The story of The Prestige was loosely based on the story of Chung Ling Soo, one of the most famous stage magicians of the 19th century and an utterly shameless race faker (he has a brief cameo in the first act of the movie)https://twitter.com/MarieMyungOkLee/status/1301607543538683910 …
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But yeah another way in which it inspired The Prestige was this became a full on feud When Ching Ling Foo became aware of Chung Ling Soo and realized who he was he became obsessed with exposing him
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Which Bill Robinson/Chung Ling Soo responded to amazingly dickishly, including firing back that maybe Ching was attacking him because *he* was the impostor in yellowface makeup stealing his act It got ugly
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The only reason the whole story came out to the general public is that Chung Ling Soo died onstage due to a botched bullet catch trick (also referenced in The Prestige) Not, as a melodrama would have it, at the hands of his rival, just some random asshole
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(Ching Ling Foo had given up on the feud and moved back to China He got shot because he was doing a bullet catch trick and the person in charge of loading the fake bullet fucked it up It's why the first rule of magic is you don't fuck with tricks involving firearms)
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And as a result his whole act became a matter of a police homicide inquiry, which is the whole framing device The Prestige uses
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I'm just now reading up on this on wikipedia, and it's kind of amazing. "You snubbed me, so now I will spend the rest of my life pretending to be Chinese and steal your name and act for my own" is some pretty amazing obsession.
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Definitely see how it inspired to Prestige now, both with the "living a lie in every aspect of your public life" thing, and in the the focus on obsession and revenge driving people to dark and weird places.
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