EDINBURGH 1926, and Harry Houdini has arrived in the Capital, on the latest leg of his world tour. This time however, it's the world famous escapologist throwing out the challenge.
Shot on location in London, Ealing and Pinewood studios and here in Edinburgh, the UK premiere of Death Defying Acts at Cineworld next week, promises to be a highlight of the 62nd EIFF.
Arriving in the city, Houdini offers a $10,000 reward to anyo
ne who can contact his mother from beyond the grave. Enter the beautiful but deceptive psychic Mary and her 11-year-old daughter Benji to take up the challenge. As Houdini spends time with this mysterious woman, he is beguiled by her charms, and what begins as a con evolves into a far more complicated and dangerous affair.
Bringing Houdini to life on the screen is Guy Pearce who, it is reported, became so engrossed in his character that he not only learned how to get out of a straitjacket but can now do half of Houdini's act for real.
However, the Cambridge-shire-born actor, best known as Mike Young in Neighbours before cementing his big screen credentials as Adam Whitrey in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, was initially reluctant to play such an iconic figure.
"I had just played Andy Warhol in a film where it was important to stay factually correct. So a part of me was saying, do I really want to take on the role of a self-promoting megastar?" he recalls.
He did eventually accept, tempted partly by the 'what if' nature of the story. "I was able to let go of being so rigid with the research material and work within the world of the script. The physical side was a challenge. I had to do a lot of preparation, learning to hold my breath for a really long time, to hang upside-down for a long while. It was astounding the stuff that I learnt as far as what we can actually do to ourselves to transform. I had quite a serious physical routine."
Playing the fictitious psychic was a thrill for Pearce's co-star, Catherine Zeta-Jones. "As soon as I read it I thought, wow this is such a great character with many levels," says Zeta-Jones, who quickly developed a strong working relationship with her leading man, she says.
Bizarrely, when writers Tony Grisoni and Brian Ward first dreamed up Death Defying Acts, Houdini did not feature. Grisoni says, "It started from the idea that at the centre of any magical act there's always an audience that's desperate for the magic to be real, the audience want there to be something extraordinary about what's going on. They don't want it to be like everyday life.
"We started with the relationship of a mother and her daughter – Mary and Benji – and Houdini came into it much later."
Ward adds, "The main characters were originally in more of a travelling circus than a music hall and one day Houdini just dropped into the story and from that we developed the story about people who were sublimating love, in Houdini's case literally tying himself up with ropes and chains. There was a kind of denial of love in him and when we found that out about him, it seemed to fit very well into our story. But it was also always a story about the idea that there is magic out there if you want to believe it."
For production designer Gemma Jackson the biggest challenge was recreating the Edinburgh of the 1920s. "We had to shoot mainly on location, so we had to find locations that somehow, by some stretch of the imagination, you could believe were the real thing and that we could embellish and build onto," she says.
"For example, we've used RAF Halton, to stand in for a smart Scottish hotel. It was originally a Rothschild's building, but it's been really let go. So I had to up the ante and bring it back to it's former glory, simplify it, get rid of the screaming carpets, bring in the appropriate furniture, put in lifts, give a sense of class really."
Director Gillian Armstrong adds, "The thing about Harry that interested me was that it was not just about his act but about how he sold his act. He was the world's first superstar."
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Death Defying Acts, Cineworld 3, Fountain Park, Tuesday, 8pm and Thursday, 5pm, £8, 0131-623 8030The full article contains 757 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
