Interview : Neil Burger

Writer/Director Neil Burger began his film career by creating and directing the award-winning "Books: Feed Your Head" campaign for MTV, promoting language and literature.  He was also chosen to create a series of television spots for Amnesty International and their campaign for ‘prisoners of conscience.’ In 2002, he wrote and directed "Interview with the Assassin," which won the Best Feature Film award at both the Woodstock Film Festival and the Avignon Film Festival and was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards, including Best First Film and Best First Screenplay.  Before that, he directed commercials for the likes of Mastercard, IB, and ESPN. 

Recently, Burger wrote and directed his second feature film, "The Illusionist," based on the short story, "Eisenheim the Illusionist," by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steven Millhauser.  The film stars Edward Norton as the mysterious stage magician, Eisenheim, and Paul Giamatti as Vienna’s shrewd Chief Inspector Uhl, two men pitted against each other in a battle of wits.  Jessica Biel plays the beautiful, enigmatic Duchess Sophie von Teschen, engaged to Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell), whose future is inexorably altered when she encounters Eisenheim.  The film is an entertaining thriller that combines romance, politics and magic to create a world where it’s hard to tell where reality ends and illusion begins.

For Burger, the challenge was to preserve what was beautiful and mysterious about the story, but also create a dramatic context for it all.  He invented new characters for the story – Crown Prince Leopold and his fiancé, Sophie von Teschen – and greatly expanded the role of Inspector Uhl, who receives just a few mentions in the original story. Burger says, "The question was, how do you tell the story of Eisenheim, a man who is an enigma, a mystery? How do you get inside his head without giving away his secrets? I decided to tell his story from Inspector Uhl’s point-of-view. Everything we see is something Uhl has witnessed or one of his agents has told him. At other times, his story becomes conjecture, what he imagines might have happened, and not necessarily true at all…but still loosely from his point-of-view.  He’s creating the legend even as he tries to figure it all out. It’s a subtle but fairly rigorous organizing principle for the storytelling."

Additionally, Burger conducted extensive research into magic, as well as the setting of the story: fin-de-siecle Vienna. "I read everything I could about the Hapsburgs, about the Secessionist movement, and about the magic from that time – both the illusions themselves and the social world of the magicians. Most of the tricks that ended up in the film are based on real illusions done at the time, and the characters I invented are also based on real people.  I wanted it all to be as believable and honest as possible, all the more so since the story examines the idea of how we perceive truth and illusion…and blurs the boundary between those two concepts. If you’re going to exaggerate certain elements, to have it be dreamlike or surreal or uncanny, you have to make sure that the rest of it has a rock solid foundation in the period."

Eisenheim the Illusionist’s performances call into question everything the audience (and ultimately, moviegoers) take for granted – his illusions challenge the laws of nature and the universe. As Neil Burger explains, "I’m interested in that moment when you come face to face with something unexplainable, incomprehensible, and how that event changes your perceptions about everything.  To that end, the magic in "The Illusionist" is not about ‘How does he do it?’, but rather about the uncanny sense that nothing is what it seems.

Burger continues, "There’s a quote in the story that says, ‘Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate to our dreams.’ That goes for the art of cinema in general and "The Illusionist" in particular.  My goal was to have the film completely inhabit that realm of dream and mystery."

Mr. Burger recently sat down with me to discuss the making of the "The Illusionist" and the pivotal role that magic plays in his new film.  Here’s what he had to say to Movies Online about his latest project:

Q: Are you a fan of magic?

NB: I’m a fan of magic as much as the next person. I wouldn’t say I’m an aficionado or something like that, but you know when you’re with these guys and we had these great magic consultants, in particular Ricky Jay. I don’t know if you guys know Ricky Jay who’s an incredible magician and he’s an actor as well. And most importantly for me, he’s an incredible historian of magic. But when you sit with these guys and they just do the smallest little trick, it just blows your mind. And so like anybody else, I can certainly enjoy that. To me the movie is less about that magic of ‘how did he do it’ and more about this kind of, I don’t know, coming face to face with something unexplainable or incomprehensible and how that changes your perception on things.

Q: Well the movie is sort of set up to make us question ‘is it real magic or is it illusion magic?’ But if we go on the (inaudible) maybe it’s real magic, isn’t it kind of just movie magic? We’ve seen movie magic before.  How do you…?

NB: Well, I think again, it’s… All the illusions that we did are based on real illusions and we tried to do them as much as they would have been done at the time and to make us…. The audience is so sophisticated, as you say, about CGI and digital effects and things like that. How do we trick them into thinking that this is really how Eisenheim is doing them? The way we did that is by really having… Edward did all his own sleight of hand and we did the illusions as much as we could as they would have done them then.  And when we couldn’t do it as they did, we still did them in camera or practically or however.  But I mean to me it’s whether … just to sort of go a little bit more into your question…To me, whether it’s real or not is not the question. But even if it’s not real, to me it still puts you in mind of …I don’t know. I said this thing. It’s in the notes. But to me the role of a magician is to remind us of the mystery of existence basically and to kind of inspire awe and mystery at that existence. Whether the magician has real power or not, for a moment, he puts you in mind of that something incomprehensible and kind of reminds you that there’s just greater powers in the world and that the works of man are very small. And so, I think even when it’s just a trick, even if just for a moment, you feel that, I think that’s an important function.

Q: Is there something very early 21st century about that idea that we have this.  There’s a "Prestige" coming out in two months.  There’s "Carter Beats the Devil."  There’s a whole rise of magic.

NB: I don’t know what the reason that is.  I think in a certain way it’s coincidence and the other reason, I think, perhaps is… In the same way in the movie… The movie takes place at a time of political upheaval and turmoil, and I think in times of that sort of disruption, or that turmoil, people reach out for something more spiritual as they do in the movie. They kind of crave something that reminds them of some sort of higher power that makes more sense to them.  And I think that perhaps something like that is happening today and maybe the movies are a result of that.  So some sort of relationship there.

Q: What specifically struck you in the story?  Was it just that?  What you just told us?

NB: It think it is. The short story is by Steven Millhauser who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 and it’s a 20-page short story.  It’s a beautiful gem of a story. It’s not a movie. It’s not a full length movie. It doesn’t have Sophie in it. It doesn’t have the Crown Prince in it. I invented those characters. But what it does have is this kind of transcendent idea that I was talking about, this sort of uncanny sense that nothing is what it seems.  You know that you’ve really come face to face with something incomprehensible and kind of mind blowing and how that changes your perceptions of everything.

Q: Well, it says it’s inspired by a true story. Correct?

NB: It doesn’t say that. But it’s not really inspired by a true story. I mean obviously it’s all… I mean I did a huge... I mean Millhauser, I’m sure, did a massive amount of research, and Eisenheim is sort of based on Robert Houdin who was kind of the father of modern stage magic. But it doesn’t say that. And the Crown Prince is based on this guy Crown Prince Rudolf who committed suicide under mysterious circumstances a little bit earlier than the movie takes place. So I did a massive amount of research to have it be as true as possible. But to me that’s not so much the important thing.  I mean I wanted it to be true to the time but not kind of trapped by it.  I mean it’s a period movie but it’s not like a typical costume drama. At least for me it’s about other things. It’s about the idea of perception that we were talking about and this power game between Inspector Uhl and Eisenheim.

Q: Could you talk about how the casting all came together?

NB: Well, Edward had read sort of an early draft of the movie. My producers are Brian Koppelman and David Levien who wrote "Rounders," and Edward was in "Rounders" and they had kept up with him and they had...  When I wrote the draft, they showed it to him. And he liked it, but I don’t think he was available at the time or something like that.  But as these things do, another year goes by and suddenly everything is different. He read it, and he liked it and came aboard. And then after he came on board, then I actually had lunch with Paul on the day that "Sideways" opened. And he wanted to do my movie which was incredibly flattering and gratifying, you know, that he was just in this great big movie and it was "The Illusionist" that he wanted to do next.  That’s the only movie he wanted to do next. But he’s kind of an unlikely bit of casting for this having done mostly these neurotic losers before.  (laughter) But in a way I knew he was such a good actor and I wanted sort of a fresh take. You know, the investigating inspector is kind of a conventional film role. And I wanted to do something different to put sort of a different spin on it, kind of a fresh take on it, and I knew he had a kind of quiet power to him.  He’s just amazing so... And then with Jessica, she read for it and knocked us out actually with her reading and she  You know, I wanted somebody who was kind of a relative newcomer. I mean certainly she was a movie star in her own right with sort of a younger group, but I wasn’t that familiar with her. But what I liked about her is she herself has a fearless spirit and the character of Sophie was again supposed to be fearless and adventurous and willing to take these kind of bold risks. And Jessica is very much that kind of person. You know she walked on the set with these three guys, Edward and Paul Giamatti and Rufus Sewell, who’s also an incredibly intense guy, and completely held her own. She gave as good as she got.

Q: The movie has such a beautiful look to it.  You shot in Czechslovakia?  Correct?

NB: Thanks. Yes.

Q: For an independently financed movie, it looks like it cost a lot more than it actually did. Can you tell us how much it cost?

NB: It cost $16 million dollars which is a lot of money but it’s not …

Q: It looks like it cost $40 or $50 million.

NB: Right.  Well, we just worked really hard on it.  And I had a very specific look in mind.  When I was writing, I always knew I wanted to have a kind of a hand cranked quality to it because I liked the quality those older movies have.  There’s something sort of unnerving and disquieting about it, and I wanted that to go with what I was saying about this sense of coming into contact with something unexplainable and the uncertainty of that, and I wanted the film to kind of back that feeling up. So I wanted to use those sort of old cinematic techniques of … not so much techniques but just sort of the vocabulary of old cinema, the flickering, the vignetting, and the grain, and then to use a very specific kind of color as well.

Q: There is the CGI and then there is the real illusion. Was there anything that was more difficult or took a little bit more because it had to look right on camera?

NB: In terms of everything or in terms of the photography?

Q: The photography.

NB: Well, the photography is based on this early color photographic process called autochrome which was invented around 1903.  There’s autochromes and there’s autochromes.  There’s some that people think are hand tinted which they’re not.  And there’s some that look like impressionist paintings, and there’s other ones that in particular that I liked and used as a model.  And we did a lot of testing with filters and things like that. And then, as you say, there’s a certain amount we can do in camera, but in terms of schedule and not having a ton of money or a ton of time or not quite enough time, we had to leave some of it for post production.  But it was all shot knowing how we were going to treat it in post production and setting it up with those ends in mind.

Q: Was there a particular scene that was hard to set up?

NB: Hard?

Q: Like the magic acts. Was there anything that was difficult to put on screen without giving it away?

NB: Yeah. They were all kind of hard like that. The hardest thing was probably the apparitions at the end which we probably take the most license with, pushing the illusions to something that they weren’t. Again, it’s based on certain early projection techniques, but wanting to make those as believable but they had to really be as dramatic as possible. Yet they also had to fit into the look of the movie and the whole thing.

Q: But how did you do the orange tree, darn it? (laughter)

NB: How did I do the orange tree?

Q: CGI?

NB: No, no…It’s half, part of it…It’s mostly mechanical, actually.

Q: Even in the movie, it’s mostly mechanical?

NB: Yes. Obviously it’s based on an old one.  I’d say it’s half mechanical actually which believe me is a lot compared to get a mechanical tree to work like that. But I think what’s important and that’s the one that has the most…The mirror illusion..it’s all done on stage in camera. The sword the same thing.  And then the apparition is sort of a combination. But the orange tree was really difficult because, if you remember, it was done in one shot. Basically the camera starts behind the stage and comes around and goes under Edward’s arm and then goes out through the back of the auditorium. It’s just a mechanical thing that keeps breaking down and so there’s fits and starts. We did it on the first day of the shoot which is never a good recipe for success.  So it was about half mechanical which was actually a real achievement mechanically and then filled in with digital stuff afterwards to… But again all the digital stuff is sort of done with the mechanical stuff in mind. It’s all done with a method. It’s not done as an organic tree. But more as… These rods would push out and the way the leaves would unfold, unroll from the rod. So hopefully the digital stuff stays, you know, is trying to mimic the mechanical stuff. So it all had some method behind it.

Q: After all the research you did, are there still magic tricks that amaze you?

NB: Oh, they all do actually. As I said, Ricky Jay will do a card trick and it’s just so alarming.  And it’s so unnervingly strange. He did… Years ago before I wrote the screenplay, I actually happened to meet him for something else, and he did one card trick for me where he held the card underneath [demonstrating what he did] just this close to me, put his hand over it, didn’t block the hand from mine. Just went like this [gestures] and then one card in his hand changed to a different card right before my eyes. It was so weird and I don’t know how he did it.  I don’t know if he waited for me to blink or what he did. I’m sure it was incredibly simple for him. But it was mind blowing. I wanted… It sort of still rattles me to think about it. And that’s actually the feeling that I wanted to get from the movie or with the movie.

Q: Do people want to be tricked, do you think?

NB: I think that there are some people that want to be astonished, and there are some people who are these fierce rationalists who want to know exactly how things are done. And I think in a way the movie is a struggle behind those two people. The Crown Prince being sort of the fierce rationalist. And perhaps some members of the public or even Sophie willing to be…or Inspector Uhl torn between being astounded and wanting to know how it’s done and that’s the sort of struggle.

Q: Where are you on that scale?

NB: Where am I on the scale? I’m sort of right in the middle. I kind of like knowing how… Let’s put it this way. I like being lost in the maze but still knowing how it’s put together.

Q: What’s the coolest illusions you’ve learned to date?

NB: The coolest one I’ve learned which is just very minor is the one that’s in the movie where he puts his hand up to his head.  He has that red ball that he puts to his head and literally the blood drains out of your hand and you can actually tell. You can see. It’s very subtle, but you can see the difference, and you can get it every time. Which I suppose it’s not huge... It’s not like you’re going to build a Las Vegas act on that. (laughter) It was such a great thing when I learned it. That’s what these guys do. They find the most unlikely way to make something fantastic. Whether it’s some sort of cutting edge technology for those guys at the time or the simplest sort of most basic principles of, in that case, biology.

Q: Your star has a reputation sometimes for getting involved in the editing room on his movies?

NB: Right. He didn’t actually in this one.

Q: Were you wary of that?

NB: Yeah, a little bit. Because I have my own… I’m a very hands-on director and I feel like it’s a very hand made movie and with the editing, I was in there for every single cut, every single edit in the movie. My editor is a great editor, but we work hand in hand. And so, you know, the movie is the movie that I cut. Nobody fooled with it, and I didn’t want anybody to fool with it (laughter), you know, and he didn’t get involved in it.

Q: Did you work that out ahead of time?

NB: No, it just didn’t happen. It’s a pretty hard thing to work out ahead of time so... (laughter)  But no, he just didn’t get involved. He knew it wasn’t his… He had other movies. He produced "Down in the Valley" and he’s producing "Painted Veil" which is coming out later, so I think he had his own kind of pet projects that he was going to be deeply involved with. And this is something that I think he feels very strongly about but he… you know… I think he understood the vision of it and that it was a particular vision and let it go.

Q: Ricky Jay is sort of an old school magician.  He still does the basic illusions. Do you think we’ve lost something in the sense of wonderment when our idea of magic becomes David Blaine and the kiddy pool?

NB: David Blaine and the kiddy pool? [laughs]

Q: Yeah.

NB: Well, it’s interesting.  Because actually the origin of this whole movie is because David Blaine came to an early screening of my first movie which was "Interview with the Assassin." He came to a rough cut screening where we were like showing it…. He was sort of a friend of a friend who came. And he sat right in front of me and watched the movie with his model girlfriend who fell asleep on his shoulder right in front of me while… the first screening of my movie ever. ‘Disaster.’ (Laughter)  anyway he liked the movie. And that’s why my producers and I got to talking about magic and I told them about this book. David Blaine has the skills to do that stuff and I think he’s just chosen these kind of…What’s the right word? I can’t remember…

Q: Crazy?

NB: These crazy things. [laughs] These things that like just stress his endurance. And I don’t know why, but he’s certainly not the only guy. I mean, I don’t know why that interests him. But he’s not the only guy doing magic.  There’s a lot of interesting people out there. There’s this guy who’s not that well know, but his name is Darrin Brown in London. And he does these thinks where he can get you... He’ll like write something down on a piece of paper himself and put it in an envelope and put it to his side and somebody else will hold it. And he’ll just start talking to you, and he’ll ask you to draw a picture.  Draw any picture you want.  And you draw a picture and he’s already drawn it.  And the way he does it… It’s not a trick.  I mean it is a trick.  It’s all by power of suggestion and he like manipulates you into drawing what he wants you to draw.  Anyway, so there are really interesting guys out there doing things. Blaine gets it…There are huge publicity stunts that are then ABC Specials or however it works. You talk to Ricky (Jay), Blaine has the skills though.

Q: Thank you.

NB: Thank you so much. Thank you for your questions. I appreciate it.

"The Illusionist" opens in theaters on August 18th.  I invite you to read my interview with the film’s star Jessica Biel right here.