Although the French succeeded before America did, I’m hoping the recipient was a more sympathetic candidate than France’s first. My friend Bryant, who lived there for a few years, gave me the details the news stories didn’t bother to state; mainly her complaining about how hard it was to smoke with the grafted muscles. I guess her mouth couldn’t get the toxins adequately into her lungs (take a drag I think is proper term). Yuck! Can’t tell how well it was working from a distance in the BBC movie.
Back when the John Woo movie appeared in 1997, I remember people asking if it was possible. The experts said no due to the individual differences in skulls and muscle development. Maybe they should’ve added a corollary to this: it’s possible, it just will wouldn’t be so smooth when exchanging the faces of Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, unless one wants the Frankenstein look.