![]() ![]() “Not to say much of the material I’ve done hasn’t been inspirational, which it has…. I can only work with what’s put on the table in front of me. “But Houdini could create whatever thing he felt would catapult him to another level. In Brody’s field, that’s not realistic - or else he would have had to spend the last decade continually topping “The Pianist.” Houdini, for instance, always felt his next trick had to be bigger and more spectacular than the last. It was facing down something hard, maybe even dangerously crazy, and beating it.īrody says that in the course of the filming he discovered that while he still admired Houdini, he didn’t share all Houdini’s drive. So jumping off a bridge wasn’t just a stunt. He stood for overcoming all the challenges, surmounting all the obstacles.” “I think that’s what he represented to all people, but maybe most importantly to the working class. By his skill and determination he became an iconic American performer. He came from an immigrant family that certainly faced anti-Semitism. “In his own life he overcame the shackles of poverty. Harry Houdini (Adrien Brody) performs card tricks in “Houdini.” “What Houdini was doing, and what he represented to everyone who saw him,” says Brody, “was overcoming obstacles. But he also suggests the reason Houdini was so popular in his day, and remains a popular reference across all of American culture these many years later, was more fundamental. That all adds to the complexity of the character, says Brody. And yet at the same time he was insecure.” She becomes increasingly concerned about his obsession with his work,and tries to prevent him from doing anything too dangerous - which is, of course, exactly what he constantly aspires to do. She works in his act, joining his long-time assistant Jim Collins (Evan Jones) in setting the stage and figuratively rolling the drums for Houdini’s entrance. “Houdini” also spends considerable time on Houdini’s relationship with his wife Bess (Kristen Connolly), whom he met when she was a showgirl and married days later. “I’ve watched this a couple of hundred times and every time, each scene he does keeps getting better.” “You never tired of watching him,” says Abrams. Kristen Connolly plays Houdini’s wife Bess in “Houdini.” In any case, says Abrams, the trump card here is Brody. “What’s important to me is whether it helps tell the story. “But since this was four or five generations ago, there’s no one around to say it didn’t really happen the way we show it. “They’re all tricks he either did or had planned ways to do,” says Abrams. He did the frozen river trick on another occasion, when he was lowered through a hole in the ice and escaped. He did jump off the Belle Isle Bridge in Detroit in 1906.īut the river wasn’t frozen that day. He was fond of jumping off bridges in shackles, including the Willis Avenue Bridge and several others around New York. The bridge jump, for instance, which was filmed at the Eads Bridge in Detroit, melds together a couple of separate tricks Houdini performed. The fact his name is still synonymous with seemingly impossible escapes a century later attests to his stature, Abrams says - and that time gap gave the producers and writers of the miniseries a little leeway in the writing. Kristen Connolly and Adrien Brody as husband and wife in “Houdini” “You see him with Charlie Chaplin, or with President Taft. “There are magicians we admire today, like Penn and Teller or David Blaine, but Houdini was just bigger. “You have to understand how big he was in his day,” says Abrams. ![]() Abrams, was to show the human dimension of someone who became almost a caricature. One of the goals of the miniseries, says executive producer Gerald W. “I shuddered at the responsibility of representing someone I admired so much, and who was so different from me.” “The more I learned about him, the more I wanted to convey the complexity of his character,” says Brody. government as an espionage agent when he went on tour through Europe in the years before World War I. “He’s a fascinating person,” Brody says, and the miniseries delves into everything from his dependence on his mother to being recruited by the U.S. “He was an inspiration,” says Brody, and the depth of that inspiration became clearer once he signed on for the miniseries. Still, like anyone who delved into magic, he never lost his affection for Houdini. Adrien Brody as the master of escape, Harry Houdini. ![]()
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