. There's only like one time that there's a little bit of a edit, but it's barely. She's actually doing the magic. And that's because she was dedicated as an actor to being able to do it. Now, James Franco, he does do the back palm, the card manipulation. And I believe he does actually produce those card fans, which was like, oh, that actually takes a lot of practice.

That's a few months of practice, oddly enough, just that one producing two card fans in each hand. Maybe it was edited. I don't know. But he did the move exactly like he held his hands up and I went, you're back palming cards. And boom, he had cards. I was like, yeah, okay.

I believe you had cards back palming cards. And boom, he had cards. I was like, yeah, OK. I believe you had cards. And that's awesome. And so I appreciate that that was probably the reality. But the amount of times people don't hire a magic consultant, when you watch it, it ends up like this. You're like, there's so much more you could have known about if you just asked the right person. Were there particular things?

I mean, and we'll get into the recap in a second. But were there particular things that really stood out to you? Because I know that like there are certain things that happened in this movie where you're like, well, that just you can't just be in a bubble. Isla Fisher. But were there certain things that really stuck out to you of like, oh, that was a severe, like, the actor clearly didn't know how that is supposed to look or be executed? Pretty much anything Jesse Eisenberg touches. Oh, shots fired. I'm not afraid to say it.

Well, so I saw him before the movie came out. He was on Letterman and he did. It's a move that's called the snap change. It's a really popular social media video for magicians to make it's basically holding a card up and then you in a sense snap the card and the card changes but because he's not a magician he didn't know how to talk to the camera people and they filmed it from the back and so only letterman saw magic no one else saw magic everyone else saw how it was done and he does it in he does it in the trailer and it's also something that takes

practice but if you actually watch closely it you can see how it's done and it's it's things like that that's like oh man i just wish i wish there was a little bit more attention to ETTL. Obviously, there's lots of CGI and all of that. But I think it's the close-up magic for me that is what could have been. Because all the mentalism is fairly doable. All the pickpocketing is very doable. The escape that Isla Fisher does in the very beginning has been done. I mean, no piranhas, but that idea of going in a water tank and then showing up in the very beginning has been I mean no piranhas but like

that idea of going in a water tank and then showing up in the back of the audience that's done all the time it's the close-up magic to me that was like oh man you had to work hard in post to make that look good that's by the way Isla Fisher almost nearly drowned doing that yeah yeah her chain got stuck when they were filming so again it's like i'm sure if they had a proper consultant that probably would not have happened were there do we know if there were magic consultants on this movie there was uh blake voight was the magic consultant on the movie i don't know his extended involvement i know that that he taught a lot of the back palming or the card moves to the magicians.

He's also the magician who taught uh oh names Ant-Man how to back palm the card. Paul Rudd. Thank you. He taught Paul Rudd how to back palm the business card that shows up in Marvel movies. So Blake Voight was the magic consultant but I don't believe

like you need a magic consultant on the script also. Like a consultant should be going through the scripts, combing through and going, this is a bad idea. Let me give you 18 other ideas you can pull from. And then going from there, my guess would be that person did not exist. I know Copperfield had a big hand in it, but I think only in certain elements. So I don't believe there was a good enough involvement from any consultant. You can kind of just tell. Got it. Okay, that's good to know. I mean, with certain things, I worked as a comedy consultant before. And sometimes it's just like, if you're not there all the time,

then it's like certain things can just slip through. And then because of how production works, you're like, oh, I guess that that's just there. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. to do is record everything like you always do one session 24 hours bpm 110 120 she's terrified should we wake her up absolutely not what was that you didn't figure it out i think i need to hear

you say it that was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian,

now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning. In a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron, and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns and church, and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked. Voila! You got straight away.

I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For now. Okay, we'll see what happens. Yep. Yep. All the time. Happens all the time.

Yikes. Brutal. Let's take a quick break and then we will come back for the recap. And we're back. We back ta-da shall we shall we get into the meat and potatoes of oh wait i should have said right when you said we're back you're really digging a hole i could i should have said and now you see me again we're caitlin this is a podcast. No one ever sees us. And that's, in a way, the illusion. And now you hear me. Now you hear me.

Now you don't because you turned off the podcast. Okay. I'm in a weird mood. Okay. This is great. Okay. So good luck. I do not envy you having to recap this this is i did my best

i i trust you so we meet several people at the very beginning one by one first is daniel that's jesse eisenberg he's doing a card trick for a big group of people it's a big spectacle we meet merit woody harrelson's character he's doing hypnosis and mentalism for this couple who's on vacation or something we meet jack that's dave franco he does a neo from the matrix bending a spoon with his mind trick which no one calls attention to then pickpockets a guy with his sleight of hand skills we finally meet henley that's isla fisher's character she does a get out of handcuffs while in a tank of water trick it seems to go horribly wrong with flesh-eating piranhas, but it turns out it was all part of the illusion and she's actually fine. In all of these scenes, there is some mysterious hooded figure lurking around who presumably leaves behind an invitation for these four people. Daniel, Merritt, Henley, and Jack all show up to the address on the

invitation. They go into the apartment where there are some tricks and puzzles and then they uncover these digital blueprints for what turns out to be an elaborate magic show. It's funny because you can tell it is like fully CG. And so it's just like Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson looking at nothing and being like, Whoa, this trick is going to be wild. Like it's like hacker style shot. Also, there's one shot in this movie where you're like, wait, Isla Fisher is a hacker. And then it never comes back. She's in front of like 40 computers and she's like i don't know and i was like you can do that like there didn't realize but don't worry like benny thinks in this movie

it's not really relevant and it won't come back right so then we cut to one year later these four people have a show together in Vegas called The Four Horsemen. In the audience of this show is Morgan Freeman, who is trying to film the show. Also, Morgan Freeman, almost in every scene of this movie, is like with some woman. We never learn who she is i think she does have a name at one point but i didn't feel like rewinding it to find out yeah it's he says something like thank you and says her name but she never speaks correct the whole movie i felt bad i was like stop i mean i hope that you know she was like paid well but I was like you're wasting this

woman's time if you give her a line or don't my god right anyways we're also about to meet Michael Kane's character he also has a young woman as his assistant question mark her name is Jasmine I think which you learn in exactly one scene. She similarly has no narrative significance, no lines of dialogue. Oh, nothing incredibly bizarre to the point where I'm like, we're large chunks of this movie cut. Cause I genuinely don't understand why those characters are there.

If you're going to give them nothing to do. Right. Real fast. I want to just mention one scene and how accurate it is because in in the scene where jesse eisenberg is going to hook up with the fangirl and he then sees a card and is like i am now more interested in this magic thing i cannot tell you the accuracy oh no there is a picture i have to find it for you and send it to you so you can see it it's a picture of four magicians sitting around a table what we call jamming so working out like playing with magic and showing each other moves and stuff at a strip club and it's there is a

naked woman and they are back to her playing with a deck of cards. Wow. It is so beautiful. I had to say in that moment, I went, ah, okay. Whoever, someone, someone nailed that. That was like probably the most accurate thing of the entire movie about magic. It's like, yeah, magicians are way more into props and magic things than they are. This like hot woman that's ready to hook up to them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was brilliant. Loved it. Wow. Okay. magic things than they are but this like hot woman that's ready to hook up to them yeah yeah

it was it was brilliant loved it wow okay the way jesse eisenberg treats that poor woman made my nose bleed i was my god yeah yeah so at least there's some accuracy in this movie that's nice yeah okay so they have the show together in vegas we meet morgan freeman briefly we also meet they call him like their benefactor i think it's like the show's financier arthur tressler played by michael caine who's like an insurance executive bajillionaire i was like okay is it explained no did i miss something no why is he interested in magic and how did he we don't know he i feel like it's revealed very very late that he is in like a nine figure insurance scammer scion i just assumed he was like a generic rich guy which Michael Caine plays all the time very well right in spite of

his horrific politics but like it's something that he does pretty often but when they made it really specific very late in the game I'm like wait how did this insurance guy get interest like how did he get connected to these magicians and they don't really tell you anyways I have no idea okay well as long as as long as I didn't miss anything, there's so many things where I'm like, did I lose a scene? Like, did they drop a scene on the floor? Because I don't know what's happening. I feel like I've thought about it like, oh, yeah, logically, you know, Vegas show to rent a theater like that. It's probably like 60 to 80 grand a night because you have to rent it like you what we call four walling

right so you have to four wall a space in vegas but in order to do that you have to have money so you might have a benefactor obviously they hooked up with this benefactor because the blueprints told them to and i've put way more thought into the script than what they did than the person who wrote it did right that's helpful to hear though because i was just like how is any of this very expensive stuff happening? And how is it worth it for anyone involved? And I just never really figured it out. Yeah.

Mark Ruffalo. Spoiler alert. Something, something. Mark Ruffalo. Yes. Okay. So for the final trick of the show, they announce that they're going to rob a bank. They pick someone seemingly at random from the audience. It's a French man named Etienne.

They seemingly teleport him into the vault stacks of cash in Paris back to Vegas and all of the cash comes raining down onto the audience. So it seems that they have successfully robbed this Parisian bank. The next day, Daniel, Merritt, Jack, and Henley are arrested and agent Dylan Rhodes,hodes mark ruffalo oh my god i couldn't have told you that character's name with a gun to my head i was like mark ruffalo that's all i had like there i did not dylan rhodes why bother yeah so dylan rhodes from the fbi is on the case assigned to him by his like superior played by common who as you mentioned jamie is in like three scenes coming and going so dylan rhodes is on the

case to figure out how they stole the money from the bank also assigned to the case is someone an agent sent from interpol from france named alma played by melanie laurent uh is i'm guessing how maybe you say your name it was pretty it was really pretty you did good it was who rhodes is reluctant to work with. The two of them interrogate Daniel and Merritt, who don't give up any information. And Daniel is all like, we're going to be so many steps ahead of you, and you're not even going to know it. And then he throws his handcuffs onto Rhodes. And we're like, woohoo. And then Rhodes has to let them go because there's no real evidence against the magicians but he's like they're gonna do this again and it seems like this was the first of three big shows that the four horsemen will perform it is it's so funny like it's so they're so rude in the interrogation

and this is like obviously this is an anti-cop podcast but i'm just like what do they think is going to happen to them they're so confident that they're not going to get arrested and also it's so like early on you're like oh this movie only cares about woody harrelson and jesse eisenberg correct the two actors who are i mean i i love woody harrelson i don't love this character at all this character fucking sucks especially because he leads by saying extremely transphobic fucked up stuff in basically his first scene yeah well no it's the misogynist scene and then the transphobic scene and then he sexually harasses isla fisher for the rest of the movie correct and then you don't get any scene of

isla fisher's police interrogation but you do get 500 scenes of her getting sexually harassed by Woody Harrelson. I have a whole spiel on that. Hated it. Anyways. Okay, so then we meet Thaddeus Bradley. That's Morgan Freeman's character's name. Good Lord. He is a former magician who now debunks magicians and exposes how their tricks

are done Rhodes meets with him Thaddeus explains misdirection he explains how they didn't actually rob the bank at least not the way it seems they did it during the show Rhodes learns that the teleportation machine just drops you into a room below the stage that looks like a bank vault. And Thaddeus explains how the four horsemen specifically targeted this French guy, Etienne, how they mind tricked him into going to their show. Okay. The way they mind trick him into going to their show is so expensive.

I know that this is like it's a movie i get it but there had to have been a smarter screenwriting way to explain how they got him there other than they all went to paris and were like jogging around being like snap crackle pop and now he's in vegas and you're like, as someone who knows basically nothing about magic, never in a million years would I believe that unless you're telling me they're fucking wizards, which I don't think we're supposed to think they are. There is an element of magic that is all about influencing your audience. And so there are elements where like, in theory, I could get you with some practice.

I'm not that good at it, but I could get you to choose something very specifically that I wanted you to choose. Like that, that's an element of it. However, would that then last months later to the show and vacation you planned? No. Like it works in the,

no. Right. Now we're getting into like weird hypnosis mind control territory which is not a thing magicians have the ability to do and so it's it's a very strange like i get the um when woody harrelson like kind of palms his chest and that hypnotizes him that's and i don't know much about hypnosis but from what i know that's an element of kind of using that. But that means that, like, how long were they, Woody Harrelson would have had to, like, sit down with this guy

and do what he did to the people, the couple on vacation at the beginning. This is not a realistic, and I, what am I, also, they don't explain misdirection correctly, which was just a massive pet peeve of mine. Misdirection is not covering up, so that illusion where the guy gets smushed and in theory he's in Paris is actually a play off of a real illusion. It's, Michael Carbonaro did it on the Carbonaro effect, but it was originally done by a magician named Doug Henning. I can go on, but it's really cool where it looks like you're smushing a person or an object down, and then you have this clear disc

where you see the clothes they were wearing. Or Michael Carpenter did it with dogs and puppies. So you see the dog fur, and then you put the disc back in, and it opens back up, and the dog or the person is back inside of the machine. So it's really cool. That's wild. But that is not misdirection. I'm mad.

So wait, Morgan Freeman, a famous truth teller, lied to us? God, also like, fuck Morgan Freeman. It's just, this movie is so messy. Yeah, there's a lot of problematic people. Messy, okay. That's very good to know because I was, because of the amount of time this movie takes, I would say like a good third of the movie is just explaining what happens in other parts of the movie.

And I was very curious as to like how much of this was rooted in any reality in the magic world. Some of it I felt like obviously wasn't, but the more specifics, it's like, I don't know. Like, so that's not it. So they got the first thing wrong is what you're saying. world some of it i felt like obviously wasn't but the more specifics it's like i don't know like so that's not it so they got the first thing wrong it's what you're saying they also get in the interrogation scene where jesse eisenberg says first rule of magic always be the smartest person in the room which is not the first rule it's not even on the rules of magic that's not a thing like no one you don't have to be we're just like we're playing with cards and coins it's great no that's never the thing uh the first rule of magic is don't tell

anybody how the trick is done which obviously morgan freeman doesn't know uh it seems like what happened was that the writers went this is my guess the writers went you guys know that magician the masked magician who revealed a bunch of magic in the 90s? Well, Morgan Freeman play him and like explain how magic is done. Do you know anything about magic? No, but I know some words and they just put it into a movie. And that's where we get, oh, yeah, here's some misdirection. No, that's a trap door.

There's no misdirection used in that moment at all like just the explanations of stuff were like you had a magician and you could have been like hey read this how accurate is it and i imagine that magician would have gone not nope let me fix it yeah and then it would have been better but i don't know here we are we. We're only still in the first half of the movie. I'm already mad. Okay, yeah. So Thaddeus is explaining to Rhodes how the trick was probably done,

how the magicians had already stolen the cash from the bank prior to the show, and they just made it seem like the money was being stolen from paris and teleported back to vegas thaddeus also tells roads about someone named lionel shrike which i kept hearing is shrek yes of course i was like wow great someone killed shrek and i'm supposed to want to watch this movie fucking unbelievable and then that means canonically that mark ruffalo spoiler alert is shrek's son yes well if he's the hulk oh green now i like this movie now i'm a fan

and i'm back and i actually make the great perfect story ever told it's the story about how the hulk is shrek's son wow that all gets answered in uh now you see me too so it'll be great right and then furthermore now you three me yeah oh my gosh okay so we learn about lionel shrike a magician who thaddeus had exposed in the 70s Shrike then I'm sorry Shrek thank you tried to then stage a comeback but it didn't work he is thought to have drowned in the East River while performing a trick although his body was never found but then it turns out he actually did die during that trick so why were they like and then we didn't find his body anyway then it's time for the four horsemen's next show in new orleans rhodes and alma follow the magicians there they speculate that there's possibly an unknown fifth horseman who is orchestrating things behind the

scenes also alma has been reading about magic and she's reading about this guy named shrike i wrote in my notes at this point it's all very shrikean similar to shrekian okay so i'm i am we were on the same page where you're like that sounds a little bit too much like shrek in 2013 where shrek was had been one of our most popular celebrities for over a decade. Correct. Okay. Yeah, the screenwriter, one of many fumbles. Yeah.

And Alma is all like, I don't know, magic is pretty cool. I like believing in it. And then Rhodes' whole thing is magic is silly and it's all fake. I am skeptical. I am Mark Ruffalo. Then at the second show in New Orleans, Daniel Merritt, Henley and Jack do a bunch of tricks. And then the big finale at the end is them redistributing Arthur Tressler, that's Michael

Kane, Arthur Tressler's $140 million to the people of the audience this is one of the more fun elements of the movie where it's like the parts where they're redistributing like nasty disgusting wealth you're like that's I wish I didn't hate these characters so much because they're doing something that I fully support but they're so unlikable I know so the whole thing there is that the members of the audience were all insured by Arthur Tressler's insurance company, which screwed the people in the audience, completely screwed them over after Hurricane Katrina. So they get the money that was owed to them right out of Arthur Tressler's like personal bank account. The show ends. Rhodes and Alma chase after the magicians because they've just committed this big theft. They managed to get away. Arthur Tressler is all pissed that his money was stolen. And he goes to Thaddeus to be like, hey, help me expose these four horsemen and bring them down. But Rhodes thinks that Thaddeus might be in on the

whole thing he thinks that maybe he's the fifth horseman so we're like red herring much which didn't make sense then Rhodes and Alma are able to track and locate the magicians in New York they are there for their last big show. So Rhodes and Alma go to New York. They find the apartment where the magicians are staying. There's a big chase. Three of the horsemen get away. But then there's this magic fight between Rhodes and Jack, aka Dave Franco. He's really, I'm so excited to hear your insight on that Kayla because I did not see that scene coming and I was like like it was he was so ready for that in a way I wasn't prepared for as an audience member is now is now a good time for me to go into that because

I would be happy to it's very very brief, to be completely honest. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. If I were to say, give me the three things you know about how magic is done. You would probably say mirrors, magnets, and hiding things behind your hand. And that's all they had. That was it. That was the entire fight it was like this is so this this

scene right here showed no magician was asked about anything because clearly it was just the three things everyone understands magic is it was there were so many mirrors why were there so many on why no magician on i barely have mirrors in my home i have enough that i can go do i look fine and then i can leave that's not a thing we just have lying around that are these massive like no it doesn't come crap stop it and then it's like oh yeah boom boom cards now i will say the accuracy of cards being thrown and it hurting is very accurate is it now okay very so when i was a kid i went to my very first magic convention and we all threw cards we tried to get it into the chandelier in the lobby um we got in trouble but whatever and when we were throwing cards uh they accidentally hit this person and she had to go to the hospital because it hit her eye like it it was bad so this does happen there was another person she also got

hit but i think it just cut her face but there was someone who had to go to the hospital um so this is actually it hurts i've been hit too but not terror like i'm not injured but that is painful if someone can throw cards really well it can actually hurt you probably have heard of ricky j who can throw who could throw cards into the outside skin of a watermelon yeah like full pierce it like amazing so that's probably the most like yeah okay I see but also even that that's like a typical magician thing being able to throw cards and it like hit things with accuracy so it's just a lot of really typical the only thing that was missing is him going abracadabra bitch as he jumped out the window like that's the only thing they could have added that I would have been like yeah there that's

the fourth thing you missed is some weird magic phrase otherwise it's just everything everybody thinks about magic and so it's there was just no creativity put into that at all there should have been an illusion there should like there could have been a suitcase he goes in and comes out of another one like there's tons of stuff you could have done with that. Right. Nothing. Which I feel like is must be even more frustrating because it seems like that is what is supposed to be cool about the movie. But then the one time they do it, they do the most boring thing.

Yeah. And then it just goes back to not making sense. Huh? Yeah. Yep. It just I feel like what they was a lot of people will be like oh we just didn't want to make it too out there like we wanted it for people to we wanted people to know what was going on and it's like it's a fight scene right you watch john wick like that

doesn't make any sense but it's happening most fight scenes defy the laws of physics so if you also have magic in your movie like yeah play with that take advantage of that right there was so much they could have done and like i think i had like 20 ideas just watching it and was like okay i mean you should write a movie now you three me hire kayla yeah save the franchise done now you three me is iconic a very weird title for a movie but i'm a big fan i'm a big fan it's great okay so there's this fight between roads and jack jack seems to be safeguarding this stack of papers there is then a high-speed car chase in which Jack crashes. The car he's in explodes and he seems to be very dead. The papers get rescued though and they turn out to be information about a company

called Elkhorn or something. I lost the thread for a few minutes both times I watched the movie. At this point, I don't know what these papers were. I don't know what Elkhorn this point i don't know what these papers were i don't know what el corn is i don't know anything about that that was so confusing to me you're not alone same okay good much less why dave franco would die trying to keep that secret not sure what he would stand to gain unclear but the fbi thinks that the horseman's next target is a safe full of half a billion dollars which gets loaded into a truck so Rhodes and his people chase after it but the safe turns out to be full of balloon animals meanwhile the four horsemen's third and final show is happening in Queens which is just a show where the horsemen jump off a roof and then explode into money. Which is kind of fun, but I'm like, yeah, it was weird that they really risked it all to just be like, bye. If I had been an audience member in that show, I would be so disappointed because it lasted all of five minutes and was not satisfying.

So they explode into money. It turns out to be fake money, though, because the horseman used the real money to frame Thaddeus and make it seem like he stole the money. So then Rhodes pays a visit to Thaddeus in a jail cell. Thaddeus explains how they must have stolen the real safe, how Jack didn't actually die in the crash, how they did a bunch of illusions and switcheroos. I'm sure that's perfect terminology. I was like, yeah, any notes? Any notes for us?

No, you're nailing it. Yep. Amazing. Nailing it. Meanwhile, in Central Park, Daniel Henley and Merritt reunite with Jack, who is in fact still alive, and they await the fifth horseman to reveal themselves. And it turns out to be dot, dot, dot, Dylan Rhodes, a.k.a. Mark Ruffalo.

Baffling. Playing the longest con I've ever heard of. Okay. You ever do a con so long you become a police detective for like 20 years? I'm like, what are you talking about? And also, we're led to believe that he would have been the one bankrolling this three-part show, like this whole thing. He would have had to pay for the magicians to fly

to paris to mind trick etienne like he can't afford that but unless he like inherited a massive fortune but you're like yeah i mean first of all whatever i mean the there's multiple government agency there's like multi-level copaganda going on in this movie but like on your average police detective's salary how is any of this possible i don't know and yet cops are still paid too much but they're they're still paid far too much for a job that shouldn't exist but like but they're not paid like mgm vegas right five nights a week money like it's just well it's so baffling what about the I like you know that you know that okay club that completely makes sense what about their budget because maybe they have a big budget that we just don't know about so I couldn't even figure out how

to work this into the recap but there's also this like secret society of magicians called the eye they're vaguely using tarot cards for reasons you're like huh what so apparently mark ruffalo's character is like one of the members of the eye and he is trying to induct the four horsemen i don't i couldn't make sense of it really so i left it out of the recap but maybe yeah maybe the eye was bankrolling this whole thing. Point is, Mark Ruffalo in a big twist turns out to be the mastermind of the whole thing. Because Lionel Shrek was his father. And he is avenging his father's death. Because all movies are about fathers and sons, of course.

Yeah, famously they are but also i would love a movie about shrek's son avenging shrek's death that is the one time i will majorly make an exception for my annoyance at the fathers and sons trope hey shrek five shrek five they kill Shrek at the beginning. And Shrek Jr. has to avenge Shrek Sr.'s death. Yeah, I would love that. Fingers crossed. Okay, so the reason that Mark Ruffalo was like targeting these people specifically, it turns out that the insurer who denied Shrek's family's claim was Tesla,

aka Michael Caine. The bank is related in a way that I didn't understand even a little bit. No idea. And then the company, Elkhorn, started as a safe manufacturer and they made the shoddy safe that Shrike wasn't able to escape from

and that's why he died doing that trick. So that's why Mark Ruffalo is targeting these people. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free,

subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out?

I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen, um, dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with.

But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts specifically to avenge his father's death and get back at these people so that's the story let's take another break and we will come back to discuss and we're back okay uh kayla is there anything that jumps up to you right away of like well this is weird or wrong or like is there anything that you wanted to kick off with oh boy if not that's fine we've got plenty well go through my notes obviously like obviously the representation of magic is not great in the movie and we've discussed that but also the

representation of women is pretty horrible it's also very bad so i know you talk a lot about this on your podcast kayla how as far as the representation of women as magicians just as a career it's not the most common thing when magicians are represented in media women are often excluded women who are magicians you've told us stories about how there's just so much sexism in the industry this movie does include a woman as a magician nope but no also right no right because you don't see her doing magic ever really she's i felt like she was and i that my feeling on i just felt like it's i feel like this also like specifically happens to isla fisher a lot and she's very talented and she's always like i feel like casting these roles where she's just underutilized in a way that is very unfair to her

talent but even like it just felt like they fucking arranged this group like it was the fucking chucky cheese band they're like okay three guys there's this guy and then there's this guy and then there's the goofy guy and then there's girl no. And then there's the goofy guy. And then there's girl. No further personality traits. She's just sexually harassed. And we're told that she's interested in the main guy for reasons that are unclear and honestly baffling, given the way he talks to her. That's very true. So funny enough, I actually used to be in a tour.

I was in a tour for four years exactly like this, where there were five magicians. I was in a tour for four years exactly like this where there were five magicians. I was the woman. But I will say this tour, the producer and the magicians would go out of their way on a regular basis to make sure I could never be portrayed as an assistant. And the best example I can give besides the fact that like I had my own stage time for 25 minutes by myself and not like doing magic without anybody else being a part of it that's great but I remember specifically we were taking promo pictures and we were standing on this illusion and I just like put my my arm on one of the magicians just like because the show is very about our camaraderie so I would put my my arm on one of the magicians just like because the show is very about our camaraderie so

i would put my arm on that magician and he goes i really like that idea however i'm very concerned by the fact that you're doing that that some people will think you're my assistant and i was like whoa i didn't even think about that great idea and because just the idea that i would like put my arm on his shoulder someone could see that go, she's clearly the assistant because she's attached to the male magician. Wow. So that is the level at which we have to think in order for people to not automatically think the woman's the assistant because that's the knowledge people have. Right. Now, they also don't

always think like oh wow i'm seeing a woman perform magic that's cool that must be rare not all audiences go to that length but they definitely will assume that if there are two magicians performing together one presents as a male one presents as a female that the woman must be the assistant and there's a lot of work you have to do a lot of the duo is in magic they have to do a lot of work to make sure that she is seen as a magician and in this partnership so when you look at this movie i make the argument that the only time she actually does magic is in her solo show. She even references how she was Jesse Eisenberg's assistant. And a lot of women who are solo performers now start off as assistants,

so that's actually really common. But then going into the show, we see her carry the bunny. She puts the bunny in the box, right? Who does the magic? Jesse Eisenberg waves the wand. Who blows up the bubble that she then levitates in it's the same as who shows off the table and moves their hands as the woman gets levitated the magician she's not seen as the magician she's the prop that's being levitated it's the same exact thing

we have on Shazam we created a our own little test which is called the table test which is can a woman be replaced by a table with wheels? Oh my god. And if the answer is yes she's not a magician she's an assistant. The script doesn't matter because you could put the script with anybody but if all she does is the same that a table does

she's the assistant there is no point in which she actually could not be replaced by a table that is and bleak narratively too like not just her role as a magician who is not doing magic in the movie i believe that woody harrelson's character would sexually harass a table where like this context so as we pointed out, like in that interrogation scene toward the beginning, there's a lot of focus in the movie

placed on the two horsemen, Daniel and Merritt, where Henley and Jack often fall into the background, which makes some sense from a screenwriting point of view. You can't have like tons of focus on like a bazillion different characters. There's often not enough real estate for that. But the fact that like, Henley is one of the ones who falls by the wayside, and doesn't get to do much, again, narratively speaking. And then even Jack, who is kind of right along, is with her in that sense of like, he's not given much focus.

But then he is sort of toward the end where he's the one in that fight scene. He's the one in that car chase. You're meant to think that he dies. He definitely ends up having more narrative impact. Right. I mean, it's like totally definitely by the end. Like he's I mean, it's it's still dissonant. But like you're like, oh, Jack took on.

I mean, it's like not like I preferred that you would think that Isla Fisher died. Like that's not. But but it's like he definitely took on more narrative meaning as it went down, went on. Right. Because then he's the one in the flashback who had broken into the safe and he steals that half a billion dollars. And yeah, so he's doing way more than Henley. And certainly Daniel and Merritt are doing way more. So she just ends up being the one character in these four horsemen

who basically doesn't get to do anything. And kind of, you could write her out of the script and it would not change the story and it really at all it felt to me like of the many dissonant but like as it like pertains to her character it felt like there was kind of this like empty movie feminism gesture made at the beginning of the movie because she says in her first scene with Jesse Eisenberg, like, I'm not your assistant anymore. You can't boss me around. Like, and it's kind of this like girl, like, and it's like, you know, it doesn't become an empty girl power moment if the story then follows through on that.

But that gesture at the beginning was completely hollow. Because like you were saying, Kayla, she's completely treated like an assistant for basically the remainder of the movie. And so it's like, well, why did they even bother to have her say like leave me alone i'm not your assistant anymore when that is very much how the movie views and treats her so right and also she has no problem with it ever again and in the same way where it's like this is movie shit that is really like i find it so frustrating especially because it's like oh that has to suck for the actor who has to do that too for like isla fisher um when she's being sexually harassed by the woody harrelson character which is all the time she'll like there should be like

a term for what this is in movies where it's like she pushes back once but by the end of the conversation she's like haha you're you're wild you that's our woody you know like at the beginning she's like oh i guess i'll when he basically says like well i know you're in love with jesse eisenberg which is the only way that we're told that she's in love with jesse eisenberg is by woody harrelson claiming it's true i don't see it in the story or the characters at all because is it even true shaming her in spite of the fact that she's very thin like just all of this wild fucked up stuff he treats her like shit but woody harrelson's like y'all love each other and they're like i guess we do and like which is weird in itself but then he's like oh well you're a tight like you you're a tightly corked like he's saying fucked up like you need

to fuck me like he's saying i'll fuck you don't worry and she's like oh well i like she she deflects which kind of like i mean she could have fucking thrown something at his head but in that situation you're like okay she's trying to brush him off be like leave me alone fuck you but then by the end of the conversation the script which is written by three men has her be like haha that's how it ends she goes teehee she goes haha over and over and it's and and then we're led to believe it's not like a subtext moment of like she's doing that because she doesn't know what else to do i think we're when we see that we're supposed to think it's funny and the character is fine with it. Right. Because, I mean, we're all familiar with the horror of being harassed by someone.

But you work with that person or, you know, there's some circumstance that it makes it really difficult to push back on it because, you know, your job is at stake or, you know, something's at stake. But the movie doesn't acknowledge that in any way and yeah like you said jamie just like presents her being harassed as something that actually she might kind of secretly like a little bit and at the very least it's a silly joke it's i think you're both nailing it and with this particular issue because women are so few and far between in magic it was probably about seven percent of anybody that's a magician from like a hobbyist to a full-time professional or magicians but only two percent of professionals are women so the the number is really low already and you don't see that that number is not reflected when

people are first starting out in magic when people are first starting out in magic. When people are first starting out in magic, the majority of the classes are often women, are often people of color. And you watch those people quit slowly as they go through magic. And it's because they either don't see themselves reflected in magic. They come up against too many barriers like, oh, my skin's not white, so I guess I can't use these props and there's nobody that makes them in my skin tone. I don't know what to do. Moving on. Or, oh, I don't have pockets and I need like some

massive pockets in order to do this trick. I guess I can't do that trick. And eventually, I guess I can't do magic. happens all of the time but then when you start to add in more of the horror and harassment and bullying that exists because magicians are have a mentality that's still in the 50s you end up having and you have a movie like this of a young girl sees this movie and it's like cool cool, a woman, like she's doing magic. This is awesome. Whether or not they see her do magic, but they see this scene, that young girl is 100% going to be spoken to like that by an older magician at some point in her life. It just, it's going to happen at a magic club meeting, at a convention. It's gonna happen.

And now she has watched this movie and it's in her head going oh i should just laugh it off right and like that sucks that's such trauma that she's later gonna need to work out in therapy i know so right like that is it's so impactful and already in a world where the lack of diversity is astounding and the lack of inclusivity is even more astounding you're like this movie doesn't help it doesn't help us go hey actually like that's not okay and actually here's a woman doing her own magic and you know of course we can get into but i also have in my notes, like, Morgan Freeman, the black magician,

quit magic to sell out for money and then got framed and arrested. Right. You know, the one magician of color in the movie. What are we doing? So this movie just doesn't help issues that we're constantly seeing optics are so bad the optics are terrible tell me what you think about this Kayla so this is such a brief

moment in the movie where if you blinked you'd miss it but I feel like there's something significant here where when the four characters are being introduced at the very beginning of the movie and we see henley's solo act you know she's and i'm about to jump in this tank of water and if i don't escape in 60 seconds i'll be eaten by piranhas and then her two assistants who i think are men rip off her clothes and then she's wearing this like sparkly bathing suit in a way that makes it seem like her act is sexualized to some degree is there like do you find that there is like pressure among the women who are operating on a professional level as magicians to do stuff like that to like have to kind of sexualize their act or like present as more quote-unquote sexy to have audiences engage with them more or like take them more seriously like is that is that a thing the first time i was told i needed to be more sexy on stage i was 13.

that doesn't surprise me but i am still horrified there, I mean, it's like that shit exists in comedy as well. But it seems like this is, it's like even more intense in magic. Good Lord. Magic is a couple decades behind comedy, if that kind of helps give you an idea. It's like, it's everything that stand-ups and comedians have experienced, magicians also experience, but we're a little behind the progress. And so it is a thing. A lot of women have just either chosen for themselves

to be more sexual on stage or they feel like that's the only way they can get work because that's who they see getting work. And what ends up happening, unfortunately, is that there's more effort put into appearance than there is the skill. And then a lot of people start to create the buzz of like, well, she's beautiful, she's hot, she's sexy, but she's real bad at magic. And then that becomes, well, all women are bad at

magic. And that's sort of how the narrative kind of continues. I remember when I wanted to become a professional, I sat down with my friend who for her entire life, she's been the sexy one, like she's always been stunning. That's what she's worked on. And I said to to her I don't want to do that but I feel like I have to in order to get work because that seems to be who gets work and she was like don't do it she just she was like don't do it I'm aging people won't book me anymore because I'm 45 and not pretty anymore and you know quote I'm not pretty anymore right of course she's beautiful she's freaking stunning but because she's getting older and you can tell people didn't want to book her anymore and so she's like if you can avoid having work because of how you look then that's brilliant

and that's where I went I think I should be funny because I like being funny but comedy doesn't rely on how I look it doesn't have to right and so that that was a really big turning point for me where I was like oh thank god I don't have to do that but it's really really big in magic and it's like the fact that that even needs to be a discussion is like a you know testament to where that particular industry is at and it's like that that happens in many industries but it seems particularly egregious in magic where it's like the fact that that's something that either of you even need to consider where it's like that's not a conversation that men in that industry are having they can just do magic right and to clear, if someone wants to, in any kind of performance, like lean into sexiness or sexuality, that's totally fine if that's what they want to do.

It's more about like the pressure on specifically women to hypersexualize themselves in an effort to get booked on shows and get work and all that stuff. Yeah. And I love like there was a act that floated around. It was a viral video many, many years ago. And at the time, I really didn't like it, but I was quite young and like didn't have a good headspace for this yet. But she's a burlesque dancer and stripper who would do a magic trick where she would make a red silk vanish and then she would pull it out of an item of clothing and then take it off, take that item of clothing off and then make the make it vanish again and pull it out of. By the time she's completely naked and she's pulling it out of her vagina and it was it was it's a brilliant act it was so clever and smart and

had nothing to do with sexuality and everything to do with just be wit it was like wit yeah and even though it's still very sexual and it's like that's to me the epitome of an act that can combine good magic with good sexuality and what ends up and it's unfortunate that there are so many women in the industry that just care about the sexuality and really don't try to do good magic because the sexuality is a crutch so they're happy to use it that's where i start i'm like oh man i wish that that wasn't the reality but there are tons of women in magic that do both and they're so good and it's such a great show that i super support being as sexual as you want to as long as the magic is also something you care about sure and it's like

even i'm sure they could be people who are perceived to be like leaning too much on any given thing like there's a greater context for that as well of like well you don't get there in a vacuum and how you're you know conditioned to value yourself and anal like there's just it just seems like there's an incredible amount of layers in a way that again this movie does nothing to move the needle on and just presents the trope without any commentary or any indication on how it makes the person being asked to execute the trope. Like no indication on how it makes her feel other than that one line of dialogue that is not followed through on in any way. Yeah. anyway yeah um the last thing i'll say about henley's character which is like the other big yikes thing is several comments made about her weight uh where it's suggested it's suggested

that daniel stopped working with her because she was too heavy or too big and couldn't fit through a hole for a trick it's kind of you have to speculate here. But it's also like, did he fire her because she was too fat, quote unquote. And then later in the movie, when he catches her on stage after the bubble pops, and she falls out of the bubble. He says, Oh, I guess you have lost some weight. Mind you, we're talking about Isla Fisher. Just the suggestion that like Daniel was like, yeah, I had to fire Isla Fisher because she was too fat. It's just completely absurd and just like insulting top to bottom and baseline makes no sense. And it was like on top of being extremely fat phobic in a way that in regards to this actor doesn't even make sense it also just like makes you hate jesse eisenberg's character which i don't think we're supposed to so it's

like right just like how we're supposed to be endeared by woody harrelson's character even though he's making transphobic jokes and slurs and homophobic jokes like that whole disaster the other major thing I wanted to touch on was what I felt to be an extremely wedged in romance between Rhodes and Alma yeah so again Alma is the agent from Inter interpol she's brought in she's also like made to seem kind of like a red herring for a while like oh what are her motives why is she here which in some ways i genuinely felt was an excuse to let mark ruffalo continue yelling at this woman yeah right because it was like anytime you were meant to be suspicious of her he would have a rude confrontation of her would like belittle her skill which you're like okay they're all fucking cops so who cares but it's like

the movie took on a lot of opportunities to be like let's yell at her again it's like what i mean how many how many times did they mention like oh this is her first time off the desk oh she doesn't know what she's doing oh sit in the car sit in the car it was constant it's like part misogyny part bad writing part both you're just like this is just a mess even though she has the best instincts and is the best at her like detective job but yeah which i mean is is realistic where you know oftentimes the person who is overlooked and mistreated on the job is the best at it. But because of their gender or race or any other number of factors, they are disregarded and not taken seriously. So that was at least realistic, I guess. But then it just means you have to see this woman mistreated by this character who turns out to be someone who we're also meant to be endeared to.

Because it's like, oh, my God, Mark Ruffalo was behind the whole thing. He's the genius who wrote the blueprints or whatever. So that's and then the romance between them. I've never seen a more wedged in romance. Suddenly they're kissing in the third act. And it's like they even seem confused as to why they're kissing. They're like, OK. And then at the end, he's like they even seem confused as to why they're kissing they're like okay and then at the end he's like i have to come back for you i'm like no you don't she's an

interpol officer that you kissed one time what's wrong with you so that was very bizarre and another thing that only happened because she's a woman there wouldn't be some random wedged in romance otherwise but it's just like oh well we have a woman and a man next to each other in a story and heteronormativity dictates that they have to kiss yeah that was egregious it's also slightly similar with the jesse eisenberg and isla fisher situation which obviously what when was that a romance they hold hands at the end that oh i didn't even notice that i believe it is one of isla fisher's last lines in the movie it was so bad that i was like laughing where she's giving her like corny end of movie line where she's like even if we go to jail and even if everything blah blah blah and then jesse

eisenberg interrupts her he's like i know what you're thinking and then and then it was like oh okay well clearly they belong together he's being fucking horrible to her again cool magic so obnoxious the jesse eisenberg character i have no i have nothing good to say what a nightmare hated him hated the woody harrell i don't like when movies make me dislike woody harrelson i resent it he's so likable and his character is awful yeah awful awful honestly the character who like the least sleazy most likable character is probably Isla Fisher's character, which is wild because you don't know anything about her. She's of when Morgan Freeman says to Mark Ruffalo, what's the role of a magician's assistant? And Mark Ruffalo goes,

she distracts the audience while he sets up the trick. And it's like, well, that's all you need. That's all we needed to know how you feel. Thank you very much. Done. The thesis statement of the movie. Does anyone have any final thoughts got it all out the last thing i'll i will say is that a better movie about the descendant of a magician

seeking revenge by stealing things of great value is Paddington 2. Abracadabra. Yeah. Good twist. That's the real twist. Mark Ruffalo. Oh God, the Mark Ruffalo twist. I was dying. It's really funny. Because even like Mark Ruffalo doesn't look totally sold in his performance that what is happening makes sense. He's like, yeah, it was me. It was me. He's on a carousel. You're like, I gotta get me out of here. Altogether, does it even pass the Bechdel test? No. No?

I don't think so. I don't think women interact. What I thought was interesting was, and this is not a compliment, but there's a number of, we've referenced some of them. There's a number of female've referenced some of them there's a number of female characters who the movie does go out of the way to give names to audience members are given names almost every time other officers that only appear in one scene get names the woman

that um interpol lady rents an apartment from in new orleans gets a name like there's all of these women that get names but then they never speak to other women and sometimes like in the case of the woman who rents the apartment never speak at all which is especially egregious because i don't think that there's like any there's there's no women of color that have significant roles in this movie even though they're cast in like one-off lines or like in a single scene. And then it's like Isla Fisher's kind of like being Princess Leia in this movie where she's like, she's not given anyone to talk to. Or it's like Isla Fisher and the Interpol agent are like Princess Leia in different storylines the movie could have so easily passed if isla fisher was to ask one of the women in the audience what their bank account number was but that did not happen

right or if we see like alma interrogating isla fisher's character but that also doesn't happen also real quick the second show where they're stealing from michael cain and redistributing it to the audience who had been affected by Hurricane Katrina. There is a black woman who has a bank account balance that increases by $70,000. And we're like, oh, wow, this is great. Everyone's going to get $70,000. But then the next thing that happens is a white woman gets 280 000 and it's like you can't just if you're going to redistribute the wealth you can't what i think that's like it's the subjects of that was i

think that they were trying to give each person what they were owed from hurricane katrina insurance but it's like it doesn't scan at all and it seemed and it comes off very aggressive for no reason like right yeah and then like the optics of like giving one of the few women of color in the movie at all with lines no like way less like a quarter of the money that then a white woman gets like what are you also she had 700 like why did we need to make the black woman living in poverty yeah that too that's how she came in that's how she started like we did not help right what is happening oh this movie sucks it's so fucking lazy to the point where i'm like did the screenwriters even like register the optics of what they're doing it just seems like it was written in this bizarro white guy vacuum i don't know this movie sucks so bad as most movies are

so our scale of zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens i would give this movie zero n Yeah. Now you see no nipples. I'll meet you there. No nipples for the movie. I can't imagine how frustrating it is to be constantly asked questions about this movie, Kayla. It's just constant. Listen, I'm going to be a little controversial here

and I'm going to give it half a nipple. And the only reason why is that there was a woman in the magic show who spoke. Like, that's already a leg up than most magic things that exist. So the fact that she had a microphone during the show, I'm going to give it a half. That's fair. Yeah. But what a low bar to set i know what a stinky ass movie now i i'm now you three me canceled ruined i hope that this episode destroyed and then there should be a movie about women doing magic for crying out loud. Are there? Well, Kayla, last question for you.

Are there movies about magic that you would recommend to our audience? I like The Prestige. I like The Prestige, too. I'm glad to hear you say that. I have to watch it again. But I wouldn't say you should watch The Prestige for any sort of intersectional feminist fun. I think it's just, I love Hugh Jackman. But other than that, no.

Not that I can think of. I'd imagine if we covered that movie on the podcast, it would similarly get half a movie. I don't think it would do very well. It's just at least a competently made movie. It's a competently made movie. So I'll tell you the most accurate magic movie to ever exist is the amazing burt wonderstone it's a not a good movie but it's the most accurate to the magic worlds like okay the opening scene where steve carell

has the biggest bed in the world that's like a straight ripped off of chris angel's life so there are a lot of that is very, very accurate. So if you want to know like what magic actually looks like, not a bad one to watch. Interesting. All right. Thanks for that, Rick. And thanks for coming on the show. It was such a treat to have you.

Come back anytime. Please. And tell us where people can follow you, plug your podcast, etc. So you can find out more about what I'm doing. My website is magicinheels.com and that's also all the social medias, Magic in Heels.

And then my podcast, if you're interested in finding out about more about diversity and inclusion in magic and allied variety arts or lack thereof of diversity and inclusion in allied variety arts, it's shesampod.com or or Shezam on all your favorite podcast places.

Thank you both so much for having me. I'm so glad we finally did this. This is awesome. Appreciate you. We're very, very happy to have you. Thank you again. And you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Bechtelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com

slash Bechtelcast. You get two bonus episodes every month, plus access to the entire back catalog, all for $5 a month. And you can go get merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtelcast if you are so inclined. Everyone, I have a

confession to make. Yes? This may not make any sense but um uh um it was me oh my gosh jamie is your dad shrek my dad is shrek and he died oh no and so i became a cop and then i waited 20 years and now i'm avenging shrek wow what a compelling story. What a perfect setup for a sequel that actually happened. Wild. Well, goodbye. Bye-bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia

was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,

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the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson, 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI, identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip here episodes of rip current early and completely ad free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to i heart true crime plus only on apple podcasts k hasn't heard from her sister in seven years i have a proposal for you come up here and document my project all you need to do is record everything like you always do what was that that was live audio of a woman's

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