Ruben Fleischer on Now You See Me: Now You Don't

0:14Chris Hewitt:Hello pod, I'm Chris Hewitt and welcome to another Empire Podcast spoiler special interview. You'll like this, not a lot, but you'll like it. It is, of course, my spoiler special interview with Ruben Fleischer, director of Now You See Me, Now You Don't, the long-awaited, especially by me, third part in the Now You See Me series, in which a group of magicians, the Four Horsemen, Moonlighters, Thieves, and wind up working for a mysterious magical organisation known as The Eye. It's been almost a decade since we last saw the Horsemen That's of course Jesse Eisenberg's J. Daniel Atlas Woody Harrelson's Merit McKinney Dave Franco's Jack Wilder And well it's been more than a decade since we saw Isla Fisher's Henley Reeves Given that she wasn't in Now You See Me Too But they're back back back Here with their ranks bolstered by the addition of three Well not Horsemen more foals really Charlie played by Justice Smith Bosco played by Dominic Sessa and June, June, played by Ariana Greenblatt.

1:17Chris Hewitt:This is a fun flick with lots of twists, turns and tricks. And I sat down with Fleischer a couple of weeks ago to talk through pretty much all of it, including the mysterious absence of a key character, the film's major reveal and the death of a beloved character. So here we go. Time to say the magic words. Apodicadabra. Yeah, it sounded better in my head. Anyway, here's Ruben Fleischer. Now you hear him. enjoy ruben fleischer director of now you see me now you don't welcome to the emperor podcast how are you sir terrific thanks so much for having me back on again chris oh no always a pleasure sir always a pleasure and uh let's start with the tricky stuff there's a lot of tricky stuff in this movie what's what's the sequence that kept you awake at night there's quite a few because uh when you're stepping into a franchise that somebody else built um you know the especially one that's as beloved as this and has been a little bit dormant for a while i felt a lot of pressure to deliver for the audience because i didn't want anyone to say that we'd you know derailed the the the franchise um and i wanted to hopefully elevate it so i was stressing over pretty much every component of this film um but the most important thing for me was that beyond just all the individual tricks uh throughout the movie that the movie as a whole work as a trick and that there you know there's a big reveal in the third act and i wanted that to feel like a real magic trick like a rug pull on the audience when we when we reveal you know the identity of the the blackmailer um i wanted that to feel you know without aspiring too highly but like you know the similar feeling you get when you saw the sixth sense or usual suspects of just not not having been able to imagine uh how it all came together but one of the things i'm most proud of of the movie was uh uh when i got to watch it with the audience for the first time and when the identity of that person's revealed there was an audible gasp in the theater and as a filmmaker who is definitely not a magician has never had the joy of performing a magic trick in his life i i for a second got to cosplay as magician because i felt like my trick had actually worked and uh and i i got to hear you know the audience appreciate it and that just was so gratifying well um obviously ruben this is a spoiler special so we we can reveal the identity of that person uh it is it is of course charlie uh just a smith's character and and you had me you got me that's great that's that makes me so happy and so proud.

4:00Chris Hewitt:And I feel so angry now looking back on it as well because all the clues are there in plain sight. I mean, we're repeatedly told that he likes to stay in the background. Henley has that heart-to-heart with him in the chateau where she says you need to step up, you need to step into the spotlight. You know, Danny constantly says, don't assume you're the smartest person in the room, prove it. And of course, there he is under our noses all the time. Yeah, I mean, one thing that as was a constant refrain during production was it's not the first viewing that matters it's the second viewing and it was really important to me that all the sort of like holes are filled and that it does stand up to a second viewing and if you know the secret that you can still say well they they were true to the audience and we stayed within the perspective that we should throughout so that it didn't feel like we were cheating the audience in any way.

5:00And I believe it stands up to the second viewing test. I don't know. You'll have to watch it again, I guess, and tell me if I'm right or wrong. But that was something that was really important to me, is that we didn't feel like we cheated anybody.

5:13Chris Hewitt:Absolutely. I haven't seen it twice yet. I've only seen it once. But you absolutely got me. And also, at the end, there's so much going on. you know there's absolutely you know so you have bosco in the formula one car and he's doing his thing and they and the horsemen they're all in under danger of drowning either in sand or in water and uh i didn't notice that charlie had gone missing so um it was uh i guess smoking mirrors a little bit you know part of uh a great magic trick is uh whatever you're doing to divert attention So I guess we've followed suit. Raise your hand over here. And then meanwhile, the dove is in his hand here.

5:53Chris Hewitt:At what point in the development process, because you've been on this film now for a couple of years, at what point in the development process did that come up? Was that always part of the wider story? It was always a part of the ambition of my ambition upon being involved. And it definitely wasn't in the first script that I read. And this movie went through a couple different writers. And I remember I was working with this writer, Mike Leslie, and there was like a definite aha moment where we came up with that as a concept. And it was a true like Eureka type situation. And we had kind of the kernels of it.

6:39But then Mike had to go in and kind of shore it up to make sure that it could really stand the stress test. But I remember when we thought about the idea of Charlie kind of basically catfishing the horseman in order to prove his worth. It just basically lined up great. And it went through a lot of different iterations in terms of like his personal backstory and how it related to Veronica. Because the most important part of it is that it is personal. It's not a random villain. And there's a direct, you know, personal reason that he wants to bring her down. And we kind of arrived at the relationship and then reverse engineered things to serve that purpose.

7:27But I'm really proud of our ability to come up with the idea and then also proud that we're able to execute it.

7:33Chris Hewitt:And you lay the groundwork again all the way through when they're in the chateau. He and Bosco look at the bullet catch and our eye is drawn to that, which obviously sets up what happens at the end of the film. So are you planting seeds throughout things I haven't even caught yet that on the second, third viewing will be there? A lot of them. So I'm going to give you the credit where it's due. But, you know, I feel like Back to the Future is like a masterclass in setups and payoffs. Like, I don't think anyone has done it better. And so I always turn to Back to the Future as far as like, knowing, you know, how important it is to have proper setups in order to earn the payoffs.

8:16And so you want to sprinkle as many of them in throughout. So when you get to the end, it's as satisfying as possible.

8:22Chris Hewitt:Just logistically, Ruben, can you talk me through how they pulled off that trick? Because at the end, when they have coerced Veronica into making the confession, and they reveal that they were doing it in front of an audience, just from a logistical standpoint, how did they keep the audience quiet?

8:41obviously um there was a lot of people there in the crowd telling people not to spoil it i think they might have posted i don't know there when you see it again you'll notice we made sure that when they're in the that cocoon that that basically the the you know the curtain is lifted there's two shots where you can actually see her on the walls being protection projected simultaneously so the intention was whether or not it's true or not was that the audience was actually what was happening inside that that vault um on the wall so so that by the time when the curtain was raised they had seen basically charlie talking to her and they knew what was happening.

9:30So, one would think that they were so entranced by this interaction that they were deathly silent.

9:39Chris Hewitt:Absolutely. But one of the things I love about this movie is that you give the original Horseman a lot to do. Obviously, you've worked with Jesse a lot in the past, you've worked with Woody a lot in the past. So, I imagine that was very important for you to do, to make sure that they didn't feel like cameos in their own movie, essentially. But you also give the new blood quite a lot to do as well. And you ground the story of the film. I mean, the opening of the movie is a fake out, a really lovely fake out where we think we're meeting the four horsemen again, but we're actually not. So how important was it for you?

10:12Chris Hewitt:And how difficult was it for you to achieve that balance to make sure that the original cast had plenty to do, whilst also giving the new blood their dues as well? Yeah, it's really tricky when you have seven or eight principal characters and you have to service all of their stories because they're all such great actors and especially with the original cast they're the reason why people are showing up so they don't want to just feel like extras in their own movie but at the same time there's just a certain you know amount of screen time for everyone and so you know building in that little love story with Lula and Jack was really important to the actors as well as for us as filmmakers.

10:57So there's more than just them feeling like they're in service to the plot and giving exposition when needed. Like they need real character moments. Woody having this kind of crisis of faith and then, you know, he's been off drinking himself to death and then he's by the end feels like he believes in magic again and its purpose and their purpose as the horseman. And then with the new crew, I mean, it was a little bit easier, I guess, because we were building their characters over the course of this movie. And so everything, you know, kind of resulted in arc. And as we've discussed, Charlie kind of has the most interesting payoff of everybody.

11:36But similar for Dominic and for Ariana, we wanted to make sure, or I should say Bosco and for June, we wanted to make sure that they had clear trajectories as well. and it's tricky I'm not going to lie but I'm glad to hear that you felt like they all were serviced.

11:54Chris Hewitt:Very much so I mean you say there was about 8 or 9 lead characters but including of course Rosamund Pike Morgan Freeman and Lizzie Kaplan who was a huge surprise to me I did not know she was going to be in this movie and you know she shows up she sticks around and she gets a lot to do and she's really really great fun as well so you're inserting that sort of tweak to the dynamic as well That's about 10 lead characters. I love when she comes in because it's just this, you know, burst of, you know, fresh air that she just brings so much comedy with her. Like, I think she's so, so funny. And she crushes in this movie.

12:31Like, I feel like she just hits so hard every line practically that she says just makes me smile. And I love her introduction, you know, concealing her identity and then revealing her. and it also felt like in spirit of her character from the previous film who was known as this sort of you know prosthetic kind of horror makeup person and so you know I love when her arm falls off and or her arm breaks and then later falls off like it all it all you know is in service of character but also in service of story and it's really exciting when you can get both of

13:11Chris Hewitt:those working pretty well at what point did you decide to bring her into the into the mix it was essential to me because it felt like this was kind of like closure uh in a way not closure because hopefully there'll be more but it's i guess um forgiving some sins of the past and so for example the second movie lula was introduced And Henley was kind of just removed with one line of exposition. And it was just kind of like, you know, a swap. And so from the beginning, it was really important to me that both women be in the film and that we kind of, you know, complete the circle. And then also with Ruffalo.

13:52And I'm not going to lie that he originally wasn't able to be in the movie because of shooting schedules. And it just so happened that we did some reshoots. And when we did our reshoots, Mark was available, although not on the actual day of our reshoots, hence why he's a hologram as opposed to the guy at the door. But he was able to be filmed in New York on green screen. And then when we were shooting the reshoot in Toronto, we were able to composite him into the scene. But I was really bummed when we were doing Principal and he wasn't able to be in it. I always really, really, really, really wanted him to be in the movie.

14:31but he was filming, I think, Task or something else at the time, and he wasn't available to us. So I felt like it was a gift that he was able to be in the film and to close it out in such a spectacular way.

14:41Chris Hewitt:Was there ever a draft in which he did appear? Were you trying to develop something until schedules got in the way? That's a great question. I think we knew fairly early on that he wasn't available to us, but I'm sure there were earlier drafts where he was more participant. But in truth, they've all kind of blurred together for me. So I couldn't tell you when he came or went. But he's back, back, back. Got him in the end. Exactly. That's all that meant. He's back, back, back. Indeed. I was wondering at one point, are we going to finish the movie with the horseman busting him out of jail in Russia?

15:20Chris Hewitt:But he wasn't in jail. So we're all good. Prior to the reshoots, I think that was the plot of the fourth movie. So now we have to come up with a new one. Amazing. Of course, there is a pretty major change to the status quo in this film. Thaddeus dies, or at least that's what seems to be the case in this film. I'm intrigued to know what sort of conversations you had and sort of the back and forth you had about that. Because tonally, no one made your character has died in these movies so far. And were you worried about the tonal tightrope you would have to walk in the midst of what is a caper movie to kill him?

16:03I honestly have real mixed feelings about it. It was always my firm belief that in order to give stakes to the villain, that she needs to have literal blood on her hands. And there's no one more beloved than Thaddeus and his proxy, Morgan Freeman, to the world, perhaps. And so it was a really challenging decision to have him die in this film. And it was important to me that, you know, Woody's character in that. I love that scene where he's confronting Veronica in jail and really feel his anger at the loss of his friend. And so it felt to me like it would have been inauthentic if at the end of the movie he popped up and he was fine and everything was well.

16:53but I didn't fully appreciate just how hard the audience would feel that loss and would almost not believe it that somebody as beloved as he could be you know killed in this movie so I was sure it was the right decision at the time but part of me you know is sad that he's no longer a part of it but at the same time um i felt like his final scene is really emotional and morgan was a was i mean just came to watch somebody of that caliber perform such a personal and emotional scene i teared up watching it because i felt so sad just watching him pretend to die it was really powerful and it really affected me

17:48Chris Hewitt:in a real way. Well, it is really interesting because when we do see him die you know, it feels to me like there's no subterfuge there on his part. He's not playing the long con he's not, there's no smoke and mirrors for example, it does feel like that he has died and it's really interesting as well because indirectly he dies as a result of decisions made a long time ago in planning this long con by Charlie and Bosco in June. And now they have blood in their hands in a way as well. Did you think? The way I absolved them of that is that he knew what he was signing up for. Yeah. He knew that it was a risk, and he knew that this might be his last trick.

18:32I think he even says in the movie. And so, in my mind, Thaddeus has absolved them of anything that might happen. And in fact, he's sacrificing himself so that they can all live on. And I think that's a choice he made. He's obviously, his character has, you know, been around a long time. And I think that it's a very, he's a martyr in a way for the rest of them.

19:00Chris Hewitt:Until Thaddeus dies, you're having a lot of fun in that sequence with the chateau and all the various reveals and the upside down room and the forced perspective room and the hall of mirrors, of course. So as a director, were you looking for things that would challenge you visually as well, as well as getting the complexity of those relationships, putting everyone together in little groups, little clumps during that extended sequence? It felt like one of those sequences where they could actually let their guard down a little bit and just enjoy and get to know each other a little bit because prior to that they've all just been on the move non-stop and they haven't really had a chance to just settle and connect and so in pairing them off and having some of those more you know conversations that don't necessarily advance the plot but they're about the relationships it was really important for me and then yeah if you're going to have a magic headquarters um we took some inspiration from the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, wanting to infuse the place with as much magic as possible.

20:08And so it felt to me like it didn't break reality to have rooms where perspectives are all off or where there are hollow mirrors or some MC Escher-inspired infinity staircase or the revolving room. All of it, I just wanted to make sure that there was as much spectacle as we could possibly cram into that chateau.

20:30Chris Hewitt:And then practically, how much of it were you actually shooting on sound stages and on sets? Was there a fair degree of green screen bringing that to life? Zero green screen. It was entirely practical, which was super important to me. The only visual effects, honestly, was in all the mirrored environments was painting out the camera person. because when you have a room that reflects like i think at one point you can see 70 iterations of yourself that was a lot of camera person to paint out but it's funny we made him wear the only green screen we used was the camera guy had to wear this like blue you know like a blue screen suit so that the reflections were super easy to find and paint out uh in the infinity staircase and in the hall of mirrors um but yeah everything else was entirely in camera that rotating room was all practical we actually built you know a room that spun and for the aims room that was especially cool because every single piece of set dressing in that environment had to be built on the correct scale and to be placed in the correct spot in the room otherwise it didn't look right in the perspective so every prop in that room was 3d printed in order to to fit because like you know that violin she pulls out it looks normal at the beginning of the shot but when she pulls it out you realize the violin's like three and a half feet long and that was just a function of the illusion you know you stand in a sweet spot in the center and everything looks perfect but the reality is one room is like 18 feet tall i mean one side of the room is 18 feet tall and the other side of the room is like five feet tall and everything that comes between those two you know it's a trapezoid and so in order to make it look straight if something spans a width it has to be built also you know to to achieve the perspective wow and that that took a lot of planning and um i'm really proud of of it because if you ever go to like one of those museum of illusions or any of those types of places there's never anything in those rooms because you know it would it would be too hard to execute um they're just boxes with like squares painted um but we we had to make everything custom to look as if it belonged in a 19th century French Chateau, but also to be able to achieve the optical illusion.

23:02Chris Hewitt:What was your favorite illusion or trick in the film? I hadn't known a lot about, well, there's so many, honestly. And one of the privileges of the film was getting to work with these consultants from the Magic Castle. And they're some of the world's greatest magicians. But in addition to their talents as magicians, they're also walking encyclopedias. I think in order to be a great magician, you somehow have to educate yourself on the entire history of magic and so learning about things like the bullet catch um which was a real thing that people used to perform and and in fact the person who we model you know they look at that little box where they see like an old kind of like um a single silent film reel of someone performing the bullet catch that was meant to be this guy chungling su who was a white man who performed as a chinese person in the early 20th century ended the 19th century and he actually died performing the bullet catch infamously um the trick went wrong and and he got shot and died performing the bullet catch um so things like that like paying homage to the the history of magic was really cool but then also um you know pepper's ghost which is the basis of the the hologram trick at the beginning of the movie the pepper's ghost is another age-old you know effect that developed in the victorian area where they would project images on transparent screens and it would make it appear as if there was a like an ethereal presence and um if you've ever been to the haunted mansion at disneyland you'll know what i'm talking about and so it felt cool to bring that trick into the modern era with holograms.

24:52And one of the consultants on the movie is named Jim Steinmeier. And when I say he wrote the book on Pepper's Ghost, he literally wrote a book on Pepper's Ghost. And so, he knows everything there is to know about Pepper's Ghost and helped us with that illusion.

25:09Chris Hewitt:Amazing. so in terms of that though in terms of pushing the blurring of the boundaries between what the horsemen and what the the new blue, I'll do it again what the horsemen and the new guys I don't know if you consider them all to be horsemen now Ruben by the way, if I just say the horsemen it counts eight people they're horse people so the horse people obviously you can do all kinds of things all kinds of sleight of hand and illusions yourself through CG and through special effects, you know, how careful do you have to be so that what the horsemen do is actually possible and doesn't cross the line into superpowers or to actual magic?

25:54Yeah, I'm really glad you raised this because this was something that, you know, as a fan of the earlier two movies, I even on the second one started to feel like maybe they were relying a little too heavily on cg for some of the tricks or illusions and prior to making this film i watched some youtube video that was like rating the tricks of the now you sue me movies on a magician versus sorcerer scale and it was like is that a magic trick or is that something all these sorcerers are able to achieve and so for example the like stopping rain thing was deemed sorcery. And for me, when I wanted to do this, I wanted everything to only land on the magician scale and not stray onto the sorcery scale.

26:44And so it was really important to me that all the tricks be vetted and bona fide by real magicians. And that was part of our consultant's task was to make sure that everything could be explained practically as if you had watched it in a real life magic show um and when i mentioned the second viewing thing earlier that also relates to the magic tricks i want them to stand up uh the test of real magicians and i i believe we have the official seal of approval from the magic castle that everything in the movie is actual real magic not sorcery but again they were paid consultants so take it with a grain of salt but i think when when you watch the movie you can tell them when you watch the movie again if there's anything you call bullshit on you know you let me know but we really try to make sure that everything was something that could be explained without saying well it's just magic uh even down things like the

27:42Chris Hewitt:diamond heist where you convince the audience that things have gone wrong uh but then again you show it from a different angle where suddenly it has all worked out very very nicely making sure you're dotting all those I's and crossing all those T's. Yeah, I mean, probably the greatest recent heist movies are the Oceans franchise. And I do love in their movies where you think everything's gone wrong, but in fact, it's in service of things going right. And so we borrowed a little bit from that. But I think, you know, one of the greatest cheats perhaps was like her thinking that she goes down in an elevator 47 stories but in fact she's being rolled around the louv abu dhabi um that one maybe you could question a little bit but at least we justified it by way of showing them pushing the you know the elevate the so-called elevator around the space uh to make it seem as if she thought she was going down you can fuse the senses anything is possible exactly and who knows what's going on inside that elevator i am going to ask very very quickly one last question because i know you're attached to now you see me four uh and i hope it happens you now have by my last count 57 horsemen and plus maybe dylan coming back as well uh so what's the challenge of of a fourth part for you i think it's just continuing to surprise audiences and to come up with great illusions and to make sure that it's entertaining but while also pushing the stories of the characters forward yeah it's not a small feat uh or a small task but i'm hopefully i'm hoping we can achieve it we're working on the script now and uh it will remain to be seen if audiences are demanding a fourth now you see me movie or not i pray that they are um after having seen the third one but um we'll we'll be happy to make it as long as people want to go see it i think you'll be okay you'll be fine uh on that note i'll let you go Ruben Fleischer, always a pleasure sir, thanks so much for your time So long, thank you Okay, that was Ruben Fleischer and that is it for this Now You See Me Now You Don't interview spoiler special, we are hoping to assemble the podcast's very own Four Horsemen to do a deep dive into not just his film, but the trilogy as a whole, but so far have found scheduling to be as tricky as this movie did Mark Ruffalo has so far proved unavailable, no promises but hopefully we will be able to bring it to you at some point.

30:11Chris Hewitt:In the meantime, since the interview, the movie has done pretty well at the box office, particularly internationally, so a fourth part could still be in the works. Fingers crossed that all roads will lead to Dylan Rhodes. All right, that's enough for me. Thank you for listening. See you next time. Bye bye.