John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood begins in November 2006 with Theranos’ successful pitch at Switzerland to Novartis - at that time ranked the 7th best pharmaceutical company in the world by revenue. Indeed, Theranos’ rise and fall closely mirrors the three-step magic process except that, as we will see, it could not produce a prestige. The second I completed Bad Blood, my mind immediately recalled The Prestige as a near-perfect parallel to the book, and for those who have watched the movie (if you haven’t, I encourage you to), the Bad Blood story should immediately evoke images from the movie. We should have looked beyond the theatrics to see that it was multiple clones sacrificed to enable the real charlatan “perform” the magic. Retrospectively, the theory about this movie - where the ultimate magic trick is the magician appearing to die and resurrect - that I find most fitting is that right from the first scene, the audience is invited to pay attention to what is ostensibly lying in plain sight: the magician never actually died, but had clones of himself.

That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part. you want to be –-fooled.īut you wouldn’t clap yet, because making something disappear isn’t enough. But you wouldn’t find it, because of course, you’re not really looking. The magician takes this ordinary something and makes it into something extraordinary. He continues: The second part is called the turn. perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see that it is indeed real.

The magician shows you something ordinary. “Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. Immediately after this scene, Caine starts: Michael Caine’s easily recognizable baritone voice - for fans of theater - crisply introduces the core motif of the movie following the first image on the screen: a yard in autumn full of magicians’ top hats lying everywhere, and then a question “Are you watching closely?” Christopher Nolan’s 2006 mystery thriller, The Prestige, begins with a memorable scene.

Bad blood secrets and lies