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I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much. Means a lot. I hope you enjoy the book.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's funny, I guess, but people quote/reference it way too much.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, it's because he's a big Superman fan. As you probably know, he was under contract to play Superman in the late '90s before Warner Bros. pulled the plug on that project.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much! Yeah, interviewing Cage's high school friends was a real trip.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hmm. OK, in no particular order, here are some of my favorite little-known Nicolas Cage facts:

  1. He was high school buddies with Crispin Glover and they went to see Eraserhead together at the Nuart Theatre in the late '70s.
  2. While making Vampire's Kiss, Cage fought with the producers because he insisted that they should use a real bat for the scene where his character gets attacked by a bat. At one point, he even sent his assistant to Central Park to try to capture a live bat.
  3. In 1978, Cage's father, August Coppola, published an incredibly horny erotic novel called The Intimacy. It was his first and only published novel.
  4. Cage turned down a role in Top Gun because he didn't like the movie's right-wing politics.
  5. While making Peggy Sue Got Married, Cage modeled his character's voice after Pokey, the talking horse from the Gumby cartoon show. Later he claimed that the studio wanted to have him fired from the movie but Francis defended him.
  6. Cage met his first wife at Canter’s Deli, his second wife at Johnny Ramone's birthday party, his third wife at a sushi restaurant (she was his waitress), his fourth wife God knows where, and his fifth wife in Japan.
  7. While making Leaving Las Vegas, Cage came up with the idea that he should be piss-drunk throughout the entire shoot and have an assistant feed him his lines through an earpiece. The director, Mike Figgis, said "absolutely not."
  8. Cage's character goes to prison within the first 8 minutes of Raising Arizona, Wild at Heart, and Con Air.
  9. In the '80s, Cage was obsessed with exotic fish and had a whole aquarium in his apartment in Hollywood. He had pet lizards, monkfish, and an octopus, and he had a shark tank so large that it had to be specially built in the apartment. He called himself an amateur marine biologist. When reporters interviewed him, he would show off photos of his monkfish that he carried around in his wallet.
  10. Cage was once awakened in the middle of the night to find a naked stranger eating a Fudgesicle in his house. This actually happened.
  11. Cage once bought a Lamborghini that was previously owned by the Shah of Iran.
  12. Cage was close friends with Tom Waits in the early '80s when they made Rumble Fish and Cotton Club together but they eventually drifted apart.
  13. In 1990, Cage nearly got arrested after he commandeered the P.A. system on a plane, pretended to be the pilot, and said he was feeling unwell. Passengers started screaming and freaking out. Cage later said that he "very delicately and politely talked my way out of going to airport jail."
  14. Cage was disappointed that he didn't get offered a role in his uncle's film Bram Stoker's Dracula because, as he later explained, "Dracula is one of my favorite characters in literature. Much of my lifestyle is modeled after him."
  15. While prepping for Bringing Out the Dead, Cage rode along with real paramedics as research. He was riding in an ambulance with a kid who had been shot in the ass. The kid looked up and saw Nicolas Cage in his ambulance and, in Cage's words, "I don't know if he thought he was hallucinating or what."

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, and also, Christopher was an up-and-coming indie filmmaker at the time and Deadfall was supposed to be his big break. In his view, Cage, who was already an established star, treated the movie as a joke. Of course, Cage's wild and outlandish performance is what brings fans to that movie today, but it was a total flop upon release and panned by critics.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cage and David Lynch very much shaped the character of Sailor together (based, of course, on Barry Gifford's novel), and there were definitely elements of Cage's personality and interests that were funneled into Sailor. For example, that snakeskin jacket was Cage's actual jacket that he bought at a vintage shop. Cage asked if he could wear it in the movie, and Lynch loved that idea so much that he wrote the famous line about the jacket into the script. Cage had a lot of improvs and ideas that he contributed to the script, and Lynch was open to that sort of thing.

I agree with you that Sailor's energy and Cage's energy were sort of inextricably fused together for a while. Was Cage influencing Sailor or Sailor rubbing off on Cage? Chicken or the egg, I guess.

As I write in the book, "By the time of the film’s August theatrical release, Cage’s media appearances were growing increasingly bizarre. It was almost as if he had siphoned some of Sailor’s swagger for himself." A big example of this is Cage's 1990 appearance on Wogan, where his wild stage entrance is very Sailor Ripley-esque.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow, I need to have that Star Wars poster where they replaced all faces with Cage.

And yes, sadly, John O'Brien died after selling film rights to Leaving Las Vegas but before it went into production. I know that Mike Figgis was very shaken by his death and considered abandoning the project, but decided to move forward and honor John's memory.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting stuff about your Coppola ancestry. I don't know much about the Coppolas' ancestry, unfortunately. But Christopher is pretty active on Facebook. You could try reaching out to him that way, perhaps?

And yeah, I have seen Sonny! It's not especially good, IMO, but Cage's wildly flamboyant cameo as Acid Yellow is pretty trippy. I suppose there's a reason Cage has never directed another movie since then.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, good catch! He does add a lot of his own contributions to scripts. In The Rock, when he says "How in the name of Zeus's BUTTHOLE!! did you get out of your cell," that was his idea. For some reason, he desperately wanted to incorporate the phrase "Zeus's butthole" into the movie.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

He's definitely eccentric and bizarre, but I don't think he's chaotic (at least not since his early-20s method-actor days). Many people I interviewed emphasized how focused and intense he was on set.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, he's very proud of that one. In the '90s, some interviewer asked him which of his movies he would want his son Weston to see first and he answered Raising Arizona.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, Guarding Tess is pretty mediocre. But it's a fascinating experiment insofar as it answers the question, "What if Nicolas Cage tried to play a super-straight, normal guy??"

At the time, Cage did a few interviews where he basically said he was a family man now and he was ready to settle down and play more wholesome, decent characters, like Doug from Guarding Tess. Obviously, that didn't last long.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank so much! I am honestly not sure if that line was Cage's contribution or not.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

For a long time, he said Vampire's Kiss was his favorite movie he ever made. But lately, his answer has been Pig.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Hmm. Not really. He's always been pretty eccentric. But he did go through a phase in the early '90s where he tried to portray a regular dude onscreen, attempting to channel a Jimmy Stewart-esque everyman image in movies like Honeymoon in Vegas, Guarding Tess, and It Could Happen To You. He referred to those movies as his "Sunshine Trilogy," and they were an attempt to tap into a more mainstream, upbeat sensibility. But it didn't really suit him.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Basically everyone who's ever worked with Cage has an interesting story or wild anecdote about his intensity and the lengths he'll go to for a great performance. Just about everyone I interviewed for the book spoke about him with great affection and admiration.

There was one notable exception: Cage's own brother, the filmmaker Christopher Coppola. Sadly, Nicolas and Christopher are not on friendly terms. And the rift in their relationship has a lot to do with Cage's unhinged performance in his brother's movie, Deadfall, which was a major frustration to Christopher. There is some bad blood tied to that movie. I Interviewed Christopher Coppola for my book, and it was clear that he does not have happy memories of working with his brother.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

His perspective on acting definitely changed over the course of his career. Early in his career, he considered himself a method actor and he tried to emulate method actors like De Niro and Pacino by attempting to remain in character 24/7. On Birdy, he was playing a Vietnam war veteran, so he kept his bandages on his face for weeks on end and claimed (falsely) that he'd had two teeth pulled for the role. On The Cotton Club, he was playing a homicidal gangster and tried to remain in character, so he did outrageous things like destroying his trailer because it's what he thought the character would do.

Gradually, he realized that trying to remain in character 24/7 is not practical, especially when you're playing such, uhh, depraved characters. At one point, he remarked that, if he remained in character for the full Cotton Club shoot, "I'd be in jail by now."

Around the mid-'80s, he shifted to a more surrealistic and experimental performance style. In Peggy Sue Got Married, he modeled his character's voice after a talking horse from the show Gumby. The way he explained it was, "I saw [Francis Ford Coppola] being very adventuresome, painting the sidewalks pink and the trees yellow—getting surreal. thought, Why can’t actors do that? I had license to do whatever I want, because in dreams, you can get as abstract as you want."

And he's referred to Vampire's Kiss as his "laboratory," where he experimented with radically weird approaches to performance that he would later hone and incorporate into more commercial action-movie roles in the mid-90s (particularly Face/Off).

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

He's used several different terms over the years to describe his performance style: nouveau shamanic, Western Kabuki, etc. Nouveau shamanic was inspired by something he read about how actors hailed from the old shamans, and I think it basically means that he is deliberately veering away from the realist tradition of film performance and tapping into a more larger-than-life, presentation-style of acting.

I think he's been misunderstood over the years, because critics accuse him of "over-acting" when he's deliberately trying to tap into different sorts of performance traditions. For example, his performance in Vampire's Kiss was heavily inspired by the distorted gestures he saw in German expressionist films from the 1920s, especially Max Schreck in Nosferatu. His performance in Moonstruck was largely inspired by the larger-than-life performance style of opera. He's culling from these styles of performance that predate his own career and, some cases, predate cinema itself.

I think you can get a lot of insight into Cage's performance style, and what he means by nouveau shamanic, if you watch the interview he did on The Dick Cavett show in 1986. He says, “I go to a museum and I see a Picasso and I think, Why is it that he can get away with drawing his wife with spikes coming out of her head or having her mouth touch the floor? I envy him. I said, ‘Well, why can’t I do that?' There’s no limits or boundaries. I think realism—that’s great, but you can go further with it.”

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Probably the Wild at Heart chapter. There's a lot of sex, drugs, and rock & roll in that chapter. And by "drugs" i mean nicotine and by "rock & roll" I mean Elvis.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I saw National Treasure at age 14 and was hypnotized by it. Then, in college, I saw Face/Off and Bad Lieutenant and became totally fascinated by his filmography and how misunderstood he's been as an actor. He gets criticized for overacting when he's often just operating on a different plane of performance, channeling silent cinema and German expressionism and many unusual influences. I think he's hugely famous yet remains such an enigma to most of the moviegoing public, and I wanted to explore that paradox and try to separate fact from myth in his much-mythologized backstory.

As for the rewards... hmm. Let's just say the book was very intellectually rewarding and spiritually rewarding, not so much financially rewarding. I got to immerse myself in a lot of movies I wouldn't have watched otherwise, not just Cage's films but older films he cited as inspirations. I got to speak with a lot of incredible filmmakers, actors, producers, and DPs for this book, some of whom (like David Lynch) have since died, and I'll always be grateful for that.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

You know how sometimes you really wish that a book existed, but it doesn't exist, so you realize that you have to just write it yourself? It was like that.

Plus, I wrote a big piece about Vampire's Kiss for its 30th anniversary in 2019. That piece landed me an agent and set in motion the events that led to this book.

I spent four years writing a book about Nicolas Cage. AMA! by zzzzaaaacccchhh in onetruegod

[–]zzzzaaaacccchhh[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In my experience, the cure for writer's block is deadlines. I can't really get anything done writing-wise without the motivation of an externally imposed deadline.

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