Daily Dialogue — February 24, 2013

Alfred Borden: You went half way around the world… you spent a fortune… you did terrible things… really terrible things Robert, and all for nothing.

Robert Angier: For nothing?

Alfred Borden: Yeah

Robert Angier: You never understood, why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple. It’s miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you… then you got to see something really special… you really don’t know?… it was… it was the look on their faces…

— The Prestige (2006), screenplay by Jonathon Nolan and Christopher Nolan, novel by Christopher Priest

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is last laugh suggested by Vic Tional who also suggested The Prestige.

Trivia: Sarah’s line “I know what you are” was not in the script. Rebecca Hall said that she felt terrible right after she said it, thinking she had given away the ending.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary from Vic: “its moving and memorable, but it’s more than that. Angier was never Borden’s equal as a magician, nor as a human being, yet he understood something about magic and humanity that Borden missed. I love that speech.”