Entertainment Affair recently got the chance to attend the press junket for The Incredible Burt Wonderstone in Las Vegas and participated in a press conference with the cast. The film stars Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi and Jim Carrey as rival Vegas magicians; Olivia Wilde and Alan Arkin join in supporting roles. 

Superstar magicians Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) have ruled the Las Vegas Strip for years, raking in millions with illusions as big as Burt's growing ego. But lately the duo's greatest deception is their public friendship, while secretly they've grown to loathe each other. Facing cutthroat competition from guerilla street magician Steve Gray (Jim Carrey), whose cult following surges with each outrageous stunt, even their show looks stale. But there's still a chance Burt and Anton can save the act—both onstage and off—if Burt can get back in touch with what made him love magic in the first place.

Production began in Las Vegas, capturing images of its celebrated main boulevard and downtown that are instantly identifiable to audiences around the world. What better place to set the story, than a city that defines entertainment in the biggest, boldest way? A big scene shot on location was The Hot Box sequence which at 40 feet above the street affords audiences a spectacular 360-degree aerial sweep of the Strip. The filmmakers chose Bally’s Las Vegas Hotel and Casino as Burt and Anton’s home base. Apart from the property’s rich history, the hotel grounds and its strategic mid-point position on the boulevard offered the perfect space for the stunt and its commanding view. “We were suspended by a crane sixty or so feet in the air in a Plexiglas box on the Las Vegas strip and we didn’t even gather a crowd, we tried to gather a crowd, we didn’t want to pay for all the extras.  We figured, “Well people will just gather and we’ll just shoot that as a crowd.”  Nobody cared,” Carell joked. 

Carell and Buscemi are consistently funny as the illusionist duo. A choreographer was originally considered to design their stage act, but the actors naturally found a way of dancing around each other. “For me one of the most thrilling things about it was the dancing that we did. I would just follow Steve’s lead and just try and keep up with him. It was so much fun to do that stuff, and again, I think it really informed who these guys were. You know that they just probably discovered it themselves, like at a show, and just kept it up. It just becomes this thing that they don’t even think about,” Buscemi said.

Pre-production prep for many of the cast and filmmakers meant connecting with working magicians, including globally renowned David Copperfield, who became an integral part of the production and also appears as himself in a sly cameo. Team Copperfield created an original illusion they called The Hangman, which makes its debut in the film. They also delivered step-by-step instructions for its execution, so that Carell and Buscemi could present it on stage as one of Burt and Anton’s signature showstoppers. When asked if Copperfield taught any magic tricks he could share Carell replied, “I’m sworn to secrecy so I cannot divulge a trick, which I think is very cool.”  

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone re-teams “Bruce Almighty” antagonists Carell and Carrey. Carrey plays Steve Gray, a David Blaine-esque street magician. The Hollywood funnyman has a topless scene in the movie and he talked about the flesh flashing event, “I’ve just never taken my shirt off in a movie before so it was good to do that finally [Laughs]. I figured that was Mathew McConaughey’s thing and I was just going to leave him to it. Really it’s not a natural place to live, in that kind of shape, it looks great, it’s fantastic and gets a lot of attention, but you have to eat like anti-matter to stay in that kind of shape, it’s not a happy place to be. Somewhere in the middle, I’m back now, I’ve got mister cuddly back and I’m happy.” Carrey designed Gray’s tattoo insignia, a rabbit skull and top hat. “My make-up artist Billy Corso helped me bring it to life and refine it. So that was kind of thrilling, as that was the first time any of my own art has crept into a film,” he said.

The film also taps Olivia Wilde’s talent for physical comedy in a way that audiences have never seen her before. Her character, Jane, is recruited to be a magician’s assistant in the middle of a show after their original assistant quits. Wilde talked about working amongst these magical giants and trying not to upstage them. “It was fantastic. I had a very similar experience as Jane, [she] is working away on her own, she wants to become a magician but she can’t imagine working with Burt and Anton and she finds herself there and has to be present in the moment and become a magician, and I was going through a very similar experience. I was so thrilled to join this cast and everyone says, “Well it must have been so scary, it must have been so scary among them,” but really everyone made me so comfortable and no one was patronizing, no one was condescending, I felt very much that I belonged there,” Wilde said.  To what Carrey added, “You did. You really did [Laughs].”

This marks Carell’s third screen collaboration with Oscar®-winner Alan Arkin who portrays Rance Holloway, a quintessential 1960s magician, who introduced young Burt to the art of illusion through an old video tape the youngster played until he knew it forwards and backwards. “It’s the third time I’ve gotten to work with him and I could not be a bigger fan. He is never not good and this movie is no exception,” Carell says of whom he considers his idol both in reality and in the movie. 

Are audiences going to love The Incredible Burt Wonderstone? Carrey thinks so, “I think people will laugh a lot and they’ll tell their friends, and those friends will tell some friends and they’ll laugh and peace will be brought to the world.” 

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone appears in theaters Friday.