A Presto, Change-O Opening Night at SXSW

Michael Buckner/Getty Images From left, Steve Carell, Olivia Wilde and Jim Carrey at the opening night South by Southwest screening of “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.”

AUSTIN, Tex. â€" Magic was on the streets and on the screen here in Austin on Friday at the opening night of the South by Southwest film festival. This year’s selection, “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” featured a starry cast in telling its story about a Vegas-performing magic duo (Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi) and a new kind of magician (Jim Carrey) who threatens to steal their thunder. Olivia Wilde also stars as a magician’s assistant aspiing to be a bigger part of the act.

The film, with its mixture of broad, traditional, sometimes subtle and other times gross-out humor played big to the audience at the Paramount Theater. A film about magicians and their different styles proved to be an interesting way to showcase the divergent comedy styles of Mr. Carrey, Mr. Carell and also Alan Arkin, who appears as a legendary magician.

Ben Glass/Warner Brothers Pictures Mr. Carell as Burt Wonderstone in the film.

Mr. Carell, Ms. Wilde and Mr. Carrey attended the screening, and while they were on the red carpet, a man was performing magic tricks steps away on the sidewalk. A few more aspiring magicians were in the audience, at least as seen by a s! how of hands during the lively, and also quite funny, post-screening question-and-answer session with the cast and some crew.

One audience member asked Ms. Wilde about her work on the television series “Continuum,” a show on which she does not appear. That show stars Kiera Cameron, but the embarrassing identity mix-up was fodder for a number of jokes throughout the session.

Another audience member asked Mr. Carell and Mr. Carrey what they thought their funniest facial expressions were and if they could perform one onstage.

“This is the most risky face that I do; just the normal one,” Mr. Carrey replied. “But thank you for the challenge.”

Mr. Carell was asked about the extreme tan his character maintains in the film.

“I got sprayed every week,” he said. “What I didn’t realize until the last two days of shooting is you only see my face and my chest. But I had a head-to-toe tan, for really no reason whasoever.”

When a woman, and aspiring magician, from the audience asked Ms. Wilde what it was like working in a male-dominated cast, Mr. Carell comically whispered to Ms. Wilde, “Say what I told you!”

Her answer: “The way Hollywood has changed dramatically recently with women opening movies to huge box office numbers and allowing the studios to realize women can open comedies, women can open action movies. That paved the way for the rest of us. And the same things needs to happen in magic.”

“The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” opens in theaters nationwide March 15.